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PART I : THE EXISTENCE OF GOD AND OF PROVIDENCE

1. God The Prime Mover Of Corporeal And Spiritual Beings

Before we proceed to consider the meaning and import of the proofs for the existence of God and His providence, it will be well to point out one general proof that virtually contains them all. It may be summed up in this way: The greater does not come from the less, the more perfect does not come from the less perfect, since the latter is incapable of producing this effect.

There are in the world living, intelligent beings that come into existence and disappear again; they are therefore not self-existent. And what we say of the present applies equally to the past.

Consequently they require a cause, one that is self-existent. Hence there must exist from all eternity a first Being who owes His being to none but Himself and is able to confer being on others: a first living being, a first intelligence, a first goodness and holiness. If it were not so, the life, intelligence, goodness, and holiness of which we have experience could never have made their appearance in this world of ours.

Already open to common sense, this proof may be further scrutinized by philosophical reason, but no fault can be found with it.

The greater cannot come from the less as from its wholly adequate, efficacious cause, for the additional perfection would itself then be without a cause, without a reason for its existence, and hence absolutely unintelligible. It is utterly absurd to maintain that the intelligence or the goodness of Jesus, of the great saints—of St. John, St. Paul, St. Augustine—are the result of unintelligent matter, of a material and blind fatality.

This general proof is at once more convincing when we consider the motion of bodies and spirits—motions from which it is shown that God is the first mover of every being, both corporeal and spiritual.

Already advanced by Aristotle, this proof from motion is set out as follows by St. Thomas in his Summa Theologica, Ia, q. 2, a. 3:

There is motion in the world, from the lowest order of beings to the highest.

St. Thomas takes as his starting-point a fact of evident experience, that there is motion in the world: the local motion of inanimate bodies displacing and attracting one another; the qualitative motion of heat increasing or diminishing in intensity; the motion of development in the growing plant; the motion of the animal desiring food and going in quest of it; the motion of the human intellect passing from ignorance to a knowledge at first confused, then distinct; the motion of our spiritual will, which from not desiring a certain object comes to desire it more keenly; the motion of our will which after desiring the end desires also the means to attain it.

Here, then, is a universal fact: there is motion in the world, from the motion of the stone that is thrown into the air, to the motion of our minds and wills. And we may say that everything in this world is subject to motion or change—nations and peoples and institutions as well as individuals. When a motion has reached its peak it gives place to another, as one wave of the sea is followed by another, one generation by another, a phenomenon that the ancients represented by the wheel of fortune on which the more successful were lifted up, only to descend once more and give place to others. Is it a fact, then, that everything passes, that nothing endures? Is there nothing constant, nothing stable and absolutely permanent?

All motion requires a mover

How are we to explain this universal fact of motion, be it either corporeal or spiritual? Is the explanation to be found in motion itself? Is it its own reason, its own cause? To answer this question, we must begin by pointing out two facts. First, in motion there is something new that requires explanation. Where does this new element come from, which previously had no existence? The question applies to past as well as to present forms of motion. Secondly, motion exists only in a movable object: it is this individual motion for the sole reason that it is the motion of this mobile object. There is no displacement without a body that is displaced, no flowing without a fluid, no current without a liquid, no flight without a bird that flies, no dream without a dreamer, no motion or volition apart from an intelligent being that wills.

But if there is no motion apart from a mobile object, is it possible for that object to move itself by its own power and without a cause of any kind? Can the stone of itself set itself in motion without someone to throw it into the air, or without some other body to attract it? Can the cold metal become hot of itself, without a source of heat?

But, you may say, a living thing moves itself. True, but is there not in the living thing a part that is moved and another that moves? If the blood circulates through the arteries of an animal, is it not because the heart by its contraction makes it circulate?

So also in man. If the hand moves, is it not because the will moves it? And if in its turn the will is moved, passing from a state of indetermination to one of determination, must it not be moved by some object attracting it, by some good? And is it sufficient merely for the good to be presented to it? Must not the will direct itself or be directed to it? It does in fact direct itself to the means because it first of all desires the end; but in the case of the first desire of an end, as when we come to the age of reason or when on waking in the morning we begin to exercise our will, is not an impulse from some higher source necessary to start our volitional activity, so as to make our will pass from the state of repose, of inactivity, to that first act which is to be the cause of all the acts that follow? That act contains something new which demands a cause; and the will, not yet in possession of this new perfection, cannot give it to itself. (Cf. St. Thomas, Ia IIae, q. 9, a. 4; q. 10, a. 4.)

Shall we say that this particular motion, whether corporeal or spiritual, has as it cause another motion anterior to it? But, if we consider motion as such, whether realized in this present motion or in the motions that precede, we shall see that it is a transition from potency to act. Now potency is less perfect than act; potency, therefore, cannot confer act upon itself. Once again, if there were not a mover for every motion, the greater would come from the less.

The stone was capable of displacement; now it changes its position, it does not do so without a mover that projects or attracts it.

The plant in its growth passes from potency to act, but not without the action of the sun, air, and moisture from the earth. The animal passes from potency to act when it pursues the prey that attracts it, but only in virtue of that higher activity which has endowed it with the instinct to feed upon this object rather than upon some other.

Man himself passes from potency to act, from ignorance to knowledge; for him it is an intellectual acquisition. But the intellect does not give itself these acquisitions which hitherto it did not possess.

Our will, too, passes from potency to act, to which at times it clings heroically. Where does this new perfection come from? The will could not confer this upon itself, since it did not possess this before.

All motion, then, whether corporeal or spiritual, requires a cause: without a mover the mobile thing is not moved. The mover may be within, as the heart is within the living animal; but if this mover is itself moved, it demands another mover superior to itself. The heart that at the moment of death stops beating cannot set itself going again; in this case it would require the intervention of the Author of life Himself, by whom that life was given and who maintained its motion until the organism finally spent itself.

Every motion demands a mover: such is the principle by which St. Thomas throws light upon this great universal fact of motion. The irrational animals perceive, indeed, that there are motions of the sensible order; but, that every motion demands a mover, is beyond their comprehension. They have no grasp of intelligible being or of the raison d’etre of things, but only of sensible phenomena—color, sound, heat, and the like. On the other hand, being and the raison d’etre of things constitute the very object of our intellect; hence we are able to grasp the truth, that without a mover all motion is impossible.

Every motion requires a supreme mover

But we must go a step farther. If for every motion either corporeal or spiritual a mover is required, does this necessitate a supreme mover?

A number of philosophers, including Aristotle, thought it possible to have an infinite series of movers accidentally subordinated to one another in past time. For such as these the series of animal generations, for instance, never had a beginning. There was never a first hen or a first egg, but always, without beginning, there were hens that laid eggs; the motion of the sun revolving in the heavens had no beginning and will have no end; the evaporation of water from the rivers and seas has always been producing rain, but there was no first rainfall.

We Christians hold it to be a fact known from revelation, that the world had a beginning: that it was created not from all eternity (non ab aeterno), but in time. This is an article of faith defined by the councils.

But precisely because it is an article of faith and not merely one of the preambles to the faith, is why St. Thomas holds that reason alone can never demonstrate that the world had a beginning (Ia, q. 46, a. 2). And why does this truth transcend the natural powers of our intellect? Because that beginning depended on the free will of God. Had He so willed, He might have created the world ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, millions of years before, or at a time even more remote, without there having been a first day for the world, but simply a dependence of the world on its Creator, just as a footprint in the sand is due to the foot that makes it, so that, had the foot always been there the footprint would have had no beginning.

Although revelation teaches that the world did in fact have a beginning, it does not seem impossible, says St. Thomas, for the world always to have existed in its dependence on God the Creator.

But, if a series of movers accidentally subordinated in the past may be infinite and does not of necessity require a first in time, it is not so with a series of movers necessarily and actually subordinated at the present moment. Here we must eventually arrive at a supreme mover actually existent, one that has not merely given an impulse at the beginning of the world, but that is moving all things now.

For example: the boat carries the fisherman, the sea enables the boat to float, the earth holds the sea in check, the sun keeps the earth fixed in its course, and some unknown center of attraction holds the sun in its place. But after that? We cannot go on in this manner ad infinitum in a series of causes that are actually subordinate. There must be a first and supreme efficient cause existing not merely in the past but in the present, and this supreme cause must act, must exert its influence now; otherwise the subordinate causes, that act only when moved by another, would not act at all.

Trying to dispense with the necessity of a source is the same as saying that a watch can run without a spring, provided it has an infinite number of wheels. The watch may have been wound up a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, or times without number, in the past—it matters little; what is necessary is for it to have a spring. Likewise it matters little whether the earth had a beginning in its revolution around the sun; what is necessary is for the sun to attract it now, and for the sun itself to be attracted by a more remote and actually existing center of attraction. In the end we must come to a first mover that acts of itself and not through another of a higher order. We must come to a first mover able to give a full and adequate account of the very being or reality of its action.

Now that alone can account for the being of its action which possesses it in its own right, and that not only potentially but actually; a being which, as a consequence, is its very act, its activity, and which, instead of having received its life, is life itself. Such a mover is absolutely immobile in the sense that it already possesses of itself what others acquire by motion. It is in consequence essentially distinct from all mobile things, whether corporeal or spiritual. And here we have a refutation of pantheism. God cannot be confounded with the world, for He is immovable, whereas the world is in a state of perpetual change. It is this very change that demands an immobile first mover, who, instead of passing from the potential to the actual, is His act from all eternity; who is consequently being itself, since action presupposes being and since the mode of action follows upon the mode of being.” I am the Lord and I change not” (Malachias 3: 6). It is false to say that everything passes and nothing endures, that nothing is constant, nothing stable. There must be a first mover who is Himself absolutely immovable.

To deny the necessity of a supreme cause is to maintain that the explanation of motion lies in itself, that a mobile thing can of itself and without a mover pass from potency to act, can confer on itself the act, the new perfection it does not yet possess. To do away with a supreme cause is to claim that, as someone has said, “a brush will paint by itself provided it has a very long handle.” 3 This is maintaining always the same thing, that the greater comes from the less.

As evidence of this necessity for a supreme mover in the present and not merely in the past, we may take another example, this time from motion of the spiritual order.

Our will begins to will a certain thing: a sick person, for instance, wishes to call in a doctor. And why? Because first of all he desires to be cured, and to be cured is a good thing. He began to will this good thing, and this act of willing is an act distinct from the volitional faculty; for with us this faculty is not of itself an eternal act of love for the good; it contains its first act only potentially, so that when the act makes its appearance it is in the will as something new, a new perfection. In order to find the ultimate raison d’etre of this becoming, of the very reality of this first act of willing, we must go back to a first mover of mind and will, one that has not received the impulse to act, who acts without its being given Him to act, to whom it can never be said: “What hast thou that thou hast not received?” We must eventually arrive at a first mover who is His own activity, who acts solely through Himself, since action presupposes being and since the mode of action follows upon the mode of being.

Only being itself, which alone exists of itself, can in the last analysis account for the being or reality of a becoming, which is not self-existent.

Are we not forced to recognize the existence of this first mover when we are confronted with an important duty to be performed at all costs and without delay, such as the defense of family or country; are we not too aware of our weakness, our powerlessness to proceed to action? What is then needed is action, not words. Who, then, will effect the transition from potency to act, if not He and He alone who has given us the faculty to will and is able to move the will, seeing that He is more intimately present to it than it is to itself?

Similarly, the first act of our intellect, whether it be when we come to the age of reason or when we wake in the morning, presupposes a first impulse given to it by the supreme intellect, without whose concurrence we could not think at all. This impulse, by many unperceived, becomes at times strikingly apparent on those occasions known as flashes of genius. Even the man of genius merely participates in intellectual life. He has a part in it, and everything that is by participation is dependent on that which exists of itself and not through another.

Is not the existence of the first mover of intellects forcibly brought home to us when, after failing to see where our duty lies, we retire within ourselves and there eventually get enlightenment? How have we passed from potency to act if not by the assistance of Him who has given us intelligence and who alone can enrich it with new light?

The first mover, therefore, is not in potentiality for further perfection. He is pure act without any admixture of imperfection. Consequently, He is really and essentially distinct from every limited mind, whether angelic or human, these passing from potency to act, from ignorance to knowledge. Here again we have a refutation of pantheism.

Is the first mover of corporeal and spiritual beings necessarily spiritual?

To move intellects and wills without doing violence to them, evidently the mover must be spiritual. The greater does not come from the less.

But even the first mover of corporeal beings must be spiritual, for, as we have seen, It must be immobile in the sense that It is its own action, its own being. This cannot be true of anything corporeal; all bodies are mobile; matter is in perpetual motion.

Even if prime matter is supposed to be endowed with primitive essential energies, still it cannot as an agent account for the being of its own action; for such an agent must not only possess action and existence, it must be its very action, existence, and consequently must be absolutely immobile, possessing of itself all perfection and not a tendency to it. Now matter is forever in motion, constantly acquiring new perfections or forms and losing others.

The first mover, therefore, of corporeal and spiritual beings must evidently be spiritual. It is of Him the liturgy speaks when it says: Rerum Deus tenax vigor, Immotus in Te permanens. (God powerful sustainer of all things, Thou who dost remain permanently unmoved.)

In what then does the immobility of the supreme mover of corporeal and spiritual beings consist? Not in the immobility of inertia, of an inert body, for that is inferior to motion. It is the immobility of supreme activity, which has nothing to gain, because of itself and from the first it possesses all that it is possible for it to possess and is able to communicate that abundance externally. On board ship the sailors pass to and fro at their duties, but is it not the captain who directs them to action by the spiritual activity of his intellect and will, standing immovable on the bridge? There is far more vitality in the steadfast contemplation of truth than in mere commotion.

The immobility of the first mover is not the immobility of the stone, but the immobility that characterizes the contemplation and love of the supreme good.

The characteristics of the supreme mover

Since the first mover is pure act with no admixture of the imperfection of potentiality, it follows that He is in no way perfectible. He is infinitely perfect, pure being, the pure and ever actual intellection of supreme truth, the pure and ever actual love of the fullness of being ever actually loved.

He is omnipresent, because to move all beings whether spiritual or corporeal, He must be present, since these beings do not move themselves, but are moved by Him.

He is eternal, for He has always by and of Himself all His being and all His action of thought and love. In one immobile instant transcending time, He possesses His life simultaneously in all its completeness. When the world was created, the creative act did not commence in God, for it is eternal; but it produced its effect in time at the desired moment fixed from all eternity.

The first mover is unique: for pure act does not receive existence, it is existence; it is being itself, which cannot be multiplied. Were there two first movers, since one would not be the other, each would be limited and imperfect and would no longer be pure act and being itself.

Moreover the capacity of a second pure act could be nothing more than the first, and would be superfluous: Could there be anything more absurd than a superfluous God?

If such be the case, if there is an actually existing first mover of corporeal and spiritual beings, what practical conclusions are to be drawn from it?

In the first place we must learn to distinguish in life between the immobility of inertia and the immobility of higher activities. The immobility of inertia or of death is inferior to motion. The immobility that characterizes the contemplation and love of God is superior to the movement it may produce by directing and vivifying it.

Instead of dissipating our life in mere commotion, let us endeavor to recollect it so that our activity may be more profound, more consistent and lasting, and directed to eternity.

Secondly, let us frequently establish a contact in the summit of our soul with the first mover of corporeal and spiritual beings, who is none other than the living God, author not only of the soul and its natural acts, but of grace also and salvation.

Let us make this contact on waking in the morning, for then we receive within us that impulse from God that stirs us to action. Instead of going astray at the beginning of the day, let us welcome this first impulse by responding to it.

Let us in the course of the day resume this contact with Him who is the author of life, who was not content merely to urge us in the past, or merely to set us in motion at the beginning of the day, but is ever sustaining us and actualizing our voluntary actions—even the freest of them—in all their reality and goodness, evil only excepted.

Before lying down to rest, let us renew this contact, and all that sound philosophy has just told us about the first mover of corporeal and spiritual beings will appear transfigured, transported to a higher plane, in the Our Father.

“Thy kingdom come”: the kingdom of the supreme intellect, by whom all other intellects are directed.” Thy will be done”: that will to which every other will must be subjected if it is to attain to its true end.

“Lead us not into temptation, ” but sustain us by Thy strength; maintain our intellect in truth and our will in the good. Then we shall have an even deeper insight into the meaning of those words of St. Paul spoken in the Areopagus (Acts 17:24) : “God, who made the world and all things therein… hath made of one all mankind… that they should seek God, if happily they may feel after Him or find Him, although He be not far from every one of us. For in Him we live and move and are.” In Him we have our being—not natural being only, but the supernatural being of grace which is the beginning of eternal life. Of this supreme mover, the source from which the life of creation proceeds we have been able to speak only in an abstract and very imperfect manner. It is He whom we must see face to face when we come to the end of our journey and reach eternity.

2. The Order In The Universe, And Providence

The general proof for the existence of God—that the greater cannot come from the less—we have made more precise by an examination of motion. We have seen how all motion, corporeal or spiritual, requires a mover, and in the last resort a supreme mover; for in a series of actually subordinated causes (for instance, in the series: the earth attracted by the sun, the sun by a more distant center), we must eventually arrive at a supreme mover who does not require to be previously moved, who must therefore possess activity of Himself if He is to confer it upon others. That is, He must be His action instead of merely receiving it. He acts without its being given Him to act. And as action presupposes being, and the mode of action follows upon the mode of being, the supreme mover of corporeal and spiritual beings, to be His action, must also be being itself, according to the Scriptural expression: “I am who am.”

We must now speak of a proof that establishes at once the existence of God and His providence—that based on the order prevailing in the world. Of all the proofs for God’s existence, it is the most popular. Easily accessible to commonsense reason, it is susceptible of greater penetration by philosophical reason; and when it is applied from the physical to the moral order it may lead to the most sublime contemplation. We find it expressed in Psalm 18: 2: “The heavens show forth the glory of God: and the firmament declareth the work of His hands.”

The fact: the order prevailing in the universe

The fact is this, that in nature, in those things that lack intelligence, we have an admirable ordering of means to ends.” This is evident, ” says St. Thomas, “since those things which lack intelligence—the heavenly bodies, plants and animals—act always, or at least nearly always, in such a way as to produce what is best” (Ia, q. 2, a. 3).

Finality and order are apparent in the universal attraction between bodies. The purpose of this attraction is the cohesion of the universe. It is seen in the translational motion of the sun through space, carrying with it its entire system. It is again seen in the twofold motion of the earth—the rotation about its axis every twenty-four hours, which is the cause of day and night, and its revolution round the sun in three hundred and sixty-five days, which is the cause of the seasons. In this constant regularity of the heavenly bodies in their courses, we have an obvious instance of means directed to an end, as the greatest astronomers declared, rapt as they were in admiration for the laws that they discovered. And many good things in this world would not be realized without the difference of day and night and the distinction of seasons, so necessary for the germination of plants and their development.

If we ascend a little higher and consider the plant organism, we see how admirably its arrangement enables it to use the moisture and transform it into sap, in a word, to nourish and reproduce itself in a regular and constant manner. If we but consider a grain of wheat put into the ground, we see that its purpose is to produce an ear of wheat, not of barley or rice.

We have only to consider an oak to see the utility of its roots and sap for the life of its branches and foliage. We have only to examine the collective organs of a flower to see that they all concur in the formation of the fruit which the flower is intended to produce—a cherry, for instance, or an orange. A particular flower is intended to produce a particular fruit and no other. How is it possible not to see in this formation a designing idea?

If we ascend still higher and consider the animal organism, whether in its lower or higher forms, we see that as a whole it is adapted for the animal’s nourishment, respiration, and reproduction. The heart makes the red blood circulate throughout the organism for its nourishment; then the dark blood charged with carbonic acid is again transformed into red by contact in the lungs with the oxygen of the air. Obviously the heart and lungs are for the preservation of animals and men.

Certain parts of the animal organism are truly marvelous. The joints of the foot are so made as to adapt themselves to every position in walking, and those of the hand are suited to a great variety of movements. A bird’s wings are adapted for flight far better than is the best airplane. The smallest cell, which is related to thousands of others, is a masterpiece in itself. Of particular beauty is the harmonious arrangement of the many parts of the ear, for the perception of sound; and again, the very complex structure of the eye, in which the act of vision presupposes thirteen conditions, each of these again presupposing very many more, all of them adapted to this simple act of vision. In the eye we have an instance of an amazing number of means adapted to one and the same end, and this organ is formed in such a way as to produce always, or usually at any rate, what is best.

If now we consider the instinctive activity of animals, especially such as bees, we meet with fresh marvels. It would require the genius of a mathematician to invent and construct a bee-hive; and no chemist has yet succeeded in making honey from the nectar of a flower. Yet the bee is obviously not itself intelligent: it never varies its work or makes any improvement. From the very beginning its natural instinct has determined it to perform its task in the same way, and it will continue to do so forever, without in any way bringing it to perfection. On the contrary, man is continually perfecting the implements of his invention because, through his intelligence, he recognizes their purpose. The bee, too, works with an end in view, but unconsciously; yet it works in a way that excites our admiration.

Shall it be said that this wonderful order in the heavenly bodies, in vegetable and animal organisms, in the instinct of animals, is the effect of a happy chance? What happens fortunately by chance is not of regular or even frequent occurrence, but extremely rare. It is by chance that a tripod, when thrown into the air, falls on its three feet; but this rarely happens. It is by chance that a man digging a grave finds a treasure; but it is an unusual thing. On the contrary, the wonderful order we have been considering as prevailing in nature is an order of fixed unchangeable laws, which are always applicable. It is a constant harmony and, as it were, the perpetual symphony of the universe for those who can hear it, that is, for great artists and thinkers and for the simple, to whom nature speaks of God.

Shall it be said that, amid a large number of useless organisms, a fortunate chance has formed a select few capable of receiving life, with the result that these have been preserved while the useless ones have disappeared? Such is the evolutionist theory of the survival of the fittest. But this would be tantamount to saying that chance is the first cause of the harmony prevailing in the universe and all its parts, and that, surely, is impossible. To be convinced of this, we need only reflect on what is meant by chance. Chance and its effect are something accidental; it is accidental for the tripod, when thrown into the air, to fall on its three feet; it is accidental for the gravedigger to find a treasure. Now the accidental presupposes the non-accidental, the essential, the natural, as the accessory presupposes the principal.

Were there no natural law of gravitation, the tripod would not, when thrown into the air, fall accidentally on its three feet. If the man who accidentally finds a treasure had not had the intention of digging the grave at that particular spot, this accidental effect would not have come about.

Chance is simply the accidental concurrence of two actions that are themselves not accidental but intentional, intentional at least in the sense that they have an unconscious natural tendency.

To say, therefore, that chance is the first cause of order in the world is to explain the essential by the accidental, the primary by the accessory; it implies as a consequence the destruction of the essential and the natural, the destruction of all nature and of all natural law. There would no longer be anything but fortuitous encounters, with nothing to encounter or be encountered—which is absurd. It is equivalent to saying that the wonderful order in the universe is the outcome of disorder, of the absence of order, of chaos, without cause of any kind: that the intelligible is the outcome of the unintelligible: that brain and intelligence are the result of a material, blind fatality. Once again it is to assert that the greater comes from the less, the more perfect from the less perfect. That is the substitution, indeed, of absurdity for the mystery of creation, a mystery that has its obscurities, but that is plainly in conformity with right reason.

The fact, then, that constitutes the starting-point of our proof holds good: namely, there is order and finality in the world, that is, means ordered to certain ends; for beings without intelligence, such as plants and animals, always or nearly always act so as to produce what is best. Universal attraction is for the cohesion of the universe, the seed of a grain of wheat for the production of the ear, a flower for the fruit, the foot of an animal for walking, the wings of a bird for flying, the lungs for breathing, the ear for hearing, the eye for seeing. The existence of finality is an undeniable fact, as even the positivist Stuart Mill admits.

More than this: not only is it a fact that every natural agent acts for some end, but it cannot be otherwise. Every agent must act for some purpose since, for the agent, to act is to tend to something determinate and appropriate to itself, that is, to an end. If the agent did not act for some determinate end, neither would it produce anything determinate, one thing rather than another; there would be no reason why the eye should see rather than hear, why the ear should hear rather than see. (Cf. St. Thomas, Ia IIae, q. 1, a. 2.)

Perhaps the objection may be raised, that we do not see for what useful purpose the viper and other harmful animals exist. True, the external finality of certain beings does frequently escape us, but their internal finality is plain enough. We are quite able to see that the viper’s organs serve for its nutrition and preservation. Its poisonous effect upon us induces us to be on our guard, and reminds us that we are not invulnerable, that we are not gods. Faith tells us that, had man not sinned, the serpent would not have become harmful to him. In spite of obscurities and shadows, there is light enough for those who are willing to see.

The materialists say there is as much heat or motion or calorific energy in a kettle as in a gier-eagle. Ruskin retorts:

Very good; that is so, but for us painters, the primary cognizable facts, in the two things, are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak; the one a lid on its back, the other a pair of wings;… the kettle chooses to sit still on the hob; the eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of the choice, not the equal degree of temperature in the fulfilment of it, which appears to us the more interesting circumstance (The Ethics of the Dust, Lect. X).

The materialist does not perceive that wings are for flying, the eye for seeing; he will not recognize the value of finality of the eye. Yet, if he feels that he is losing his sight, he goes to the oculist like the rest of men, and that is at any rate a practical recognition of the fact that eyes were made to see with.

For those who are willing to see, there is light enough in spite of obscurities and shadows. The finality of nature is an evident fact, not for our senses of course,—for these get no farther than the sensible phenomena—but for our intellect, which is made to grasp the raison d’être of things. For the intellect, obviously the eye is for seeing, the ear for hearing.

A means cannot be directed to an end except by an intelligent designer

From the fact that there is order in the world, how are we to ascend to the certain truth of God’s existence? By means of the principle that beings without intelligence can tend to an end only when directed to it by an intelligent cause, as the arrow is directed by the archer. More simply, a means cannot be directed to an end except by an intelligent designer.

Why is this? Because the end, which determines the tendency and the means, is none other than the effect to be realized in the future. But a future effect, which as yet has no actual existence, must, to determine the tendency, be in some way already present, and this is possible only in a cognitive being.

If nobody has ever known the purpose of the eye, we cannot say that it is made to see with. If nobody has ever known the purpose of the bee’s activity, we cannot say that it is for making honey. If nobody has ever known the purpose of the lung’s action, we cannot say that it is for the renewal of the blood by contact with the oxygen of the air.

But why must there be an intelligent designer? Why does not the imagination suffice? Because only the intellect knows the raison d’être of things and consequently the purpose, which is the raison d’être of the means. Only an intellect can see that the wings of a bird are made for flying and the foot for walking; only an intellect could have designed wings for flying, the foot for walking, the ear for hearing, etc.

The swallow collecting straws to make its nest does so without perceiving that the building of the nest is the raison d’être of the action it performs. The bee, as it gathers the nectar from the flower, does not know that the honey is the raison d’être of its gathering. It is the intellect alone that reaches beyond mere color or sound down to the being and the raison d’être of things.

Only an intelligent designer can have directed means to an end; otherwise we would have to say that the greater comes from the less, order from disorder.

But why is an infinite intellect necessary, one strictly divine? Why, asks Kant, should not a limited intellect, like that of the angels, be sufficient to explain the order in the universe?

It is because a finite or limited intellect would not be thought itself, intellection itself, truth itself. Now an intellect that is not truth itself always known is merely directed to the knowledge of the truth; and this passive presupposes an active direction, which can come only from the supreme intellect, who is thought and truth itself. It is in this sense that our Lord declares Himself to be God, when He says: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” He does not say merely, “”I have received truth, ” but, “I am the truth and the life” (John 14: 6).

This, therefore, is the conclusion to which our proof leads us: a transcendently perfect intelligent designer, who is truth itself and consequently being itself, since the true is being that is known. It is the God of the Scriptures: I am who am. It is providence or the supreme reason of the order in things, by which every creature has been directed to its own particular end and finally to the ultimate end of the universe, which is the manifestation of the divine goodness. This is the way St. Thomas puts it (Ia, q. 22, a. 1) :

We must necessarily suppose a providence in God; for, as was pointed out above, whatever goodness there is in things has been created by Him. Now in created things not only in their substance is goodness to be found, but also in their order to some end, and in particular to the ultimate end, which, as we concluded above, is the divine goodness. Hence this goodness in order apparent in created things has also been created by God. Now since God is the cause of all things through His intellect, in which therefore the conception of everyone of His effects must pre-exist, there must also pre-exist in the divine mind the conception of this ordering of things to an end. But the conception of the order of things to an end is strictly providence.

Providence is the conception in the divine intellect of the order of all things to their end; and the divine governance, as St. Thomas observes (ibid., ad 2um), is the execution of that order.

We now understand more fully the significance of those words of the psalm: “The heavens show forth the glory of God” (Ps. 18:2). The wonderful order of the starry skies proclaims and extols the glory of God, and reveals to us His infinite intelligence. The harmony of the universe is like a marvelous symphony, the sweetest and most effective chant of the Creator. Blessed are they who listen to it.

Is there not a great moral lesson in this proof for the existence of God from the order prevailing in the world? Yes, an important one that is taught us in the Book of Job and more clearly later on in the Sermon on the Mount.

It is this lesson that, if there is such order in the physical world, much more must it be so in the moral world, in spite of all the wickedness human justice allows to go unpunished, as it also leaves unrewarded many a heroic act giving proof of God’s intervention in the world.

It is the Lord’s answer to Job and his friends. As we shall insist later on, the purpose of the Book of Job is to answer this question: Why so often in this world are the just made to suffer more than the wicked? Is it always in expiation of their sins, their secret sins at any rate?

Job’s friends declare that it is, and they blame this poor stricken soul for complaining. Job denies that the trials and tribulations of the just are in every case the result of their sins, even their secret sins, and he wonders why so much suffering should have befallen him.

In the latter part of the book (chaps. 32-42), the Lord replies by pointing out the wonderful order prevailing in the physical world with all its splendors, from the life of the insect to the eagle’s flight, as if to say: If there exists such order as this in the things of sense, much more so must there be order in the dispositions of my providence concerning the just, even in their most terrible afflictions. There is in this a secret and a mystery which it is not given to men to fathom in this world.

Later on, in the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord speaks more plainly (Matt. 6: 25) : “Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat…. Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap… and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they?… Consider the lilies of the field:… they labor not, neither do they spin. But I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. And if the grass of the field… God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith.” If there is order in the world of sense, a providence for the birds of the air, much more so will there be order in the spiritual world and a providence for the immortal souls of men.

And lastly, to the question put in the Book of Job, our Lord gives the final answer when He says (John 15: I-2) : ‘“I am the true vine: and My Father is the husbandman… and everyone that beareth fruit, He will purge it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” God proves a man as He proved Job, that the man may bring forth the splendid fruits of patience, humility, self-abandonment, love of God and one’s neighbor—the splendid fruits of charity, which is the beginning of eternal life.

This, then, is the important moral lesson taught us in this sublime proof for the existence of God: If in the world of sense such wonderful order exists, much more must it be so in the moral and spiritual world, in spite of trials and tribulations. There is light enough for those who are willing to see and march on accordingly to the true light of eternity.

3. God, The Supreme Being And Supreme Truth

The proof for the existence of a first mover of corporeal and spiritual beings, and of a supreme intelligence, the author of the harmony prevailing in the universe, will prepare the way for a better understanding of three other traditional proofs for the existence of God. They are those of (1) God, the supreme being and supreme truth, (2) the sovereign good who is the source of all happiness, and (3) the ultimate foundation of our obligations. These we must touch upon if we would have a right idea of providence.

Following in the steps of Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine, St. Thomas develops the first of these proofs, called the proof from the degrees of perfection, in the Summa Theologica, Ia, q. 2, a. 3, 4a via. Its point of departure lies in the more or less of perfection to be found in the beings that compose the universe, a perfection always limited, from which our minds are led on to affirm the existence of a supreme perfection, a supreme truth, a supreme beauty.

Let us closely examine the starting-point of the proof, the fact upon which the proof is based, and then the principle by which the proof rises from the fact to the existence of God.

The fact: the degrees of perfection

The proof starts with the fact that there are in the universe beings more or less good, more or less true, more or less noble. In other words, in the universe of corporeal and spiritual beings, goodness, truth, nobility exist in varying degrees, from the lowest mineral such as iron with its strength and resistance up to the higher degrees of the intellectual and moral life apparent in the great geniuses and the great saints.

Of these degrees of goodness in things we have daily experience. We say that a stone is good when it has solidity and does not crumble away; a fruit is good if it provides nourishment and refreshment; a horse is good if with it we can go on a long journey. In a higher way a teacher is good if he has knowledge and knows how to impart it; the virtuous man is good because he wills and does what is good; far more so is the saint, in whom the desire for good has become an ardent passion. And yet, however great a saint may be, he has his limitations; no matter how much good he has accomplished, like the Cure of Ars he will experience hours of intense sadness coupled with a sense of his own helplessness at the thought of all the good that remains to be done. Indeed, the saints realize most of all their own nothingness.

It is an established fact, then, that goodness is realized in varying degrees. It is the same with nobility: the vegetable is nobler than the mineral, the animal is nobler than the vegetable, man is nobler than the animal. One man is nobler in mind and heart than a certain other; yet he too has his limitations, his temptations, his weaknesses, his very imperfections. Nobility has its degrees, but even the most exalted in our experience are still very imperfect.

Similarly, truth has degrees, for that which is richer in being, as a reality, is richer also in truth. True gold is superior to spurious gold alloyed with copper, the true diamond is superior to the artificial, the upright mind is superior to the false. Surpassing the mind that possesses a knowledge of but one science, physics for example, is the mind that ascends to the sciences of the spiritual world, to psychology and the moral and political sciences. Yet how very limited is the truth of even these higher sciences!

The more we know, say the great thinkers, the more we realize all that still remains to be known, and how little we do know. So, too, with the great saints: the more good they do, the more keenly they realize the amount of good that still remains to be done.

What, then, is the explanation of these various degrees of goodness, nobility, and truth, or of beauty? Does this ascending gradation remain stunted, incomplete, without a culminating point, a summit? Must the progressive ascent of our minds toward the true halt at a limited and impoverished truth, as in the case of our psychology and our moral and political sciences? Must the progressive ascent of our will to the good halt at one that is imperfect, mingled always with some defect, some impotence? Must our enthusiasm at the sight of the ideal be forever followed by a certain disillusionment and, if there is no summit, by a disillusionment for which there is no remedy?

The principle: the more and the less perfect presuppose perfection itself

Following in the steps of Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine, St. Thomas explains the fact of the various degrees of the good and the true by means of the following principle: “Different beings are said to be more or less perfect in the measure of their approach to that being which is perfection itself.”

By this sovereign perfection does St. Thomas mean ideal sovereign perfection, one existing solely in the mind, or one that is real? He means a real perfection, for that alone can be the cause of the various degrees of perfection which, as we have seen, do exist and which demand a cause.

The meaning of the principle invoked by St. Thomas is that, when a perfection (such as goodness, truth, or beauty), the conception of which does not imply any imperfection, is found in various degrees in different beings, none of those which possess it imperfectly contains a sufficient explanation for it, and hence its cause must be sought in a being of a higher order, which is this very perfection.

For a clearer understanding of this principle let us pause to consider its terms. When an absolute perfection is found in various degrees in different beings, none of those possessing it as yet imperfectly contains a sufficient explanation for it. Here we must consider (1) the multiple and (2) the imperfect.

1) The multiple presupposes the one. In fact, as Plato says in the Phaedo, his disciple Phaedo is handsome; yet beauty is not peculiar to Phaedo, for Phaedrus, too, is handsome.” The beauty found in some finite being is sister to the beauty found in similar beings. None of them is beauty; each merely participates, has a part in or is a reflection of beauty.” (Cf. Phaedo, 101, A.)

It is not in Phaedo, then, any more than in Phaedrus, that we are to find the raison d’être of the principle of their beauty. If neither can account for the limited beauty that is his, he must have received it from some higher principle, namely, from Beauty itself. In a word, every multiplicity of beings more or less alike presupposes a higher unity. The multiple presupposes the one.

2) The imperfect presupposes the perfect. The principle we are explaining is brought home to us even more forcibly when we consider that the perfection of the beings we see around us is always mingled with its contrary, imperfection. A man’s nobility and goodness cannot be said to be unlimited, mingled as it is with so much infirmity, with its trouble and errors. So also ignorance and even error constitute a great part of human knowledge; this merely participates in truth, has no more than a part and that a humble part in it. And if it is not truth, that is because it has received truth from some higher source.

Briefly, an imperfect being is a compound, and every compound requires a cause uniting its constituent elements. The diverse presupposes the identical, the compound presupposes the simple. (Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 3, a. 7.)

The truth of our principle will impress itself more forcibly upon us if we observe that a perfection such as goodness, truth, or beauty, which of itself implies no imperfection, is not in fact limited except by the restricted capacity of its recipient. Thus knowledge in us is limited by our restricted capacity for it, goodness by our restricted capacity for doing good.

Hence it is clear that, when a perfection of this kind, that as yet is in an imperfect state, is found in some being, such a being merely participates or has a part in it, and has therefore received it from a higher cause, which must be the unlimited perfection itself, being itself, truth itself, goodness itself, if this cause is to be capable of imparting to others a certain reflection of that truth and goodness.

Among the philosophers of antiquity Plato has emphasized this truth in one of the finest pages to be found in the writings of the Greek thinkers. (Cf. Symposium, 211, C) We must learn, he says in substance, to love beautiful colors, the beauty of a sunrise or sunset, of the mountains, seas, and skies, the beauty of a noble countenance. But we must rise above mere material beauty to beauty of soul as displayed in its actions; thence from the beauty of these actions to the principles that govern them—to the beauty of the sciences, and from science to science ascending even to wisdom, the most exalted of them all: the science of being, of the true and the beautiful. Afterward there will arise in us the desire to have knowledge of the beautiful itself and as it is in itself—the desire to contemplate, says Plato, that beauty which grows not nor decays; is not fair in one part, uncomely in another; fair at one time, uncomely at another; fair in one place and not in another; fair to some, uncomely to others… a beauty residing in no being other than itself, in an animal, in the earth or skies or elsewhere, but existing eternally and absolutely, of itself and in itself; in which all other beauties participate, without inducing in it by their birth or destruction the least diminution or increase, or any change whatsoever.

The disillusionments that we meet with here on earth are permitted precisely in order to direct our thoughts more and more to this supreme beauty and impel us to love it.

What Plato says of beauty applies equally to truth. Transcending particular, contingent truths, which possibly might not be so (as that my body exists at this moment, to die perhaps tomorrow), there are the universal, necessary truths (as that man is by nature a rational being, with the capacity to reason, without which he would be undistinguishable from the brute beast) ; or again the truth, that it is impossible for something at once to exist and not exist. These truths never began to be true and will continue to be true always.

Where have these eternal, necessary truths their foundation? Not in perishable realities, for the latter are governed by these truths as by absolute laws, from which nothing can escape. Nor is their foundation in our finite intellects, for these eternal, necessary truths govern and regulate our intellect as higher principles.

Where, then, are we to look for the foundation of these eternal, necessary truths, governing all finite reality and every finite intellect? Where is that foundation if not in the supreme being, the supreme truth always known by the first intellect, which, far from having received truth, is the truth, pure truth, without any admixture of error or ignorance, without any limitation or imperfection whatever?

In a word, the truths which govern all perishable reality and every finite intellect, like necessary and eternal laws, must have their foundation in a supreme truth which is being and wisdom itself. But it is God who is being itself, truth itself, wisdom itself.

Such is this further proof for the existence of God proposed by Plato, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas.

We now see more clearly the significance and scope of the principle on which this proof is based: “Different beings are said to be more or less perfect according to the measure of their approach to that being which is perfection itself.” In other words, when a perfection such as goodness, truth, or beauty, the concept of which implies no imperfection, is found in varying degrees in different beings, this cannot be accounted for by any of those beings in which it is found in as yet an imperfect degree; the being merely participates in it, and has received it according to the measure of its capacity—has received it, too, from a higher being who is this very perfection.

What practical conclusion are we to draw from this ascent? It is expressed in that saying of our Lord: “None is good but God alone”—good, that is, with goodness unalloyed. God alone is true, with a truth and wisdom untrammeled by ignorance; God alone is beautiful with that infinite beauty which we are called upon to contemplate some day face to face, that beauty which even here on earth the human intellect of Jesus contemplated as He conversed with His disciples.” God alone is great”: that was St. Michael’s answer to Satan’s pride. The thought of this makes us humble.

Ours is but a borrowed existence, freely given us by God, and He keeps us in existence because indeed He wills it so. Ours is but a goodness in which there is so much infirmity and even degradation; there is so much error in our knowledge. This thought, while serving to make us humble, brings home to us by contrast the infinite majesty of God.

And then if it is a question of others and no longer of ourselves, if we have suffered disillusionment about our neighbor whom we had believed to be better and wiser, let us remember that he too has suffered disillusionment about us; let us remember that he too is perhaps better than we are, and that whatever is our own as coming from ourselves-our deficiencies and failings—is inferior to everything our neighbor has from God. This is the foundation of humility in our relations with others.

Lastly, we must admit that the disillusionments we ourselves experience, or which others experience through us, in view of the radical imperfection of the creature, are permitted that we may aspire more ardently to a knowledge and love of Him who is the truth and the life, whom we shall some day see as He sees Himself. We shall then understand the meaning of those words of St. Catherine of Siena: “The living, practical knowledge of our own wretchedness and the knowledge of God’s majesty are inseparable in their increase. They are like the lowest and highest points on a circle that is ever expanding.” And the more we realize our own imperfections and limitations, the more we realize, too, that God has a right to be loved above all things by reason of His infinite wisdom and His infinite goodness.

Our final observation is this: the supreme truth has Himself spoken to us: He has revealed Himself to us, as yet in an obscure manner, but it is the foundation of our Christian faith. It is in the name of this supreme truth that Jesus speaks, when He says: “In truth, in truth, I say to you.” He is Himself the truth and the life, and by His help from day to day we must gradually live a better life. This far surpasses Plato’s ideal; no longer is it an abstract, philosophic ascent to the supreme truth, but the supreme truth which condescends to reach down to us in order to raise us up to Himself.

4. God The Sovereign Good And The Desire For Happiness 4

When speaking of God as supreme being and supreme truth we saw that a multiplicity of beings resembling one another in one and the same perfection, such as goodness, is insufficient to account for the unity of likeness thus existing in that multiplicity; as Plato said, the multiple cannot account for the one. Moreover, none of the beings possessing the perfection in an imperfect degree is sufficient to account for it; for each is a compound of the perfection and the restricted capacity limiting it, and like all compounds it demands a cause: “Things in themselves different cannot possess an element in common except through a cause uniting them.” 5 This compound participates or has a part in the perfection; it has therefore received the perfection, and can have received it only from Him who is perfection itself, which in its notion implies no imperfection.

From the moral point of view this doctrine becomes of vital importance in reminding us that the more we realize our limitations in wisdom and goodness, the more our minds should dwell on Him who is wisdom and goodness itself. The multiple finds its explanation only in the one, the diverse in the identical, the compound in the simple, the imperfect mingled with imperfection only in the perfect that is free from all imperfection.

This proof for the existence of God contains implicitly another which St. Thomas develops elsewhere, Ia IIae, q. 2, a. 8. He shows that beatitude or true happiness, the desire for which is natural to man, cannot be found in any limited or restricted good, but only in God who is known at least with a natural knowledge and loved with an efficacious love above all things. He proves that man’s beatitude cannot consist in wealth, honors, or glory, or in any bodily good; nor does it consist in some good of the soul, such as virtue, nor in any limited good. His argument for this last is based on the very nature of our intellect and will. 6

Let us consider (1) the fact which is the starting-point of the proof, (2) the principle on which the proof rests, (3) the culminating point of the proof, and (4) what the proof cannot extend to.

1) The fact of experience: true, substantial, and enduring happiness cannot be found in any passing good

We can ascend to the sovereign good, the source of perfect and unalloyed happiness, by starting either from the notion of imperfect subordinate goods or from the natural desire which such goods never succeed in satisfying.

If we begin with those finite limited goods which man is naturally inclined to desire, we very soon realize their imperfection. Whether it be health or the pleasures of the body, riches or honors, glory or power, or a knowledge of the sciences, we are forced to acknowledge that these are but transitory goods, extremely limited and imperfect. But, as we have said repeatedly, the imperfect, or the good mingled with imperfection, is no more than a good participated in by the restricted capacity of the recipient, and it presupposes the pure good completely excluding its contrary. Thus a wisdom associated with ignorance and error is no more than a participated wisdom, presupposing wisdom itself. This is the metaphysical aspect of the argument, the dialectic of the intellect proceeding by way of both exemplary and efficient causality.

But the proof we are here speaking of becomes more vital, more convincing, more telling, if we begin with that natural desire for happiness which everyone feels so keenly within him. This is the psychological and moral aspect of the argument, the dialectic of love founded on that of the intellect and proceeding by way of efficient (productive, regulative) causality or final causality. 7 These, the efficient and final, are the two extrinsic causes, each as necessary as the other. Indeed the final is the first of the causes, so that Aristotle (Metaphysics, Bk. XII, chap. 7) saw more clearly the final causality of God the pure act than His efficient causality, whether productive or regulative. 8

Following in the wake of Aristotle and St. Augustine, St. Thomas (Ia IIae, q. 2, a. 7, 8) insists on the fact that man by his very nature desires to be happy. Now man’s intellect, transcending as it does the sense and the imagination of the brute, has knowledge not merely of this or that particular good, whether delectable or useful—a particular food or a particular medicine, for instance—but of good in general (universal in predication), constituting it as such, as the desirable wherever it is to be found. Since this is so, and since man’s inclination is directed to the real good to be found in things, and not simply to the abstract idea of the good, it follows that he cannot find his true happiness in any finite limited good, but in the sovereign good alone (universal in being and causation). 9

It is impossible for man to find in any limited good that true happiness which by his very nature he desires, for his intellect, becoming immediately aware of the limitation, conceives forthwith the idea of a higher good, and the will naturally desires it.

This fact is expressed in the profound sentence of St. Augustine’s Confessions (Bk. I, chap. 1): “Our heart, O Lord, is restless, until it finds its rest in Thee” (irrequietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in Te, Domine).

Who of us has not experienced this fact in his intimate life? In sickness we have the natural desire to recover our health as a great good. But, however happy we are in our recovery, no sooner are we cured than we realize that health alone cannot bring happiness: a man may be in perfect health and yet be overwhelmed with sadness. It is the same with the pleasures of the senses: far from being sufficient to give us happiness, let them be abused ever so little and they bring only disillusion and disgust; for our intellect, with its conception of a universal unlimited good, straightway tells us: “Now that you have obtained this sensible enjoyment which just now had such an attraction for you, you see that it is sheer emptiness incapable of filling the deep void in your heart, of satisfying your desire for happiness.”

It is the same with wealth and honors, which many desire eagerly. We no sooner possess them than we realize how ephemeral and superficial is the satisfaction they give, how inadequate they, too, are to fill the void in our hearts. And intellect tells us that all these riches and honors are still but a poor finite good that is dissipated by a breath of wind.

The same must be said of power and glory. One who is lifted up on the wheel of fortune has scarcely reached the top when he begins to descend; he must give place to others, and soon he will be as a star whose light is extinguished. Even if the more fortunate retain their power and glory for a time, they never find real happiness in it; often they experience such anxiety and weariness of mind that they long to withdraw from it all.

The same applies to the knowledge of the sciences. Here it is a case of only an extremely limited good; for the true, even when complete and without admixture of error, is still the good of the intellect, not of man as a whole. Besides the intellect, the heart and will have also their profound spiritual needs, and so long as these remain unsatisfied there can be no true happiness.

Shall we find it in a most pure and exalted form of friend ship? Such a friendship will doubtless bring us intense joy, sometimes affecting our inmost being. But we have an intellect that conceives universal and unlimited good, and here again it will not be long in perceiving that this most pure and exalted form of friendship is still but a finite good. This reminds us of those words of St. Catherine of Siena: “Would you continue long to slake your thirst with the cup of true friendship? Leave it, then, beneath the fountain of living water; otherwise it will speedily be drained and no longer satisfy your thirst.” If the thirst is satisfied, it is because the person loved is made better, and in order to be made better he needs to receive a new goodness from a higher source.

Suppose we could look upon an angel and see his suprasensible, purely spiritual beauty. Once. the first sense of wondering amazement had passed, our intellect, with its conception of the universal, unlimited good, would immediately remind us that even this was no more than a finite good and thereby exceedingly poor in comparison with the unlimited and perfect good itself. Two finite goods, however unequal they may be, are equally remote from the infinite; in this respect the angel is as insignificant as the grain of sand.

2) The principle by which we ascend to God

Can it be that this natural desire for happiness, which we all have within us, must forever remain unsatisfied? Is it possible for a natural desire to be of no effect, chimerical, without meaning or purpose?

That a desire born of a fantasy of the imagination or of an error of reason, such as the desire to have wings, may be chimerical, can well be understood. But surely it could not be so with a desire which has its immediate foundation in nature without the intervention of any conditional judgment. The desire for happiness is not a mere hypothetical wish; it is innate, with its immediate foundation in nature itself; and nature again is stable and constant, being found in all men, in all places, and at all times. Furthermore, this desire is of the very nature of the will, which, prior to any act, is an appetitive faculty having universal good as its object. The nature of our will can no more be the result of chance, of a fortuitous encounter, than can the nature of our intellect; because, like the intellect, the will is a principle of operation wholly simple, in no way compounded of different elements that chance might have brought together. Can this natural desire of the will be chimerical?

In answer to this question we say, first, that natural desire in beings inferior to ourselves is not ineffectual, as the naturalists have shown from the experimental point of view. In herbiverous animals the natural desire is for herbaceous food, and this they find; in carnivores the desire is to find flesh to eat, and they find it. Man’s natural desire is for happiness, and with him true happiness is not and cannot be found in any limited good. Is this true happiness nowhere to be found? Is man’s natural desire, then, to remain a deception and without finality when the natural desire of inferior beings is not in vain?

And this is not purely a naturalist’s argument based on experience and the analogy of our own natural desire with that of inferior beings. It is a metaphysical argument based on the certitude of the absolute validity of the principle of finality.

If the natural desire for true happiness is chimerical, then all human activity, inspired as it is by that desire, is without finality, without a raison d’être, and thus contrary to the necessary and evident principle that every agent acts for an end. To grasp the truth of this principle, thus formulated by Aristotle, it is enough to understand the terms of the proposition. Any agent whatsoever, conscious or unconscious, has an inclination to something determinate which is appropriate to it. Now the end is precisely that determinate good to which the act of the agent or the motion of the mobile object is directed.

This principle, self-evident to one who understands the meaning of the words agent and end, may be further demonstrated by a reductio ad absurdum; for otherwise, says St. Thomas (Ia IIae, q. 1, a. 2), “there would be no reason why the agent should act rather than not act, no reason why it should act in this way rather than in another, ” why it should desire this object rather than some other.

If there were no finality in nature, if no natural agent acted for some end, there would be no reason why the eye should see and not hear or taste, no reason why the wings of the bird should be for flying and not for walking or swimming, no reason for the intellect to know rather than desire. Everything would then be for no purpose, and be unintelligible. There would be no reason why the stone should fall instead of rising, no reason why bodies should attract rather than repel one another and be dispersed, thus destroying the harmony of the universe.

The principle of finality has an absolute necessity and value. It is no less certain than the principle of efficient causality, that everything that happens and every contingent being demands an efficient cause, and that in the last analysis everything that happens demands an efficient cause itself uncaused, a cause that is its own activity, its own action, and is therefore its existence, since action follows being and the mode of action the mode of being.

These two principles of efficient and final causality are equally certain, the certitude being metaphysical and not merely physical, antecedent to a demonstration of the existence of God. Indeed, without finality, efficient causality is inconceivable: as we have just seen, it would be without a purpose and consequently unintelligible.

3) The term of this ascent

There is, then, a purpose in our natural desire for happiness; its Inclination is for some good. But is this inclination for a good that is wholly unreal, or, though real, yet unattainable?

In the first place, the good to which our natural desire tends is not simply an idea in the mind, for, as Aristotle more than once pointed out, whereas truth is formally in the mind enunciating a judgment, the good is formally in things. When we desire food, it is not enough for us to have the idea: it is not the idea of bread that nourishes, but the bread itself. Hence the natural desire of the will, founded as it is in the very nature of the intellect and the will and not merely in the imagination or the vagaries of reason, tends to a real good, not merely to the idea of the good; otherwise it is no longer a desire and certainly not a natural one.

It will perhaps be said that our universal idea of good leads us to seek happiness in the simultaneous or successive enjoyment of all those finite goods that have an attraction for us, such as health and bodily pleasures, riches and honors, the delight in scientific knowledge, art and friendship. Those who in their mad career wish to enjoy every finite good, one after another, if not all at once, seem for the moment to think that herein lies true happiness.

But experience and reason undeceive us. That empty void in the heart always remains, making itself felt in weariness of spirit; and intelligence tells us that not even the simultaneous possession of all these goods, finite and imperfect as they are, can constitute the good itself which is conceived and desired by us, any more than an innumerable multitude of idiots can equal a man of genius.

Quantity has nothing to say in the matter; it is quality of good that counts here. Even if the whole sum of created goods were multiplied to infinity they would not constitute that pure and perfect good which the intellect conceives and the will desires. Here is the profound reason for that weariness of spirit which the worldly experience and which they take with them wherever they go. They pursue one thing after another, yet never find any real satisfaction or true happiness.

Now if our intellect is able to conceive a universal, unlimited good, the will also, awakened as it is by the intellect, has a range and depth that is limitless. Is it possible, therefore, for its natural desire—which calls for a real good and not merely the idea of good—to be chimerical and of no effect?

This natural desire, which has its foundation not in the imagination but in our very nature, is, like that nature, something fixed and unchangeable. It can no more be ineffectual than the desire of the herbivora or that of the carnivora; it can no more be ineffective than is the natural ordering of the eye for seeing, the ear for hearing, the intellect for knowing. If therefore this natural desire for happiness cannot be ineffective, if it cannot find its satisfaction in any finite goods or in the sum total of them, we are necessarily compelled to affirm the existence of a pure and perfect good. That is, the good itself or the sovereign good, which alone is capable of responding to our aspirations. Otherwise the universal range of our will would be a psychological absurdity, something radically unintelligible and without a purpose.

4) What does not come within the exigencies of our nature

Does it follow that this natural desire for happiness in us demands that we attain to the intuitive vision of God, the sovereign good?

By no means; for the intuitive vision of the divine essence is essentially supernatural and therefore gratuitous, in no way due to our nature or to the nature of angels.

This is the meaning of St. Paul’s words: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard; neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him. But to us God hath revealed them by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (I Cor. 2: 9).

But far inferior to the intuitive vision of the divine essence and to Christian faith, is a natural knowledge of God as the author of nature, which is the knowledge given us by the proofs of His existence.

If original sin had not enfeebled our moral strength, this natural knowledge would have enabled us to attain to a naturally efficacious love for God as the author of nature, who is the sovereign good known in a natural way.

Now had man been created in a purely natural state, he would have found in this natural knowledge and naturally efficacious love for God his true happiness. Of course it would not have been that absolutely perfect and supernatural beatitude, which is the immediate vision of God, but a true happiness, nevertheless, one solid and lasting; for in the natural order, at any rate, the order embracing everything our nature demands, this natural love for God, if efficacious, does really direct our life to Him and in a true sense enables us to find our rest in Him. Such in the state of pure nature would have been the destiny of the immortal souls of the just after the probation of this life. The soul naturally desires to live forever, and a natural desire of this kind cannot be ineffective. (Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 75, a. 6, c, end.)

But gratuitously we have received far more than this: we have received grace which is the seed of glory, and with it t supernatural faith and a supernatural love for God, who is no longer the author merely of nature but also of grace.

And so, for us Christians, the proof we have been discussing receives strong confirmation in the happiness and peace to be found even here on earth through union with God.

In a realm far beyond any glimpse that philosophical reason might obtain, though not yet the attainment of the perfect beatitude of heaven, true happiness is ours to the extent that we love the sovereign good with a sincere, efficacious, generous love, and above all things, more than ourselves or any creature, and to the extent that we direct our whole life daily more and more to Him.

In spite of the occasional overwhelming sorrows of this present life, we shall have found true happiness and peace, at least in the summit of the soul, if we love God above all things; for peace is the tranquillity that comes with order, and here we are united to the very principle of all order and of all life.

Our proof thus receives strong confirmation from the profound experiences of the spiritual life, in which are realized the words of our Lord: “Peace I leave with you: My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you” (John 14:27). It is not in the accumulation of pleasures, riches, honors, glory, and power, but in union with God, that the Savior has given us peace. So solid and enduring is the peace He has given us that He can and actually does preserve it within us, as He predicted that He would, even in the midst of persecutions: “Blessed are the poor…. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice…. Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5: 10). Already the kingdom of heaven is theirs in the sense that in union with God they possess through charity the beginnings of eternal life, inchoatio vitae aeternae (IIa IIae, q. 24, a. 3 ad 2um).

Epicurus boasted that his teaching would bring happiness to his disciples even in the red-hot brazen bull of Phalaris in which men were roasted to death. Jesus alone has been able to accomplish such a thing by giving to the martyrs in the very midst of their torments peace and true happiness through union with God.

According to the degree of this union with God, the proof we have been discussing is thereby very much confirmed by reason of the profound spiritual experience; for, through the gift of wisdom, God makes Himself felt within us as the life of our life: “For the Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God” (Rom. 8: 16). God makes Himself felt within us as the principle of that filial love for Him which He Himself inspires in us.

5. God, The Ultimate Foundation Of Duty

We have been considering the proof for the existence of the sovereign good based on our natural desire for happiness. It may be summed up, we said, in this way: A natural desire, one that has its foundation not in the imagination or the vagaries of reason but in our very nature, which we have in common with all men, cannot possibly be ineffective, chimerical, deceptive; this means that it cannot be for a good that is either unreal or unattainable.

Now every man has a natural desire for happiness, and true happiness is not to be found in any finite or limited good, for our intellect, with its conception of universal, unlimited good, naturally constrains us to desire it.

There must, then, be an unlimited good, pure and simple, without any admixture of non-good or imperfection; without it the universal range of our will would be a psychological absurdity and without any meaning whatever.

If the herbivora find the grass they need and the carnivora the prey necessary for their sustenance, then the natural desire in man cannot be to no purpose. The natural desire for true happiness must be possible of attainment and, since it is to be found only in the knowledge and love of the sovereign good, and this is God, then God must exist.

There is another proof for God’s existence, the starting point of which is not in our desire for happiness but in moral obligation or the direction of our will to moral good. This proof leads up to the sovereign good, not considered as simply the supreme desirable but as possessing the right to be loved, as having a claim on our love, and as the foundation of duty.

1) The ordering of our will to moral good

This proof has its starting-point in human conscience. All men, including even those who doubt the existence of God, realize, at least vaguely, that one must do good and avoid evil. To recognize this truth it is enough to have a notion of “good” and to distinguish, as common sense does, between (1) sensible or purely delectable goods, (2) good that is useful in view of some end, and (3) honorable or moral good (bonum honestum), which is good in itself independently of the enjoyment or utility it may afford. The animal finds its complete satisfaction in delectable good of the senses; by instinct it makes use of sensible good that it finds to be useful, but without perceiving that the raison d’être of the useful lies in the end for which it is employed. The swallow picks up a piece of straw with which to make its nest without knowing that the straw is of use in building it. Man alone, through his reason, recognizes that the utility or raison d’être of the means lies in the end they subserve.

Again, he alone recognizes and can love the honorable good; he alone can understand this moral truth: that one must do good and avoid evil. The imagination of the brute may be trained and continually perfected in its own order, but never will it succeed in grasping this truth.

But, on the other hand, every man, however uncultured he may be, will grasp this truth as soon as he comes to the age of reason. Everyone who has come to the full use of reason will recognize this threefold distinction in the good, even though he may not always be able to put it into words. It is obvious to anyone that a tasty fruit is a delectable good of the sensible order, a physical good having nothing to do with moral good, since the use it is put to may be either morally good or morally bad: the delectable is not therefore in itself moral.

Again, all are aware that a bitter medicine is not a delectable good, but one that is useful in view of some end, as a possible means of recovering their health. In this way money is useful and, from the moral point of view, the use it is put to may be either good or bad. Here is one of the most elementary principles of common sense.

Lastly, everyone who has come to the age of reason sees that transcending the delectable and the useful there is the honorable good, the rational or moral good, which is good in itself independently of any pleasure or advantage or convenience resulting from it.

In this sense virtue is a good, such as patience, courage, justice. That justice is a spiritual good and not a sensible one is obvious to everybody. Though it may bring joy to the person practicing it, it is good regardless of this enjoyment; it is good because it is reasonable or in conformity with right reason. We are fully aware that justice must be practiced for its own sake and not merely for the advantage to be gained, let us say, in avoiding the evil consequences of injustice. Thus, even though it should mean certain death to us, we are bound to do justice and avoid injustice, especially where the injustice is grave.

This is a perfection belonging to man as man, to man as a rational being, and not as an animal.

To know truth, to love it above all things, to act in all things in accordance with right reason, is likewise good in itself apart from the pleasure we may find in it or the advantages to be gained thereby.

Furthermore, this honorable or rational good is presented to us as the necessary end of our activity and hence as of obligation. Everyone is aware that a rational being must behave in conformity with right reason, even as reason itself is in conformity with the absolute principles of being or reality: “That which is, is, and cannot at the same time be and not be.” The honest man who is beaten unmercifully by some scamp proves to him the superiority of the intelligible world over that of sense when he exclaims: “You may be the stronger, but that does not prove that you are right.” Justice is justice.

“Do your duty, come what may, ” “one must do good and avoid evil.” In these or equivalent formulas the idea of duty finds expression among all peoples. Pleasure and self-interest must be subordinated to duty, the delectable and the useful to the moral. Here we have an eternal truth, which has always been true and will ever be so.

What is the proximate basis of duty or moral obligation? As St. Thomas (Ia IIae, q. 94, a. 2) says, this basis is the principle of finality, evident to our intellect, according to which every being acts in view of some end and must tend to that end which is proportionate to it. Whence it follows that in rational beings the will must tend to the honorable or rational good, to which it has been ordered. The faculty to will and act rationally is for the rational act as the eye is for seeing, the ear for hearing, the foot for walking, the wings of the bird for flying, the cognitive faculty for knowing. A potency is for its correlative act; if it fails to tend to that act it ceases to have a raison d’être. It is not merely better for the faculty to tend to its act, it is its intrinsic primordial law.

Since over and above the sensible, the delectable, and the useful good, the will from its very nature is capable of desiring the honorable or rational good (and this is equivalent to saying that it is essentially ordered to that good), it cannot refuse to desire that good without ceasing to have a raison d’être. The will is for the purpose of loving and desiring rational good; this good must therefore be realized by it—by man, that is, who is capable of realizing this good and who exists for such purpose. This is the proximate basis of moral obligation. But is there not also a far nobler and ultimate basis?

The voice of conscience is peculiarly insistent at times in commanding or forbidding the performance of certain acts—in forbidding perjury or treason, for instance—or again in rebuking and condemning when a grave offense has been committed. Is not the murderer tormented by his conscience after his crime, even when the deed is perpetrated in complete secrecy? The crime is unknown to men, yet conscience never ceases to upbraid him even though he chooses to doubt God’s existence.

Where does this voice of conscience come from? Is it simply the result of a logical process? Does it come simply from our own reason? No, for it makes itself heard in each and every human being; it dominates them all.

Is it the result of human legislation? No, for it is above human legislation, above the legislation of any one nation, of every nation and of the League of Nations. It is this voice which tells us that an unjust law is not binding in conscience; those who enact unjust laws are themselves rebuked in the secrecy of their hearts by the persistent voice of right reason.

2) The ordering of our will to moral good presupposes a divine intelligent designer

Whence, then, comes this voice of conscience, so insistent at times? We take for granted that a means cannot be ordered to an end except by an intelligent designer, who alone can recognize in the end to be attained the raison d’être of the means, and therefore can alone determine the means to the end. We take for granted also, as was seen above (chap. 2), that the order in the physical universe presupposes a divine intelligent designer. Then with much greater reason must such an intellect be presupposed in the ordering of our will to moral good. There is no passive direction without a corresponding active direction, which in this case must be from the very Author of our nature.

Again, if from the eternal speculative truths (such as, that the same thing cannot at the same time be and not be), we pass by a necessary transition to the existence of a supreme Truth, the fountain of all other truths, why should we not ascend from the first principle of the moral law (it is necessary to do good and avoid evil) up to the eternal law?

Here we begin with the practical instead of the speculative principles; the obligatory character of the good merely gives a new aspect to the proof, and this characteristic, evident already in the proximate basis of moral obligation, leads us on to seek its ultimate basis.

If honorable good, to which our rational nature is ordered, must be desired apart from the satisfaction or advantages we derive from it; if that being which is capable of desiring it must do so under pain of ceasing to have a raison d’être; if our conscience loudly proclaims this duty and thereafter approves or condemns without our being able to stifle remorse of conscience; if, in a word, the right to be loved and practiced inherent in the good dominates the whole of our moral activity and that of every society, actual or possible, as the principle of contradiction dominates all reality, actual or possible: then of necessity there must exist from all eternity some basis on which these absolute rights inherent in the good are founded.

These claims inherent in justice dominate our individual, family, social, and political lives, and dominate the international life of nations, past, present, and to come. These necessary and predominating rights cannot have their raison d’être in the contingent, transient realities which they dominate, nor even in those manifold and subordinate goods or duties which are imposed upon us as rational beings. Transcending as they do everything that is not the Good itself, the rights of justice can have none but that Good as their foundation, their ultimate reason.

If, then, the proximate basis of moral obligation lies in the essential order of things, or, to be more precise, in the rational good to which our nature and activity are essentially ordered, its ultimate basis is to be found in the sovereign good, our objective last end. This moral obligation could only have been established by a law of the same order as the sovereign good—by the divine wisdom, whose eternal law orders and directs all creatures to their end. Agent and end are in corresponding orders. The passive direction on the part of our will to the good presupposes an active direction on the part of Him who created it for the good. In other words, in rational beings the will must tend to the honorable or rational good, since this is the purpose for which it was created by a higher efficient cause, who Himself had in view the realization of this good.

This is why, according to common sense or natural reason, duty is in the last resort founded on the being, intelligence, and will of God, who has created us to know, love, and serve Him and thereby obtain eternal bliss.

And so, common sense has respect for duty, while at the same time it regards as legitimate our search after happiness. It rejects utilitarian morality on the one hand, and on the other Kantian morality, which consists in pure duty to the exclusion of all objective good. To common sense this latter is like an arid waste where the sun never shines.

Against this demonstration of God’s existence, the objection is sometimes advanced that it is a begging of the question, that it involves a vicious circle. Strictly speaking, there is no moral obligation, so it is said, without a supreme lawgiver, and it is impossible to regard ourselves as subject to a categorical moral obligation unless this supreme lawgiver is first recognized. Hence the proof put forward presupposes what it seeks to prove; at the most it brings out more explicitly what is presumed to be already implicitly admitted.

To this we may reply, and rightly so, that it is sufficient first of all to show the passive direction of our will to moral good and then go on to prove the further truth that, since there can be no passive direction without an active direction, there must exist a first cause who has so given this tendency to the will. Thus we have seen that the order in the world presupposes a supreme intelligent designer, and that the eternal truths governing all contingent reality and every finite intelligence themselves require an eternal foundation.

Moreover, this passive direction of our will to moral good is not the only starting-point from which we may argue. We may also begin with moral obligation as evidenced in its effects, in the remorse felt by the murderer, for instance. Whence comes this terrible voice of remorse of conscience which the criminal never succeeds in silencing in the depths of his soul?

Right reason within us commands us to do good, that rational good to which our rational nature is directed. Nevertheless it does not command as a first and eternal cause; for in each of us reason first of all begins to command, then it slumbers, and is awakened again; it has many imperfections, many limitations. It is not the principle of all order, but is itself ordered. We must therefore ascend higher to that divine wisdom by which everything is directed to the supreme good.

There alone do we find the ultimate basis of moral obligation or duty. There is no vicious circle; from the feeling of remorse or from its contrary, peace of mind, we ascend to conscience. In the approval or disapproval of conscience lies the explanation of these feelings. We then look for the source of this voice of conscience. The ultimate source is not in our imperfect reason, for reason in its commanding had a beginning. It commands only as secondary cause, presupposing a first cause that is eternal, simple, and perfect—wisdom itself, by which everything is directed to the good.

The sovereign good is now no longer presented simply as the supreme desirable, wherein alone we may find true happiness, if we love it above all things; it is further presented as the sovereign good which must be loved above all things, which demands our love and is the foundation of duty.

From all this it is plain that, if the primary duty toward God the last end of man is denied, then every other duty is deprived of its ultimate foundation. If we deny that we are morally bound to love before all else the good as such and God the sovereign good, what proof have we that we are bound to love that far less compelling good, the general welfare of humanity, which is the main object of the League of Nations? What proof have we that we are bound to love our country and family more than our life; or that we are bound to go on living and avoid suicide, even in the most overwhelming afflictions? If the sovereign good has not an inalienable right to be loved above all things, then a fortiori inferior goods have no such right. If we are not morally bound by a last end, then no end or means whatever is morally binding. If the foundation for moral obligation is not in a supreme lawgiver, then every human law is deprived of its ultimate foundation.

Such is the proof for the existence of God as supreme lawgiver and the sovereign good, who is the foundation of duty. Such is the eminent origin of the imperious voice of conscience, that voice which torments the criminal after his crime and gives to the conscientious who have done their utmost, that peace which comes from duty accomplished.

The moral sanction

In conclusion we shall say a few words about another proof for the existence of God, a proof closely related to the preceding: that based on moral sanction.

The consideration of heroic acts unrequited here on earth and of crimes that go unpunished shows us the necessity of a sovereign judge, a rewarder and vindicator.

The existence of this sovereign judge and of an eternal sanction may be proved from the insufficiency of all other sanctions. Kant himself chose to attach some importance to this argument, but in itself it is far more convincing than he made it out to be. It may be summed up in this way:

By perseverance in virtue the just man merits happiness since he has persevered in doing good. Now the harmony prevailing between virtue and happiness, in another and better life, is accomplished by God alone. Therefore God and that other life exist.

The more exalted a man’s moral life is, the firmer and livelier is his conviction resulting from this proof. In reality it presupposes the preceding proof and is a confirmation of it. If, in fact, the voice of conscience comes from the supreme lawgiver, then He must also be the sovereign judge who rewards and vindicates. Because He is intelligent and good, He owes it to Himself to give to every being what is necessary for it to attain the end for which He has destined it, and hence to give to the just that knowledge of truth and that beatitude which they deserve. (Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 21, a. 1.) Furthermore, since the supreme lawgiver must of necessity love the good above all things, He owes it to Himself also to compel respect for its absolute rights and repress their violation (Ia IIae, q. 87, a. 1, 3).

In other words, if there is order in the physical world and if that order demands an intelligent designer, much more must there be order in the moral world, which is on an infinitely higher plane.

Herein is the answer to the complaints of the just who are persecuted and unjustly condemned by men. How often in this world do the wicked and indifferent triumph, while upright and high-minded souls, like Joan of Are, are condemned? Barabbas was even preferred to Jesus; Barabbas was set free and Jesus was crucified. Injustice cannot have the last word, especially when it is so flagrant as this. There is a higher justice; its voice makes itself heard in our conscience and it will one day restore all things to the true order. Then will be clearly made manifest the two aspects of the Sovereign Good: His right to be loved above all things, which is the principle of justice, and His being essentially self-diffusive, which is the principle of mercy.

These moral proofs for the existence of God are of a nature to convince any mind that does not try to stifle the interior voice of conscience. Such a mind will have little difficulty in discovering the deeper source of this voice directing us to the good, because it comes from Him who is the good itself.

6. On The Nature Of God

We have seen how the classical proofs for the existence of God as presented by St. Thomas demonstrate the existence of a first mover of spiritual and corporeal beings, of a first cause of everything that comes into existence, of a necessary being on which all contingent and perishable things depend, of a supreme being, the first truth and sovereign good, and of an intelligent designer, the cause of order in the universe, to which we rightly give the name providence.

Now it is through these five attributes (first mover, first cause, etc.) that we have our conception of God. We have thus proved His existence. We must now go on to state what He is, what formally constitutes His nature. We cannot otherwise form a right idea of providence.

The problem

Here on earth, of course, we can have no knowledge of the divine essence as it is really in itself; for this we must have an intuitive vision of it as the blessed see it in heaven. Our knowledge of God here on earth is obtained solely through the reflection of His perfections in the mirror of created things. Since these are on a plane far inferior to His, they do not enable us to know Him as He is in Himself. As Plato tells us in his allegory of the cave, where God is concerned we are to some extent like men who have never seen the sun but simply a reflection of its rays in the things it illuminates; or like men who have never seen white light but only the seven colors of the rainbow: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. For such men a right conception of white light would be impossible; they could have only a negative or relative conception of it as an inaccessible source of light. It is the same with the divine nature: we cannot form a proper and positive conception of it through creatures, for the perfections which in God form an absolute unity are in creatures multiple and divided.

Here on earth, therefore, it is impossible for us to know the divine nature as it is in itself. If this were possible, we should see how all the divine perfections contained in it-such as infinite being, wisdom, love, justice, mercy—are really identified, yet without destroying one another. As it is, we are reduced to spelling out, as it were, and enumerating these divine perfections one after another, always with the reservation that they are identified in one transcendent simplicity, in the higher unity of the Deity or Divinity. But the Deity or the very essence of God—that which makes God to be God—we do not see, nor shall we ever be able to do so until we reach heaven. It is as though we were gazing at the sides of a pyramid the summit of which remains ever invisible.

But, without knowing the divine nature as it is in itself, can we not determine, so far as our imperfect mode of knowing permits, what it is that formally constitutes that nature? In other words, among all the perfections we attribute to God is there not one that is fundamental, the source as it were of all the divine attributes and likewise the principle distinguishing God from the world?

Is there not in God some radical perfection having the same function in Him as rationality in man? Man is defined as a rational being; this, distinguishing him from inferior beings, is the principle of his distinctive human characteristics. Because man is rational, he is free, he is morally responsible for his actions, he is social and religious, he has the faculty of speech and intelligent laughter. These characteristics do not exist in the brute beast. We deduce man’s characteristics as we deduce the properties of the triangle or the circle.

Is there in God some radical perfection also that allows of our defining Him, according to our imperfect mode of knowledge, in some such way as we define man, or again as we define a circle or a pyramid? In other words, is there not a certain order in the divine perfections, so that from one primary perfection all the rest may be deduced? This is the statement of the problem.

The various solutions

To the question thus stated various solutions have been given. Beginning with the least satisfactory, we shall proceed by degrees to the most profound.

1) Some (Nominalists) have held that in God there is no fundamental perfection from which the rest may be logically deduced. According to their view, the divine essence is merely the sum of all the perfections; there can be no question of seeking a logical order among them, since they are simply different names for the same transcendent reality.

This doctrine of Nominalism leads to the conclusion that God is unknowable, because His attributes cannot be deduced from one fundamental divine perfection; and, since we can give no reason why He must be wise or just or merciful, we should simply be asserting the fact without knowing why.

2) Others, inspired by Descartes, have held that what constitutes the divine nature is liberty: God is pre-eminently a will transcendently free. Descartes claimed that, if God so willed, He could make the circle square, mountains without valleys, or beings that at one and the same time would exist and not exist, or effects without a cause. Ockham in the Middle Ages declared that, had God so willed, He could have commanded us not to love but to hate both ourselves and Him. That is, the principle of contradiction and the distinction between moral good and evil are dependent for their truth on the free will of God. First and foremost God is said to be absolute liberty.

In the opinion of some modern philosophers (Secretan in Switzerland, for instance), the correct definition of God is I am what I will, I am what I would freely be.

In reply to this view, it has been pointed out that liberty cannot be conceived as anterior to intellect. Liberty without intellect is impossible; it would be confounded with mere chance. Liberty is inconceivable without an intellect to direct it; it would be liberty without standard of any kind, without truth, without true goodness. As Leibniz remarked, to say that God, if He had wished, could have commanded us to hate Him, is to deny that He is of necessity the sovereign good; in that case, had He wished, He might well have been the Manichean principle of evil. A man would have be out of his senses to maintain such a position. To claim that God has established the distinction between good and evil by a purely arbitrary decree, to claim that He is absolute liberty without standard of any kind, is, as Leibniz again says, “to dishonor God.”

Clearly, then, liberty cannot be conceived without an intellect and wisdom to direct it, and conversely intellect is conceived as anterior to the liberty it directs. The knowledge of true good, indeed, is anterior to the love of that good, which would not be so loved were it not already known.

Intellect, therefore, is prior to and the cause of liberty. Shall we say, then, that what formally constitutes the divine nature is intellect, the ever actual thought or eternal knowledge of the true in all its fullness? This, of course, is a divine perfection, but is it the fundamental perfection?

A number of philosophers and theologians thought so. They conceived of God as pre-eminently a pure intellectual flash subsisting eternally. During a storm at night, an immense streak of lightning may sometimes be seen, flashing from one extremity of the sky to the other; this, they would say, is a faint image of God. We also speak of “flashes of genius, ” as in the case of Newton’s discovery of the great laws of nature. These are transitory and very confined flashes, revealing what after all is only a partial truth, like the law of universal gravitation. God, on the other hand, is a pure intellectual flash subsisting eternally, who is infinite truth and sees in one glance all actual and possible worlds, with all their laws. God is, indeed, eternally subsistent thought itself, truth itself ever actually known. And why is this? Because intellectual life is the highest form of life, transcending vegetative plant life and sensitive animal life; because, too, intellect is anterior to will and liberty, which it directs by pointing out the good to be desired and loved.

This is all quite true. But is subsistent thought or intellection the absolutely primary perfection in God? However lofty this way of conceiving the divine nature may be, it does not seem to be the highest. 10

Holy Scripture provides us with a more profound conception of the divine nature. It tells us that God is being itself; He Himself has revealed His name to us as “He who is.”

God is the eternally subsisting being

In the Book of Exodus (3: 14), we are told how God, speaking to Moses from the burning bush, revealed His name. He did not say, “I am absolute liberty, I am what I will”; nor did He say, “I am intellect itself, thought eternally subsistent.” He said, “I am who am, ” that is, the eternally subsistent being

Let us call to mind this passage from Exodus: “Moses said to God: Lo, I shall go to the children of Israel, and say to them: The God of your fathers hath sent me to you. If they should say to me: What is His name? what shall I say to them? God said to Moses: I am who am. He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: He who is hath sent me to you.” He who is: in Hebrew, Yahweh, from which the word Jehovah has been formed.” This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations” (ibid., 15).

Again, in the last book of the New Testament (Apocalypse, 1:8), we read: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Cf. 1: 4.)

Under this title God has frequently revealed Himself to His saints, to St. Catherine of Siena, for instance: “I am He who is, thou art that which is not.”

God, then, is not only pure spirit, He is being itself subsisting immaterial at the summit of all things and transcending any limits imposed by either space or matter or a finite spiritual essence.

In our imperfect mode of knowledge, must we not say that subsistent being is the formal constituent of the divine nature?

It would not seem a difficult matter to establish the truth of this. In fact, what formally constitutes the divine nature is that which in God we conceive to be the fundamental perfection distinguishing Him from creatures and the source from which His attributes are deduced.

Now, because God is the self-subsisting being, the infinite ocean of spiritual being, unlimited, unmaterialized, He is distinguished from every material or spiritual creature. The divine essence alone is existence itself, it alone of necessity exists. No creature is self-existent; none can say: I am being, truth, life, etc. Jesus alone among men said, “I am the truth and the life, ” which was equivalent to saying, “I am God.”

Upon this culminating point, namely, the self-subsisting being, converge the five proofs for the existence of God, as developed by St. Thomas: the first mover, the first cause, the necessary being, the supreme being, the intelligent designer of order in the universe. All these attributes must be predicated of the self-subsisting and immaterial being who is at the summit of all things. Again, from this culminating point are deduced all the divine attributes, as the characteristics of man are deduced from his rationality.

As will be seen more clearly in what follows, the self-subsisting and immaterial being who is at the summit of all things must be absolutely one and simple, must be truth itself ever actually known, the good itself ever actually loved. By reason of His perfect and unique immateriality He must be intelligence itself, thought itself eternally subsistent, wisdom itself; subsistent will and love; hence justice and mercy.

Conversely, we see that justice and mercy presuppose the love of the good; that love presupposes an intellect which enlightens it; that intellect presupposes an intelligent being and at the same time an intelligible being which it contemplates.

It remains true, therefore, that of all the names of God, the primary and most distinctive is “He who is, ” Yahweh. It is pre-eminently His name, says St. Thomas (Ia, q. 13 a. 11), and that for three reasons:

1) Because it expresses not one form of being or one particular essence, but being itself; and God alone is being itself, He alone is self-existent.

2) It is the most universal name, embracing being in all its fullness, with all its perfections—the boundless, shoreless, ocean, as it were, of omnipotent, omniscient, spiritual substance.

3) This name, “He who is, ” signifies not only being, but the ever-present being, for whom there is neither past nor future.

Here, then, is what formally constitutes the divine nature according to our imperfect manner of understanding, which consists in deducing from this formal constituent the divine attributes, enumerating them one after another: unity, wisdom, love, justice, mercy and the rest, yet without ever perceiving how they are fused together and identified in the intimate life of God, which is the Deity.

The Deity

In this life we can have no knowledge of the Deity, of the divine nature, such as it really is; for this we should need to have an intuitive vision of it as the blessed have in heaven, without the intervention of any created image. Only in heaven shall we see how wisdom is identical with God’s utterly free good pleasure; how, for all its freedom, this good pleasure is by no means a caprice, since it is penetrated through and through by wisdom. Then only shall we see how infinite justice and mercy are identified in the love of the sovereign good, which has the right to be loved above all else and which tends to communicate itself to us for our happiness.

The Deity, as it really is, remains for us a secret, a profound mystery. Indeed, the mystics have called it the Great Darkness, a light-transcending darkness; it is the “light inaccessible” spoken of in Scripture.

Although we cannot have knowledge of the Deity as it really is, we are permitted to participate in it through sanctifying grace, which is in very truth a participation in the divine nature as it really is, 11 preparing us in this present life to see and love God some day as He sees and loves Himself. From this we see the value of sanctifying grace, which far surpasses the natural life of the intellect, whether in us or even in the angels. This truth leads St. Thomas to remark that the least degree of sanctifying grace in the soul of a little child just baptized is of more value than all corporeal and spiritual natures taken together: “The good of grace in one is greater than the good of nature in the whole universe” (Ia IIae, q. 113, a. 9 ad 2um).

Pascal expresses this well in one of the finest pages of his Pensees: “The least of minds is greater than all material objects, the firmament, the stars, the earth and its kingdoms; for the mind has knowledge of all these things and of itself; whereas things material have no knowledge at all. Bodies and minds, all these taken together and the effects produced by them, do not equal the least act of charity. This latter is of an infinitely higher order. From the sum total of material things there could not possibly issue one little thought, because thought is of another order. From bodies and minds we cannot possibly have an act of true charity, for the latter, too, is of another order, pertaining to the supernatural. The saints have their realm, their glory, their luster, and have no need of temporal or spiritual aggrandizement, which in no way affects them, neither increasing nor decreasing their greatness. The saints are seen by God and the angels, not by bodies or by curious minds. God suffices for them.” 12 This sums up the value of the hidden life.

In the present life this holiness reveals most clearly, though in the obscurity of faith, what constitutes the intimate life of God, the Deity. This it does because holiness, which is the life of grace in its perfection, is a real, living participation in this same intimate life of God, preparing us to behold it some future day. Hence those words of the psalmist (Ps. 67: 36) : “God is wonderful in His saints.”

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3

Sertillanges, Les Sources de la croyance en Dieu, p. 65.

4

We here reproduce the substance of a study we have developed at greater length in another work entitled: Le réalisme du principe de finalité, Part 11, chap. 5, “La finalité de la volonté: le désir naturel du bonheur prouve-t-il l’existence de Dieu?

5

St. Thomas, la, q. 3, a. 7, and De Potentia, q. 3, a. 5.

6

Cf. Summa Theologica, Ia IIae, q. 2, a. 8.

7

Cf. ibid., la IIae, q. 1, a. 4: “Is there an ultimate end to human life?” “Absolutely speaking, it is impossible in a series to continue to infinity in any direction…. Were there not an ultimate end, nothing would be desired, no action would have a term, nor would the inclination of the agent find repose.

8

If, instead of considering simply the end of this natural desire, we consider its ordering to that end—and this demands an efficient, regulating cause (ordinans vel imperans movet ut agens, non ut finis)—then the argument pertains to the fifth way of St. Thomas, which is that based upon the presence of order in the world: “All design presupposes a designer.” In this sense the passive ordering of our will to the bonum honestum or moral good, superior alike to the delectable and to the useful, presupposes a supreme regulator. Or again, moral obligation, which is displayed in remorse of conscience and in the peace that comes from duty accomplished, presupposes a supreme lawgiver. Of this we will speak in the next chapter.

9

Cf. Cajetan, Commentary on Ia IIae, q. 2, a. 7.

10

In favor of this view it is said that since sanctifying grace is a participation in the divine nature ordered essentially to the beatific vision, it is a participation in that nature in so far as it is intellectual life. It would seem, then, that the divine nature is fundamentally the supreme intellectual life, eternally subsistent thought, rather than being itself. To this we reply that sanctifying grace is a participation in the divine nature as it is in itself and not simply as our imperfect mode of knowledge conceives it. It is a participation in the Deity, whose formal signification transcends even that of being and intellection. Conceived simply as subsistent being, God contains only implicitly, actu implicite, the rest of the divine perfections deducible from it; whereas the Deity as it is in itself and as contemplated by the blessed in heaven contains all the divine attributes explicitly, actu explicite. The blessed behold them immediately in the Deity and have no need to deduce them.

11

See preceding note.

12

Pascal, Pensees (Havet Ed.), art. 18.

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PART II :THE PERFECTIONS OF GOD WHICH HIS PROVIDENCE PRESUPPOSES