During a recent conversation with a friend, a fellow Roman Catholic who not only attends church regularly, but who often serves in Mass as both a reader and a Eucharistic minister, she revealed, to my surprise, that her quest for Truth has so far led her to put into question some of the most fundamental of Christian teachings.<\/p>\n
She is not alone.\u00a0 Unfortunately, as I have gathered from my own experience as a college philosophy professor\u2014a Christian<\/em> professor who for the last 20 years has almost always taught at secular institutions\u2014many, and perhaps most, self-identified Christians are either confused as to the ideas traditionally affirmed by their religion or they have outright repudiated them.<\/p>\n The first and most fundamental misconception that must be addressed prior to attending to any of the others is that surrounding the concept of God. <\/em><\/p>\n People, and especially self-declared Christians (at least those living in the West), are put off by the exclusivity of the claims that distinguish each religion from the other.\u00a0 On what basis, so goes the common question, can Christians claim to know that their God is the one true God when the adherents of countless other religions make similarly exclusive claims regarding their <\/em>gods?<\/p>\n This question is misplaced, for it reflects a gross misunderstanding of the nature of monotheism.\u00a0 <\/em>The latter differs from polytheism not in degree, but in kind. \u00a0They are in different leagues.<\/p>\n In affirming the existence of one God, the monotheist doesn\u2019t mean to deny (or affirm) that there are other deities within<\/em> the world.\u00a0 As a monotheist, it isn\u2019t immanent<\/em>, but ultimate<\/em>, reality with which he is concerned.<\/p>\n The God of the monotheist is a Deity that transcends <\/em>the world, a Deity in whose absence there could be no world.<\/p>\n This means at a minimum four things:<\/p>\n First, the monotheist does not <\/em>intend to affirm the reality of a \u201chigher<\/em> being.\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s popularity notwithstanding, the terminology of a \u201chigher being\u201d is fundamentally irrelevant here, for in suggesting that the \u201chigher being\u201d is a being in<\/em> the world, it implies that between this \u201chigher being\u201d and all of the other beings of which the world is populated there is a difference only of degree.<\/p>\n Second, neither, then, can God be the highest<\/em> being, as this descriptor too implies that God is but one more being among all others, differing from others only in terms of degree.<\/p>\n Third, following this same chain of reasoning, it should now be clear that, common usage aside, referring to God as \u201cthe Supreme <\/em>being\u201d is also inaccurate: The Supreme being would be only another being that happens to be superior to all other beings.<\/p>\n Fourth, God is not a being standing over and above the world, a set of beings distinct from the set of beings that we know as the universe.<\/p>\n Just as Taoists say of the Tao\u2014the Way,<\/em> that which pervades, orders, begets, and sustains all things\u2014that it is beyond <\/em>being and non-being, so too can the God of the monotheist be said to be beyond being.\u00a0 Yet the God of the monotheist is beyond being only insofar as God transcends every conceivable universe of beings.<\/p>\n The monotheistic concept of God has several implications.<\/p>\n (1)God is infinite<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n God must be unlimited.\u00a0 Now, \u201cinfinite\u201d and \u201cinfinity\u201d are terms that can indeed mean more than one thing.\u00a0 In the case of God\u2019s infinity, however, we clearly can\u2019t be talking about either infinite space or infinite time.\u00a0 In the case of the former, God would have to be a body, for only bodies are in <\/em>space.\u00a0 And if God was an infinite body, this would mean that there are no other bodies, for bodies delimit one another, and an infinite body would leave no room for any others.<\/p>\n If God\u2019s infinity pertained to infinite time, then God would have to be in time, unfolding chronologically like any other temporal being.<\/p>\n So, because God cannot be limited by space or <\/em>time; because God must transcend the flux of time, God\u2019s infinitude is His timelessness.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Thus, when it is said of God that God is eternal, His eternality is not, as the ancient Greeks envisioned it, endless time.\u00a0 The eternality of God is the timelessness of God.<\/p>\n Since God is the Ground of all that exists, \u201cthe infinite wellspring\u2026in whom all things live and move and have their being,\u201d as David Bentley Hart, writing in First Things <\/em>and quoting the book of Acts <\/em>remarks, it is best to view God, not as a being, <\/em>but as Being.\u00a0 <\/em>God is unadulterated, unrestricted Being in that God \u201cis the inexhaustible source of all reality, the absolute upon which the contingent is always utterly dependent,\u201d and \u201cthe unity underlying all things.\u201d<\/p>\n (2)God is omnipotent, omniscient, <\/strong>& omnipresent.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n God is infinite, but infinite in what?\u00a0 <\/em>God must be unlimited in His power<\/em>, knowledge<\/em>, and Being<\/em>.<\/p>\n Thus, it is no exaggeration to characterize the deists from Aristotle to Thomas Jefferson and many extraordinarily bright men in between as having been scandalously confused:\u00a0 Not only is it impossible for the God of the monotheists to be as distant from the world as the deists imagined Him to have been; it is impossible for the God of the monotheist to be distant from the world at all.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n This last point is but another way of saying that\u2026<\/p>\n (3)God is immanent. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n While some, including such geniuses as Aristotle (who was convinced that he had proven the existence of God, his \u201cFirst Mover,\u201d through reason alone), deny that God can be both transcendent and immanent, in truth it is precisely because<\/em> God is transcendent that He must <\/em>be immanent. The eternal, infinite Being must be fully present\u2026everywhere.<\/em><\/p>\n And if God is immanent, as He must be, then\u2026<\/p>\n (4)God is personal.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n God is not a \u201cthat<\/em>\u201d or a \u201cwhat.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>God is and can only be a Who. <\/em><\/p>\n The power and knowledge essential to Being are characteristics unique to, not impersonal forces or phenomena, but persons<\/em>, to beings with intelligence and will.<\/p>\n The personal nature of God leads to another implication of the concept of God:<\/p>\n (5)God is morally perfect.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Because God is, and must be, personal, God must be morally perfect.<\/p>\n That God is morally perfect means that God is the source of all meaning.\u00a0 <\/em>The cosmos is <\/em>rich with meaning, objective meaning, because it is produced by and suffused throughout with God.<\/p>\n To put this last point another way, moral excellence, beauty, justice, truth\u2014these are all intrinsic features of the world within which we live.\u00a0 They are not, in other words, subjective projections or social constructions, but part of the furniture, as it were, of the world.<\/p>\n Moral, aesthetic, and ontological values are real<\/em>.<\/p>\n The existence of God guarantees them.<\/p>\n During my lectures on philosophy of religion, students have often asked something like, \u201cWell, who says that God must be as Christians and other traditional monotheists have depicted him?<\/em>\u201d Or, in seeking to convey the same point, they\u2019ll say, \u201cMaybe I have something else in mind when I imagine God!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n What I\u2019ve been at pains to establish here is that remarks of this kind are the function of ignorance:<\/p>\n Just as no person or persons \u201csay\u201d that a square must have four sides, or that red things must be colored things, or that something can\u2019t be and not be in the same respect and at the same time, so no person or persons \u201csay\u201d that God must be eternal; unlimited in power, presence, knowledge, and goodness; and both transcendent and immanent.<\/p>\n Nor can an individual have in mind an alternative conception of God that doesn\u2019t include these features.<\/p>\n It is the very logic of the concept of God\u2014the monotheistic<\/em> concept of God\u2014that inescapably entails the constellation of properties that constitute God.<\/p>\n This concept of God entails that if the world that we take for granted is real (as we all assume it is), then the values and virtues, the meaning, that we discern in the world is really, objectively, present.<\/p>\n There is one final point:<\/p>\n In denying God\u2019s existence, as atheists do, they are not, as they would have everyone, including themselves, think, merely denying the existence of a being\u2014like Big Foot or the Abominable Snowman. The atheist\u2019s position is every bit as metaphysical as that of the theist\u2019s. It implicates an entire worldview that is fundamentally and radically at odds with that of the monotheist.<\/p>\n The atheist affirms a cosmology that is necessarily materialist.\u00a0 His denial of God commits him to a world in which value and meaning are not to be found.\u00a0 <\/em>Rather, whatever value and meaning human beings experience they have created. <\/em>\u00a0It isn\u2019t just beauty that is in the eye of the beholder in the atheist\u2019s universe, but goodness, evil, justice, injustice, virtue, vice, and every other value.\u00a0 Indeed, from Dostoevsky to Sartre (and beyond), both theist and atheist alike have noted that the very concept of truth <\/em>itself becomes dubious in a cosmos that ultimately boils down to matter in motion.<\/p>\n And when the agnostic shrugs his shoulders and purports to suspend judgment as to whether God exists or not, the agnostic is purporting to suspend judgment as to whether his universe is pregnant with meaning, purpose, and value, on the one hand, or, on the other, whether it is just a brute, physical fact.<\/p>\n When we consider all that is at stake in choosing to affirm or deny God\u2019s existence, it couldn\u2019t be clearer that Blaise Pascal was correct when he remarked that the question of God\u2019s existence is the single most important of all human questions.\u00a0 Pascal knew something of which far too many of us are ignorant: How one answers the question concerning God\u2019s existence will inevitably impact every other aspect of one\u2019s life.<\/p>\n Yet in order to choose wisely, we must first think clearly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During a recent conversation with a friend, a fellow Roman Catholic who not only attends church regularly, but who often serves in Mass as both a reader and a Eucharistic minister, she revealed, to my surprise, that her quest for Truth has so far led her to put into question some of the most fundamental…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n