II. AS KNOWN THROUGH FAITH
("THE GOD OF REVELATION")
A. Sacred Scriptures
Neither in the Old or New Testament do we find any elaborate argumentation devoted to proving that God exists. This truth is rather taken for granted, as being something, for example, that only the fool will deny in his heart [Ps. xiii (xiv), 1; lii (liii), 1]; and argumentation, when resorted to, is directed chiefly against polytheism and idolatry. But in several passages we have a cursory appeal to some phase of the general cosmological argument: v.g. Ps. xviii (xix), 1, xciii (xciv), 5 sqq., Is., xli, 26 sqq.; II Mach., vii, 28, etc.; and in some few others -- Wis. xiii, 1-9; Rom., i, 18,20 -- the argument is presented in a philosophical way, and men who reason rightly are held to be inexcusable for failing to recognize and worship the one true God, the Author and Ruler of the universe.
These two latter texts merit more than passing attention. Wis., xiii, 1-9 reads:
But all men are vain in whom there is not the knowledge of God: and who by these good things that are seen, could not understand him that is, neither by attending to the works have acknowledged who was the workman: but have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, to be the gods that rule the world. With whose beauty, if they, being delighted, took them to be gods: let them know how much the Lord of them is more beautiful than they: for the first author of beauty made all those things. Or if they admired their power and effects, let them understand by them that he that made them, is mightier than they: for by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby. But yet as to these they are less to be blamed. For they perhaps err, seeking God, and desirous to find him. For being conversant among his works, they search: and they are persuaded that the things are good which are seen. But then again they are not to be pardoned. For if they were able to know so much as to make a judgment of the world: how did they not more easily find out the Lord thereof?
Here it is clearly taught
that the phenomenal or contingent world -- the things that are seen -- requires a cause distinct from and greater than itself or any of its elements;
that this cause who is God is not unknowable, but is known with certainty not only to exist but to possess in Himself, in a higher degree, whatever beauty, strength, or other perfections are realized in His works, that this conclusion is attainable by the right exercise of human reason, without reference to supernatural revelation, and that philosophers, therefore, who are able to interpret the world philosophically, are inexcusable for their ignorance of the true God, their failure, it is implied, being due rather to lack of good will than to the incapacity of the human mind.
Substantially the same doctrine is laid down more briefly by St. Paul in Romans 1:18-20:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice: because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.
It is to be observed that the pagans of whom St. Paul is speaking are not blamed for their ignorance of supernatural revelation and the Mosaic law, but for failing to preserve or for corrupting that knowledge of God and of man's duty towards Him which nature itself ought to have taught them. Indeed it is not pure ignorance as such they are blamed for, but that wilful shirking of truth which renders ignorance culpable. Even under the corruptions of paganism St. Paul recognized the indestructible permanency of germinal religious truth (cf. Romans 2:14-15).
It is clear from these passages that Agnosticism and Pantheism are condemned by revelation, while the validity of the general proof of God's existence given above is confirmed. It is also clear that the extreme form of Traditionalism, which would hold that no certain knowledge of God's existence or nature is attainable by human reason without the aid of supernatural revelation, is condemned.
B. Church Councils
What the author of Wisdom and St. Paul and after them the Fathers and theologians had constantly taught, has been solemnly defined by the Vatican Council. In the first place, as against Agnosticism and Traditionalism, the council teaches (cap. ii, De revelat.)
that God, the first cause (principium) and last end of all things, can, from created things, be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason (Denz., 1785-old no. 1634)
and in the corresponding canon (can. i, De revelat.) it anathematizes anyone who would say
that the one true God our Creator and Lord, cannot, through the things that are made, be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason (Denz., 1806-old no. 1653).
As against Agnosticism this definition needs no explanation. As against Traditionalism, it is to be observed that the definition is directed only against the extreme form of that theory, as held by Lamennais and others according to which -- taking human nature as it is -- there would not, and could not, have been any true or certain knowledge of God, among men, had there not been at least a primitive supernatural revelation -- in other words, natural religion as such is an impossibility. There is no reference to milder forms of Traditionalism which hold social tradition and education to be necessary for the development of man's rational powers, and consequently deny, for example, that an individual cut off from human society from his infancy, and left entirely to himself, could ever attain a certain knowledge of God, or any strictly rational knowledge at all. That is a psychological problem on which the council has nothing to say. Neither does it deny that even in case of the homo socialis a certain degree of education and culture may be required in order that he may, by independent reasoning, arrive at a knowledge of God; but it merely affirms the broad principle that by the proper use of their natural reasoning power, applied to the phenomena of the universe, men are able to know God with certainty. In the next place, as against Pantheism, the council (cap. i, De Deo) teaches that God, "since He is one singular, altogether simple and incommutable spiritual substance, must be proclaimed to be really and essentially [re et essentia) distinct from the world most happy in and by Himself, and ineffably above and beyond all things, actual or possible, besides Himself" (Denzinger, 1782-old no. 1631); and in the corresponding canons (ii-iv, De Deo) anathema is pronounced against anyone who would say "that nothing exists but matter"; or "that the substance or essence of God and of all things is one and the same"; or "that finite things both corporeal and spiritual, or at least spiritual, have emanated from the Divine substance; or that the Divine essence by a manifestation or evolution of itself becomes all things; or that God is universal or indefinite being, which by determining itself constitutes the universe of things distinguished into genera, species and individuals" (Denzinger, 1802-4; old no. 1648).
These definitions are framed so as to cover and exclude every type of the pantheistic theory, and nobody will deny that they are in harmony with Scriptural teaching. The doctrine of creation, for example, than which none is more clearly taught or more frequently emphasized in Sacred Scripture, is radically opposed to Pantheism -- creation as the sacred writers understand it being the voluntary act of a free agent bringing creatures into being out of nothingness.
C. The Knowability of God
It will be observed that neither the Scriptural texts we have quoted nor the conciliar decrees say that God's existence can be proved or demonstrated; they merely affirm that it can be known with certainty. Now one may, if one wishes, insist on the distinction between what is knowable and what is demonstrable, but in the present connection this distinction has little real import. It has never been claimed that God's existence can be proved mathematically, as a proposition in geometry is proved, and most Theists reject every form of the ontological or deductive proof. But if the term proof or demonstration may be, as it often is, applied to a posteriori or inductive inference, by means of which knowledge that is not innate or intuitive is acquired by the exercise of reason, then it cannot fairly be denied that Catholic teaching virtually asserts that God's existence can be proved. Certain knowledge of God is declared to be attainable "by the light of reason", i.e. of the reasoning faculty as such from or through "the things that are made"; and this clearly implies an inferential process such as in other connections men do not hesitate to call proof.
Hence it is fair to conclude that the Vatican Council, following Sacred Scripture, has virtually condemned the Scepticism which rejects the a posteriori proof. But it did not deal directly with Ontologism, although certain propositions of the Ontologists had already been condemned as unsafe (tuto tradi non posse) by a decree of the Holy Office (18 September, 1861), and among the propositions of Rosmini subsequently condemned (14 December, 1887) several reassert the ontologist principle. This condemnation by the Holy Office is quite sufficient to discredit Ontologism, regarding which it is enough to say here
that, as already observed, experience contradicts the assumption that the human mind has naturally or necessarily an immediate consciousness or intuition of the Divine,
that such a theory obscures, and tends to do away with, the difference, on which St. Paul insists (1 Corinthians 13:12), between our earthly knowledge of God ("through a glass in a dark manner") and the vision of Him which the blessed in heaven enjoy ("face to face") and seems irreconcilable with the Catholic doctrine, defined by the Council of Vienne, that, to be capable of the face to face or intuitive vision of God, the human intellect needs to be endowed with a special supernatural light, the lumen gloriae and finally that, in so far as it is clearly intelligible, the theory goes dangerously near to Pantheism.