Most participants in the Great Tradition over the past 2000 years would have agreed with David that it only the fool who says in his heart “There is no God” (Ps. 14:1; 53:1). The early church fathers, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, the Protestant Reformers, Reformed Scholasticism, the Puritans and the Catechism of the Catholic Church all agree the God’s existence can be demonstrated.
In a recent article I discussed what would be entailed in recovering the Great Tradition of metaphysics that was presupposed by those who wrote the Protestant confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries. Many Protestants today do not understand what it means to be a Protestant Christian because they cannot understand the theology of the confessions. This can be seen in the fact that so many people today (including theologians!) cannot makes sense out of the fact that the confessions teach that God is the simple, eternal, immutable, self-existent First Cause of the universe and also that God speaks and acts in history to judge and save. Modern people cannot understand how this is not contradictory.
So we need to recover the metaphysics of Nicaea in order to be able to intelligently confess and confidently pass on historic Christian orthodoxy. In this article, I want to take a first step toward doing that by discussing the importance of the proofs for God’s existence.
Why the Metaphysical Proofs for God’s Existence Matter
Today, very few theologians teach that it is possible to demonstrate by reason alone the existence of God and this situation seems normal to most people. But this is actually the first era of Christian history in which this has been true. Most participants in the Great Tradition over the past 2000 years would have agreed with David that it only the fool who says in his heart “There is no God” (Ps. 14:1; 53:1). The early church fathers, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, the Protestant Reformers, Reformed Scholasticism, the Puritans and the Catechism of the Catholic Church all agree the God’s existence can be demonstrated. I believe (1) that this conviction is fundamental to sound metaphysics and (2) that sound metaphysics is fundamental to a healthy culture. In this short essay, I want to make three basic points about this tradition.
- The existence of God can be demonstrated with rational certainty; it is not merely a matter of probability.
- Belief in the existence of God does not need to be presupposed by a leap of faith.
- Denying the existence of God is not a rational act, but an irrational act of rebellion against God.
Demonstrated with Rational Certainty
First of all, the mainstream of the Christian tradition (both Roman Catholic and Protestant) has taught that the existence of God can be demonstrated by reason and is not merely a matter of probability. The metaphysical proofs of God’s existence are different from the apologetic strategy usually employed today in which evidence for God’s existence is marshaled in an attempt to convince you that it is more likely than unlikely that a God does, in fact, exist.
