Paul Tillich
My approach deals with "realizing" the reality of God. This concept that we can just realize God is real implies two things: (1) that we can experince God's reality; (2) that we can understand God a priori. The atheist assert that I'm saying we don't need a reason to believe. Far from saying that, I am saying our reasons do not have to be derived from empirical data. They can be "realized" existentially and phenomenologically, that is experienced in the reality of God's presence and power. They can also be understood logically as a priori reasoning, as with the ontological argument.
Paul Tillich opposed arguing for the existence of God, he especially opposed the cosmological argument because This is because for him these arguments treated God like a thing that can be part of creation. But Tillich gives us an implied argument, an ontological argument in a statement he makes in a sermon called "The Shaking of the Foundations."
The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not."
--Paul Tillich, The Shaking of The Foundations
This is an implied ontological argument because it indicates that God is being itself and that this reality of God as being itself is given to us in the realization that being has depth. All we have to do is figure out what the hell he's talking about and we can know how to realize God's reality. There are two terms we need to know: (1) What does "being itself" mean? (2) what does it mean to say that "being has depth?"
There are three possibilities that I can find for the meaning of the phrase "being itself." This idea also goes hand in hand with the phrase "ground of being." Tillich alternated between the two, they are suppossed to mean the same things. Here are the three possible meanings:
(1) There is no "God" per se, that is just a metaphor for the idea that the fact of our being is special thing, and when realize how special it is to be we feel good and we think of that with the kind of gratitude we feel toward God, we look to being as a religiously minded person looks toward blessings of God.
(2) God is not one of many; there are no other things like God, thus God exists, or is, or has being at the level of being itself. God exists at the level of being itself, God is unique and thus can't be thought of an individual being because individual beings are singled as particular examples of herds.
http://www.faithnet.freeserve.co.uk/tillich.htm
From website no longer on file
visited 6/20/01.
"Existence - Existence refers to what is finite and fallen and cut of from its true being. Within the finite realm issues of conflict between, for example, autonomy (Greek: 'autos' - self, 'nomos' - law) and heteronomy (Greek: 'heteros' - other, 'nomos' - law) abound (there are also conflicts between the formal/emotional and static/dynamic). Resolution of these conflicts lies in the essential realm (the Ground of Meaning/the Ground of Being) which humans are cut off from yet also dependent upon ('In existence man is that finite being who is aware both of his belonging to and separation from the infinite' (Newport p.67f)). Therefore existence is estrangement."
"Although this looks like Tillich was an atheist such misunderstanding only arises due to a simplistic understanding of his use of the word existence. What Tillich is seeking to lead us to is an understanding of the 'God above God'. We have already seen earlier that the Ground of Being (God) must be separate from the finite realm (which is a mixture of being and non-being) and that God cannot be a being. God must be beyond the finite realm. Anything brought from essence into existence is always going to be corrupted by ambiguity and our own finitude. Thus statements about God must always be symbolic (except the statement 'God is the Ground of Being'). Although we may claim to know God (the Infinite) we cannot. The moment God is brought from essence into existence God is corrupted by finitude and our limited understanding. In this realm we can never fully grasp (or speak about) who God really is. The infinite cannot remain infinite in the finite realm. That this rings true can be seen when we realize there are a multitude of different understandings of God within the Christian faith alone. They cannot all be completely true so there must exist a 'pure' understanding of God (essence) that each of these are speaking about (or glimpsing aspects of)...."
"... However in many cases his theology has been misunderstood and misapplied and this most notably with his statement that God is beyond existence (mistakenly taken to mean that God does not exist). Tillich presents a radically transcendent view of God which in fairness he attempts to balance with an immanent understanding of God as the Ground of Being (and the Ground of Meaning) but fails to do so. In the end, as we cannot speak of the God above God we cannot know if any of our religious language has any meaning and whether ultimately the God above God really exists. Certainly, according to his 'system', we cannot test Tillich's 'God hypothesis'. However an interesting dialogue may be had between Christian humanists who posit that God is bound within language and does not exist beyond it (e.g. Don Cupitt) and Tillich who posits that our understanding of God is bound within language yet presumes (but cannot verify) that God exists beyond it."(Grenz/Olson p.124)
(3) God is the ground; that is the basis, the origin, the creator,the fountain head of all being (of all that is). Thus to be is to be a creature of God. The putative state of all being is to be God himself. Thus God is being in the sense of the orgin the basis and the eternalness of all being.
I rule out the first sense, but at times it does seem that Tilich is saying that. However, there are otehr statements he makes that leads me to think it's not what he meant. I think what we can take away form that idea is that God is not the conventional notion of a big man on a throne up in the sky. The basic reality of God is that God blows away our conventional understandings. God blows away all the pre conceived categories we can have about "him." God is mystery and is transcendent of our understanding.
As for the second and third statements these flow out of the basic understanding of the concept of divine, the creator of all things, eternal, not created, necessary and not contingent. But that doesn't tell us that God is real. We are still asserting a concept. But the statement Tillich makes directly implies that there is a way to know this concept is real by some fundamental realization about the nature of Being. I stated realizing God is really a realization about our own being. When we realize the reality of God we are realizing that we are creatures of God. That means that part of what realizing that being has depth entails is realizing our creatureliness and our dependence upon something that in some way way can be thought of as "God."
What does it mean to say that being has depth? It's all right there in the quote itself:
The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him.
The name of God is Infinite and inexhaustible ground of our being. That's the first thing he says. Then he says translate the word God and speak of the depths of your life. So depth is related to God and to our own lives. Then he reinforces that by saying "of the source of our being." So what we have so far is that God means infinite and inexhaustible ground of our being, and that is connected to the source of our being. Thus we can infer that depth of being is this inexhaustible ground, and when we get his this we realize that God it is God. But there's something more, after he says its connected to the depths of life (being has depth and it's the depth of life) he says of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. What's he talking about?
He's talking about his concept of the ultimate concern. This is the key to Tillich's apologetic. God is the source of our ultimate concern. The thing we absolutely bottom line most care about; the fact that we die. We will die and that's certain. The alternative to this is the source of life. So we have juxtaposed the infinite inexhaustible ground and source of being (ground = source) and so the depth that being has is this infinite and inexhaustible ability to ground individual beings and constantly foment more being. This, the source of our being,is our ultimate concern because we want to live. The contrast between our on finitude and God's depth in inexhaustible eternalness creates the basis of the sense of the numinous. When we comprehend the this we sense the ultimate concerns we sense the numinous this is the basis of religious experince and the basis of religion itself.
We can gain this understanding through a phenomenological apprehension of our own being. Because it evokes the numinous it is a valid object of our worship; we have religion a priori. Thus to make this realization of the connection between the infinity of being and the sense of the numinous is to realize the reality of God in the object of our ultimate concerns.
This may not sound very orthodox, but it is extremely orthodox.God is not just a big man on a throne, he is not the Zeu Patter(Jupiter,"Sky Father") of Pagan mythology. The great theologians of Christian faith, the Orthodox Church, and theologians such as Paul Tillich and John Mcquarrie, believe, as Timothy Ware (The Orthodox Church , New York: Pelican, 1963) quoting St. John of Damascus says, "God does not belong to the class of 'existing' things; not that he has no existence but that he is above existing things, even above existence itself..." The Jewish Virtual Library tells us, "The name of god, which in Hebrew is spelled YHWH, is difficult to explain. Scholars generally believe that it derives from the Semitic word, "to be," and so means something like, 'he causes to be.'"
Here is the argument as I make it on my God argument list:
Argument:
(1)Nothingness as PSA is marked by its own contradiction,
A.True absolute nothingness and PSA are contradictions because nothingness means nothing at all, and PSA is something.
B.True nothingness would lack any essential potential for change; no time, no ptoentiality, noting at all; therefore, no change, no becoming.
Therefore: (2)Being, in some form, as the alterntive to nothingness must obtain to a state of aseity.
(3)Aseity implies eternal and the infinite.
(4)Human being is contrasted by finitude.
(5)The awareness of our finitude in contrast to Aseity of Being creates a sense of the unbounded condition; which evokes our sense of the numinous.
(6) The sense of the numious creates religious devotion, thus we have an object of religious devotion and theological discourse in Being itself.
(7) An object of religious devotion and theological discourse is a ratinal warrent for belief.
If you find this hard to take or understand, here's a simpler version:
(1) Sense of the Numinous evokes religious devotion
(2) The sense of the numinous is the sense of the special nature of being
(3) Thus being itself, the ground of being, is the object of religious devotion
(4) whatever is the fit object of religious devotion (the thing that evokes it at the core in the first place) is defined as "God."
(5) since we know this special sense of being existing then QED God exists.
Analysis:
this is not an attempt at modal logic. It's a desscription of the basic phenomenolgoical apprehension of depth in Being and how it unfolds into the object of religious devotion.
People confuses what God is with the most sticking or most frequently used images. That doesn't mean God is those images, it just means the images is used to point to the reality beyond the image. One example, God is not a big father-king in the sky. But the image of the father king was important to people in the ancient world, they understand certain things about that image,s o they used it a lot. So we today have inherited the notion that God has to be a big father-kind in the sky. No that is not the case.
God is not a big man, God is reality, God is the basis of how we understand and feel about what it means to be. God is the foundation of our take on the spacial nature of not failing to exist.
The nature of religion, the reason it exists in the first place, the core origin of what religion is about is prompted by these kinds of feelings, the sense of the numinous. The result of this this feeling is the evocation of religious devotion. That means the object of these feelings, the thing that evokes them is God! I mean by that not that I think God is evoking these feelings, and then you can go on imagining a big guy in the sky evoking them. I mean the thing that reallky evokes them, whatever it is, is actually God. that is the nature of our religious instincts.
It's the fulfillment of our religious impulse. It means the thing that evokes the sense of the numinous must be the object of our religious devotion, the term we use to describe that is "God."
Now we can speculate about the nature of that thing that evokes this sense. It could be connected to the origin of the Bible and the object of Biblical revelation or not. It could be object of Hindu revelation, or both, or neither. that's for the individual believer to decide.
1)Nothingness as PSA is marked by its own contradiction,
A.True absolute nothingness and PSA are contradictions because nothingness means nothing at all, and PSA is something.
B.True nothingness would lack any essential potential for change; no time, no ptoentiality, noting at all; therefore, no change, no becoming.
Therefore:
(2)Being, in some form, as the alternative to nothingness must obtain to a state of aseity.
Some form of being must always be. I use the term "being" rather than "existence" because "existence" refers to the particular fact of existence of a contingent object.Being in abstract terms (which is not to say that is a mere abstraction) is not contingent, cannot be contingent upon anything, because if it was that thing upon which it is contingent would have to be outside of the nature of being.
so here I'm not considering being as some kind of platonic form, but as whatever example of being happens to exist. If all that exists in all reality is a toco shell, then being itself is a taco shell. But whatever that x is, it is must have a reality and an aseity beyond that of any particular contingent thing, as this requires the eternal nature of some form of being apart from any events which might condition it.
This is not as mystical as it sounds, but it is beyond our knowledge. It doesn't matter if this is the universe or a singularity or whatever. It is still logically the case that Being in some form must always be. It is this eternal nature of being that contrasts with our own finite creaurliness and creates the sense of the numinous.
(3)Aseity implies eternal and the infinite.
The self sufficient nature of being requires that being always be, which contrasts with our finitude and gives us a sense of the unbounded condition.
(4)Human being is contrasted by finitude.
We know we will die, we know all things die. We are stuck by the contrast and can sense the greater unity in the life world of all things upon some larger scheme. That gives us a sense of the Holy. We have thus come into contact with a sense of the nature of the numinous. This creates our sense of ultimate concerns, we become aware of the greater questions like why am I here? And How should I live?
(5)The awareness of our infinitude in contrast to Aseity of Being creates a sense of the unbounded condition; which evokes our sense of the numinous.
Unbounded condition is the sense of the open nature of reality, the limitless infinite expanse of whatever that great unkown is. It's like the thing all art works seem to be getting at, but no one can say.
(6) The sense of the numinous creates religious devotion, thus we have an object of religious devotion and theological discourse in Being itself.
It doesn't have to be "the God of the Bible." It doesn't have to be a big daddy man in the sky who will tell you what to do (which I think all agthesits are afraid of). But any object of religious devotion which is connected that sense of the unbounded condition is a proper object of religious devotion; it evokes our ultimate concerns.
Since we have a proper object of religious devotion, we can religious beliefs. Connection with the ultimate concerns creates transformation and resolves the human problematic. This is what religion is all about, this is the core of the nature of religion itself. since it is an object of theological discourse, we can talk about it, we can talk about talking about it, we can start a tradition, we can have religion. This is a ratinonal thing to do since it relates to our ultimate concerns.
(7) An object of religious devotion and theological discourse is a rational warrant for belief.
ie "God." This means that once we discover the depth in being, this process of uncovering the unbounded condition, we have a rational reason to believe in God. We can sense the relation of the reality of God to our own lives, our existential nature, and our understanding of what our being in the world.
This does not have to be "the God of the Bible," but it can be and it really is. It is because we are told that it is. In two places or more the Bible identifies God with this unlimited and aseic notion of Being itself; Exodus 3:18 "I am that I am" (translation from LXX might read "I am being itself") Acts 17 "in him we live and move and have our being."
This could be the God of the Bible. Of course I would suggest that those who say that and those who fear it don't know what the God of the bible is. They are confusing the God of the Bible with the father image which is portrayed in the Bible, but they also exclude the many mother images, and the other stamens that clearly disassociate God from being like a man ("our God is a consuming fire"--no one knows the mind of God"--"my ways are not your ways" that sort of thing). I suggest that the God of the bible ties us into something much deeper that is much more universal to all human apprehensions of the divine and of the numinous; the atmon, the zeit guest, the over soul, transcendental signifier, it's all there in the Bible if you just know where to look and what to look for.
Being itself: just an abstraction in the mind?
Of course atheists will say "this is just an idea in the mind. It's no different than 'yellowness' which does not exist. this is just an abstraction of being so it doesn't exist."
This is a totally wrong headed notion.Clearly what I'm talking about exists, because it is nothing more than the actuality of being of that which must exist eternally since we cannot start from nothingness. .It isn't the being of any particular being, it is not contingent being, but is being in itself and for itself as it is manifested eternally apart from nothingness.It has to exist or we do not exist, because it is present and manifest in us!
Take one example given against this argument already, on message boards, "yellowness." Yewllowness doesn't exist, it is only an abstraction based upon the color we see when we look at yellow colored things. We can abstract this color by itself, so the "ness" part is just in our minds (so to speak). But while that is true, it is also true that there is a color we call yellow upon which we base this abstraction.
The essence of this argument does not depend upon "God" being a big man on a throne. It doesn't depend upon God being an entity or even "personal." We know yellow because we see it. We don't know this X, this unknown form of Being which must exist eternally (and could be many things, they could all be naturalistic) but it has to be; since we cannot start from nothingness, something must always have been.
Whatever that something is, it's aseity as something which has to be conditions our religious sensibilities and kickes off, so to speak, our sense of the numinous. Now I don't believe that its a quantum particle or that it isn't consciousness or something of that nature. Of course I do believe that, and that can be understood in that way through other arguments connected to it. But whether it is or not, it is at least the ground of our understanding of meaning, reality, reality, devotion, transformative experiences which resolve the human problematic, and that gives us the object of ultimate concerns and religious devotion; it makes religion a viable option because it does what it sets out to do, it resolves the human problematic.
It doesn't have to be an argument. All it has to be be is a real actual realization and you live. That is exactly what it can be. Not not big a mystery, just pray and go sit under the stars.
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