Argument from Ground of Being

1 whatever evokes the sense of the numinous warrants belief in God
2 Contemplating the Depth of Being evokes the sense of the Numinous
3 therefore, depth of being warrants belief in God



Paul Tillich did not like God arguments and he did not try to make them He didn't really need them because, as he put it, if you know being has depth then you know there's a God. Yet several commentators, such as John M. Russell,[1]  and Duane Olson [2] have seen the potential in Tillich's thought for an implied ontological argument i n his notion of the depth of being, I have a problem here because both arguments, and Tilliich's original thinking have a gap where the only link to the reality of God is intuitive, thus will be seen as unclear. Thus I set up my own argument based upon Tillich,

The key to understanding the Tillich ideas is to stop thinking of /God as a big man or even powerful force and think of it as a condition or state of being, I am not suggesting that this is all God is. God is still king of reality as far as I am concerned,. God has his own idea will and volition, But we come to rubber stamp  everything about God with this standardized image of the king on a throne, If God is not "blowing your mind," as we used to say in 60's parlance, you re not thinking of God, If you have God figured out and you can rubber stamped then you are not dealing with God. This is an  exercise in breaking the mold.It might be a helpful exercise to try thinking of God in terms of a zone the God zone) or a state of being. I still expect God to have will and volition and to blow away our convent well understood categories. We are like "flat landers" [3] talking about God's finger as though it's God.  Now examine the argument. Remember it's mot proof it's a warrant (justification) to believe:

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[4]

We discussed God and the Depth of Being last time
"The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means." 

Depth = God

"For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him." 

Analogy to truth: Tillich uses this idea to get across the unbounded condition (God is the unbounded condition the prius to subject/object dichotomy). Truth has to exist because if truth was said not to exist it would be true that it didn't exist. Thus truth can't fail to be. Moreover, this works by the ontological principle, we know it;s true if we know the meaning of the term. The link between this point about truth and God is one of the unclear points, How do we know God is truth, Thus I use it as an analogy,


Like truth, knowing that being has depth is knowing God is real. how to link being itself to God?  It's an intuitive sense. That's really the bottom line. The connecting link of how we hook up truth and depth of being to God is merely an intuitive sense, "Tillich's Bonaventurian claim that "God is most truly present to the very soul and immediately knowable...we thus therefore intuit God in himself directly without media..."[5]

There is an indication, there's a co-determinate, or a correlate.   In other words there is a "trace of God" or a correlate that we are able to associate with God like a finger print is associated with a finger or a track in the snow is associated with the creature that made the track, How do we know what is associated with God? The best example would be whatever evokes a sense of God;s presence,

The juxtaposition between finitude and infinitude evoked by the realization of our own finitude against, for example,  the backdrop of the night sky in the  desert can evoke a sense of the numinous. This is special sense of God's presence and unbounded love. Because this sense points to the reality of God it gives us a fit object of religious devotion, 

Like the issue of truth if we know what depth means we know being has depth and that helps us understand the nature of the sense of the infinite which produces religious sense. The difference is the actual experiences the numinous is empirical and not deductive. The analogy in the understanding of what depth means, If you understand what depth means you know being has depth, From that point you can go on to the initiative sense that connects depth to 'god, the sense which nay include the numinous, 




sources

[1] John M. Russell, "Tillich's implied ontological Argument." Sophia Vol. 32, no. 2, 1993, 5.

[2] Duane Olson, "Paul Tilloich and the Ontological Argument,"Quodlibet Journal: Volume 6 Number 3, July - September 2004 ISSN: 1526-6575 URL:
http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/olson-tillich.shtml  (accessed 8/9/16)
[3] flatLand the 20007 film (2007) aticle Wikipidia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland_(2007_film)


[4] Paul Tillich, the Shaking of The Foundations

[5]Russell, op cit, 4