From the Finite to the Infinite: A Pagan's Journey to the Promised Land (Revised) 5/07/13 03/12/14

School of Athens

All of us desire to know where we are going with our lives. What does it all mean? What can we hope for? The humanities or the liberal arts might answer these questions, but there are many issues to consider. What is an eager truth-seeker to do? Indeed, analyzing the truth will be much easier to pursue if we consider their principles.

In previous articles, we explored modern philosophy from this bird's eye view. Let us now explore Ancient Greek philosophy and Medieval Scholasticism and ask the same questions they would have asked if they were here. Is there a God? What can we hope for? These obscure philosophers asked the most profound questions, and we still struggle to answer them. Let us now attempt to prove for His existence in the same way in which they had done so.

If we are going to prove for God's self-existence and independent existence from the cosmos, we need to begin with an elaboration of the various objects of the cosmos. Only then can we demonstrate for a being in reality that corresponds to the notion of a self-existing and independently existing God.

Cosmos

Thirteenth century Dominican friar, St. Thomas Aquinas, began with what he thought was obvious: diversum est esse et id quod est—that what a thing is and its existence are not the same. There are many things that exist, but distinguishing between various things requires that we define them as being other than their existence.

We also understand what things are regardless of their existence (e.g. unicorns, vampires, etc.). Therefore, every contingent being's essence (i.e. those by which we understand the things of the cosmos according to their kind) is not the existence they have. Since a contingent being's essence does not guarantee its existence, we must appeal to an extrinsic cause for its existence.

Since contingent beings do not exist necessarily, we must appeal to external beings to account for their existence, but appealing to contingent beings to account for other contingent beings will cause an infinite regress. Therefore, contingent beings will not suffice to account for their existence.

Aquinas thus concluded that the cosmos exists but does not exist though itself, and everything open to our common experience exists contingently. An appeal to the cosmos, however, will not suffice to explain the cosmos' contingency.

Finally, there must exist some transcendent Being who is the ultimate cause of the cosmos' nexus of conditioned causality. In other words, there must exist a transcendent Being whose essence is His own existence and thereby exists through the power of His own essence.He must exist this way. Otherwise, He will not have His own reason for existing and would cease to exist necessarily.

There must also be no possibility in this transcendent Being for being something other than what He is. This Being, in other words; must be purely actual, indeterminate, or unrestricted being and existence. We shall henceforth call this subsistent existence God.

What name could we give for God that best expresses who He is? We must name God using an extraordinary mode of predication that is distinct from the modes of predication used for contingent beings. Since Being is God's proper name; the infinitive of the verb, being (viz. 'to be') best expresses His indeterminate existence. The propositions "God is the One who is 'to be,'" 'God is He that is,' and 'God is' best communicate His name.

Aquinas also quoted from a passage in St. John of Damascus' Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, which reads that God's name denominates an "infinite ocean of substance." In other words, God is the sheer act of 'to be' itself, the least imperfect name for God.

The Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Old Testament traditions speak to the Lord's name as well but from the standpoint of divine revelation. Surprisingly, they all claim that God revealed His name to Moses:

Then Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?'" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you,'"

God also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Issac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you': this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations." (Exodus 3:13-15)

The Douay-Rheims translation also expresses God's name as the Septuagint reads it: "God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS, hath sent me to you" (Exodus 3:14). I AM, HE WHO IS, YHWH (Hebrew: יהוה), or the Lord's name is the God of the Bible and the God of Israel. More specifically; the verb form, YHWH, derives from the triconsonantal root היה (h-y-h) 'to be.' Indeed, the Lord's name integrates rather well with God as Being itself.

Moses and the Burning Bush

The biblical authors also wrote the book of Exodus about ten centuries before the coming of Christ; writing how God, with Moses' help, freed the enslaved Israelites from the Egyptian rulers and established a covenant with God on Mount Sinai.

They also claimed that the narrative had taken place thirteen centuries before the coming of Christ. Interestingly, the biblical authors wrote the Pentateuch long before philosophy began in ancient Greece. Yet, the earliest and most archaic arguments for God's existence date at around 400-340 B.C., beginning mostly with Plato and Aristotle's arguments, and later with Aquinas' arguments into the High Middle Ages.

How did the ancient Israelites know God's name, thousands of years before the Greeks and the Medieval Scholastics knew it? The ancient Israelites constantly fought with one another with no time for theoretical study. With that said, however, they claimed to know God's name not in the way in which the Greeks had. They claimed that it was revealed to them by God.

God, moreover, established a series of covenants with different people over many centuries. They all ruined them by turning away from Him. Despite that fact, however, God reinstated new covenants in order to unite Himself with His people.

Moreover, later prophecies claimed that the Lord would  redeem Israel from her misdeeds and reign as King in an everlasting covenant with all nations. The Messiah, as they called Him, will descend from the Davidic bloodline in order to do so. In fact, the New Testament references these claims Gospels' genealogies, tracing Jesus Christ's ancestry from the Old Covenant:

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Ammin'adab, and Ammin'adab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Bo'az by Rahab, and Bo'az the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king…

and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations. (Matthew 1:1-17)

Ezekiel, the Prophet

Moreover, a priest and prophet, Ezekiel, envisioned God leaving the corrupt temple of Jerusalem and restoring order: "Then he led me to the gate, the gate facing toward the east; and behold, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the way of the east... And the Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house" (Ezekiel 43:1-5). Ezekiel's prophetic vision prefigured Christ's triumphal entry from the Mount of Olives, just east of Jerusalem, to the temple.

Jesus Christ also fulfilled Ezekiel's prophesy by driving the corrupt out of his temple: "[Jesus Christ] entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling, saying to them, 'It is written, 'and my house shall be a house of prayers,' but you have made it a robbers' den'" (Luke 19:45, 46).

On a further note, Jesus Christ's name, "'YHWH or He who is' saves, the Messiah," also testifies to God's self-revelation to Moses. In a particular passage in John's gospel, Jesus Christ urged his fellow Jews to have faith that He and His Father are one. When Jesus told them that Abraham was glad when he came to Him, the Jews asked Him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?" (John 8:57). Jesus then replied by reaffirming His divinity: "'Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am'" (John 8:58).

Finally, Jesus also intimately expressed His love towards His present and future disciples at the Garden of Gethsemane, where he had prayed an act of petition before the Sanhedrin took him prisoner to be crucified for blasphemy:

When Jesus had said this, he raised his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to all you gave him. Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ. I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began.

Angel Consoling Jesus

I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.

I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.

Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you.

I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely. I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.

I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.

And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them. (John 17)

Jesus Christ