Course XXXI - Teaching 8: Rational Proofs about the Existence of God

Necessarily, one must believe in a personal God, Analogical Contrariety of the Impersonal One.
Of course, the existence of God cannot be proved a priori, since we only have a nominal knowledge about God.
Since God is a se, as we have seen above, man never would be able to know the essential existence of God; he can just intuit His existence in a way confused or clear.
Also man can know God through His existence in fact.
From the antiquity, several schools of Theology have given five very clear propositions to prove rationally the existence of God.
First: GOD IS THE UNIVERSAL MOTOR.
If movement has not raison d’être in se, it demands a first motor. Any movement potentially needs a superior movement, and so on. But, since God exists per se without any drive on Him, He is Universal Motor and First Motor.
Second: GOD IS THE SUPREME CAUSE.
Existent or non-existent causes, efficient and subordinated causes, are manifested in the Universe through a great rhythm of cause and effect; them, it should there be a Supreme Cause that fundamentally has in se the two laws, and able to communicate the successive causality to subsequent causes.
Third: GOD IS THE SELFSAME EXISTENCE.
If in the Universe there are beings that can exist and can stop existing, it should there be a Unique Being, necessarily existent per se, and able to communicate existence to other beings. If God, as existence, would be absent for a moment alone, the entire life would be extinct; and if in the Universe just exist contingent beings, and not a unique Being necessarily existent, then existence would have no raison d’être.
Fourth: GOD IS THE SELFSAME UNITY.
Anything composed is a part in the simple totality of a unity; that is, if there is a composed part, a simple unity must there be.
Fifth: GOD IS THE COSMIC MIND.
If any form, energy or thought tends to certain end, by law of universal cohesion should there be necessarily a Superior, organizing Mind, a Supreme Mind toward any effort converges.
Certain definitions perhaps may help in synthesizing and clarifying these five propositions.
God is the same Being lasting per se, and as the First and Universal Motor, the selfsame God is His very activity.
God or First Cause has to have knowledge of His Own Existence to be Cause in Himself.
God, the Necessarily Existent Being, implies in Se , as an essential attribute, that His Existence can only emanate from Himself, because He is the Very Existence.
The Supreme and Absolutely Simple Being dilutes in Himself, with perfect harmony, every compound because He is the Very Perfection.
God, or Cosmic Mind, cannot lead His intelligence toward Him as something different, but Mind has to be Himself because He is ad Se, always presently known.
Existence and essence are only perfectly identical in God; seemingly what differentiates them is an accidental and apparent relationship that disappears in God in Se.
This is Supreme principle of a real differentiation between Himself and the Universe.
God is absolutely simple as fundamentally identical Essence and Existence, and actually differentiated from the Universe because the Universe is composed.
God is He who Is, and what is outside Him is Him, only because has His Existence; but only God is existence of Himself, and Essence and Existence are only One in Him.
God is Pure act in Se, or rather, potentiality and activity at the same time; but in the Universe is act and power, rather, potentiality and activity, successively.