A Perfect Being 1

As I said in my last blog post, those who continued to follow this blog would hear reasons why I believe in the classical, orthodox Christian worldview. As one of my Facebook friends commented, I may as well have posted the Athanasian Creed. Now that my readers know what I believe, I want you to know why I believe as I do. The purpose of this blog is not only to answer skeptics of classical Christianity, but also to help other Christians who have questions about the faith. Unfortunately, most people do not think deeply about why they believe what they believe. In fact, I did not always think much about my faith in Christ. I was sure I had really experienced God and knew Him, but I would not have been able to tell you much else before I began studying Christian apologetics.

While serving in the United States Marine Corps, I found myself in a foxhole* with an atheist in Baghdad, Iraq (contrary to the popular saying). He was not a particularly bitter or angry atheist. He had never had a bad church experience or strong objections to theism. He merely did not see any good reason to believe in God. I desperately wanted to give him a reason to embrace God, but I was not prepared to make a defense to anyone who asked me for a reason for the hope within me (1 Peter 3:15). I hope and pray that someone reached that Marine with the gospel, because I was taken off guard and an ineffective witness for Christ. It was several years later when I discovered Frank Turek’s television show I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. Soon after I read the book of the same title he co-authored with Norman Geisler. I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist was my introduction to Christian apologetics, but  I wish I had begun to think more clearly about my beliefs for the sake of the atheist in the foxhole and other atheists I encountered before I discovered apologetics. In memory of that foxhole atheist, I have decided to re-name this blog The Foxhole Evangelist. Now that I have some answers, I want to give them to anyone willing to read this blog.

One of the most fascinating arguments for God’s existence is the ontological argument. My mind was first opened to this line of reasoning in Dr. Douglas Groothuis’s outstanding book, Christian Apologetics: AComprehensive Case for Biblical Faith. In his words,

The ontological argument claims that proper reasoning about the idea of a Perfect Being generates the conclusion that God exists. For this argument, God’s existence is not merely possible or probable or very likely, but is logically guaranteed. In this sense the ontological argument is “the king of the hill” of all the theistic arguments. It is a priori (depending on no debatable empirical conditions); it is deductive in form, thus making its conclusion certain and not merely probable; and its conclusion is metaphysically superlative: there must be a Perfect Being. If successful, the ontological argument is a masterpiece of a priori or rationalist reasoning and, as such, sharply and deeply cuts against the grain of the empiricism that dominates both the popular and the academic mind.

I was intrigued, although part of me thought at first that this argument might be too good to be true. I have friends who claim to only believe in what is observable, testable, and repeatable. On one hand I realized that the empiricist viewpoint is obviously self-contradictory; the idea that only the observable, testable, and repeatable evidence is trustworthy cannot itself be observed, tested, or repeated. On the other hand, an argument for God that relied purely on logic without reference to tangible evidence seemed like a bit of a stretch to me. Dr. Groothuis persuaded me otherwise.

The ontological argument was first conceived by the monk Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109 A.D.). Anselm gave two versions of the argument. For the sake of brevity I will quote Dr. Groothuis’s summary of the arguments, but I encourage my readers to read Anselm’s Proslogium for themselves. Inspired by Psalm 14:1, Anselm reasoned:

1.       God is understood or defined as a being “than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Even the fool possesses this concept of God.

2.       A thing exists either in (a) the understanding only (such as the idea of a painting before it is painted) or (b) in both the understanding and reality, such as existing in the mind of the painter and then existing on the canvas.

3.       It is “greater” to exist in reality than to exist merely in the understanding.

4.       If God exists merely in the understanding (existing only in the mind of the fool), then God is not the greatest possible being, since a being that existed in reality would be greater than a being that existed only in the understanding.

5.       But God is by definition the greatest possible being (from 1).

6.       Therefore, God exists not merely in the understanding (as the fool claims) but in reality as well. By reductio ad absurdum.

In other words, even the atheist understands that God is a Perfect Being—the greatest possible being by definition—even though the atheist does not believe such a being actually exists. The atheist understands what God is; if the atheist did not understand God as the greatest possible being, such a being’s existence could not be denied. Things that exist in the real world also exist as concepts in the human mind, but there are also things that only exist in the human mind that are strictly imaginary. The atheist claim is that any Perfect Being is imaginary. Things that exist in the real world are greater than things that only exist in the human mind. If God is only imaginary, obviously He cannot be the greatest possible being, since the real is greater than the imaginary. However, God is by definition the greatest possible being, so He must be real since the real is greater than the strictly imaginary.

Dr. Groothuis points out that,

This argument is deductive and is formally valid. If the five premises are true, the conclusion follows necessarily from them.

Of course, that’s a big “if.” If the premises are true, then so must be the conclusion. If any of the premises are faulty, the argument is too good to be true.

Premise 1 is not controversial. God, whether He really exists or is make-believe, is by definition the greatest possible being. According to the Bible, God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent. He is perfect in every way and to the nth degree. He has every quality that it would be better to have than to lack, and He has no bad qualities whatsoever. He is as good as any being can possibly be, and cannot be (even a little) evil. He is all powerful, and has no weakness at all. He created the heavens and the earth, and so nothing is hidden from His sight and nothing is too difficult for Him to understand. He is perfect love. He is perfectly holy, perfectly just, perfectly righteous, perfectly wise, perfectly merciful, perfectly compassionate, perfectly creative, perfectly humorous, perfectly clever, perfectly witty, perfectly playful, perfectly delightful, perfectly beautiful, perfectly glorious, perfectly awe-inspiring, perfectly victorious, perfectly perfect, and so on. As the Bible says, He cannot lie, and He cannot fail. The Christian insists that such a being not only exists, but is experientially knowable. The atheist denies the existence of a Perfect Being, but even so must know what God is by definition in order to deny His existence.

Premise 2 is also easily agreed upon. Either a Perfect Being is pure hokum, or a He exists in reality. Both theists and atheists can conceive of a Perfect Being. The concept of God is universally understood, and even those who deny the existence of a Greatest Conceivable Being must be able to understand what such a being is in order to reject Him.

One objection is that such a great being is beyond human comprehension. After all, how can finite humans truly understand an infinitely Perfect God? This is something that had actually occurred to me when I had heard of the ontological argument from Dr. William Lane Craig, who prefers the term Greatest Conceivable Being, where Dr. Groothuis used the term Perfect Being. I thought this description limited God to the scope of the human mind, and I realized that even the greatest genius could not fully comprehend his maker. Such a god could not be the transcendent God of the Bible, but only an idol. While I figured that I must have misunderstood Dr. Craig, given his prominence as a philosopher and theologian, this is how the argument sounded to me, and I ignored it for a spell. However, Dr. Groothuis’s explanation helped me to understand where I had gone wrong. When Anselm wrote of God as “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived,” he did not mean a God that could be neatly fit within the confines of the human mind, only that we could conceive of such a thing as a Perfect Being. An exhaustive knowledge of God was not implied or necessary to Anselm’s argument.

A possible flaw in the argument might be in Premise 3. Why was God’s existence greater than His nonexistence? The strength of the whole argument seems to hinge on whether or not Premise 3 is true, but this also seems to be the most questionable premise.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant insisted that the idea of existing added nothing to the concept of God, and it was therefore conceivable that God did not exist. A helpful example of Kant’s reasoning was given by Dr. Groothuis,

Kant claims that while being almighty is necessary to the idea of God, existing is not necessary to the idea of God. In the same way, having three sides is necessary to the idea of a triangle, but existing is not necessary for the idea of a triangle. That is, it might be the case that no triangles exist even if the very idea of a triangle requires that it have exactly three sides. One can conceive of God as non-existent, just as one can think of a triangle as nonexistent.

Premise 3 states, “It is ‘greater’ to exist in reality than to exist merely in the understanding.” However, if Kant is right then this is an odd statement to make. We do not typically think of things being greater simply because they exist. We might say a well-trained dog is greater than an undisciplined dog, but we would not think a dog “great” only because it existed. We can apply the same kind of logic to almost anything. To merely say something exists doesn’t seem to add to its greatness. Dr. Groothuis agrees that in most cases, this is true.

It is not a settled principle that for any possible being it is better for that being to exist than not to exist. Indeed, it is better for an unstoppable flesh-eating virus not to exist than to exist, and Anselm is not suggesting otherwise.

The difference here is that we have a Perfect Being in mind. A Perfect Being that actually exists is obviously greater than an imaginary Perfect Being. If the greatest conceivable being that Anselm wrote of exists, then this universe was created for a reason, the best of reasons in fact, because its Creator is maximally good. Our existence has real meaning and purpose. We can take comfort in the fact that fine-tuning is not merely apparent, but evidence that the universe was designed with the greatest wisdom and precision. We can rest in the knowledge that God is not malevolent or arbitrarily making up the rules as He goes along; rather, the standard of all goodness and morality is rooted in His maximally great nature. He is sovereign and just, and worthy of our trust and worship.

Premise 4 states that if God is imaginary, only existing as a figment of the imagination, then He cannot be the Greatest Conceivable Being. If a Perfect Being does not exist then there is no good or evil, right or wrong, truth or falsehood. Mother Theresa was no better than Adolf Hitler, and Adolf Hitler was no worse than Mother Theresa. The world has no purpose or meaning, and we are simply the arbitrary result of the blind physical forces of the universe. However, we are rescued from despair by Premise 5, which reminds us that by definition God is the Greatest Possible Being. The inescapable conclusion is a Perfect Being really does exist. Hallelujah!

There is a bit more to this argument. In fact, I have only given the first version of Anselm’s ontological argument. However, the second argument will have to wait until next time.

*To be perfectly accurate, no Marine nowadays uses the term “foxhole.” It is now known as a “fighting hole,” and any Marine who unwittingly uses the term “foxhole” will be swiftly corrected by their superiors. However, since the proverbial saying is that, “There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole,” I have retained the older, more popular nomenclature.