Aims: A Brief Metaphysics for Today

Chapter 12. Participation and God

Chapter 12 Participation and God 12.1 PARTICIPATION AS A COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR GOD Arguments for the existence of God that begin with the experienced universe (cosmos) and then conclude to the existence of a supreme being that is the necessary cause of the existence of that cosmos or of some aspect of it have traditionally been called “cosmological” arguments. But the above rough description requires to be exactly understood. It does not primarily ask, “Is there a God?” Rather, it asks questions about the universe, namely, “What are the necessary conditions for the intelligibility of the given, existent universe ? Is the universe self-explanatory in its existential givenness ?” The argument evokes the insight that the intelligibility of the existing universe requires the continued causal influx of a source of that existing, and that such a source must exist by reason of itself, so that it exists necessarily. Thus the universe that we experience and find more or less intelligible is not self-explanatory but is intelligible only through an ongoing, causally dependent relationship on a unique being transcendent of the universe.1 77 Felt-12 7/27/07 2:49 PM Page 77 Now Aquinas’s core theory that all finite acts of existing flow by participation from a limitless source of existing is an intellectual vision both of the universe and of its relation to that source. It amounts to asserting that the universe is intelligible only by reason of its relation to that source. Hence to embrace Aquinas’s theory of participation amounts to accepting its validity as an implicit argument for the actuality of that source of existing. In Aquinas’s “Five Ways” for arguing to God he concludes , respectively, (1) to an ultimate source of all motion or becoming, (2) to an ultimate cause of all causing, (3) to an ultimately necessary being, (4) to a source of all existential perfection (a kind of compact expression of the theory of participation ), and (5) to an ultimate intelligence underlying the order of the universe.2 In each case he adds: “And this is what everyone understands to be God.” This latter step is of course quite a leap, but it is provisionally justified in the context both for brevity and in anticipation of later arguments. In this essay, however, I prefer, when possible, to avoid using the word “God” in the argument because of all the historical and religious overtones that the word naturally brings with it. In the theory of participation of existing one can speak of the source of existing without importing those other considerations. If it is not an unacceptable neologism, I propose sometimes to call that source “Alpha,” and mean by it only what our above argument and conceptuality have implied. It is a common experience that Aquinas’s Fourth Way— by appeal to God as a source of participated existence—is initially the most obscure but in the end the most persuasive of his arguments. Since I have so far barely sketched his theory of participation, I can hardly suppose that the reader has already found it convincing as a fundamental philosophic perspective. I therefore think it useful to add a different way of arguing to an ultimate, transcendent source of existence that fits quite exactly what I have called Alpha in the Thomistic theory of par- — A I M S 78 78 Felt-12 7/27/07 2:49 PM Page 78 ticipation. Thus, the two approaches may be seen to reinforce each other. 12.2 AN ARGUMENT FOR GOD AS THE NECESSARY SOURCE OF EXISTING I begin with the following preliminary considerations.3 (1) There do exist some beings (fact of experience). Once again I assert that we observe extramental, corporeal things around us (rather than merely our own sensations). If one were a pure idealist, or even a solipsist, it would suffice for the argument that one admits that one’s self, at least, exists. (2) Beings cannot have arisen from sheer nothingness (claim). This is one way of putting Whitehead’s “ontological principle.” He writes: “According to the ontological principle there is nothing which floats into the world from nowhere. Everything in the actual world is referable to some actual entity [Whitehead’s technical term for an ultimate existent, what I call a primary being].”4 (3) Hence there cannot have been a time when nothing whatever existed; (conclusion).5 Consequently something (or other) has...