Modern Christians continue to seek to deepen their faith and reconcile reason and faith by attempting to prove the existence of God. This is to ensure that faith is more than just an emotional belief and can be justified through philosophical thought.
For modern Christians, proving the existence of God is more than just an intellectual endeavor. It is a question that is intimately connected to the very essence of faith, and it plays an important role in forming and sustaining the foundation of faith. As a Christian, I am intrigued by the first proofs that have been attempted, are being attempted, or will be attempted, regardless of the outcome. The quest to prove the existence of God often leads to a deepening of one’s faith, or sometimes to a crisis of faith. The metaphysical proof of God’s existence by the famous theologian Duns Scotus is one of the most impressive. He does a great job of explaining the difference and implications of grasping God’s truth through faith rather than through reason, which is powerless in the face of it.
But this raises an important question: why do modern Christians still try to prove the existence of God? Especially in an age dominated by science and technology, there is a question of whether faith is something that can be proven. Many Christians may feel that trying to prove the existence of God is an arrogant endeavor that goes beyond human limitations. Nevertheless, it’s still an important endeavor for good reason. The relationship between faith and reason has always been a central theme of Christian theology, and for modern Christians, it has become even more important to harmoniously integrate the two. When rational thought and faith collide, attempts to prove the existence of God can be seen as part of the effort to understand faith rationally.
Before explaining Duns Scotus’s proof of God’s existence, I want to talk about Duns Scotus’s metaphysics. Metaphysics is the study of being as being. He focused on particular objects, such as finite, infinite, actual, and possible beings, which he believed were basic attributes of existence for creatures and applied analogically and uniformly to God.
In this way, the process of proving the existence of God is more than just a philosophical argument; it sheds new light on the relationship between faith and reason. By proving the existence of God, modern Christians seek to affirm that their faith is not merely an emotional belief, but can be justified through reason and philosophical thought. This endeavor serves to strengthen their personal faith and deepen their understanding of God. Duns Scotus’s metaphysical approach does not simply prove the existence of God, but shows how reason and faith can work together.
He attached great importance to the idea of necessity or contingency, a declaration that applies to all beings. This is true of all beings. Duns Scotus’s attention to contingency led him to distinguish between moments of nature and moments of time. The moment of intersection of the moment of time and the moment of nature is called a simultaneous possibility. Since the moment of time continues to be established even as I write this, and even as you read it, the moment of nature is a contemporaneous possibility. This simultaneous contingency allows non-existent objects to claim an objective potentiality, the potentiality to exist. By this objective potentiality, non-existent objects are said to be objectified.
This assertion reinterprets the conventional concepts of form and practice, and says that practice exists without form and is its own essence. That essence may not be recognized by humans. Furthermore, the form performs the function of individualization by itself, regardless of the substance. The divine power is capable of creating and preserving formless matter and formless form. Both the former and the latter have possibility, the inherent right to be objectified. It is with this objective possibility that he discusses the proof of God’s existence.
Duns Scotus used the concept of causality to prove that a First Cause exists. For him, a First Cause could be God. For example, if something possesses the ability to exist, the question arises as to what created it. To answer this question, he says that since nothing comes into existence from nothing, there must be something, and since nothing can cause itself, the answer is that it is something other than something that possesses the capacity to exist. Therefore, we can arrive at the First Principle by identifying the cause of the effect. However, we make the mistake of trying to find the cause that created something that created something that possesses the capacity to exist, and according to this argument, it is impossible to repeat the argument forever. Eventually, he argues, we arrive at a first principle.
He explains the impossibility of this argument by distinguishing between causal chains. He distinguished between those that are ordered by chance and those that are ordered by nature. Suppose there is a son, a father, and a grandfather. The father is the cause of the son. The father is the cause of the grandfather. It is questionable whether the son causes the grandfather. It’s a correlation, but it doesn’t explain direct causation. For Duns Scotus, the chain of human beings through the generations is merely a contingent order. In contrast to contingent order, which is a horizontal order, intrinsic order represents a vertical hierarchy. For example, a gardener is holding a shovel and moving soil. Without the gardener, the shovel can’t move the soil on its own. The soil can’t move itself without the gardener. The gardener is the first cause. It is argued that this represents a vertical hierarchy of order in which the chain of causes cannot be traced back infinitely.
There is a major weakness in this argument, in that he assumes that we can grasp the objective possibility that God has the power to create and preserve any number of formless and formless forms. It is also unclear why he produces a single, infinite first cause in this argument rather than a multitude of finite first causes (beings).
While Aquinas took as his starting point the causal chains that actually exist in the world, Duns Scotus took as his starting point the possibility of causality, because he wanted to present his proofs on the basis of purely abstract possibilities, not on the basis of contingent facts of nature. If you start with natural science, he thought, you can never go beyond the finite world. Duns Scotus also accepts that this argument is only possible if there is no contradiction in the concept of an infinite being. He argues that if there were any contradiction between the concepts of existence and infinity, it would have been discovered long ago.
He would consider infinity to be the most important element in the concept of God. This infinity is not an attribute of God, but a component of divine being. Furthermore, infinity is the defining characteristic of all attributes of God. When he says that “by its very nature it has the formal perfection of infinity as its source and foundation” (Oxcn, 4, 3, 1, 32), he is saying that the attributes of God can be derived from the concept of infinity.
To summarize Duns Scotus’ proof of God’s existence at a macro level, we must first identify objective potentiality and then identify contingent order and essential order in order to identify a first cause. The intrinsic order identifies the property of infinity, which allows us to prove the existence of God. This is an important example of medieval theologians’ attempts to harmonize religion and philosophy.
Modern Christians have continued this tradition and continue to attempt to prove the existence of God. What is important in this process is to go beyond mere theoretical arguments, to deepen our faith and renew our relationship with God. These proofs can be seen as part of an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of faith and to reconcile it with reason. Through these efforts, modern Christians can deepen the roots of their faith and pursue a life of faith in which reason and faith coexist in harmony.
