God Existence and Essence
‘To believe in God is to realize life has meaning’ Wittgenstein. We don’t know whether God exists. This is why we must question whether or not we believe. Kant said, ‘deny knowledge to make room for faith.’ For knowledge is limited for the essential always eludes us. We are as ignorant of the First Cause as we are of the ultimate goal. Why is there something rather than nothing? We don’t know. We will never know. The very existence of the universe would seem to imply that there has always been something: that being is eternal, uncreated, perhaps creator, and this is what people call God. He exists out of time. Creating it as he created all things.
There is no before him since that presupposes existence in time. Eternity, is not contained in time, time is contained within eternity. God is not in the universe; the universe is in God.
Should we believe? Without this absolutely necessary being, nothing would have a reason to exist. How could he not exist? God is outside the world, its cause and its end. Everything comes from him. In him we have being, movement and life. Absolutely infinite, perfect and real. Without which nothing relative could exist. Why is there something rather than nothing? Because God!
We are as ignorant of the First Cause as we are of the ultimate goal. Why is there something rather than nothing? We don’t know. We will never know. This does not answer the question – why God rather than nothing? But God would be the Being which answers the question of His own existence. He is His own cause. It is what defines Him!
What is God? God is a being – absolutely necessary (self-causing), absolutely creator (the cause of everything), absolutely absolute (dependent on nothing, everything is dependent on him. He is the foundation of all! (Anselm) ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought,’ the supremely perfect being (Descartes). Existence cannot be separated from the essence of God. Essence is synonymous with nature and substance. Essence a theological term. God’s nature is exactly who he is: there is nothing added to the substance of God. Whereas all living things have a substance( a primary mode of being) and accidents (the secondary modes of being), God is only a substance. (Accidents making you a unique person = height, weight, colour, position, time of existence etc. Action, posture, time, state and relation to something else). God has no accidental modes of being and is defined only as a substance (His Godhead). Essence = his attributes/characteristics: Finite man cannot define the infinite. Essence or nature is that by which a thing exists by having an essence.
