Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God

The necessity we feel of understanding the elevation of the spirit to God from the point of view of thought, is suggested by a formal characteristic which meets us at the very first glance when we consider what direction is taken by the proof of the existence of God, and which has to be taken notice of first of all. The study of a subject from the point of view of thought is an exposition, a differentiation of what in our very first experience we arrive at by a single stroke. In connection with the belief that God is, this analysis comes into direct contact with a point which has already been incidentally touched upon, and is to be dealt with more thoroughly here, namely, the question as to the distinction to be drawn between what God is and the fact that He is. God is; what then does this mean? what is it supposed to be? God is, to begin with, a figurative idea, a name. So far as the two determinations contained in the proposition, namely, God and Being, are concerned, the most important thing is to determine or define the subject for itself, all the more that here the predicate of the proposition which would otherwise be indicated by the peculiar determination of the subject, namely, what this subject is, contains merely dry Being. But then God is for us more than mere Being. And, conversely, just because He is an infinitely richer content than mere Being, and is infinitely different from it, the important thing is to add to it this determination as representing a determination which is different from that of Being. This content which is thus distinguished from Being is an idea, a thought, a conception which is to be explained for itself, and have its meaning determined afterwards. Thus in the Metaphysic of God, or what is known as natural theology, we start by unfolding the meaning of the notion or conception of God. This is in accordance with the ordinary mode of dealing with the subject, since we consider what our previously formed idea of God contains, and in so doing further presuppose that we all have this idea which we express by the term God. The notion, accordingly, for itself, and apart altogether from the question of its reality, brings with it the demand that it should be true in itself as well, and consequently, as being the notion, that it should be logically true. Since logical truth, in so far as thought takes the form of Understanding merely, is reduced to identity, to what does not contradict itself, nothing more is demanded than that the notion should not contradict itself, or, as it is otherwise expressed, that it be possible, since possibility is itself nothing more than the identity of an idea with itself. The second thing, accordingly, is to show that this notion exists, and this is the proof of the existence of God. But because that possible notion is, in this very matter of identity, of bare possibility, reduced to this the most abstract of categories, and becomes no richer by means of existence, the product thus reached does not answer to the fulness of the idea of God, and we have accordingly a third division of the subject, in which we treat still further of the attributes of God and of His relations to the world.