The Third Writing on God

May this work be a channel of the graces of the Holy Spirit for you. My friends, I will write 2 topics in this writing, first concerning my spiritual life and second concerning my thoughts. I am in a great state of joy right now thanks to the joy of the Spirit and am greatly inspired to write things to you, my natural and supernatural brethren. One of you have reminded me that spiritual life should be kept between me and my spiritual father. I disagree with that idea partially. I believe if parts of our spiritual life or thoughts can be useful for others, we are not only allowed but also ought to share it to our brethren, with the sole requirement that our conscience is certain that what we ought to say is useful.

The spiritual idea that I wish to convey is that we ought to make our entire existence an offering towards God, for God has conveyed Himself to us in the temporal revelation and later in the eternal revelation to our soul. As such, by justice we ought to give ourselves fully to God. In fact, this is precisely what prayer is, prayer is the gifting of every part of ourselves, every act of ourselves, to God. Prayer is the relationship between man and God. For any relationship to work, there must be reciprocity. As such, I wish to make all of you witness to my desire to give myself completely to God, and thus this work has one eternal audience apart from the temporal audiences I have, and that is God.

The thought that I wish to express is the thought of philosophy. Let none of you misunderstand, I do not mean philosophy as in secular philosophy, I mean philosophy precisely as theistic philosophy, or theological philosophy. Secular philosophy is merely the workings of man apart from his God. Theistic philosophy is not the same as pure theology, which is the human comprehension of God, rather it is the cooperation of man and God to obtain a better understanding of God and Creation which includes man himself. Theistic philosophy is what I have always called the marriage of human philosophy and Divine Theology.

Why does philosophy and God matter? Why does anything matter, and do anything matter at all? Things matter simply because we have the desire to be happy, to experience goodness, to be good. Some people may have the wrong understanding of what is good, but they nonetheless aim for what they perceive as good. Everything that we do and are is oriented towards happiness and goodness. Were there to be no goodness, then we would not do anything and in fact, we would not even be. Philosophy is then a way to enlighten ourselves about what is good and what is happiness. In fact, philosophy is the supreme study of that which is good and happy. So certainly philosophy matters for our happiness and our goodness.

Where does God come into the problem? The idea or hypothesis is God matters because God is precisely Good and Happiness. God is thus the central and supreme object of all philosophy. All rightly ordered philosophy and its servants, the sciences, should be oriented towards God directly or indirectly. Since God is Goodness and Happiness Himself, the correct understanding of God would be necessary for our own goodness and happiness. If we do not understand God well, then we will fall away and according to the Truth, suffer loss forever.

As such, I wish to at least provide a better understanding of God for myself and for you so you may eventually attain with me, our greatest happiness in God. An important part of understanding God is understanding His existence, or more properly, His Existence. This is because the official understanding of God is that He is precisely not just Goodness, but He is Existence Himself. How is that possible shall be elaborated in this writing. I have written 2 writings on the argument for God (note not the existence of God but precisely God Himself), and this shall be a third writing for God.

There are various arguments for God, there are existential arguments, ontological arguments, causal arguments, and other arguments. I am not sure what kind of argument I will develop in this writing, but it will surely be influenced by all arguments I have heard. First, let us define precisely what God is. The God that we shall argue for is the Judeo-Christian God, or precisely the Catholic God. This God has 2 key attributes, Infinity and Simplicity. However, in the Catholic Tradition, we simply discern these attributes from the highest reality and name that highest reality to be God. As such, God is simply discovered from the questioning of the ultimate nature of Reality.

What is the ideal way of arguing for God? In my opinion, the ideal philosophical way of discerning into the truth of anything is to possess no assumptions. However, it is rather difficult to do that, you always have to have some assumptions, axioms, and presuppositions which acts as the foundation of proof but eventually those principles do have to be proven as well. In the scientific method, the principle is called a hypothesis. We have a principle or concept that we have before we know its certainty and our research or examination is done to discover the truth of that thesis and make it certainly true or certainly false or probably.

Therefore, we hypothesize the existence of God and we discern from the existing evidences, that is perceived reality, whether God is or is not. The evidence is simple, the universe exist, things exist, we exist, and many other things exist. Now we must ask, whether things have a beginning or not. A thing which has no beginning must not be existentially dependent or limited by another thing. Therefore, first, a thing which has no beginning cannot have an end, as it was never limited by any other thing other than itself. Then, a thing which is limited only by itself can only exist. In fact, it is only existence. However, let us imagine a teacup which is clearly finite and has no beginning, is it God?

A teacup is clearly not God, yet the teacup in question has no beginning in existence. It has always been a teacup and will always be a teacup. It will never be not a teacup, and it was never not a teacup. This is clearly not a regular teacup, yet it is not God. However, it does remind me of something I conceived of or more of discovered one time, “Essential Existence.” An object can be in just 2 states of existence, it exists or it does not. For the very least, this is the conventional language of philosophy. I reject that language and appropriate the word “existence” for the common reality of the essence in both states which I refer to essence and actuality. Therefore in both states the essence exists within Essential Existence and Actual Existence.

What is precisely Essential Existence and Actual Existence, what differentiates the 2 states? All essences possess essential existence, but at any given point of time, not all essences possess actual existence. Consider that the essence has not any power to change itself or change any other thing. The essence is forever itself without beginning or end. For you cannot change the definition of any object, it is eternally itself. Yet these things clearly are not God. The essence of the teacup is clearly not God. Meanwhile in actual existence, things can change itself and become other things and change other things.

So how is it that the essences can possess a certain immutability yet be not God? I posit one answer. Consider this, how does the essences exist in relation to each other in their essential existence? In the essential existence, everything exists at once with perfect relationship among themselves. I then consider that the essential existence of all things is united as a single Reality of Existence, this is what we call God. God is then the Essence of Essences, so the teacup does not actually exist as itself, but it exists in infinite union with all other essences in Essential Existence, therefore we have God. However, this does not make individual essences identical to God. As the essence is not identical to the whole of essences, which is the categorical object of Existence.

Let us pause for a moment, I want to convey my thoughts about what I am trying to write for a moment. I am wondering if there is a world in which we cannot reason God from the evidences. For example, if every essence is actually existent. That means every possible world is actually existent. Every possible relationship between essences is actually existent. Would we be able to reason God from such a world? The problem is as follows. If we know that every possible world actually exists, then there are at 2 categories of worlds, worlds which are created from God and worlds which are not created from God, that is they have no beginning. Then that means God exists simply from the definition of Reality.

A condition which is difficult is if we know every world to have no beginning. However, each world does have a beginning, we can say that the state of the world at each point of time is different from another state at another point of time and so each state of the world has a clear beginning and end, that is when the state begins to actualize and when it ceases to be actualized. Now it does not matter whether the world runs in a cycle or not, as the rules are the same, at every instance of change, the world is reactualized. Therefore, within every instance of change, or even simply within every instance, there has to be an actualizer which actualizes the world. This actualizer must be outside of the world which eternally decides whether the world is actualized or not.

I now wonder, why am I so obsessed with this endeavor, of figuring out how and why God exists? Is it not enough to know with certainty that God exists? I went so far to debate people about how a thought exists or not, whether possibilities exist or not, whether things exist inside of God or not. Eventually, deconstructing what existence means in the end, what anything means, why? Because I want some novel truth? Why can’t I just accept the orthodox and conventional truths taught by the authorities? I could’ve rewritten the arguments my friend gave me about God, instead of making up my own which I can’t even comprehend.

I just think I can figure out everything on my own, that I can comprehend everything on my own. I have fallen away from the original premise of the entire new canon of my writings, that is I don’t understand anything. Now I act like I can understand everything and anything. I have even violated the principle of sufficient reasoning, that I must aim only for sufficient and not perfect reasoning. Yet as I write these words, I hear an interior thought which reprimands me for these unworthy thoughts of mine.

If it were translated, they say, “Do you remember that you ought to improve yourself and challenge yourself everytime? Do you remember that you ought to do what is free and what is obliged by God? You are not to repeat the past, you are to deepen the future.” So now I understand my true fault, that is my insecurity of writing and my lack of confidence and trust in God. I should have trusted God that He will guide me in actually making progress in understanding Him, that is how it should be. The Faith is not stagnant but rather it evolves until it reaches its consummation.

Therefore, the idea stands. I will continue to argue for God and write about God, deepening my understanding of Him every single time I write. I care not for the sayings of the people, but I will write what I write. As long as my conscience is clear and it is no sin, I will do it. Why do I forget my real goal? To deepen my understanding for myself and for others. I will not be discouraged, I will continue writing. However, I will continue this writing in another writing to make it more manageable for me. May this work bring further glory to God.