Typically, "proofs" of God's existence have been squarely confined to metaphysics of causality.  That is, what is all presupposed in holding a cup of water?  Sounds silly, but bear with me:  Well, the cup holds the water, for one, but my hand happens to hold the cup, but beyond that: who made the cup?  Moreover, beyond who fabricated the cup, what indeed is a "cup" for that somebody happened to make one?  I don't mean to quibble over trivial matters or count angles on a tip of a pin, but a lot is presupposed there in the essence of a cup, is it not? 

 

The world can be engaged in similar metaphysical approaches towards what things take for granted in their existence.  If it's true of cups, it's even more pressing for things like "reality" and why a just society conforms to Natural Law among other things.   Ultimately, something accounts fully for things as important as "justice" and something as seemingly insignificant as a "cup."  That is the point of metaphysical search for "first principles" of reality (that is, the concepts which natural science takes for granted in measuring things like gravity such that we can build airplanes!  What do we mean by force?  Scientists don't define it!  They merely measure and correlate mathematically quantities that presuppose something called force.  The conceptualization of physics is necessarily meta-physical!).

 

An example of Christian adoption of philosophical inquiry into metaphysics is the Catholic use of God as "Uncaused Cause" through Aristotelianism.  The most well-known of these developments within the Catholic tradition are Sts. Anselm and Aquinas.  Through these thinkers and many others, we get most of our "proofs" for God's existence.

 

While these are fundamental towards a natural theology (i.e. what is God?  What does that mean?  And how does that resolve the problem of Infinite Regress for change as such?), there are other kinds of proof towards the sourcing of Revelation itself--- not so much about what God is, but who God is. 

 

For God must be something far more than a mere force.  Blind forces did not create the order of the cosmos.  Blind forces did not create humanity and its interiority.

 

The question of personality then--- of who, not what--- requires a different kind of knowledge that is not so much abstract but concrete.  That is why this level of personal engagement won't involve the metaphysical and speculative basis of logic itself where the notion of an intelligent will begins to make sense, so much as literary knowledge through which Revelation transpires.  This is, as we shall see, a very different domain of intellectual engagement with the question of God's presence (vs. His mere existence).

 

A lot hinges on the distinctions of the two verbs: to exist vs. to be present.  The latter is what we would call an intentional act.  God, you see, has not just an intellect but a will.

 

This sub-blog is devoted to two ends: First, a defense of literature as a kind of rational domain of knowledge (similar to medicine, botany, or engineering) that can serve as handmaid to sacred theology; and second, that the Literary Genius of Holy Scripture as a whole affords proof to the superhuman dimensions of Divine Inspiration that cannot be reasonably recast as a mere human product of mortal individuals. 

 

Through the coherence and literary merit of the Bible, there is evidence of a grand intelligence at work behind Holy Scripture and its use of human figuration and language points to an insight that can only belong to the Third Person of the Trinity: that is, the Holy Ghost.  For just as God the Father creates and God the Son redeems, leads, and brings order, so too does God the Holy Spirit infuses and divinizes by unifying both origin and end between the Father and His Son.

 

Personally, this sub-blog is my favorite and the most exciting!  If properly approached (Lord, give me light!), the use of typology and other sources of Catholic traditional exegesis and various levels of Biblical hermeneutics give considerable confidence in the reliability of Scripture as a locus of Divine authority that concerns us collectively and spiritual progress that concerns us privately as individuals beyond the fickle and unreliable realm of mere human opinion (where developments like philosophy itself are somewhat limited).   The problems inherent in dialectic (or philosophical rapprochement towards the resolution of problems) -- namely, its unresolvable plurality of perspectives and arguments at the end of the discussion--- is also precisely why God's disclosure took shape through the Prophets, not the Philosophers.  This distinction of the God of the Prophets and the God of the Philosophers--- where one proclaims and the other only proposes--- and why the former can settle the score, as it were, without robbing Reason of its own dignity, is a major organizing theme of this sub-blog.

 

If anything, our modern society desperately needs a political resourcement of its own in Holy Writ!  I hope these posts can help you better appreciate the Bible and its central importance to Christian civilization.

 

More to come!