The Mars Hill Club

The ontological argument makes most sense if one buys into substance metaphysics. Not just substance metaphysics though, but Thomistic substance metaphysics. Therefore, it is incumbent upon those who believe that this is a good argument to demonstrate the veracity of Thomistic metaphyics.

If Thomistic metaphysics is correct, then it makes no sense to talk about a being whose essence is existence as having existence as an accidental quality. However, if you do not buy into substance metaphyics then the argument does not make sense. If it is taken as a given that existance is a secondary quality that can be added to the concept of God then the ontological argument falls apart. But, if Thomas was right and existence is not only a primary quality but for God it is equivalent to essence then the argument stands as bedrock.

I do not propose to prove Thomistic metaphyics since I am at the beginning of my studies in this realm. I merely want to share some preliminary thoughts.

Consider first that in Thomistic metaphyics, substance is essence plus existence. Further, according to Thomas, God is that whose essence is existence, or whose essence it is to exist. Thus God needs no further act of existence to go along with essence. The basic nature of God is to exist, therefore He describes Himself as I AM or I Exist.

The Anselmian version of the argument says that God is that which greater cannot be conceived. Consider the possibility that Anselm has God as essentially existing in mind here. What greater power could there by than self-existence? The greatness of God is contained in Gods essence of existence. It is absurd under this brand of logic to claim that a being whose essence it is to exist does not actually exist.

Consider now the response to Anselm by Gaunilo. His contention was that formulating the language as 'that which greater cannot be conceived' is faulty. As a refutation Gaunilo proposed an island somewhere in which a greater island cannot be conceived. He claimed that the absurdity of such a notion refutes the original idea about God. But Gaunilo is patently wrong. Since the greatest that can be concieved is self existence then such an island would contain self-existence in its essence. But this would mean that the island would have to have a dual essences, namely both the essences of islandness and existence. Since the essence of existence is equated with God then this means that such an island would simultaneiously be both island and God. This shows remarkable simularity to the doctrine of Jesus' having both human and divine essences. Thus if such an island were to exist it would need to be a part of the Godhead in the same way that Jesus is part of the Godhead.

This seems absurd but look where it leads--back to God! The existential existence of such an island marks it as part of God. This leads to the question of why can't we just posit everything in the same way? The world greater than which cannot be conceived would equate with a world whose essence it is to exist which in turn would equate with God. This would lead to the idea that the entire world is itself God and thus pantheism would be the result. However, this would mean that the world is self existent. The problem is, however, that this is incorrect on two points: 1) philosophical argument a la Kalaam and 2) the data from modern physics. It is suffient merely to look at 1, and in taking with the medievel bent of the argument this makes the most sense from a consistency standpoint. The Kalaam argument says, in a nutshell, that one cannot transverse an actual infinite series. Since if the world had always existed, then the time component of the world would have always existed then one cannot transverse the actual infinite of time to arrive at today. The reason is that in order to do so one must go through the actual infinite number of time periods in the past. It is not suffient to go from a fixed point in the infinite past to today all past moments, of which there are an infinite amount would need to be transversed. So we know that this pantheistic formulation is incorrect.

But what do we do with the darn God-island established earlier if this is the case? Unlike the very idea of a self-existing being, the idea of a dual essence self-existing being does not make the actual existence of such a being a necessity. In other words, in these cases the essence of existence is added in to the essence of x. This matches back with the primary thrust of Gaunilo's objection as well as Kant's objection to the argument. The contention is that existence is an additional quality added to the main idea. This is the case with the island, however it does not apply to God. The reason is that unlike the island God does not require two terms to exist but only one term. It would be saying that existence needs existence added into existence in order to exist. This is incoherent. God as pure existence just is in one single term.

This is well and good and I think explicates the argument in detail but it seems I have left a loose thread. I mention Jesus divine and human essences as simular to that of the hypothetical island. I go on to determine that the island does not necessarily exist. The same argument logically applies to the doctrine of Jesus divine and human essence. The point to make here is precisely that it is not necessary for Jesus to partake in both essences. There is nothing inherent to the doctrine via the pure rational intellect to pull this together. Thus, God gave us revelation. The Bible is what pulls this together and makes the claim that Jesus is human and divine. Now the consistency with the island discussion comes into play. There is nothing contradictory about having two essences! Note that I did not throw out the island argument on the basis of essence conflict. So what we can say is that there is nothing incoherent about Jesus as both divine and human but such a conclusion cannot come from the unaided human intellect but from a revelatory source-the Bible.