A-what-y?
As I mentioned, people often have very different ideas of what should constitute as "God." There are, however, several aspects generally agreed upon that are considered necessary attributes of any being trying to claim this title. Perhaps the most important of these characteristics is the attribute of "aseity." Don't feel bad if you're unfamiliar with the term or have never heard it before. In fact, even my spell checker doesn't recognize the word (which I find oddly amusing). Here's a breakdown for you. It's a two part latin term comprised of a (from) and se (self), with the suffix -ity to denote the property. 1 These phrases combined gives us the attribute of being self-generated or self existence. To put it more precisely, "the absolute self-sufficiency, independence, and autonomy of God." 2 What this means is that when we use the term God, we should be referring to an entity that does not rely on anything else. Something that is whole, complete and eternal all on it's own. The notion of something existing entirely in and of itself can be a difficult one to grasp, and indeed impossible to understand completely with our finite limitations. However, it should be noted that this is not logically in-congruent, but as we'll see shortly, necessary for there to be anything else at all.
Defining God
Before I continue, I would like to take a quick side step to address an important issue to these upcoming posts. At this point, some of you may be thinking "Well, you can define God how you want, but not everyone will define God that way and you can't force your definition on others." In some respects that's true. Many people over the years have had different ideas in mind when they thought of "God." The danger of this sort of question is that in some ways, it begs the question by presupposing God to be an abstract concept that people get to create on their own. The purpose of this discussion is not to look at how people would create the idea of God, but whether or not God actually exists, and if so, what properties that deity would have. To illustrate the problems with arbitrarily choosing how to define God, think of how this would work on a more every day scale. For instance, take the phrase "I think Jeremy is roughly 6 foot 2 and has wings." Now, part of this statement is actually true and the other part is (sadly) false. The reason you could probably guess that this second description was in error, even if you've never actually met me before, is because you recognize that this is not an attribute possessed by something with a human nature. In the same manner, when looking to the concept of God, we should be trying to discover at least some of what would be the natural state of affairs for a being with the nature of divinity. In this case, we don't get to randomly choose characteristics and qualities of God that are appealing to us. Rather we should be trying to determine what characteristics best fit the profile of something that would be creator and sovereign of the universe.
The Un-Caused Cause.
So what does the attribute of aseity have to do with an all powerful creator of the universe? Well, to explain this we're going to look at what is perhaps the most popular (and convincing) argument for the existence of God. This argument is called the Kalaam Cosmological Argument, or sometimes the Causal Argument. Stated in it's most basic form the argument goes like this:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause. 3
This is pretty straightforward, but it leaves us at an interesting place. What would be necessary to be the cause of the universe? This argument is based off of what's known as the Law of Causality, that being the idea that every effect has, necessarily, a prior cause to it. It's perhaps easiest to picture as a line of dominoes. One domino falls because the one before it hit it. Let's let the dominoes in this scenario represent any event in life. Logic then dictates that this event had a prior cause, which also must have had a prior cause, which also had a cause and so on. If we were to continue ad infinitum into the past of pre-requisite prior causes, we would end up with what's referred to as an infinite regress; a big red flag in philosophical terms. If this were the case, then we would be left with no actual starting place to get the law of causality moving. Let's go back to the dominoes. If you continually add one more domino before the current one in this fashion, and kept going infinitely into the past always adding one more domino, you would never actually have a starting place to begin the process of knocking them over. What this tells us is that if we actually observe one domino falling, then we must accept that at some point, one domino fell without having a domino prior to it. This domino must, of it's own accord, have had the necessary characteristics to cause this first event.
I'm sure you see the connection now. The Kalaam argument leads us to the conclusion that if there is any event at all, at some point prior there must have been one thing that existed and had the power of causality all on it's own. This would be what Thomas Aquinas referred to as the "un-caused cause," which brings us back to the concept of aseity. It's clear that we have a universe, and that stuff happens in it. Because of this, we should then accept the fact that something had to have the property of self-existence in and of itself in order to bring about the rest of creation. For this reason, the attribute of aseity becomes one of the necessary characteristics of anything to which we would want to ascribe the tile of God. It's easy to see how this one characteristic alone will rule out many (though not all) of the world's religions in how they view what it means to be God. For me, this becomes one of the most amazing and awe-inspiring attributes of deity for the Christian faith. Not only because such a being must (out of necessity) exist on it's own, but also because this being goes one step further to reach out to the finite creation He started. In one of the earliest encounters of human beings with the divine, Moses asks God for a name which he can use to explain to other people who this God is. His simple reply echoes with all the power and authority of what we would expect an un-caused, self existent foundation for the entire universe to use as His own description.
Then Moses said to God, "Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you.' Now they may say to me, 'What is His name?' What shall I say to them?" God said to Moses "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" Exodus 3:14, NASB
1 - Wikipedia - Aseity
2 - Meriam-Webster Online Definition - Aseity
3 - Reasonable Faith - In Defense of the Kalaam
Todays Recommendations
On Guard - William Lane Craig
There's little dispute on who to go to as the authority on the Kalaam argument. Dr. Craig's book on basic Apologetics will help you explain this and many other arguments for the existence of God to other people in a clear and understandable fashion.
Recommended Listening
The Best of the Kalaam - Reasonable Faith
A look at the highlights and best defenses for the Kalaam argument, again by Dr. Craig. Like I said, he really is the "go to" guy on the subject...
Before the Beginning - R.C. Sproul, Ligonier Ministries
A video lecture by R.C. Sproul on the attribute of God's aseity and it's implications. A little dated in it's presentation, but the information is still excellent.
Today's Challenge
Take a moment to stop and think about what would be necessary to be a cause of the universe. What other characteristics can you think of that would have to be used to describe God? Think of the Kalaam argument and what it would take to be an external, eternal, all powerful cause outside of creation.
No comments:
Post a Comment