“Man is, ergo God must be.…” This concise formulation expresses succinctly the classical mode of attaining natural knowledge of God. Beginning with the mediate phenomenon of the world, Thomas Aquinas was able to postulate the existence of God. Of the various arguments Aquinas used to support his thesis, the best known is the cosmological argument, which led him to the affirmation of an ens necessarium. Simply stated, what Thomas argued was: “Something exists now; therefore something, by necessity, must always have existed.” To substantiate this assertion, the reasoning went that whatever is must either be self-created, created by another, or self-existent. To be self-created, a being must antedate itself, which is absurd. To be created by another presupposes the prior existence of another, which when reasoned backward in time must not become an infinite regress of contingent beings; ergo something must be self-existent. (That is, it must have aseity and its sufficient reason within itself). Arguing further, the Thomist position concluded that neither man nor the world could be conceived as being self-existent, for both clearly demonstrate contingency. Therefore there must be something transcendent and self-existent, who is God.
The cosmological method of Aquinas is not without important points of contact with the ontological method of Augustine and Anselm. Although the latter theologians postulate a more immediate knowledge of God via introspection and reasoning from man’s awareness of his finitude and dependent existence, they like Aquinas start from the existence of man in their reasoning to the existence of God.
The same point of departure is seen in the famous Cartesian formulation, Cogito ergo sum. Descartes’s laborious doubting process was designed not simply to demonstrate “clearly” and “distinctly” the existence of man but to establish, with certainty, the starting point for further reasoning for the existence of God. He sought to make explicit what was only implicit and assumed in Thomistic categories. Thus, in both the classical mediate (cosmological) and immediate (ontological) methods, the existence of man was the springboard to knowledge of God. Calvin began his Institutes with the premise that there is an inseparable relationship between knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves:
For in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone.
Since the Reformation, with the advent of the Enlightenment and particularly with the critique of twentieth-century dialectical theology, the “via antiqua” of natural theology has been largely rejected, giving place to various types of fideism. Therefore it is with some amusement that we witness the irony displayed by modern so-called “atheistic existentialism,” which in revolt to classical natural theology has postulated its own natural anti-theology.
The pendulum has swung 180°, and the primary proof for the “non-existence” of God rests on the affirmation of the existence of man. The negative credo of modern existentialism is, “Man is, ergo God cannot be.”
This peculiar affirmation of man and consequent negation of God may be seen in the writings of such philosophers as Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, and Heidegger. The fundamental issue in their thought is not so much, To be or not to be?, but rather, What does it mean to exist as an authentic man?
Nietzsche in his biological heroism locates the meaning of human existence in man’s “will to power,” which reaches its authentic apex only in the Übermensch. The “superman” overcomes and supersedes the present weaknesses of inauthentic man. He does not live in subjection to the heteronomous dictates of Another but with dialectical courage creates his own values. He exchanges the “slave morality” of decadent Christianity for his own “master morality.” There can be no peaceful co-existence between superman and historic Christianity. In Nietzsche’s system, the existence of God would be prohibitive for the achieving of authentic existence. The Christian God represents the “kryptonite” that would destroy superman. According to Nietzsche, Christianity encourages the “will to nothing” with its negative view of the world. The Christian God must die lest he continue to castrate the potentially authentic man. Nietzsche says in Thus Spake Zarathustra:
And this is the great noontide: it is when man stands at the middle of his course between animal and superman and celebrates his journey to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the journey to a new morning.… Then man, going under, will bless himself; for he will be going over to superman; and the sun of his knowledge will stand at noontide. “All gods are dead: now we want the superman to live”—let this be our will one day at the great noontide!
In analyzing what it means to exist, Sartre finds the uniqueness of man to lie in his being an absolutely free subject. It is man’s moral autonomy that distinguishes him from animals and things (pure objects). If God existed as an absolute Other, man’s subjectivity would be impossible because man would then become an “object” beneath the gaze of God. For man to exist he cannot be swallowed by a prior “essence of man” in the mind of God; there can be no archetypal image of man if man is to retain his subjectivity. For Sartre, if God is sovereign, man cannot exist, and conversely, if man is sovereign (autonomous), God cannot exist. This reasoning continually refers back to Sartre’s definition of human existence as necessarily demanding absolute moral freedom, which is clearly antithetical to any notion of divine sovereignty. In The Flies, Zeus shares the secret of the gods with Aegisthus:
Once freedom lights its beacon on a man’s heart, the gods are powerless against him. It is a matter between man and man, and it is for other men, and for them only, to let him go his gait, or to throttle him.
Thus, for Sartre, moral autonomy is the built-in Magna Charta of human existence. Man, to be man authentically, must declare his independence.
Although there are decisive differences between Nietzsche and Sartre as well as between Camus, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and others, a similar strain of moral autonomy versus the sovereignty of God is evident in all of them. For Heidegger, “Dasein” is authentic only when it manifests itself through self-determination and self-projection. Man, in experiencing the “thrownness” of his existence (Geworfenheit), hangs suspended between past and future. To overcome the anxiety that this situation produces, he must carve his own destiny. Authentic existence is characterized by a freedom that can only be maintained apart from heteronomy.
Thus atheistic existentialism, with its view of autonomous human freedom, places itself on a collision course with Christianity. Its understanding of man makes the God-hypothesis of classical theism untenable. No one, of course, can gainsay the argument that the sovereignty of God and the autonomy of man are irreconcilable polar opposites. Here the ubiquitous “dialectic” of contemporary theology cannot function as a trans-logical deus ex machina. Surely the atheist is correct in asserting that human autonomy is incompatible with divine sovereignty.
However, though there is tacit agreement between athetism and historic Christianity at this point, the Christian must go on to pose several questions. Not least is the question whether one can be autonomous simply because he declares himself to be. Man can be autonomous ultimately only if, indeed, there is no God. To argue for the non-existence of God from the premise that such a God cannot be because man is autonomous, which in turn can be demonstrated only if it is first known that God does not exist, is to argue from the center of a most vicious circle.
Another assertion of atheistic existentialism that remains to be demonstrated is that moral autonomy is a necessary prerequisite for freedom. The fact that man is a volitional being is indeed intrinsic to his being a man and not a thing, but must volition be raised to the level of autonomy to be regarded as free?
Freedom may be defined as the ability to choose (morally) what one wishes. Autonomy goes a step farther and says that an individual not only has the private ability to choose what is pleasing to himself but in so choosing is responsible to no one for his choice. Sartre calls that freedom; others have called it—more accurately—anarchy. In Fenomenology en Atheisme W. Luypen responds to Sartre’s assertion that the rejection of God makes morality possible by saying, “Perhaps it is Sartre’s morality that makes the rejection of God necessary!” (my translation).
Thus Sartre fails to show that moral autonomy is the sine qua non of genuine human existence. Taken to its logical conclusion, moral autonomy, at least socially speaking, makes human existence impossible.
A similar error is evident in Nietzsche’s thesis built upon the “will to power.” He is perceptive enough in his analysis of man to see that such a drive is indeed common to humanity. However, he moves beyond the analytic sphere to make a value judgment about it. To insist that the cultivation of the will to power is the touchstone of authentic existence simply because such a will is universally present in man is to make a gratuitous leap from what is to what ought to be.
In biblical categories the quest for autonomy is not a prerequisite for authentic existence but the negation of it. Such a quest viewed from the biblical perspective is not only futile (because there is a God from whom no one can escape, though anyone can deny him) but also foolish. The quest for autonomy is seen not as the moving force for liberation but rather the capitulation to the primordial temptation, sicut erat dei. Such a capitulation brings not freedom but bondage, which is the supreme irony.
The genuine paradox found in the Scriptures is that the New Testament designates freedom as authentic only when it is brought onto subordination to the divine will. Hence Christ calls men to freedom via wearing his yoke. Paul testifies doxologically to his freedom while calling himself a slave to his Lord. The losing of one’s life to save it is not seen as sacrificing one’s will to a tyrant “Other” whose Law reduces a person to an object. The new creation that is the product of the liberating Spirit of God is not a “thing” but a covenant partner, an adopted son who now has the ability to cry “Abba.”
Man as covenant partner and adopted son does not lose his subjectivity or personality but is given the command (which at the same time is a privilege) to have dominion over the earth. This mandate does not annihilate man’s role in the cosmos, nor does it chain him as Prometheus to the mountain. Rather, it gives him a liberating task that involves the whole creation. The new man in Christ exists not as a reified object but as a subject in relationship to God. Calvin sums up the true paradox of Christian freedom by saying: “The Lord delivers us from miserable bondage, that we might learn to yield prompt submission and obedience to him as the author of our freedom.”
The Shame Of The Game
A United Press survey found that the “typical American” is a twenty-seven-year-old who does not read one book a year. He is materialistic, satisfied with small pleasures, bored with theological disputations. Although he may attend church twenty-seven times a year, he is not interested in the supernatural. He is concerned with neither heaven nor hell. In fact, he has no interest whatever in immortality. His principal interests are football, hunting, fishing, and car-tinkering.
Throughout human history men have been materialistic and insensitive to higher values. But until our day the majority of men had some concern for their souls and for the life to come. It would seem a painful burlesque on human existence that in an age when we challenge the last frontier of the universe, the “typical American” is chiefly absorbed in playing games.
One is reminded of those gamblers who fulfilled prophecy on the day Christ died. Imagine the click of the dice as men vied for the robe of that Man through whom God was changing time’s clock and beginning the thrust of a new humanity in the earth. The Hero of history was unflung on a death-beam, his arms reaching wide as if to call all mankind to his great heart. Possibly the earth shuddered in its flight as God’s Son cried in thirst. But the men beneath the Cross rattled spotted cubes. As angels bent their heads in grief over a Man’s redemptive agony, men gambled for a piece of cloth. Redemption for the race was being wrought to the tune of clacking dice.
We also, millennia after the Happening at Calvary, are preoccupied with games while God’s Spirit attempts to break through to our insensitive hearts. We embrace cynicism at a time when cynicism would seem impossible. If the anguished ages behind us have not taught us the futility of materialism, then indeed do the blind lead the blind as the ditch gapes ahead of us.
Scientists warn us that air and water pollution could make an end of us in a brief time. Starvation could cause a decimation of mankind more fearful than the Black Plague of old. We could loosen nuclear arrows and make earth a ruin. The judgments of the Almighty might march over a world that has too long ignored and disobeyed him. And the typical American keeps on tinkering with automobiles or watching the game.
Conditions are made worse by clergymen and theologians who proclaim secularism. In the dictionary one definition for “secularism” is “indifference … to religion.” Prophets today turn our minds from the supernatural; they mock the transcendent. What wonder that the man in the street often shrugs when you try to put a Cross between him and the game that absorbs him.
Even taking up a cry about the human situation is like asking to be dubbed an “alarmist.” One thinks how those dice-throwers might have reacted that day had someone caught at an arm and cried, “Look, men! A big thing is going on here today. History is being split. Things will never be quite the same after this Man’s death on this hill. Millions of persons will look back to this hour and glorify God for sending a Saviour. Will you put down those silly dice for a moment and have a look at this Happening? Forget that piece of cloth—God is here!” They might well have looked up from their dice as irked as men today when you interrupt their petty pastimes to mention eternal life.
The games, to be sure, are not wrong in themselves. It is understandable why men are interested in them. But the astounding thing is the amount of that interest. The shame of the game is that God is rarely invited to attend.
But perhaps we had better face it: Jesus warned that that was how it would be—even in the face of apocalyptic thunders and eschatalogical trumpets. They would all be very busy, he said, not with prayers or gospel labors but with buying and selling—which in itself is a kind of game in our day. They would be preoccupied with their treasuries of trifles at the Daybreak God himself had looked forward to.
We must not, however, be disheartened overmuch. The typical American may not be interested in the history God has made, is making, or will make; but not all men are typical Americans. And even a typical one may now and again look up from his game, or put down his monkey wrench, and note the message of hope. A number will be concerned with trading ashes for beauty. They will look up, listen to the Word, and live.
For the evangelical a word of counsel may be in order. It is easy to be caught up in the spirit of the human game, until the vision dims and the heart turns diceward. Jesus told of the dangers of trying to serve two masters.
The name of the game, according to the Word, is eternal life. The shame of the game is to throw it for “the beggarly elements of this world.”—LON WOODRUM, evangelist, United Methodist Church, Hastings, Michigan.
