Why There Almost Certainly Is A God

Keith Ward puts the ontological argument in its correct place as a reminder of the incomparability of the nature of God, rather than a ‘proof’. (Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, pages 122-3)

The ontological argument claims that ‘necessary existence’ – the property of being uncausable and indestructible – would be an essential property of a perfect being. As Aquinas puts it, existence would be part of the essence of the perfect being. God exists more fully than anything else, and to think of God not existing is not to think properly of God.

I think this is correct. If we could understand God truly, we would see that it is impossible for God not to exist. God is the fullness of being, and all other things are derived, partial and imperfect expressions of divine being. When thinking of what God is, it is important to see God not as a personal mind who happens to exist, but as the fullness of existence itself, whose being dazzles by excess of light, and who is more perfect than anything we can imagine.

Anselm’s definition is lucid in making this clear. But it still does not show that God actually exists. It shows that God is either necessary (God cannot fail to exist) or impossible (that the concept is incoherent). But we cannot, simply by thinking, establish which.

The function of the ontological argument, then, is not to prove God, but to remind us of the uniqueness and incomparability of the divine being. It spells out what it is to be a being of supreme perfection. Kant was wrong in thinking that it is the foundation of all theoretical arguments. for God. On the contrary, we arrive at it by way of considering what a final personal explanation would be, and determining that it would lie in a being who existed both by necessity and because it is supremely good that it should exist. That is a postulate of reason. It is elegant, economical and attractive. But to affirm its objective reality we need confirmation of some sort from experience. As in science, elegant speculation needs some sort of confirmation from experience. That confirmation may be difficult to determine, and it may not be wholly free from ambiguity. But in the end it will be what leads most people to positive belief in God. It is therefore important to investigate its nature and its possibility.