The Existence of God 1

The Existence of God I   

To listen to this in mp3 format click here

The question of whether God exists is something that human beings have always considered. Some have argued that believing in God is fundamentally unreasonable. Some believe that we just can’t be sure as to whether there’s a God, and some think that God’s existence is something that can be rationally proven. What does the Church say?

The answer is somewhat complex. According to a tradition going at least as far as Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, there are certain things we can know with the use of our own natural reason and there are certain things for which we just need faith (and therefore can’t be proven).

Those things that require faith are beliefs such as the Incarnation of Christ, the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and resurrection, and countless other things. One thing that does not require faith, however, is the simple fact that God exists. This can be known without Scripture, without faith, and without any sort of divine revelation.

This teaching, of course, is not intended to dismiss the importance of Scripture. In fact, even scripture states that God can be known apart from revelation. As St. Paul stated in the first chapter of Romans, "God’s invisible nature and divine majesty have been seen through the things that he has made."