Great IdeasGod and the soul
God
What the great writers argued and believed about God, each in their own words.
The question
What have the great writers argued and believed about God? Can reason tell us anything about God?
This page reports what each author argued, in their own terms. The authors disagree deeply, and families will have their own beliefs; the point here is to understand each view fairly.
How the books answer
Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.
c. 360 BC
Plato, Timaeus and Critias
Plato's Timaeus tells of a good divine maker who shaped the world out of disorder, using eternal patterns as his model. Because the maker is good and free of envy, he wanted everything to be as good as possible. Plato offers it as a likely story, not a proof.
“And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be.”
c. 350–322 BC
Aristotle, Metaphysics
Aristotle reasons that the eternal motion of the heavens needs a first source that is not itself moved. This unmoved mover is pure thought, thinking about itself, and it moves the world the way something loved moves the one who loves it. Aristotle's god does not create the world or watch over individuals.
“The final cause, then, produces motion as being loved, but all other things move by being moved.”
c. AD 253–270 (edited by Porphyry)
Plotinus, The Six Enneads
Plotinus teaches that everything flows from a first principle he calls the One, beyond all description. From it come Mind and then Soul, and the soul can turn back and rise toward its source. His thought later shaped both Christian and Islamic writers.
c. AD 397–400
Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions
Augustine writes the Confessions as a long prayer to God, telling how he searched through pleasure, philosophy and Plotinus before coming to Christian faith. For him, God is the creator of all things, closer to us than we are to ourselves. He describes God as the one in whom the restless heart finds rest.
1265–1274 (unfinished)
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, First Part
Aquinas holds that some truths about God can be shown by reason, and he offers five ways, from motion, causes, things that need not exist, degrees of goodness, and the order of nature. Other truths, like the Trinity, he says, are known only by revelation. Philosophers have debated his arguments ever since.
“The existence of God can be proved in five ways.”
1536; final edition 1559
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (selections)
Calvin begins by saying that nearly all wisdom is knowing God and knowing ourselves, and that each leads to the other. He holds that people have a sense of God built in, but that it is clouded, so they need the Bible to know God rightly. His Institutes became a founding work of Reformed Protestant churches.
“Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”
Go to the rung: Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion
1670 (published after his death)
Blaise Pascal, Pensées (Thoughts)
Pascal, a great mathematician, doubts that proofs bring people to God. He offers instead his famous wager: if God exists, believing gains everything; if not, little is lost. He also says the heart knows things reason cannot, and he wrote as a committed Christian.
“Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is.”
1677 (published after his death)
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order
Spinoza defines God as the one infinite substance of which everything is a part, so that God and Nature are the same. His God does not act for purposes or answer prayers in the usual sense. Some readers called him an atheist, others a deeply religious thinker, and the argument continues.
1879–1880
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Ivan Karamazov says he cannot accept a world in which innocent children suffer, whatever the final harmony. Dostoevsky, a believer, gives Ivan's protest full strength. He answers not with an argument but with the life of the elder Zosima and the gentle love of Alyosha.
“"It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket." "That's rebellion," murmured Alyosha, looking down.”
1924 (English 1928)
Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man
The Swiss theologian Karl Barth argues that the Bible is not mainly human thoughts about God but God speaking to people. Human beings, he says, cannot reach God by their own reasoning. Preachers must speak of God, yet cannot do it by their own power, and that tension is the heart of his message.
“It is not the right human thoughts about God which form the content of the Bible, but the right divine thoughts about men.”
For young readers
People all over the world, for thousands of years, have asked about God. Many believe God made the world and loves people. Some believe in different ways, and some do not believe in God at all.
The great books are full of these questions. Some writers tried to reason about God, some prayed, and some wrote stories and poems. Your family can talk about what you believe, and why other people believe differently. Listening carefully is the first step to understanding.
Talk about it
- What questions do you have about God?
- Aquinas thought reason could show some things about God. Pascal said the heart knows things reason doesn't. What do you think?
- Why do you think people in every age have asked these questions?
- How can we listen respectfully to someone who believes differently?
Where else on the site
- Premises and Conclusions
- The Principle of Charity
- Decisions with Expected Value
- Belief and Doubt
- The Parts of a Syllogism
Every rung tagged with this idea:
- Plato: Timaeus and Critias
- Aristotle: Metaphysics
- Plotinus: The Enneads
- Augustine: Confessions
- Augustine: The City of God
- Aquinas: God and Creation
- Aquinas: Faith, Hope and Love
- Dante: Paradiso
- Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion
- Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy
- Spinoza: Ethics
- Pascal: Pensées
- Milton: Paradise Lost
- Berkeley: The Principles of Human Knowledge
- Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling
- Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
- Barth: The Word of God and the Word of Man
- Frazer: The Golden Bough
These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.