In his prologue to metaphysics, Aristotle wrote that all men, by nature, seek to know. Human beings are rational creatures, and rational creatures seek knowledge. I would like to argue that human beings are also spiritual creatures that naturally seek God.
In order to proceed with the thesis that humans naturally seek God, it is first necessary to show that humans have a soul. Establishing the existence of the soul allows us to differentiate those beings with a soul from those that do not. This is most succinctly done by positing that the soul is, as Saint Augustine observed, “the life of the body.”
What does it mean to say that the soul is the life of the body? In following Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Catholic philosophy asserts that the soul is that which is life actually; it is that principle that makes something alive. By actual, philosophy means that which exists as opposed to that which might exist (exist in potency). A way of explaining this is to say that a human body is a human being potentially. It is the soul that makes a human being what it is. The soul is the essence of a particular being.
Since the act of seeking out something, in this case, God, requires the capacity of conceiving (some concept of who God is) as well as a will (we must desire to know God), and since conception and will are powers of the intellect, which itself is a power of the soul, it must be that which has no soul cannot seek anything. A rock does not desire anything, nor does it have a concept of God (or of anything else, for that matter).
Finally, souls must be spiritual (not composed of matter) because the various powers of the soul cannot be reduced to a physical body (e.g., free will, qualia, abstract thinking, etc.).
Having sought to explain what a soul is, it is necessary to show that human beings naturally seek God. Saint Augustine provides a point of departure for that claim. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you,” In following Augustine, Catholicism asserts that not only is God our efficient cause (the cause of our existence) but also our final cause (that for which we have been created).
Accepting that human beings – all of creation, really – have a Divine origin, the question becomes whether human beings naturally “seek out” their creator. Augustine seems to suggest that not only do we naturally seek God, but that we will not be truly happy until we have “found” God.
Two presuppositions are foundational to understanding Augustine’s claim. First, God’s existence and essence are identical. That is to say that God exists necessarily. And second, that the universe is contingent. Stated differently, the universe does not need to exist. Since that which does need to exist must be created, and since nothing is created without a reason, we can infer that God created the universe for a cause or purpose. If Augustine is correct, that purpose, as it relates to human beings, is communion with God.
If it is true that we are made for God, one would expect to find evidence of religiosity in human history. And indeed, that is what one finds. While its form can differ significantly, every known society and culture has been religious (see Glazier, Stephen D. 1999. Anthropology of Religion: A Handbook. Westport, Ct: Greenwood Press). Religion provides the vehicle by which human beings seek out and worship God. In part, religion is the manner in which the human desire for God is manifested.
It is no exaggeration, therefore, to posit that human beings are religious creatures by virtue of their nature. If Aristotle is correct in claiming that nature does nothing in vain, then human religiosity must serve the purpose of seeking out and being in communion with God.
All of this goes to what the Catechism calls the human capacity for God, which echoes Augustine. “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God, and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 27).
What has been said thus far speaks to the human desire for God. More important, however, is God’s desire for human beings. Because life is created for God and by God, life possesses an innate dignity, an innate sacredness.
As the Second Vatican Council notes, “The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists, it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.”
If what has been said is true, if human beings naturally seek out God, how can one account for the existence of atheism? Answering that question requires admitting that original sin has clouded the intellect. No longer illuminated by the light of Grace, the mind struggles with comprehending matters of the transcendent. The result has been not the destruction of the human desire for God but rather a perversion of that desire.
In a sense, atheism replaces the transcendent God with a pantheon of gods of its own making. G.K. Chesterton observed that “When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing; he believes in anything.” The “anything” that atheists believe in includes the gods of secularism, to wit, individualism, pleasure, money, and, in our time, particularly, power as manifested in politics. Is it any wonder that the more our society tends toward secularism, the more political it becomes?
If Augustine is correct, however, these secular gods will ultimately fail us. If human beings are made for God, anything less will fail to satisfy the human heart.
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