Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” This is a hard thing to understand. How can He be the way to God, Truth Itself, and real Life?
I believe that we have to look at this as a mirror saying. God is the source of Life, the Creator. Through His creation, He conveys Truth about Himself, metaphysical truths expressed through the Logos, the Word, the logic behind the order of the universe.
By understanding God as the source of Life and Truth, a perfect example of all that is good, we can then begin to derive a way of acting that is in accord with our nature in His Image and Likeness.
Jesus is the fulfillment of time, God incarnate, the perfect example of how to act. People around the world struggled to find a way to live virtuously. They looked for the straight and narrow path, or as Aristotle and Confucius would say, “The Mean.”
I believe, and will demonstrate, that Jesus showing us how to live led us to a full Truth that leads to the fullness of Life.
Today, we’ll begin that discussion with the Life, and its source: God. I want to walk through arguments in favor of a creator and why that creator must be God.
The universe can’t have always existed. If that were the case, every possible thing would have had to have happened, which would include the universe itself not existing. Without getting into a discussion of the multiverse, it is clear that anything physical can’t be eternal in the way the universe is today. You could argue that something created could be never-ending, however with science today, that is a hard case to make as well.
Everything created is contingent. If you exist (which you do if you’re reading this), then you have some cause for your being. Each person comes from 2 parents. Trees come from seeds that came from trees before them. The universe, all known being, is contingent on something else. That means that we fall into the problem above. You can’t just have an infinite regress of causes- that’s absurd. There has to be one necessary being that created everything. That’s God. This argument is true for motion, actuality, and cause, and they’re very similar to one another.
There are a few things we can know about God based on this. If God is the uncaused cause, He is at His essence being itself. He simply is. He is also simple, made up of no parts. He needs nothing. Therefore, we can be confident that His creation is out of love. He doesn’t need to be loved, entertained, assured of His power. Through His omnipotence, he sustains all of being and gives life.
