An inquiry recently came to The Fatima Center from someone who asks, “Can you give proof for the existence of your Christian God and the relevance of Christian claims?” We certainly can. We have two chief means to employ: reason and miracles.
Note: Hear Fr. Rodriguez address this question in an Ask Father episode, released July 24, 2023: [Video] [Podcast]
The Existence of God Known by Reason
Dei Filius, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith from the First Vatican Council, affirms that the existence of God can be known by reason alone. The document acknowledges the capacity of human reason to reflect on the natural world and the order of creation, leading to the recognition of a supreme, intelligent, and transcendent Being.
The Fathers of Vatican I acknowledged that human beings, through intellectual inquiry and observation of the created world, can come to know the existence of God. By contemplating the order, beauty, and complexity of the universe, individuals may infer the existence of a supreme Creator. Now reason alone does not inexorably lead us to know that the Christian God is the true God, but the natural world abounds in too many well-ordered things for there not to be an Intelligent Designer.[1] Order does not come from disorder. An effect must come from a greater cause. Existence cannot come from non-existence. Thus, created-ordered things do not appear out of nothing, chaos, or chance. There had to be a Creator and a creation event at the beginning.
Dei Filius recognizes the rational faculties of human beings as a means by which they can apprehend the existence of God. It implies that the usage of reason, logic, and intellect is a valid and effective way to contemplate the nature of the divine.[2] Reason can teach us that there is a God, and miracles show us who God is.
Miracles as Concrete Proof of a Christian God
As previously stated in articles on The Fatima Center website, miracles are a concrete proof of the Catholic Religion as the one and only true religion. Just as two contradictory statements can not both be true, likewise two contradictory religions can not both be true. And miracles confirm which religion is true.
Miracles can be separated into four categories: bodily miracles, intellectual miracles (e.g., prophecies), moral miracles, and social miracles. All of these are proof of Christianity and specifically Catholicism.
Bodily Miracles:
Apparitions, healings, resurrections, and more are all forms of bodily miracles. We could say a ‘bodily’ miracle is any time the natural laws of science are suspended by God. We could also call these ‘physical’ miracles or miracles on the natural order.
There are dozens of confirmed and verified apparitions in history, not only of our Blessed Mother (e.g., at Guadalupe, Rue de Bac, La Salette, Lourdes, Quito, and Fatima) but also of St. Michael the Archangel (e.g., Mount Gargano, near Naples, Italy; and at Fatima) and other saints (e.g., St. Joseph, at Fatima). Many people have been likewise bodily cured by the prayers and intercession of the saints, such as the miracles by Our Lady at Lourdes.
Similarly, many saints have raised the dead. St. Vincent Ferrer alone is known to have raised more than thirty people from the dead, and the Church records 873 miracles performed by him. St. Rose of Viterbo, St. Joseph of Cupertino, St. Collette, and St. Juan Capistrano are just some of the other saints who have raised the dead.
Moral Miracles:
The singular holiness of Jesus Christ, the One Who claimed to be God and Who taught a definitive body of doctrine and inaugurated the Catholic religion, is a constitutive proof of the truth of Catholicism. Jesus Christ, Who claimed to be God-made man and Who founded the Christian Religion (i.e., the Catholic Religion), displayed the most manifest holiness ever seen on earth. Monsignor Joseph Fenton, in Laying the Foundation: A Handbook of Catholic Apologetics and Fundamental Theology, describes how Jesus Christ far surpasses the mere human founders of other [false] religions.[3]
This truth has led other men to convert and embrace the Catholic Faith. C.S. Lewis, for example, who has been called ‘the most reluctant convert,’ asserted that one either has to accept Jesus’ claim to be God, or claim Jesus is a lunatic or the devil. In other words, there is no middle ground where one could simply say He is a great moral teacher like other founders of religions.[4]
Intellectual Miracles:
True prophecy is an intellectual miracle. It is imperative to note that authentic prophecies are never to be confused with vague guesses or the predictions of charlatans who masquerade as “fortune tellers.” True and authentic prophecy is entirely different and, if authentic, is a proof from God. Beyond the prophecies of Old Testament prophets, Our Lord Himself was the prophet par excellence. Monsignor Fenton does not fail to note this importance, explaining how Jesus knew men’s hidden thoughts, foretold certain events with certainty and absolute accuracy, and predicted the utter ruin of Jerusalem.
Our Lord never failed to demonstrate by word and deed His fulfillment of dozens of Old Testament prophecies. After our Redeemer’s Ascension into Heaven, the Apostles and their successors and contemporaries continued to appeal to the fulfillment of the prophecies by Christ. St. Peter also appealed to the prophecies in His sermon on the first Pentecost and he even demonstrated how Christ, and not David, perfectly fulfilled it.
Prophecy, taken holistically, is a powerful tool to prove Christianity as the divinely revealed religion. We must, however, be careful in correctly identifying prophecy. With his superior intelligence, ability to move at the speed of thought, and vast knowledge of human behavior, the devil can mimic prophecy and deceive humans.[5] Authentic prophecy can only come from the true God.
Social Miracles:
The Church is the pre-eminent social miracle that has spread throughout the world and reached its current level despite its modest beginnings. The Fathers of the First Vatican Council pointed out five characteristics that demonstrate that the Catholic Church is a true social miracle:
- Her admirable propagation
- Her exalted holiness
- Her marvelous and unlimited fruitfulness in all good things
- Her catholic unity
- Her unconquered stability
The Church has spread to all corners of the world through the preaching and sacrifices of the Apostles and their successors even though they were not educated men; nevertheless, they achieved success that by earthly standards seems impossible. And all of this would continue under the leadership of simple men who before Pentecost had fled the Cross and hid in fear. Their transformation and eventual martyrdoms are true social miracles.
Read more in the article on The Church as a Social Miracle.
Conclusion
If the Catholic religion is true – and it is – then there is nothing more important for our salvation than to believe it and live it. The Catholic Church teaches dogmatically that there is no salvation outside of the Church. The Church also affirms that those who die in the state of mortal sin go to hell for all eternity. We must not just be Catholic – we must be good Catholics! And we can do so only by staying true to the authentic Catholic Faith, staying close to the Sacraments, praying, and answering Heaven’s call for penance, etc.
In our world today, as the Faith is under unprecedented assault, it is our responsibility to defend it and bring about the conversion of non-Catholics and the return to the Faith of fallen-away Catholics. It is our duty as Catholics – confirmed soldiers of Christ the King – to do battle on behalf of the True Faith.
To those who think we should not do actions, St. Anthony of Padua said: “Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak. We are full of words but empty of actions, and therefore are cursed by the Lord since He Himself cursed the fig tree when He found no fruit but only leaves. It is useless for a man to flaunt his knowledge of the law if he undermines its teaching by his actions.”
And it was St. Pius X, the great Pope against the errors of the Modernists, who asserted, “The greatest obstacle in the apostolate of the Church is the timidity or rather the cowardice of the faithful.”
May Our Lady of Fatima, the worker of one of the greatest miracles in history, pray for us all to be successful missionaries in our daily lives!
ENDNOTES:
[1] At Vatican I, the Church infallibly stated that everyone must “confess [that] the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing” (Canons on God the Creator of All Things, canon 5). So, we do not believe the world was created in a random order without God’s role. Read more at https://acatholiclife.blogspot.com/2006/05/catholics-and-theory-of-evolution.html
[2] Even logical and wise pagans had deduced this. Aristotle may well represent the epitome of the ancient world’s pagan thought. He logically deduced there had to be an Unmoved Mover or an Uncreated Cause, whom men commonly refer to as the Supreme Deity. However, Aristotle viewed this Being as impersonal. He did not have the benefit of Christian Revelation to know the One God was personal – Three Divine Persons, to be precise.
[3] Msgr. Fenton writes: “It is strikingly evident that the Jesus of Nazareth described in the four canonical gospels was a man of the highest degree of holiness, a holiness which is manifestly supernatural in origin when we consider it in its own light, but is still more extraordinary if we compare it with the moral qualities of other men who have founded historical religious doctrines or who have been intimately identified with other religious cults. Mohammed, and long before him men like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius have expressed beautiful sentiments of affection for God. Yet a man could never say fairly that the love of God was the sole or even the outstanding interest of these men. The prophet of Islam most definitely arranged his life in such a way as to gain a tremendous amount of material wealth and sensual pleasure for himself. The two great Stoic philosophers made even the love of God a means for the aggrandizement of their own pride.”
[4] In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote: “I am trying here to prevent anyone [from] saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
[5] The devil can frequently predict how humans will act. We too can do this, though on a much more limited scale and with a greater probability of error. The devil can also use knowledge from one person or location to influence another. For example, the emperor Constantius was told by heretical Arian priests of a victory his armies would have in an important battle. The battle had already occurred, and the devil revealed it to his prophets days before the emperor’s messenger on horseback arrived from the battlefield. The devil can also influence men upon a certain course of actions, as we see in ‘prophecies’ uttered by the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.