Does God exist? Yes and No.

When dealing with the Transcendent, especially, that extreme transcendence that we label God, it is fitting to combine affirmations with negations. In talking of God, it is always yes and no. Drawing on the work of Dionysius of the Apophatic, (modernists refer to Saint Denys as Pseudo-Dionysius,) this is called the kataphatic (the way of affirmation) and the apophatic (the way of negation.) This becomes very interesting when applied to the basic fundamental assertion of the existence of God.

On the one hand, as Hebrews 11:6, affirms God is the rewarder of those that diligently seek Him, and therefore God exists. But at the same time God is Holy and is radically unlike any limited created thing. Since everything that we can point to as existing is limited, God does not exist in that sense. God does not exist in the sense in which we apply that word to any creature.

God does not exist but God is existence. When we speak of God, we are speaking of Being itself and not any particular being. Everything that exists participates in Existence. Things exist therefore Existence. I have just restated what is called the cosmological argument for the existence of God. Existence (God) is the ground of existing things, existing things exist because they share in Existence; that is participate in God.

All of this does flow from divine simplicity, God cannot have parts, to have parts is to be dependent on what transcends partition/number. Since God has no parts He cannot be divided into essence and existence, thus God’s existence must be His essence. He cannot be a being but must be Being itself.

Since God is absolutely transcendent, He must not only be Being itself, but beyond Being, Nothingness. And since God is absolutely transcendent, He must be the convergence of Being and Nothingness, because for the absolutely simple Being is Nothingness. Listen to the Philosopher-Theologian David Bentley Hart on this topic, “If God is to be understood as the unconditioned source of all things, rather than merely some very powerful but still ontologically dependent being, then any denial of divine simplicity is equivalent to a denial of God’s reality. This is obvious if one remembers what the argument from creaturely contingency to divine necessity implies. To be the first cause of the whole universal chain of per se causality, God must be wholly unconditioned in every sense. He cannot be composed of and so dependent God is to be understood as the unconditioned source of all things, rather than merely some very powerful but still ontologically dependent being, then any denial of divine simplicity is equivalent to a denial of God’s reality. This is obvious if one remembers what the argument from creaturely contingency to divine necessity implies. To be the first cause of the whole universal chain of per se causality, God must be wholly unconditioned in every sense. He cannot be composed of and so dependent upon severable constituents, physical or metaphysical, as then he Himself would be conditioned.” (Hart, David Bentley. The Experience of God (p. 134). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.)

There are those who deny God’s metaphysical ultimacy, process theists, open theists, LDS theists, and evangelical theistic personalists, and who would argue that God is a being rather than Being. The problem with the God the Father as a Zeus, Odin type of being is that such a being would be unworthy of worship. He would be worthy of being honored and praised certainly. But worship is the ascription of metaphysical ultimacy and it could only be offered to that which is actually metaphysically ultimate. If the God of the LDS or of the evangelical theistic personalists exists, then He would be dependent on the transcendent absolutely simple One, who would then be the God beyond God. It is that one that must be worshiped.

Now LDS and evangelical theistic personalist often will point to the anthropopathic language in the Scripture and argue that God as a being with parts is more biblical. But Isaiah writes in union with all of Scripture when he says, in Isaiah 45:5, “I am the Lord, and there is no other, there is no God beside Me.” So, the God of the bible is metaphysically ultimate and all of the anthropopathic language the theistic personalists point to is simply symbolic and analogical language.

Now all of this applies to Christian Gnosis in this manner. Christian Gnosis is a matter of the deep Intellect and not the surface analytical reason. Analytical reason will never understand or ‘get’ these matters. The Intellect, in contrast, to the surface reason, participates in the Divine, and perceives in a noetic manner the realities that we are discussing. Noetic cognition, that is Gnosis is experiential, unitive, and transformative. It is a spiritual gift where in which the Intellect is freed from its chains and raised from its death to perceive that which is beyond perception. What we see we become and thus are transformed. (1 John 3:2)

In Christian Gnosis, metaphysical truth which is gibberish to the lower mind, is perceived and understood, and experienced. Those with Gnosis understand the symbolic and analogical language in the Bible and perceive how this language points to and connects us with God. The Gnostic is freed both from the literalism of the fundamentalist and the equally ridged modernism of the atheist. The Gnostic also understands the hierarchical nature of manifested creation, and thus rejects the egalitarianism of the progressive. Even, more significant, the Gnostic in perceiving God, also perceives the metaphysical forces at work in history and sees through the work of the evil archons who strive to incarnate hell in our physical reality. One who truly knows will reject the globalist agenda of the archons and the human elites through whom they work. It is to the cultivation of Gnosis that what remains of my life is dedicated.