I just received a phone call from a close friend who has known me for years. She reminded me that I have been teaching philosophy for almost 60 years!
I taught for 18 years at what was then Cathedral College Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Douglaston, Queens, and I have been teaching philosophy at St. John’s University since 1985. I guess, even I, am not so dense as not to have learned some philosophy in all that time. After studying and teaching the mystery of the human person, I have come to believe deeply in the mystery of human freedom. I believe we are our freedom; that freedom is part of our essence, and depending on how we live, choose, and especially love, we can become more and more free. We should want our life’s story to be a love story.
In last week’s column, I tried to explain the view of freedom held by existentialist Søren Kierkegaard. The Danish philosopher believed that we attain human fulfillment and salvation through a free act of faith — a leap of faith in Christ — a leap that involves risking everything.
More than 100 years later, the most famous 20th-century existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre, claimed that human freedom meant that God cannot exist. Although both Kierkegaard and Sartre were existentialists, and both emphasized freedom, one believed that freedom could lead to God, while the other thought that human freedom made the existence of God impossible.
Kierkegaard called the leap absurd, meaning that it was so meaningful that no one could understand it completely. Sartre thought human existence was absurd, meaning it made no sense because God and human freedom could not coexist. Because there is no God, human existence is absurd.
Early on in my studies, I became convinced that if something was true, it could be embraced no matter what its source. Perhaps it was St. Thomas Aquinas who convinced me of that. One argument against God’s existence that Sartre offered was the notion that believers often referred to God as the “Divine Artist” and that the saints were God’s masterpieces. Sartre was not a happy atheist. He wished that God existed, but he thought that God’s existence would make human freedom impossible.
Pointing out that human artists never produce a perfect work, that every human work of art has some flaw, Sartre claimed that God would produce a perfect work. That would mean that the human being would be exactly what God intended and not be free. I cannot explain the mystery of how God’s creative causality does not take away human freedom, and I don’t know if anyone can, but I think I can point out the error that Sartre has made in his argument.
Sartre was thinking of God as a physical cause. Physical causes “make” things happen, “force” things to happen. For example, if I apply certain pressure to a chair in my room, the chair does not decide to move. My pressure forces the chair to move. I think if God were a physical cause, we could not be free. God would be creating us as though we were puppets. But what if God is a “love cause”? Love causes freedom in the beloved. I think the following statement is profoundly true: what being loved causes in the beloved is freedom. If that happens with human lovers, then God’s love can cause even a deeper freedom in the beloved.
There is a dramatic scene in Sartre’s play “The Flies” in which Zeus, a stand-in for the traditional God of Western philosophy, tells Orestes, who is a stand-in for Sartre, that Zeus has created the entire physical universe and that he has created Orestes. The conversation between Zeus and Orestes sums up Sartre’s view of free-
dom:
Orestes: “But you blundered; you should not have made me free.”
Zeus: “I gave you your freedom so that you might serve me.”
Orestes: “Perhaps. But now it has turned against its giver. And neither you nor I can undo what has been done …”
Orestes: “Neither slave nor master. I am my freedom. No sooner had you created me than I ceased to be yours.”
How strange that an atheist’s refusal to affirm God’s existence can help us to see more deeply into the mystery of God’s special causality, a causality which I am calling “love causality.”
Sartre’s atheism is an example of a great philosopher, an atheist, who, without intending to do so, has helped us see that God’s infinite love and causality bring us into existence and nurture our freedom throughout our lives. More than anything else, our relationship is a beautiful love story.
God is not opposed to our freedom. God is the cause of our freedom.
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. His new book, “The Cosmic Love Story: God and Us,” is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.