How does God REALLY exist

[Guest Person]

Hey y'all this may be the stupidiest question y'all have EVER been asked but I REALLY wanna know okay so heres my question: How does God, Souls and Heaven REALLY exist when it isn't a physical thing because from my knowledge something can only been in existence if you can touch it, or actaully see it with your own eyes... What is God? What is heaven? what are souls? because it is said they every human being has a soul, if a surgan were to do a operation on someone he wouldn't say "oh cool there's so and so's soul", when he first opens up the person, This is REALLY bothering me because I know God must exist some how because like 70 percent of the worlds population is Christain, another and my final question is, I know that Catholicism was the first Christain denomination and I know that one of the deciples is a Pope, Paul I think it is, why is there so many different beleifs about what a true Christain is these days even though Jesus started Catholcism??? Please answer as SOON as you can I REALLY wanna know!!!!!

[Apotheoun]

I don't know if this will assist you, but the following is an excerpt from a paper I wrote at Franciscan University on the related topic of God's immanence and transcendence, which also touches upon the ways of knowing God's existence. It is a rather complex paper, but I hope it helps:

[quote name='Divine Transcendence and Immanence and the Distinction between the Essence and Energies of God']
HOW GOD CAN BE KNOWN

          In order to comprehend the Eastern Christian position on the nature of God it is important to begin by looking at the three ways or methods of knowing God and how each one of these ways is properly understood.  In the East, as exemplified in the theology of John Zizioulas, a theological distinction is made between the [i]hoti esti[/i], that is, the fact “that” God exists, and the [i]ti esti[/i], that is, the “what” of God’s existence, and finally the [i]hopos esti[/i], which concerns “how” God exists. [1]  As it concerns the first method or way of knowing God, the [i]hoti esti[/i] of God’s existence, this is something that can be understood by man through the light of natural reason.  In other words, it is a knowledge founded upon the created order and not upon the experience of God through the incarnation of the Son of God, and as a form of rational apprehension through abstraction it can be both [i]apophatic[/i] and [i]cataphatic[/i]. [2]   So, when a man looks at the created world around him, he can know "that" God exists, and this involves a type of natural revelation through the created order, but it does not reveal "what" God is, or "how" God exists; instead, it simply tells him that there is a God.  This type of knowledge is not dependent upon divine revelation in the proper sense of the term, although it is perfected by revelation, and so it is accessible to all men through the right use of their rational abilities.  As St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “. . . with regard to the Creator of the world, we know that He exists, but of His essential nature we cannot deny that we are ignorant.” [3]   This statement of St. Gregory’s leads us into the second of the three ways of knowing God, that is, the ti esti of God’s existence.
          As indicated above, the [i]ti esti[/i] or “what” of God’s existence concerns His Essence, and for the Eastern Fathers the Divine Essence always remains hidden from man in unapproachable light, so much so that it is by its very nature completely incomprehensible and incommunicable, both at the level of natural knowledge and even with the assistance of divine revelation.  God is and remains totally unknowable and inaccessible in His Essence, because any communication of the Divine Essence to man would involve the annihilation of the human person.  In reference to God’s Essence, theology is and always must be [i]apophatic[/i], that is, it must always focus on what God is not.  The primary way in which this [i]apophatic[/i] or negative theology focuses on what God is not, is when it asserts that He is not created, and that He is totally distinct from His creation, and is thus completely unknowable and wholly transcendent.  This focus on God as uncreated must not be thought of as an intellectual definition of what God is, because it in no way defines or illuminates the Divine Essence in itself.  This is because God is superessential, that is, He is beyond being and non-being, and our knowledge cannot move beyond our limited created abilities in order to grasp what being uncreated really entails.  The distinction made by Scholastic theologians between knowledge of God's Essence, albeit to a limited degree, and comprehension of His Essence, is not held to be a valid distinction in Eastern Catholic theology, because the Divine Essence, as both East and West agree, is wholly simple and indivisible by its very nature, and so to know the Divine Essence in part would involve knowing it completely.  That is why even when we speak of the three Divine [i]Hypostases[/i] (persons), or of the [i]enhypostatic[/i] uncreated Energies of God, we speak of each them as possessing the whole Divine Essence through the divine [i]perichoresis[/i] (coinherence).  Thus, each of the Persons is wholly and completely God, and this truth naturally leads us to the next way or manner of knowing God, that is, to the [i]hopos esti[/i] of God’s being.
          The [i]hopos esti[/i] or “how” of God’s existence centers on His inner [i]hypostatic[/i] relations; in other words, it focuses on the mode of existence proper to God as a Trinity of persons.  This type of knowledge involves the condescension of God in the incarnation and the revelation of the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.  The Son and the Spirit give man an experiential and personal communion in God’s inner life, and because this communion is experiential, it must not be viewed as a type of definitional knowledge, nor as type of mental abstraction, because the vision of God is not so much a knowledge in the order of intellection as it is a communion or union with God through personal experience.  It is this mode of being that allows man to come into contact with God in a personal manner through His [i]enhypostatic[/i] energies, and in the process this participation elevates man into God's own uncreated life and glory, while at the same time God remains completely and utterly transcendent in His Essence.  The Father condescends to reveal the inner workings of the Triune life and glory through His Son in the power of the Holy Spirit, but in spite of this self-revelation on God’s part, He remains transcendent and incomprehensible, because even the [i]hypostatic[/i] relations exceed the finite ability of man to comprehend them.  In other words, God does impart to man a real experience of His existence as the Tri-personal Godhead, but the communion given, which is real, must not to be thought of as exhausting God's being, or even worse, as a simple intellectual vision and apprehension of what God is in Himself. [4] Clearly then, through Christ’s incarnation man gains a real personal experiential communion in the “how” of God’s existence, and this opens up the possibility of [i]cataphatic[/i] description, but this experiential communion does not do away the essential mystery of God’s being in itself, and so the [i]apophatic[/i] nature of Trinitarian theology must constantly be borne in mind.

End notes:

[1] Cf., Papanikolaou, Aristotle.  "Divine Energies or Divine Personhood:  Vladimir Lossky and John Zizioulas on Conceiving the Transcendent and Immanent God."  [u]Modern Theology[/u] 19:3 (July 2003):  pages 373-378.

[2]  [i]Apophasis[/i] involves negation, i.e., saying what God is not, in order to gain a deeper grasp of the incomprehensibility of God; while [i]cataphasis[/i] involves making positive assertions about God, based on the relative perfections found within the natural world, and which ultimately posit the existence of an absolute perfection.

[3]  Schaff, Philip, Editor.  [u]Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers[/u].  Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994.  Series 2, Volume 5, page 257.

[4]  cf., Yannaras, Christos.  "The Distinction Between Essence and Energies and its Importance for Theology," [u]St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly[/u] 19 (1975):  pages 232-245.  The Scholastic reduction of the vision of God and the process of deification itself to an act of intellection is problematic, because "The first foundation of the truth of God is not achieved through the experience of the Church, which is an experience of personal relationship with the person of the Incarnate Logos, a relationship which is realized in the Holy Spirit and which reveals the Logos as witnessing to the Father.  Rather, this first foundation is entirely anthropocentric, with an intellectual leap seeking to understand the divine essence in itself, its attributes and its objective relationships.  And this rationalistic conception of essence not only obliges one to an ontic understanding of essence which overlooks the mode of being of the essence, but also leads by logical necessity either to the identification of essence and energy or to the essential separation of nature from the energies.  The problematic of energy is reduced to a procedure of logical proof which refers the mystery of divine existence to the syllogistically necessary idea of a creating and moving cause of creation or a causal grace (causalité de Grâce) which contributes to the moral improvement of man," but which fails to truly deify him ontologically; instead it reduces deification to a human act of intellect and will.[/quote]

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Person' date='Oct 2 2004, 03:32 PM']What is heaven?[/quote]
Heaven is the state of being in which a man is in communion with God. Such a man has been deified by God's grace and has received the gift of divine sonship, thus becoming a son of God in the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ.

[quote name='Person' date='Oct 2 2004, 03:32 PM']What are souls?  Because it is said they every human being has a soul, if a surgan were to do a operation on someone he wouldn't say "oh cool there's so and so's soul", when he first opens up the person[/quote]
The soul is the immaterial natural animating principle of life. It is also important to distinguish between the human soul and the souls of other living beings, because the human soul is not simply a sensate life principle, but is a rational principle of life, which, along with the body, images God the incarnate Logos; moreover, because the soul is an immaterial reality it cannot be seen by a person during surgery.

[quote name='Person' date='Oct 2 2004, 03:32 PM']Why is there so many different beleifs about what a true Christain is these days even though Jesus started  Catholcism??? Please answer as SOON as you can I REALLY wanna know!!!!![/quote]
The one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church alone. [cf. Dogmatic Constitution [u]Lumen Gentium[/u], no. 8] The various divisions among Christians are the result of the sins of individuals throughout history, but we can be thankful that the unity of the Church is not dependent upon man, but upon God, and that the unity that He gives to the Church cannot be broken by sin, and as a consequence, it will always exist in the Catholic Church governed by the Pope.

[Pio Nono]

JMJ
10/10 - Twenty-eighth Sunday

Just to add my two cents - I feel like I have to do something, since I've been a pile and haven't been able to post much, being in Italy and all.

There's a great quote on this from G.K. Chesterton that might be good for you to reflect on...

"It's true - there is no one thing that proves the existence of God. The fact is, everything proves the existence of God."