Lubos Rojka Web Site

Bernard Lonergan’s Argument for the Existence of God

The Existence of Transcendent Being

The question ‘What is being?’ could lead to conception of an unrestricted act of understanding and the idea of being. Lonergan, however, does not consider this line of thinking to be an argument for the existence of the unrestricted understanding. Rather, according to him, only if we ask ‘What is causality?’ then ‘we shall be lead to affirm that there is such an unrestricted act.’ In other words, investigation of ‘What is being?’ explains the meanings, implications, and shows coherence of the conception of the unrestricted act. Coherence and meaningfulness are the first conditions of any theory to be possibly true. Lonergan’s investigation of causality is intended to show that such an act really exists.

Before Lonergan proceeds with the argument, he distinguishes external and internal causes. Internal causes are the central and conjugate potency, form, and act. External causes are efficient, final, and exemplary. They are conceived analogously with the purposive human actions, which are within the realm of proportionate being. The question is whether external causes hold in general for the proportionate being as a whole. If the answer is affirmative, then the transcendent being (first agent) has to exist. Lonergan explains that the arguments based on external causes are anthropomorphic concepts. In order to make his argument stronger, Lonergan intends to penetrate deeper into the roots of these concepts, into universally applicable principles. Deeper metaphysical principles are, according to Lonergan, capable of bearing human knowledge from the realm of proportionate being to the realm of transcendent being.

The first step in his argument is the affirmation that there is being and that being is intelligible, because ‘It [being] is what is to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation.’ Furthermore, ‘What is apart from being is nothing and so what is apart from intelligibility is nothing.’ Consequently, ‘to talk about mere matters of fact that admit no explanation is to talk about nothing. Lonergan supports these affirmations explaining that counter-positions ‘bring about their own reversal the moment they claim to be grasped intelligently and affirmed reasonably.’ No true definition of being can deny intelligibility and reasonableness of its own meaning. To sum up: ‘The real requirement is that, if conditioned being is being, it has to be intelligible; it cannot be or exist or occur merely as a matter of fact for which no explanation is to be asked or expected, for the non-intelligible is apart from being.’ The ‘matters of fact’ are brute (unexplained) facts arising in the context of human cognitive inquiry. Brute facts cannot be expected to provide any explanation of other facts or anything at all; according to Lonergan, they would have to be disregarded as not real.

It seems that if the matters of fact are not real, the facts themselves cannot be real. It is interesting to note, however, that even though Lonergan denies that the matters of fact may be real, he considers given sense experience as real (experience seems to be given as a matter of fact). Ordinarily, the facts like ‘the sun rose on July 28, 2003’ would be considered real, even though not being. In my understanding, facts involve real events or characteristics of proportionate being. The facts are somehow related to real being, and thus they are real similarly as immediate experience is real. What is not true, however, is that there are unexplainable real facts. The facts are (given as) real, but they cannot be brute or unexplainable.

It seems that when Lonergan writes about the unreality of ‘matters of fact,’ he does not want to make an ontological statement about their unreality. (They are real because they can be experienced, understood, and affirmed as real.) What is crucial in this first step of Lonergan’s argument is that matters of fact cannot be completely explained solely by other matters of fact. Moreover, there are no mere matters of fact that admit no explanation. Thus the ‘matters of fact’ seems to mean here rather unexplained facts, which are only described and affirmed as existing. In metaphysics, according to Lonergan, the ultimate explanation of all facts cannot conclude with affirmation of other unexplained facts. This interpretation is parallel to Lonergan’s understanding of the reality of sense experience, which is an instance of matters of fact, and which in itself does not explain anything, but yet it is described, understood, and affirmed as real.
The second step of Lonergan’s argument is recognition that ‘one cannot confine human knowledge within the domain of proportionate being without condemning it to mere matters of fact.’ Every proportionate being is conditioned in its existence and, therefore, is explained by appealing to another contingent being. If one remains in the realm of proportionate (contingent) being, one has to appeal soon or later to mere matter of fact. If one asks the most fundamental questions about existence, neither empirical science nor a methodically restricted philosophy can have an adequate answer:

As far as empirical science goes, existence is just a matter of facts. Nor is the methodically restricted philosophy better off. So far from accounting for existence, the philosopher can establish that it cannot be accounted for within the limits of proportionate being.

The scientist is restricted by his methods to asserting what in fact is the actual course of generalized emergent probability or some small part of it. He deduces one contingent existent from other, or assigns the frequencies with which things come to exist or events occur, or accounts for the respective numbers of different kinds of things. Existence always remains just a matter of fact. Similarly a philosopher restricted to proportionate being offers no more than an account of what in fact the structure of the universe or the human being is.

The third step is acknowledgment of two basic characteristics of a transcendent being:

On the one hand, it must not be contingent in any respect, for if it were, once more we would be confronted with the mere matter of fact that we have to avoid. On the other hand, besides being self-explanatory, the transcendent being must be capable of grounding the explanation of everything about everything else; for without this second attribute, the transcendent being would leave unsolved our problem of contingence in proportionate being.
The urge to find ultimate explanation leads to the ultimate being, which cannot be contingent and, in addition to being self-explanatory, it must explain everything else. The transcendent being is a necessary ultimate explanatory ground, which cannot be explained or necessitated by another being.

Before we conclude this section, let us summarize Lonergan’s core affirmation of the transcendent, necessary, and self-explanatory being:

(1) Being (and only being) is to some extent intelligible for human intelligence (through common sense knowing and the four heuristic structures).
Implications: (1a) Being is everything which is or can be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation.
(1b) Being (and only being) exists.
(1c) There are no matters of fact that admit no explanation.
[Lonergan also adds: (1d) Matters of fact are not intelligible, they are not real.]
(2) The ultimate explanation of being, which accounts for the existence of proportionate beings, cannot be a matter of unexplained facts.
(3) Explanations restricted to the domain of the proportionate being are confined to the domain of unexplained matters of fact.
(4) Therefore, there must be a self-explanatory and non-contingent (in other words, transcendent being) which ultimately explains everything about everything.
I will return to this argument in the last section of this chapter where Lonergan’s general form of the arguments for the existence of God will be analyzed. There are several parallels and differences between these two expositions, which have to be examined. The reason for splitting these arguments into two sections is that Lonergan in his second argument uses the terms ‘unrestricted act of understanding’ and ‘God’ as synonymous. Thus we have to understand how exactly he justifies that the notion of the self-explanatory being is identical with the traditional notion of God.


The Notion of God

Search for an ultimate explanation of the intelligibility of proportionate being has led us to a conception and affirmation of a self-explanatory and non-contingent unrestricted act of understanding. Lonergan’s approach is based on more profound principles than explanations in terms of internal or external causality. If further implications of his concept of the unrestricted understanding are worked out, Lonergan says, ‘it becomes manifest that it is one and the same thing to understand what being is and to understand what God is.’ Hence consideration about the question ‘What is being?’ explored in the previous sections becomes consideration about ‘Who is God?’ The goal of this section is to show how Lonergan explains that the self-explanatory being is a being which is traditionally called ‘God.’

The primary intelligible is one, unconditioned, necessary (non-contingent), and self-explanatory. All these attributes are interrelated: If it were not one, if it depended on anything else, or if it were contingent, it would not be self-explanatory. Self-explanatory means that the unrestricted act grasps the intelligibility of its own understanding. The unrestricted understanding is the primary intelligible and intelligent in the fullest sense, which means, it is spiritual in the fullest sense. Since it is unrestrictedly intelligent and completely intelligible, there is no possibility of correction, revision, or improvement in it. It is invulnerable, and it knows that it is invulnerable.

The perfection of the primary being is not only perfection of understanding; it is absolute perfection. For if there were any imperfection in it, the unrestricted understanding would grasp what is missing. But, as Lonergan says, this is impossible. The unrestricted act of understanding cannot grasp any defect or imperfection in its own being. If it could, then it would not really be unrestricted understanding. For the primary being is identical with the unrestricted act (which is implied in being spiritual), and anything missing in the primary being would be a restriction in the unrestricted act of understanding.

The perfection of the most spiritual being requires, in Lonergan’s words, that the primary intelligible ‘is identical not only with an unrestricted act of understanding but also with a completely perfect act of affirming the primary truth and a completely perfect act of loving the primary good.’ If the unrestricted understanding and primary intelligible are the same reality, then perfect affirming and truth, and perfect loving and the primary good must also be the same reality. All these different perspectives, by analogy with human understanding, judging, and loving, are united in a single act. The unrestricted act is absolutely simple. Consequently:

It [the unrestricted act] does not admit the compositeness of central and conjugate forms. For there are no other beings of the same order with which it could be conjugate; and as it is but a single act, it has no need of a unifying central form.
Nor does it admit the compositeness of potency and form. For it is a spiritual being beyond all development, and potency has been identified either with a capacity to develop or with the empirical residue and materiality.
Nor does it admits the compositeness of distinct form and act. For if it exists, it exists necessarily.


Unrestricted understanding understands the secondary intelligibles inasmuch as the unrestricted act understands itself. The secondary intelligibles are conditioned and thus distinct from the primary intelligible. They cannot be, however, distinct realities. If there were other realities to be known in order to have unrestricted understanding, then the unrestricted act would not be perfect. The secondary intelligibles are understood as distinct if they become mere objects of abstract thought.

In regard to the anthropological concepts of internal and external causality, Lonergan says that the primary being is the omnipotent efficient cause. For the primary being ‘would be imperfect if it could ground all possible universes as object of thought but not as realities.’ If one understands efficient causality only as fulfillment of (causal) conditions for the existence of a proportionate being, then an infinite regress or a circle of a scheme of recurrence may satisfy such understanding. In Lonergan’s explanation, however, they are aggregates of mere matters of fact, ‘so they [infinite regress and circular explanation] do not succeed in assigning an efficient cause for being that is intelligible yet conditioned.’

The primary being is the omniscient exemplary cause. If the conditions of actual occurrences are not completely random (they are fulfilled in accordance with statistical laws), then there must be an exemplary cause that grounds the intelligibility of the pattern in which these conditions are fulfilled. In addition to the pattern, the primary being also grasps all concrete components of proportionate being and all possibilities of development. ‘In itself it [unrestricted understanding] grasps the intelligible order of every possible universe of being in their every component and aspect and detail.’

Since contingent things have intelligible conditions to be fulfilled in order to exist, they cannot exist necessarily or arbitrarily. They exist in virtue of the free and reasonable choice of the unrestricted understanding:

It [contingent being] cannot be necessitated, for what follows necessarily from the necessary is equally necessary. It cannot be arbitrary, for what results arbitrarily from the necessary results as a mere matter of fact without any possible explanation. But what is neither necessary nor arbitrary yet intelligible and a value is what proceeds freely from the reasonable choice of a rational consciousness.

Contingent being exists in virtue of the freedom of unrestricted understanding (and perfect affirming and loving). The possibility of a reasonably realized possibility is grounded in the final cause: ‘There is the intended ordination of each potency for the form it receives, of each form for the act receives, of each manifold of lower acts for the higher unities and integrations under which they are subsumed. So it is that every tendency and force, every movement and change, every desire and striving is designed to bring about the order of the universe… all that is for the order of the universe is headed ultimately to the perfection and excellence that is its primary source and ground.’

The unrestricted act understands, wills, and chooses contingent beings to be, without any increment or change in its own reality, because its act is perfect:

The perfect primary being does not develop, for it is without defect or lack or imperfection; and so the unrestricted act understands and affirms and wills contingent being to be, without any increment or change in its reality.

Even though Lonergan started with a seemingly impersonal question, ‘What is being?,’ the notion at which he arrived is the notion of a personal God. The unrestricted act of rational self-consciousness, ‘however objectively and impersonally it has been conceived, clearly satisfies all that is meant by the subject, the person, the other with intelligence and a reasonableness and a willing that is his own.’ In other words, the empirical residue of individuality, continuum, particular places and times, and of the nonsystematic divergence of actual frequencies (or probabilities) from ideal frequencies (or probabilities), ‘while unexplained by particular sciences, partly are understood in cognitional theory and metaphysics and ultimately are accounted for by God’s creative decision.’ If the existence of all concrete occurrences is to be explained, God’s efficient causality – or God the creator – has to be at its origin. Divine efficient causality is exercised as long as the universe or any part of it exists, since every contingent being is in intelligible dependence on the self-explanatory being. God is the conserver of the universe. Hence the concepts of Lonergan’s metaphysics describe the same being as traditional (analogical and anthropological) terms applied to God.

It is important to note that for Lonergan the perfection of the divine act of understanding also implies that it not only grasps intelligibility of the actual (past, present, and future) reality, but also every possibility and what every free will would choose in each successive set of circumstances in each possible world order. This aspect of God’s knowledge involves several difficulties, and it will be explored in the next chapter.

In order to bring more light to his explanation, Lonergan compares his account with those of Bañez and Molina. They ascribed divine control of all events to the fact that God somehow relates to each actual event. According to Lonergan, however, ‘God controls each event because he controls all, and he controls all because he alone can be the cause of the order of the universe on which every event depends.’ The crucial element in the relation of God and the universe is the order or intelligibility of reality. The fact that something actually occurs points towards classical and statistical intelligibility of such occurrence, which ultimately leads to considerations about the order of events and thus the primary intelligibility and ultimate explanation. The climax of such consideration is the affirmation of ultimate self-explanatory being.

To sum up, the unrestricted understanding is (1) absolutely simple, (2) necessary, (3) self-explanatory, in all respects (4) the most perfect act, which is also (5) the first efficient cause, which creates freely and intelligently, (6) the first agent of every event, every development, and every emergence, (7) the conserver, (8) the ultimate final cause, the ground of the value of created things and their ultimate objective, (9) the highest good, and (10) the truth. If both God and the universe exist, then God ‘must understand, affirm, will, effect whatever else is.’ Things exist and events occur exactly as God understands, affirms, and wills it. One cannot say, however, that God first understands, wills and then affirms something to exist or occur. The relevant (concrete!) contingent existence or occurrence is the metaphysical condition which guarantees the truth that God understands, affirms, wills, and effects this or that to exist or occur. Hence it is impossible for this or that not to exist or not to occur if God affirms it as existing.


The Affirmation of the Existence of God

The explanation of the nature of causality provides the basis for an argument for the existence of an unrestricted act of understanding. After Lonergan identifies the unrestricted act with God, he formulates an additional general form of the argument for the existence of God, which seems intended to summarize the previous step by step analyses and explore several further implications and difficulties related to the existence of God. This argument is important because it is claimed to embrace all traditional arguments for the existence of God.

Lonergan starts with a few preliminary considerations. The existence of any proportionate being and the existence of the transcendent being are each known through a rationally posited ‘yes.’ The meanings of existence, which is affirmed in these two ‘yeses’ are different:

If one asks whether a contingent being exists, an affirmative answer means a contingent existence. But if one asks whether a self-explanatory being exists, an affirmative answer means a self-explanatory existence.

Only the self-explanatory being can really grasp the meaning of its own existence. In the effort to grasp who God is, we extrapolate from a restricted understanding to an unrestricted act, but ‘what is grasped is not the unrestricted act but the extrapolation that proceeds from the properties of a restricted act to the properties of the unrestricted act.’ If we cannot grasp the full meaning of a self-explanatory being, then, Lonergan concludes, the ontological arguments, which deduce the existence of God from the conception of God, are all fallacious.

If we cannot really understand what an unrestricted act is, is it possible to make a proof of its existence? Since we cannot experience (externally or internally) unrestricted understanding, then the proof of its existence may also seem impossible. Lonergan explains that this line of thought rests on a mistaken identification of the notions of verification and experience. The law of falling bodies, for example, is verified but not experienced. Lonergan says, ‘it is not experience but a reflective grasp of the fulfillment of the conditions for a probable affirmation that constitutes the only act of verifying that exists for the law of falling bodies.’ If the conditions are fulfilled the conclusions follow necessarily (unconditionally).

The conditions are an element in what Lonergan calls ‘virtually unconditioned.’ The second element is the link between what is conditioned and its conditions, and the third one, fulfillment of these conditions. A prospective judgment is virtually unconditioned, if it is conditioned and its conditions are known and fulfilled. It is reflective understanding (not experience), which transforms a conditioned judgment into a virtually unconditioned judgment through the grasp of the link and fulfilled conditions. The grasp of the virtually unconditioned is the key element also in the arguments for the existence of God. The grasp of all three elements of the virtually unconditioned guarantees that the inference of God’s existence from premises is valid.

According to Lonergan, all the arguments for the existence of God are included in the following general form of affirmation: ‘If the real is completely intelligible, God exists. But the real is completely intelligible. Therefore, God exists.’ The link in the virtually unconditioned is ‘If the real is completely intelligible, God exists.’ Lonergan also gives a longer formulation of this major premise: ‘If the real is completely intelligible, then complete intelligibility exists. If complete intelligibility exists, the idea of being exists. If the idea of being exists, then God exists.’ It has been established in the previous section that if complete (the most profound) intelligibility exists, then this intelligibility must necessarily be God. The question that is re-examined in this section is whether the condition (existence of the complete intelligibility of reality) is known and fulfilled; in other words, whether we know, or we can know, that real is completely intelligible.

Lonergan states, ‘Being… is intelligible, for it is what is to be known by correct understanding; and it is completely intelligible for, being is known completely only when all intelligent questions are answered correctly.’ This first premise presupposes several other affirmations. Before I comment on the argument as a whole, let us formulate the presuppositions together with the rest of the argument in a series of steps:

(1) At least one real thing (being) exists.
(2) Real is (or existing things are) known by correct understanding (intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation).
(3) Existing reality is intelligible. (From 1 and 2)
(4) Complete intelligibility means that being is known completely when all questions are answered correctly.
(4a) There is no meaningful question about being, which has no answer or explanation.
(4b) There are no unexplainable brute facts.
(5) Being is (or existing things are) completely intelligible. (From 1 and 4)
(6) Complete intelligibility exists. (From 5)
(7) The idea of being exists. (From 6)
(8) God exists. (From 7)

Now let us analyze the argument step by step. The arguments for the existence of God usually start from what is more evident and conclude with something less evident; namely, the existence of God. Even though Lonergan says that his argument is only a set of signs or indicators for a reflective grasp of the virtually unconditioned judgment about the existence of God, he follows a similar pattern. There are two crucial elements in his argument. He says:

The second element lies in the affirmation of some reality: it took place in the chapter on self-affirmation… The first element is the process that identifies the real with being, then identifies being with complete intelligibility, and finally identifies complete intelligibility with the unrestricted act of understanding that possesses the properties of God and accounts for everything else.

The second element is the first step in my reconstruction of Lonergan’s argument. Here Lonergan refers to one particular proportionate being; namely, the person who investigates the intelligibility of reality. Since nobody can reasonably deny his own existence, in Lonergan’s understanding, the evidence of the first premise is very strong.
We have empirical evidence to support the cognitive principle of the second premise, which says that proportionate being is known by correct understanding and reasonable affirmation. We have no other way to know proportionate reality than by experience, understanding, and judging, where the last two are both essential. It seems impossible to think that it could be otherwise. Thus the first conclusion that existing reality is intelligible (step 3), seems to be justified.

An ambiguity may arise in interpreting the three steps. I have shown that in Lonergan’s writing ‘real’ and ‘intelligible’ can mean particular intelligibilities grasped through the heuristic structures of empirical inquiry and/or metaphysical intelligibility. Intelligibility, which Lonergan has in mind in the second and third step, is the former intelligibility grasped in the context of four heuristic structures.

Before we analyze the steps 4 and 5, let us say again that once the step 5 is justified, the next three follow necessarily (based on the analyses of the previous section).

The most problematic are the fourth and fifth steps of the argument. It is not obvious that the conclusion ‘being is completely intelligible’ follows from the fact that being is known when all questions are answered correctly. The four heuristic structures designate four different sorts of drives and goals of empirical investigation or, in other words, four different ways of answering questions of empirical investigations. They do not lead to one intelligibility of reality but to multiplicities of classical, statistical, generic, and dialectical intelligibilities. The four kinds of investigation cannot lead to the affirmation of one complete intelligibility. Even if one answers all the questions of such a strictly empirical investigation, one cannot uncover a unifying intelligibility of nonsystematic processes.

Questions asked by common sense people cannot be intelligently unified either, because, as Lonergan explains, there is an enormous number of possible, correct, unrelated answers. In addition, common-sense questions are motivated by practical interests, and they are bound to spatiotemporal viewpoints. Hence based on Lonergan’s understanding of common sense, questions of common sense imply variety and enormous multiplicity of intelligibilities unified by the purposes of a person, group, or society. Therefore, the existence of complete intelligibility of reality cannot be deduced from all the questions raised by empirical and common sense inquiry.

Even though we cannot raise and answer all the questions about reality, we can grasp what it would be like to understand the answers to a complete set of questions about reality. The difference between the two is like the difference between enumerating all values of variables of a function and understanding the function as such. A function or equation describing the relations between variables can be clearly understood and truthfully applied to real circumstances, even if all possible values of variables are not enumerated. Clearly, we have the desire to answer all the questions about reality, but this does not mean – as Lonergan acknowledges – that such an attainment is possible. It is possible, however, to understand that each meaningful question must have a meaningful answer.

One of the principles of Lonergan’s metaphysical affirmation of the fourth step is that an investigator searching for an ultimate explanation cannot be satisfied by any matter-of-fact explanation. There are no unexplained facts. Therefore, one should also ask, for instance, why is it that the reality studied by the heuristic structures of empirical inquiry is intelligible? (For an empirical inquirer, this is just a brute fact.) Such a research project, according to Lonergan, necessarily concludes with the affirmation of the existence of complete self-explanatory intelligibility. Therefore, ‘all questions’ in the fourth step imply also metaphysical questions about proportionate being as a whole and the search for the ultimate explanation. All meaningful questions must be answerable, and not only those raised in the confines of the heuristic structures of empirical inquiry. Since all matters of fact invite further questioning, an ultimate explanation cannot conclude with the matters of fact.

Lonergan explains the same idea from another viewpoint distinguishing three kinds of intrinsic intelligibility of a being; material, abstract, and spiritual:

It [intelligibility] is material in the objects of physics, chemistry, biology, and sensitive psychology; it is spiritual when it is identical with understanding; and it is abstract in concepts of unities, laws, ideal frequencies, genetic operators, dialectical tensions and conflicts.

Material intelligibility is necessarily incomplete, for it is contingent in its existence. Abstract intelligibility is also necessarily incomplete, for it is a self-expression of spiritual intelligibility. If spiritual intelligibility can inquire it is incomplete. The only possibility of complete intelligibility lies in a spiritual intelligibility that cannot pursue any further inquiry because it understands everything about everything. (There are no unexplained facts in such an understanding.)

Lonergan showed that if one is searching for an ultimate explanation of entire reality, then one cannot accept any matters-of-fact explanation, and the affirmation of self-explanatory being follows necessarily. When Lonergan says that being is known completely when all questions are answered correctly, he must have meant first of all the metaphysical questions about complete and ultimate explanation of being. Metaphysical context of the search for an ultimate explanation and refusal of all matters of fact guarantee the affirmation of the ultimate reality and complete intelligibility of reality.

The fact that some common sense or empirically oriented investigators may ignore such questions concerning ultimate reality does not make the argument weaker. Some of them may explicitly object to this argument saying that the existence of any kind of question cannot imply that it can be truly and fully answered by affirming reality of something, which we have never experienced and do not fully understand. From Lonergan’s exposition it is clear that the questions themselves do not imply the existence of a unique, perfect, and concrete intelligibility, but understanding that all meaningful questions can in principle have coherent and reasonable answers mediates a grasp of a generative intelligibility of all reality. Another very similar objection may be that the existence of the complete intelligibility is an a priori assumption in the questions about ultimate reality. One first has to believe in the existence of the ultimate reality, then one asks questions about it, and finally tries to rationalize one’s belief. From Lonergan’s perspective, wondering or questioning implies a belief that there may be such an unrestricted act, but what is crucial in Lonergan’s argument is the judgment about its real existence. The notion of ultimate reality, which is present in the investigation since the beginning, does not have the decisive bearing on the final judgment about the existence of this being. Not the notion of God as such, but the virtually unconditioned judgment is the decisive element in the proof.