A thousand reasons to believe
I bow down to pray
I try to make the worst seem better
Lord, show me the way
To cut through all his…
I've got a hundred million reasons to walk away
But baby, I just need one good one to stay
These lines from Lady Ga Ga’s You’ve given me a million reasons to walk away might describe the precarious spiritual balance that many believers experience today. The world distracts in a million ways. There are so few reasons to stay with main line faith! But Jesus and Mary and God continue to break through with signs.
In the 1960s, the Virgin Mary appeared in Egypt before hundreds of thousands of witnesses. Why should we believe that? These reports were well documented in the press, observed by hundreds of thousands including a high proportion of non-Christians, and they were visible to all without exception.
These visions were accompanied by miraculous cures, authenticated by medical professionals. Many lasting conversions resulted. All of this was witnessed by civil and religious authorities. Thousands of pilgrims photographed these events. All of this took place at night, above a Coptic church on the outskirts of Cairo.
How do we convince skeptics to believe if miracles and Divine signs are not enough? Perhaps using our minds will move us where preternatural signs fail. One of our most learned scholars of theology, philosophy, and science Thomas Acquinas offers us five proofs of God. His first argument is from motion: there must be a first mover. We live in a universe that is constantly moving, but who initiated the first motion.
Causation is his next argument. Everything in the universe appears to have been caused by something else. But what was the first cause? There must be Someone who started the whole chain of cause and effect. Nothing comes from nothing.
Argument for necessary being - Everything in the natural world depends on something else to be in existence. You would not exist if it were not for your parents. Your parents would not be here without your grandparents. But where did this chain of existence start? Aquinas argues that this points to the existence of God.
Argument for gradation - If there is no ultimate goodness, then we are free to define good and bad how we desire. Aquinas reminds us that it is rational to believe in an ultimate level of goodness, and that ultimate level of goodness is not just an idea — it is a Person.
Argument from Design - Aquinas’ argument from design is that everything in nature seems to “know” what to do, even if it is not a living, thinking being. There is a “design” to everything. Beyond Acquinas’s five reasons to believe many are still looking for “one good one” to stay with faith.
In his body of works Acquinas attested to the fulfillment of scripture through the incarnation of Jesus. Then Jesus performed signs and wonders passed on by tradition and scripture – miracles like turning water into wine. The multiplication of loaves and fishes, casting out of demons, raising the dead, controlling the wind and the sea!
The Resurrection is the ultimate proof of Christ’s divinity. And all of Jesus’ teachings were reaffirmed by his disciples’ miracles and signs described in Acts of the Apostles. Pope Pius XII confirmed this by saying: "The many wonderful external signs God has given…are sufficient to prove with certitude by the natural light of reason alone the divine origin of the Christian religion."
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