A. What is the authority of the Spiritist revelation, since it emanates from beings whose understanding is limited and who are fallible?
B. What are the purpose and usefulness of spiritual manifestations?
C. What is the main spiritist argument for the existence of God?
Text for reading
127. Deeming humankind mature enough to grasp the mystery of its destiny and serenely contemplate new wonders, God has allowed the lifting of the veil that had separated the invisible from the visible world. The phenomena involving the manifestations have nothing extra-human about them. Spirit humanity has come to converse with corporeal humanity and say: “We exist, so nothingness does not exist; this is what we are, and this is what you will be; the future is for you as it is for us. You used to walk in darkness; we have come to illumine your path and to clear the way; you used to roam aimlessly; we will show you the goal. Earthly life used to be everything to you because you saw nothing beyond it; we have come to tell you, by showing you the spirit life: earthly life is nothing. Your vision used to stop at the grave; we have come to show you the splendorous horizon beyond it. Formerly, you did not know why you suffer on earth; now, in suffering, you see the justice of God. Doing good used to seem to bear no fruit for the future, whereas from now on it will have a purpose and will be a necessity. Fraternity used to be nothing more than a fine theory; now it rests upon a law of nature. Under the domain of the belief that everything ends with life, the immensity of space is empty; selfishness reigns supreme among you and your word of order is: ‘Every man for himself.’ With the certainty of the future, infinite space is infinitely populated; there is neither emptiness nor solitude anywhere, and solidarity connects all beings both here and beyond the grave. It is the kingdom of charity with the motto: ‘One for all and all for one.’ Lastly, at the end of your life you used to say an eternal goodbye to those dear to you; now, however, you will say to them: See you soon!
128. Such are, in sum, the results of the new revelation. It has come to fill the void left by disbelief, to encourage those stricken by doubt or the perspective of nothingness, and to give all things a reason for being.
129. Nevertheless, the fruit that humans should take from it, are not only for the future life. They will enjoy it on the earth through the transformation that these new beliefs must necessarily bring to their character, their likes, their inclinations, and, consequently, their habits and social relationships. Putting an end to the reign of selfishness, pride and disbelief, these beliefs prepare the reign of the good, which is the kingdom of God announced by Christ.
130. Chapter II – Since God is the primary cause of all things, the point of departure for everything and the foundation upon which the edifice of creation rests, God is the subject that we must consider before anything else.
131. It is an elementary principle that a cause is judged by its effects, even when the cause is not seen. If a bird cutting through the air is hit by a fatal bullet, one may deduce the fact that a skillful shooter struck it, even if the shooter cannot be seen. Thus, it is not always necessary to have seen a thing in order to know that it exists. In everything, observing the effects is how one arrives at understanding the causes.
132. Another equally elementary principle that has become an axiom due to its truthfulness is that every intelligent effect must have an intelligent cause. If one were to ask who the builder of a certain ingenious mechanism was, what would the person think of someone who answered that it had made itself? When a fine work of art or industry is observed, it is stated that it must have been the product of a person of genius, because an advanced intelligence must have presided over its conception. Thus, it is thought that a human being must have made it because it is known that the thing is not above human ability; but it would never occur to anyone to state that it was the product of the mind of a mentally impaired or an illiterate person, much less that it is the work of an animal or a product of chance.
133. Everywhere, the presence of human beings is recognized by their works. The existence of antediluvian humans would not be proven solely by human fossils, but also, and with equal certainty, by the presence, in the ground dating to that age, of objects constructed by humans. A pottery shard, a carved stone, a weapon or a brick would be enough to attest to their presence. By the crudeness or the perfection of a work, one will recognize the degree of intelligence and advancement of those who accomplished it. Thus, if you find yourself in a country inhabited exclusively by primitive peoples and you happen to find a statue that looks as if a Phidias had made it, you would not hesitate to say that, since those primitives are incapable of having made it, it must be the work of an intelligence more fully developed than theirs.
134. Well then! Looking around oneself at the works of nature, observing the foresight, the wisdom and the harmony that preside over all things, one realizes that there is not one of them that does not surpass the highest reach of the human mind. If human beings could not have produced them, it is because they are the product of an intelligence superior to that of humanity, unless it were stated that there are effects without a cause.
135. Some might oppose this with the following argument: Such works of nature are the product of natural forces that act mechanically as a consequence of the laws of attraction and repulsion; the molecules of inert bodies come together and split apart under the imperative of these laws. Plants sprout, blossom, grow and multiply always in the same manner, each according to its own kind in virtue of those same laws; each individual plant resembles the one from which it came; growth, flowering, fructification and coloration depend on material causes such as heat, electricity, light, humidity, etc. The same applies to animals. The heavenly bodies were formed by molecular attraction and continue to move in their orbits due to the effect of gravity. This mechanical regularity in the use of natural forces does not imply an independent intelligence. Humans move their arm whenever they want to and however they want to, but a person who moved it in the same way from birth to death would be an automaton. Hence, the organic forces of nature are purely automatic.
136. All of this is true; however, such forces are effects that must have a cause, and no one claims they comprise the Divinity. They are material and mechanical; they are not intelligent in and of themselves, and this is true also; but they are set in motion, distributed and suited to the needs of each thing by an intelligence that is not human. The useful application of these forces is an intelligent effect, which indicates an intelligent cause. A clock moves with automatic regularity and it is this regularity that makes it useful. The force that causes it to move is completely material and not at all intelligent. But what would the clock be if an intelligence had not combined, calculated and distributed that force to make it move with precision? From the fact that such intelligence is not inside the mechanism of the clock, and from the fact that we do not see it, would it be rational to conclude that the intelligence does not exist? It is proven by its effects. The existence of the clock attests to the existence of a clockmaker; the ingeniousness of the mechanism attests to the clockmaker’s intelligence and knowledge. When the clock gives you the information you need at the proper time, would anyone ever think to say: Now that is a very intelligent clock?
137. The same applies to the mechanism of the universe: God per se does not appear but is affirmed through God’s works. The existence of God is, therefore, a fact acquired not only through revelation but also through the material evidence of the facts. Early peoples did not have a revelation; nevertheless, they instinctively believed in the existence of a super-human power. They saw things that were above human abilities and from them concluded that such things must have come from a being superior to humanity. Were they not more logical than those who claim that such things were made by themselves?
138. It is not given to human beings to probe the inner nature of God. To comprehend God, they still lack the sense that can be acquired only through the complete purification of the spirit. However, if they cannot grasp the essence of God – God’s existence given as a premise – they can, by reasoning, arrive at the knowledge of God’s necessary attributes.
139. Without knowledge of the attributes of God, it will be impossible to comprehend the work of creation. This is the point of departure for all religious beliefs, and for not having referred to them as the lighthouse that could guide them, most religions have erred in their dogmas. Those that have not attributed omnipotence to God have imagined many gods; those that have not attributed supreme goodness to God make God out to be a jealous, angry, partial and vindictive one.
140. God is the supreme and sovereign intelligence. Human intelligence is limited, since humans could neither make, nor could they comprehend everything that exists. God’s intelligence, embracing the infinite, must be infinite. If it were supposed that God was limited at any one point, then one could conceive of a still more intelligent being capable of comprehending and doing what the other could not, and so on and so forth ad infinitum.
141. God is eternal, meaning that God had no beginning and will have no end. If God had had a beginning, God would have had to have sprung from nothingness. But nothingness being nothing, it cannot produce anything; or God would have been created by another previously existing being, and therefore it is this other being that would be God.
142. God is immutable. If God were subject to change, the laws that govern the universe would have no stability.
143. God is immaterial, meaning that God’s nature differs from everything that we call matter. Otherwise, God would not be immutable, because God would be subject to the transformations of matter. God has no form perceivable to our senses; otherwise, God would be matter.
144. God is all-powerful. If God did not possess supreme power, one could conceive of a more powerful being, and so on and so forth until one encountered the being that no other could surpass in power, and that being would be God.
145. God is supremely just and good. The providential wisdom of the divine laws is revealed in the tiniest things as well as in the greatest, and that wisdom allows no doubt about either God’s justice or goodness. Supreme goodness implies supreme justice, because if God were to act unjustly or with partiality in just one instance, or with respect to just one of God’s creatures, God would not be supremely just, and, consequently, would not be supremely good.
Answers to Proposed Questions
A. What is the authority of the Spiritist revelation, since it emanates from beings whose understanding is limited and who are fallible?
Such an objection would be relevant if the revelation consisted only of the teaching of the Spirits, if we had received it from them exclusively and had accepted it with closed eyes; however, the objection becomes pointless from the moment humans add the concourse of their intelligence and reasoning. Moreover, the Spirits limit themselves to placing humans on the path of deductions that they can derive from observing the phenomena. Humans study them and look for the law in them, and they are aided in that endeavor by all categories of spirits, who are collaborators rather than revelators in the usual meaning of the word. All spirits, therefore, regardless of the degree they have reached, can teach us something; but since they are at different degrees of enlightenment, it falls upon us to discern what is good or bad in them, and to profit from what their teachings entail. (Genesis, Ch. I, items 57 and 58)
B. What are the purpose and usefulness of spiritual manifestations?
The Spirits did not come to free human beings from the endeavor of study and research. They did not bring them some kind of ready-made science. Concerning what humans could discover for themselves, the Spirits left them to their own efforts. Their manifestations have served to enable us to understand the unseen world which surrounds us, and which we did not even suspect. In the event we were to believe that spirits were incapable of teaching us anything else, this understanding alone would be of major importance. (Genesis, Ch. I, items 60 and 61)
C. What is the main spiritist argument for the existence of God?
Every intelligent effect must have an intelligent cause. If one were to ask who the builder of a certain ingenious mechanism was, what would the person think of someone who answered that it had made itself? Looking around us, at the works of nature, observing the providence, the wisdom and the harmony that preside over all things, we realize that there is not one of them that does not surpass the highest reach of the human mind. If human beings could not have produced them, it is because they are the product of an intelligence superior to that of humanity, except it was stated that there are effects without a cause. (Genesis, Ch. II, items 3 to 5)
