What's the meaning of the word “God”? While it's been given many different meanings, all refer to a being who's superior to ordinary human beings. But so vague a definition won't do. In our view, God is the absolute, that which exists in and by itself, outside of any relationship with anything else. If God exists, He's a being not limited by any other, determined by nothing outside Himself, completely and perfectly self-sufficient. So to ask if God exists is to ask what reason we have for believing in the existence of the absolute.

Of course, many arguments – sometimes divided into a priori and a posteriori – have been advanced to prove God's existence. But this is too unequal a division, for the vast majority of these proofs are a posteriori. Others have distinguished between proofs that are metaphysical and those that are a priori or between two types of a posteriori proofs – physical (which rest on external observation) and moral (which rest on introspection). But such “physical” proofs have no value without metaphysical support. Like a priori proofs, they rely primarily on the principles of reason. So we'll take a different approach, dividing proofs of the existence of God into only two categories – metaphysical and moral. What follows will demonstrate the need for this distinction.

Let's begin by examining metaphysical proofs for the existence of God. The definition we've given allows us to introduce a certain order into the exposition.