07/27/2023 – “Life after Death” – “The Argument from Sehnsucht (Longing)”
“Major premise: Every natural, innate desire in us — as distinct from artificial and conditioned desires — corresponds to a real object which can satisfy that desire. If there is hunger, there is food; if thirst, drink; if eros: sex; if curiosity, knowledge; if loneliness, society. It would be surpassing strange if we found creatures falling in love in a sexless world.
Minor premise: There exists in us one desire that nothing in this life can satisfy, a mysterious long (Sensucht) that differs from all others in that its object is undebinable and unattainable in this life.
Although we do not clearly understand exactly what it is that we want, we all do in fact by our nature want paradise, heaven, eternity, the divine life. Augustine said, ‘Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee’ – even if we don’t know who or what ‘Thee’ is. Something deep in our souls is not satisfied with this whole world of time and mortality.
Conclusion: There this ‘more’ — eternal life ” exists.
Complaint about anything shows that there must be an alternative, something more and better. We do not complain about being, or about 2+2 making 4. But we complain about pains and ignorance and poverty. We also complain about time; there is never enough ooff ti — even now, and certainly when we are dying. We want more than time; we want eternity. Therefore there must be eternity. We complain about this world. It is never good enough. We may not attain it, just as we may die of starvation. But the innate hunger for it proves that it exists, just as the innate hunger for food proves that food exists.”
Soli Deo Gloria