The Vitalistic Universe and the Existence of God

We explore the question of the existence of God from an African vitalist perspective. We raise the question of the kind of properties that God may possess if the universe is conceived as expressing vitality. We conceive vitality in two ways, namely (1) as an animating principle which God maximally embodies in himself and which is a perfection indicative of God’s all-round perfection (2) as a universal limiting principle indicative of the existence of an imperfect God who, nevertheless, embodies vitality in a more excellent way than humans and other entities. Adopting aspects of the traditional cosmological and teleological arguments for God’s existence, we argue that a vitalistic conception of the universe ultimately favours belief in the existence of a limited God rather than the existence of a perfect God even as force of argument alone cannot show that the limited God actually exists.