Jean-Paul Sartre, in his lecture-turned-essay The Humanism of Existentialism, writes that existentialism is “nothing else than an attempt to draw all the consequences of a coherent atheistic position” (62). Indeed, throughout his lecture Sartre writes from a perspective firmly rooted in atheism. The absence of God, Sartre says, is what gives way to the principal existentialist belief that man’s existence must precede his essence. A large portion of Sartre’s lecture is spent explaining this implication, with his reasoning as follows: without God to conceive of it, there cannot be such a thing as human nature; man exists first of all, he “turns up, appears on the scene,” and, having no essence defined by God, only after existing can man’s essence be defined – by himself (35-36). Sartre then furthermore argues the inverse is also true, that is, if there is a God then essence must precede existence. This implication is what makes atheistic existentialism “more coherent” than Christian existentialism (35), writes Sartre, but, really, it makes Christian existentialism totally incoherent. This is not a problem for Sartre, as he defends only his atheistic view in his lecture, until, however, he leaves the reader with a bombshell in the final paragraph: “even if God did exist, that would change nothing [about existentialism],” followed by, “the problem of His existence is not the issue” (62). How can this possibly be? The existence or nonexistence of God is clearly a pressing issue, as Sartre argues that His being implies essence precedes existence (the antithesis of existentialism). Sartre has given us a massive contradiction, but I will in fact argue that it is his earlier claim, that God implies humans’ essence precedes existence, which is wrong. The issue of God is not completely contradictory to existentialism: there is indeed a coherent explanation for the theory of Christian existentialism, and Sartre has just made a minor mistake in his lecture.

Sartre uses the analogy of an artisan producing a paper-cutter in order to explain the affair of God creating man. One has a clear idea, when manufacturing a paper-cutter, of what a paper-cutter is, how it can be produced, and what it exactly it ought to be and will be used for (34). Indeed, one does not first create a paper-cutter and then determine its essence – its reason for being, its nature – afterward; so, for this object, we have that essence precedes existence. Sartre says it is similar with God and man, that God, a “superior sort of artisan,” conceives of humankind and our entire essence before our creation: “the concept of man in the mind of God is comparable to the concept of a paper-cutter in the mind of the manufacturer” (35). However, while they are comparable, these two concepts are not the same. Both God and mankind are able to think up an essence in our head, without having to create the thing itself in the physical world (establish its existence) in the first place. When the idea of a paper-cutter was first thought up, no such thing existed tangibly, and yet its essence, right then, came in to being in the mind of its creator. An essence is not a tangible thing, it only exists intersubjectively, somewhere in the ether. Any entity created in the world, then, was presumably conceived of by an artisan – whether God or man – and its essence necessarily precedes its existence. And God is an artisan who created us. However, humankind must be the one exception, because at the moment of our creation God did not know exactly what we would be used for, nor what our nature will be. Human beings are uniquely different because we have free will, and a being with free will cannot possibly have its entire essence defined ahead of time. The way in which one acts is certainly part of one’s essence, and how mankind acts is continually being defined by the individual as they exist. It is not so with a paper-cutter, nor with any other object: they cannot change their nature, their being, as they go on existing.

It is impossible to ignore the contradiction between God’s omnipotence and human beings’ free will. If we have freedom from God when making a choice, then He cannot know what we will choose, and therefore is not all powerful. These two concepts are thus seemingly incompatible; however, to that regard I say that if God is omnipotent, He can do anything, and certainly that includes granting us free will while remaining omnipotent (though it logically does not make sense). As a child, I heard of God’s all-powerfulness and my mind jumped to this silly example: surely He can’t do anything – what about wearing clothes and not wearing clothes at the same time? But, yes, being all-powerful means He can do this, in a similar fashion to how, when one is exercising their free will, God both knows exactly what they will choose and doesn’t know at the same time. In any case, if this argument is unconvincing, all existentialists – Christian or atheist – must nonetheless believe in free will, since its absence renders existentialism meaningless. Existence cannot really precede essence if all of one’s existence is predetermined from the start. Ultimately, human beings must have freedom, and God must not have predetermined all of our actions – such would go against all Western philosophical and religious beliefs. God has some idea of the kind of things we might do, but in all decisions we are free to choose and thus define our own essence through our existence. When one makes a paper-cutter, it does not have a will to decide that it would rather not cut paper, or to say, “I will determine my own actions – watch this!” Human beings do, and, therefore, though God may exist, it is still not the case that our essence precedes existence. This is what Sartre is getting at when he says God’s existence would “change nothing” about existentialism.

One might still argue that God, in conceiving of mankind, defines most of our essence (before our existence) even though we do have free will. Perhaps we can make our own choices, but we cannot define ourselves – God has already defined what a human being is. Indeed, biology and psychology tell us that there are some universal qualities all humans share, but does this mean there is some rigorous formula, some predefined essence for what a human being is? What could be the full list of criteria for being a human? Could such a formula exist? No, or, at least, no one has yet come up with such a complete set of criteria. Regarding existentialism, this lack of any “human formula” is especially pertinent in terms of human beings’ innate sense of ethics. The entire essence of each person’s morality cannot be boiled down to a single recipe, nor can it defined by God if we get to make our own decisions; it is created as we go through life. Our morality is the most important essence of all because it defines how we relate to other human beings, and it is established as we relate to other beings – it cannot possibly be established by God beforehand. Thus, as Sartre writes, “Man makes himself. He isn’t ready made at the start” (56). And if our morality is not defined by God, then God cannot define our entire essence when he conceives of mankind, and therefore our existence still takes precedence.

The point at which a belief in God comes in to play in existentialism is that now there may be some higher set of values we can ascribe to. The problem is, we just don’t know what they are. From a Christian belief, they are told to us by God in the bible, but of course the bible is full of strange, professed values, and one still has to pick which values to ascribe to using whatever means might be available. If there are a set of higher, objective ethical values, then one might argue that God (in light of these) has created a human nature that tends towards living out such values. While we are free to make moral decisions, each of us is only operating in the moral sphere created by Him; our essence is defined by that moral space and the values created by Him, which we tend towards. The obvious rebuttal to this is that, clearly, we can drift away from higher moral truths. Any value one might claim is universal – not killing the innocent, sharing when one has an excess, for example – is thrown out by at least some human being, and this shows that man has the final say in his essence, not God. This is a real reason for despair: an eternal punishment could be awaiting us if one defines one’s essence poorly. In the former case of the atheistic mindset, it seems there is less reason for despair and anguish. If, as Sartre writes, we can never choose to do evil, then what is there to worry about? On the one hand, yes, the responsibility to choose correctly in the ethical sense in immense. However, one then remembers that Sartre says there is no objectively correct choice, but whatever one chooses is right, simply by having chosen it, and is thus always being absolved by himself. The theory of God existing and our existence preceding our essence is truly the only scary one: God lurks in the background, watching us as we try to make ourselves into something good.

Sartre’s lecture is intriguing in that its final contradictory paragraph argues God’s existence is not a big issue. He defends existentialism from its common critiques, but does so from an atheistic perspective, not explaining the Christian existentialist viewpoint. In fact, he essentially states that the Christian theory of existentialism makes no sense, since if there were a God He would define mankind’s essence before creating us. Perhaps, though, Sartre is arguing this claim from the perspective of a typical Western philosophical mindset and does not believe it himself. Ultimately, in having free will – whether God exists or not – human beings must make themselves through action. Additionally, the reason God’s existence is not an issue is because even if He exists and has some set of moral truths for us, we cannot ever really know them. Any presumed communication between God and man is still up to man to interpret as true or not (or perhaps just a hallucination). Man still must decide for himself, and for all of mankind, what is good, and he does so through his existence.