God does exist. God is like an energy or principle. Within ethical monotheism, God is the source of all, the ultimate creator of Truth. God can make paradoxes real. While God could do evil, the nature of a perfectly loving God ensures that God would not.

Ideas and concepts like love and hate exist in a way similar to numbers. Numbers are an abstract idea, yet they have practical applications. In mental and spiritual space, we can add numbers conceptually. In reality, if there are two male ducks and two female ducks, then we have four ducks. Existence itself exists, and there must be a cause or reason for existence. This cause or reason may be beyond words and human comprehension, if one does not utilize both logic (mental effort) and faith.

To understand this cause or reason, we can use faith and abstract concepts to point to the ultimate Truth. Just as we can imagine the concept of infinity—though we can never fully count all the numbers within it—our human minds, constrained by time and space, struggle to grasp the infinite. Yet God, being infinite and beyond normal human perception, transcends these limitations. One can have faith that God can count all the numbers in infinity, doing so an infinite number of times with the ability to utilize infinite time.

The Catholic conceptualization of God holds that He is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, and all-present. Even to non-Catholics, this idea can make perfect logical sense if one is willing to use mental effort (logic) and faith. Believing in God is akin to understanding something that can only be fully known through experience. Unlike traveling to a foreign country—which requires a plane ticket and resources—believing in God and knowing His reality requires only faith, combined with mental effort and logic. Without a willingness to embrace faith and continuously apply logic and experience to strengthen it, one may not be able to fully perceive and understand that God exists.

The Arian Controversy: A Challenge to Orthodoxy

The debate began with Arius, a Christian presbyter in Alexandria, who argued that Christ was a created being, distinct and subordinate to God the Father. According to Arius, Jesus was not co-eternal or consubstantial with the Father, meaning he did not share the same divine essence. These views were controversial, as they undermined the Trinitarian belief that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were three persons of one substance.

In 325 AD, the First Council of Nicaea convened to address this theological divide, resulting in the Nicene Creed, which affirmed Christ’s full divinity and co-eternity with the Father. Arius and his supporters were declared heretical, yet the debate persisted for decades, influencing later theological developments and sparking renewed interest in Christ’s nature in subsequent centuries.

Isaac Newton’s Unorthodox Theology

Isaac Newton is best known as a groundbreaking scientist, but he was also a devout and deeply theological thinker. His religious beliefs were far from mainstream, placing him in the company of historical dissenters like Arius. Newton rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, finding it unsupported by Scripture and irrational. He believed the Trinitarian view was a corruption of early Christianity, introduced to accommodate political and ecclesiastical agendas.

Newton’s private theological writings, kept secret during his lifetime, reveal his meticulous study of the Bible and early Church history. He concluded that Christ was subordinate to God the Father, echoing a central theme of Arianism. However, Newton did not fully align with Arius, as he viewed Jesus as divine in a unique sense but still distinct from and lesser than the Father. For Newton, God was one, indivisible, and supreme, while Christ was God’s agent in creation and salvation.

The Influence of Early Christian Thought

Newton’s engagement with early Christian debates highlights his intellectual independence and refusal to accept orthodoxy uncritically. He was drawn to Arianism and other non-Trinitarian traditions because they seemed to align better with his interpretation of Scripture. Newton also critiqued the Council of Nicaea, which he viewed as a political event rather than a purely theological one.

His theological dissent paralleled his scientific revolution, where he challenged established ideas and sought to uncover universal truths. Just as Newton’s Principia redefined physics, his religious studies reflect a desire to purify Christian theology from what he saw as unwarranted complexities and distortions.

Newton’s Legacy in Theology

Newton’s theological writings, though overshadowed by his scientific achievements, offer a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a man who sought harmony between reason, scripture, and faith. His unorthodox views align him with historical dissenters like Arius, demonstrating how the debates of early Christianity continued to influence thought centuries later. Newton’s legacy is not only that of a scientific genius but also a seeker of truth in all its forms, both natural and divine.

At the center of this is the concept that death may not be absolute. If resurrection is possible even once, then it introduces a fracture into the assumption that death is the ultimate boundary. It suggests that what appears final may instead be transitional. For many, this is not merely comforting. It is foundational. It reshapes how one interprets suffering, loss, and the limits of the human condition. The idea does not require constant proof to remain powerful. It persists because it answers a question that nearly every human being encounters: is this truly the end?

Jesus stands as one of the most prominent carriers of this idea. Historical debates continue, and likely always will, regarding the exact nature of his life and the events that followed his death. Yet the cultural and psychological imprint remains undeniable. The narrative of crucifixion followed by resurrection is one of the most widely transmitted stories in human history. It has crossed languages, empires, and centuries. It has been repeated, reinterpreted, and internalized by billions of people. In that sense, its influence does not depend entirely on empirical validation. Its power lies in what it communicates and how deeply it resonates.

There is also something structurally compelling about the narrative itself. It follows a pattern that appears again and again in human storytelling and experience. Descent followed by return. Loss followed by renewal. Apparent defeat followed by unexpected victory. This pattern appears in myths, in literature, and in personal life. The story of Jesus crystallizes this pattern in a particularly vivid and memorable way. It presents the most extreme version of loss, death itself, and then reverses it. That reversal carries symbolic weight even for those who do not interpret it literally.

The persistence of belief in Jesus is therefore not only about doctrine. It is about what the idea represents. Resurrection, in this sense, becomes a kind of anchor point for broader human hopes. It suggests that transformation is possible even when circumstances appear irreversible. It offers a framework in which meaning can survive beyond apparent endings. This is not limited to religious contexts. Variations of the same idea appear in secular thinking as well, in concepts of renewal, reinvention, and the overcoming of limitations through technology or knowledge.

At a deeper level, the idea of resurrection intersects with the human resistance to finality. There is a persistent intuition that existence should not simply terminate without continuation or resolution. This intuition expresses itself in different ways across cultures and philosophies. In the case of Jesus, it is expressed through a specific narrative that has proven unusually durable. The belief does not require that every individual agree on the details. It requires only that the core idea continues to feel meaningful or plausible enough to hold attention.

It is also worth noting that ideas, once embedded, can function independently of their origins. The concept of resurrection has extended beyond its initial context and taken on a life of its own. It influences how people think about justice, about time, and about the future. It shapes expectations about what is possible. In some interpretations, it aligns with modern discussions about extending human life, reversing aging, or preserving consciousness. While these are framed in scientific rather than religious terms, they echo a similar underlying desire to overcome death.

This continuity between ancient narrative and modern aspiration is part of what keeps the figure of Jesus relevant. He becomes not only a religious figure but also a symbolic reference point for a larger human project. That project can be described in many ways, but at its core it involves the refusal to accept death as the final word. Whether approached through faith, philosophy, or science, the question remains the same. Can death be transcended?

The enduring belief in Jesus can therefore be understood as a convergence of narrative power, psychological need, and philosophical implication. The story provides a clear and memorable expression of an idea that humans are already inclined to consider. It reinforces the possibility that what appears fixed may be altered. It keeps alive the notion that limits may not be as absolute as they seem.

In this light, the importance of Jesus is not confined to a single interpretation. For some, he is a divine figure whose resurrection is a literal historical truth. For others, he is a symbolic figure whose story captures something essential about human experience. In both cases, the central idea remains intact. Resurrection stands as a challenge to the assumption of finality. It suggests that endings may not be what they appear to be.

That suggestion is enough to sustain belief across generations. It does not require unanimous agreement or uniform understanding. It requires only that the idea continues to resonate. As long as humans confront mortality and question its permanence, the concept of resurrection will retain its place in the human imagination. And as long as that concept remains, the figure most closely associated with it will continue to matter.

There is a whole theory of counseling and psychotherapy that is labeled as being existential therapy. In philosophy, existential theories (existentialism) have to do with the nature of and reasons for existence. Philosophy, theology and spirituality can all deal with the reasons and nature of why humans exist and the meaning that can be associated with that existence.

Theology and spirituality often deal with and have something to suggest or posit about what happens after one dies. Secular psychology and psychiatry do not do this so much, at least explicitly. However, secular psychology and psychiatry do implicitly theorize and posit about what happens after one dies. This is evident with regards to how individuals employed in the psychiatric and psychological industry treat individuals who attempt suicide or indicate that they will attempt to engage in suicide.

Locked hospitals and hospital wards exist. Adults who attempt to engage in suicide or indicate that they will attempt to engage in suicide are frequently locked inside hospital wards and sometimes forcibly and physically stopped from engaging in behaviors that might result in one’s own human body being unable to support and maintain one’s own human life. This implicitly signals to the individual being held in a ward involuntarily and to the rest of society that living is better than dying. That belief that living is better than the results of dying seems to be a theological, philosophical and/or spiritual belief.

I personally think that it will be quite good if all suicides stop occurring because individuals no longer have reasons to want to engage in suicide. Additionally, I think that it will be good if all individuals who might want to engage in suicide can successfully be persuaded that it is possible to create a life worth living for one’s own self.

I do not support imposing implicit theological, philosophical and spiritual beliefs about death and dying on adults in the form of locked psychiatric wards, civil commitment and psychiatric holds. Hopefully more individuals will take time to critically examine the implicit implications of how suicide is currently treated legally, medically and so forth. Psychiatry and psychology implicitly indicate that living on Earth is better than whatever happens after death; this is made evident through the use of force and coercion to stop adults from engaging in suicide. That it is better to live on Earth, than to experience whatever happens after one dies is a theological and/or spiritual assertion, and should not be physically forced on any adult.