“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” While the world definitely had a beginning, there’s a question of whether we can prove this by reason alone (i.e., by philosophical arguments).

Defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument often use an argument like this one, which is found in William Lane Craig’s book Reasonable Faith:

1) An actually infinite number of things cannot exist.

2) A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things.

3) Therefore, a beginningless series of events in time cannot exist.

I have a problem with the first premise, but that’s a topic for another time. Here I’d like to look at Craig’s second premise.

Is it true that a beginningless series of events entails an actually infinite number of things?

At first glance, the answer would seem to be yes, but the reality is more complex.

The Nature of Time

The answer depends on your view of time. Here we need to consider two major theories of time, which are known as eternalism and presentism.

Eternalism holds that all of time exists. The past, the present, and the future are all real from the ultimate perspective—that is, from the eternal perspective outside of time. We may only experience history one bit at a time, but from the “eternal now” that God dwells in, all moments of time are equally real.

Presentism (as we will be using the term) holds that, from the ultimate perspective, the only time that exists is right now—the present. The past used to be real, but it is no longer. And the future will exist, but it does not yet. Since neither the past nor the future are real, they do not exist in any sense of the word. If you asked God—from his ultimate perspective—“What is real in the created order?” he would answer, “Only the present.”

The Eternalist Option

Supposing that eternalism is true, Craig’s second premise would be true. From the eternal perspective outside of time, God would see an infinite series of past events laid out before him.

Or, if you wish to avoid the question of how God’s knowledge works then, as the Creator, God would be causing that infinite series of past events to exist.

They would all be equally real—equally actual—from his perspective, and—since they have no beginning—they would be infinite. Being both actual and infinite, the events of a beginningless history would represent an actual infinity. Thus, the second premise would be true.

But for a classical Christian theist, there would be a problem, because Christianity teaches that God will give people endless life. While human beings may come into existence at the moment of their conception, they will never pass out of existence.

Therefore, humans have an endless future. And that future also will be equally real to God.

From his eternal perspective outside of time, God sees and creates all the moments of our endless future. They are both real—actual—from his perspective, and they are infinite in number. Being both actual and infinite, the moments of our future also would be an actual infinity.

From the viewpoint of a classical Christian theist, eternalism implies the existence of an actual infinity of future moments, giving such theists reason to challenge Craig’s first premise (that an actual infinity can’t exist).

However, this post is only examining his second premise, so let’s consider the other option we need to look at.

The Presentist Option

If only the present exists, is it true that a beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things?

No. At least not an actual infinity of real things.

The reason is that, on the presentist view, only one moment of time exists. No past moments exist, and no future moments exist.

It doesn’t matter how many events took place in the past, because those events are no longer real. As soon as a new moment arrived, all the events taking place in the previous moment evaporated and are no longer actual.

Therefore, it doesn’t matter how many past events there have been—it could be a finite number or an infinite number—because they have all ceased to be actual. The only actual events are those occurring in the present.

So, if presentism is true, the second premise of Craig’s argument is false if applied to concrete, real things like events. A beginningless series of events in time does not entail an actually infinite number of such things because those things are no longer actual.

For a collection of things to be actually infinite, they all have to be actual from some perspective. On eternalism, that can happen, because all the moments of time are actual from the eternal perspective outside of time.

But it can’t happen on presentism, because this view holds that, from the ultimate perspective, only one moment is real, and one is a finite number. This view entails that no actual infinity of moments in time exists, because only one moment of time is actual.

This is why Aristotle could believe that the world did have an infinite history. Even though he thought an actually infinite number of things couldn’t exist at the same time, history didn’t present that problem, because one moment passed out of existence when another came into it, so the total number of moments was always finite.

The Counting Argument

In the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, Craig and coauthor James Sinclair respond to this issue with two lines of thought.

The first is based on counting, and their reasoning (omitting examples for brevity) goes like this:

[W]e may take it as a datum that the presentist can accurately count things that have existed but no longer exist. . . .

The nonexistence of such things or events is no hindrance to their being enumerated. . . .

So in a beginningless series of past events of equal duration, the number of past events must be infinite, for it is larger than any natural number. . . .

[I]f we consider all the events in an infinite temporal regress of events, they constitute an actual infinite.

It’s true that a presentist can count things that have existed but no longer exist (e.g., the number of days that have elapsed so far this year)—and their nonexistence doesn’t prevent this counting (just look at a calendar!).

The problem comes in the third statement, because it can be understood in more than one way.

In terms of what is real on the presentist view, the number of past events is not infinite, because no past events exist. That’s a key point of presentism.

If you want to talk about an infinite number of past events, you have to shift from speaking of events that do exist to those that have existed, and those aren’t the same thing.

Yes, on presentism, we could speak of an infinite collection of events that were real but aren’t anymore. And that’s the point: They aren’t real.

This points to a second way of reading the statement when Craig and Sinclair speak of “the number of past events.”

If we are talking about the number of events, then we’re no longer talking about the events themselves. Instead, we’re talking about a number, which raises a question.

What Are Numbers?

Mathematicians and philosophers have a variety of views about what numbers are. Some classify them as “abstract objects” that exist independent of the mind. Others think of them as mental constructs of some kind. There are many variations on these views.

Whatever the case may be, Craig doesn’t see infinite numbers themselves being a problem.

In his talks and writings, he has frequently said that he doesn’t have a problem with the mathematics of infinity—that modern mathematical concepts dealing with the infinite are fine and useful as concepts. Thus, the infinite set of natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3 . . . ) is a useful concept.

Craig doesn’t reject the idea that the set of natural numbers is actually infinite. It’s just not the kind of actual infinity that causes a problem for him because numbers aren’t concrete objects in the real world.

So, actual infinities of the numerical order are fine, in which case it’s fine if the number of past events is actually infinite. It’s an actual infinity of events themselves that he says can’t be part of the real world.

And on presentism, they’re not. Past events would have to be understood in some other way. They might be abstract objects, like many mathematicians hold numbers to be. Or they might be purely mental concepts at this point, as others regard numbers.

Whatever is the case, on presentism they do not exist in the real world. And so, whatever kind of infinity a beginningless universe would involve, it doesn’t violate the principle that—while actual infinities may exist in an abstract way, as in mathematics—they don’t exist in the real world.

Back to the Future

There is another way of illustrating the problem with the argument from counting, and it involves considering the number of future events.

If the universe can’t have a beginningless past because an infinite set of non-real past events can’t exist, then we also can’t have an endless future, because that entails an infinite set of non-real future events.

The argument simply involves shifting from events that used to be real to those that will be real.

If God gives people endless life, then the number of days that we will experience in the future is infinite. As the hymn says about heaven,

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise,

Than when we first begun.

As Craig and Sinclair acknowledge:

It might rightly be pointed out that on presentism there are no future events and so no series of future events. Therefore, the number of future events is simply zero. . . . [O]n presentism, the past is as unreal as the future and, therefore, the number of past events could, with equal justification, be said to be zero. It might be said that at least there have been past events, and so they can be numbered. But by the same token there will be future events, so why can they not be numbered? Accordingly, one might be tempted to say that in an endless future there will be an actually infinite number of events, just as in a beginningless past there have been an actually infinite number of events.

So, why should an infinite number of future events be considered more permissible for a presentist than an infinite number of past ones?

Possible vs. Actual Infinity

Craig and Sinclair’s response involves the difference between an actual infinity (where an unlimited number of elements exist simultaneously) and a potential infinity (where an unlimited number of elements don’t exist simultaneously). They write:

[T]here never will be an actually infinite number of [future] events since it is impossible to count to infinity. The only sense in which there will be an infinite number of events is that the series of events will go toward infinity as a limit. But that is the concept of a potential infinite, not an actual infinite. Here the objectivity of temporal becoming makes itself felt. For as a result of the arrow of time, the series of events later than any arbitrarily selected past event is properly to be regarded as potentially infinite, that is to say, finite but indefinitely increasing toward infinity as a limit.

This reasoning is mistaken. It is false to say that “the series of events later than any arbitrarily selected past event is . . . finite but indefinitely increasing toward infinity as a limit.”

No. If you arbitrarily select any event in time and consider the sequence of later events, they do not “indefinitely increase toward infinity.” They are always infinite.

Consider January 1, 1900. On the Christian view, how many days of endless life will there be after that? An infinite number.

Consider January 1, 2000. How many days are to come? Again, an infinite number.

Consider January 1, 2100. How many days follow? Still an infinite number.

As the hymn says, “We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun!”

What Craig and Sinclair are thinking of is the fact that, if you pick a date and go any arbitrary distance into the future, your destination will still be a finite number of days from your starting point.

Thus, the number of days that has elapsed between the start and finish of your journey grows toward infinity but never gets there, making this span of days a potential rather than actual infinity.

But it does not follow—and is simply wrong—that the complete set of future days is only potentially infinite. To show this, just give each day a number: Today is 0, tomorrow is 1, the next day is 2, and so on. We can thus map the set of future days onto the set of natural numbers, which is actually rather than potentially infinite.

Take any day you like, and on the Christian view the quantity of days that will be after it is identical to the quantity of natural numbers.

The quantity of days that will be—like the quantity of natural numbers—does not grow. This quantity just is.

Unless you say—contrary to the teaching of the Christian faith—that the number of future days is finite and God won’t give us endless life, then there is an actual infinity of future days.

And if a presentist wants to affirm an actual infinity of currently-not-real days that will be, he must allow the possibility of an actual infinity of currently-not-real days that have been.

Conclusion

In summary, Craig’s second premise was:

2) A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things.

Whether this is true will depend on one’s view of time and the status of non-real things.

On eternalism, a beginningless series of events in time would involve an actually infinite number of things, for all these moments exist from God’s perspective outside of time. But so would the actually infinite number of future days that God promises us, giving the eternalist reason to reject the idea that an actual infinity cannot exist in the real world.

On presentism, a beginningless series of events in time would not involve an actual infinity of events existing in the real world, because presentism holds that the past does not exist.

Such a series of events might result in an actual infinity of (past) non-existent days, but so would the actual infinity of (future) non-existent days. And if a Christian allows one set of non-existent days, the other must be allowed as well.

The fact that the past days are countable is irrelevant, because so are the future days.

And it is simply false to say that the days that will be are only potentially infinite. They’re not. Right now, the number of days that will be is actually infinite, the same way the set of natural numbers is actually infinite.

Based on what we’ve seen here, presentism does not exclude an infinite past any more than it does an infinite future.

In recent years, one of the most popular arguments for the existence of God has been the Kalaam cosmological argument.

Ultimately, I think this argument is successful, but many of the ways it has been employed are unsuccessful.

It is an argument that needs to be used carefully—with the proper qualifiers.

Stating the Argument

We can state the Kalaam argument like this:

1) Everything that has a beginning has a cause.

2) The universe has a beginning.

3) Therefore, the universe has a cause (which would be God).

Is this argument valid? Is it sound?

Valid arguments are ones that use a correct logical form—regardless of whether their premises are true. The Kalaam argument falls into this category, which is not disputed by its critics.

If a valid argument has true premises, then its conclusion also will be true. Valid arguments that have true premises are called sound arguments, and I agree that the argument’s premises are true:

1) It is true that whatever has a beginning has a cause.

2) And it is true that the universe has a beginning (approximately 13.8 billion years ago, according to Big Bang cosmology).

Since the Kalaam argument is valid and has true premises, it is a sound argument.

Using the Argument Apologetically

The Kalaam argument is sound from the perspective of logic, but how useful is it from the perspective of apologetics? There are many arguments that are sound, but sometimes they are not very useful in practice.

For example, in their famous book Principia Mathematica, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead spend the first 360 pages of the book covering basic principles that build up to them rigorously proving that 1 + 1 = 2.

While their book is of interest to mathematicians, and their proof extremely well thought-out, it is so complex that it is not of practical use for a popular audience. For ordinary people, there are much simpler ways to prove that 1 + 1 = 2. (If needed, just put one apple on a table, put another one next to it, and count the apples both individually and together.)

Complexity is not the only thing that can limit an argument’s usefulness. Another is the willingness of people to grant the truth of its premises. Here is where some of the limitations of the Kalaam argument appear. While it is very simple to state and understand, defending the premises is more involved.

The First Premise

The first premise—that everything that has a beginning has a cause—is intuitive and is accepted by most people.

Some object to this premise on philosophical grounds or on scientific ones, such as by pointing to the randomness of quantum physics.

Both the philosophical and the scientific arguments can get technical quickly, but a skilled apologist—at least one who is actually familiar with quantum mechanics (!)—would still be able to navigate such objections without getting too far over the heads of a popular audience.

This—plus the fact that a popular audience’s sympathies will be with the first premise—mean that the argument retains its usefulness with a general audience.

The Second Premise

The second premise—that the universe had a beginning—is also widely accepted today, due in large part to Big Bang cosmology. A popular audience will thus be generally sympathetic to the second premise.

That’s apologetically useful, but we need to look more closely at how the second premise can be supported when challenged.

Since “The Bible says the universe has a beginning” will not be convincing to those who are not already believers, there are two approaches to doing this—the scientific and the philosophical.

The Scientific Approach

For an apologist, the approach here is straight forward: For a popular level audience, simply present a popular-level account of the evidence that has led cosmologists to conclude that the Big Bang occurred.

On this front, the principal danger for the apologist is overselling the evidence in one of several ways.

First, many apologists do not keep up with developments in cosmology, and they may be relying on an outdated account of the Big Bang.

For example, about 40 years ago, it was common to hear cosmologists speak of the Big Bang as an event that involved a singularity—where all matter was compressed into a point of infinite density and when space and time suddenly sprang into existence.

That view is no longer standard in cosmology, and today no apologist should be speaking as if this is what the science shows. Apologists need to be familiar with the current state of cosmological thought (as well as common misunderstandings of the Big Bang) and avoid misrepresenting current cosmological views.

Thus, they should not say that the Big Bang is proof that the universe had an absolute beginning. While the Big Bang is consistent with an absolute beginning, cosmologists have not been able to rule out options like there being a prior universe.

One way apologists have dealt with this concern is to point to the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem, which seeks to show that—on certain assumptions—even if there were one or more prior universes, there can’t be an unlimited number of them.

It’s fair to point to this theorem, but it would be a mistake for an apologist to present it as final proof, because the theorem depends on certain assumptions (e.g., that the universe has—on average—been expanding throughout its history) that cannot be taken for granted.

Further, apologists should be aware that authors of the theorem—Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin—do not agree that it shows the universe had to have a beginning. Guth apparently believes that the universe does not have a beginning, and Vilenkin states that all the theorem shows is that the expansion of the universe had to have a beginning, not the universe itself.

It thus would misrepresent the BGV theorem as showing that the scientific community has concluded that the universe had to have a beginning, even if it were before the Big Bang. (It also would be apologetically dangerous and foolish to do so, as the facts I’ve just mentioned could be thrown in the apologist’s face, discrediting him before his audience.)

Most fundamentally, the findings of science are always provisional, and the history of science contains innumerable cases where scientific opinion as reversed as new evidence has been found.

Consequently, apologists should never sell Big Bang cosmology—or any other aspect of science—as final “proof.”

This does not mean that apologists can’t appeal to scientific evidence. When the findings of science point in the direction aspects of the Faith, it is entirely fair to point that out. They just must not be oversold.

The Philosophical Approach

Prior to the mid-20^th century, Big Bang cosmology had not been developed, and the scientific approach to defending the Kalaam argument’s second premise was not available.

Consequently, earlier discussions relied on philosophical arguments to try to show that the universe must have a beginning.

Such arguments remain a major part of the discussion today, and new philosophical ways of defending the second premise have been proposed.

Authors have different opinions about how well these work, but in studying them, I find myself agreeing with St. Thomas Aquinas that they do not. Thus far, I have not discovered any philosophical argument—ancient or modern—that I thought proved its case.

This is not to say that they don’t have superficial appeal. They do; otherwise, people wouldn’t propose them.

But when one thinks them through carefully, they all contain hidden flaws that keep them from succeeding—some of which are being discussed in this series.

I thus do not rely on philosophical arguments in my own presentation of the Kalaam argument.

Conclusion

The Kalaam cosmological argument is a valid and sound argument. It does prove that the universe has a cause, which can meaningfully be called God.

As a result, it can be used by apologists, and its simplicity makes it particularly attractive.

I use it myself, such as in my short, popular-level book The Words of Eternal Life.

However, the argument needs to be presented carefully. The scientific evidence we currently have is consistent with and suggestive of the world having a beginning in the finite past, though this evidence must not be oversold.

The philosophical arguments for the universe having a beginning are much more problematic. I do not believe that the ones developed to date work, and so I do not use them.

I thus advise other apologists to think carefully before doing so and to rigorously test these arguments: Seek out counterarguments, carefully consider them, and see if you can show why the arguments don’t work.

It is not enough that we find an argument convenient or initially plausible. We owe it to the truth, and honesty in doing apologetics compels us not to use arguments just because we want them to be true.

God created the universe a finite time ago, but there’s a question of whether we can prove this by reason alone.

Defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument often claim that the universe cannot have an infinite history because “traversing an infinite” is impossible.

In his book Reasonable Faith (pp. 120-124), William Lane Craig puts the argument this way

1. The series of events in time is a collection formed by adding one member after another

2. A collection formed by adding one member after another cannot be actually infinite

3. Therefore, the series of events in time cannot be actually infinite.

The second premise of this argument is the one that deals with “traversing an infinite.” Craig writes:

Sometimes this problem is described as the impossibility of traversing the infinite.

Still a third way of describing it is saying that you can’t form infinity “by successive addition.”

Whatever expression you prefer, each of these expressions refer to the intuition people commonly have about infinity—that “you can’t get there from here.”

Where Is “Here”?

If you can’t get to infinity from here, where is “here”?

However you want to phrase the problem—getting there from here, traversing an infinite, or successive addition, this is a question that needs to be answered.

Let’s take another look at the second premise:

2. A collection formed by adding one member after another cannot be actually infinite

What does it mean to “form” a collection by adding one member after another?

Perhaps the most natural way to take this would be to form such a collection from nothing. That is, you start with zero elements in the collection (or maybe one element) and then successively add one new member after another.

And it’s quite true that, if you form a collection this way, you will never arrive at an infinite number of members. No matter how many elements you add to the collection, one at a time, the collection will always have a finite number of elements.

This can be seen through a simple counting exercise. If you start with 0 and then keep adding +1, you’ll get the standard number line:

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 . . .

But no matter how many times you add +1, the resulting number will always be finite—just one unit larger than the previous finite number.

However, there is a problem . . .

The First-and-Last Fallacy

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, any string of natural numbers that has both a first and a last element is—by definition—finite.

Any time you specify a first natural number and a last natural number, the space between them is limited.

It thus would be fallacious reasoning to envision an infinite timeline with both first and last elements.

Yet it is very easy to let the idea of an infinite past having a beginning somewhere “infinitely far back” unintentionally sneak back into discussions of the Kalaam argument.

It can easily happen without people being aware of it, and often our language is to blame:

• The natural sense of the word “traverse” suggests going from one point to another, suggesting both a beginning point and an end point.
• So does the idea of “forming” an infinite collection. If we imagine forming a collection, we naturally envision starting with nothing (a collection with no members) and then adding things to it.
• And if we think of getting to infinity “from here,” we naturally think of a starting point in the finite realm (“here”) and an end point (“infinity”).

Without at all meaning to, it’s thus very easy to fall into the trap of subconsciously supposing both a starting point and an ending point in a supposedly infinite history.

This happens often enough that I’ve called it the First-and-Last Fallacy.

Taking No Beginning Seriously

In Reasonable Faith, Craig denies that this is how his argument should be understood. He writes:

Mackie and Sobel object that this sort of argument illicitly presupposes an infinitely distant starting point in the past and then pronounces it impossible to travel from that point to today. But if the past is infinite, they say, then there would be no starting point whatever, not even an infinitely distant one. Nevertheless, from any given point in the past, there is only a finite distance to the present, which is easily “traversed.” But in fact no proponent of the kalam argument of whom I am aware has assumed that there was an infinitely distant starting point in the past. The fact that there is no beginning at all, not even an infinitely distant one, seems only to make the problem worse, not better (boldface added).

Craig thus wishes us to understand his argument not as forming an infinite collection of past historical moments from an infinitely distant starting point—i.e., from a beginning.

It’s good that he is clear on this, because otherwise his second premise would commit the First-and-Last Fallacy.

But does this really make things worse rather than better?

It would seem not.

Formed from What?

If we are not to envision a collection being “formed” from nothing by successive addition, then it must obviously be formed from something. Namely, it must be formed from another, already existing collection.

For example, suppose I have a complete run of my favorite comic book, The Legion of Super-Heroes. Let’s say that, as of the current month, it consists of issue #1 to issue #236.

Then, next month, issue #237 comes out, so I purchase it and add it to my collection. I now have a new, larger collection that was “formed” by adding one new member to my previous collection.

Now let’s apply that to the situation of an infinite history. Suppose that the current moment—“now”—is the last element of an infinite collection of previous moments (with no beginning moment).

How was this collection formed?

Obviously, it was formed from a previous collection that included all of the past moments except the current one.

Let’s give these things some names:

• Let P be the collection of all the past moments
• Let 1 represent the current moment
• And let E represent the collection of all the moments that have ever existed

With those terms in place, it’s clear that:

P + 1 = E

We thus can form one collection (E) from another collection (P) by adding a member to it.

But Can It Be Infinite?

Now we come to Craig’s second premise, which said that you can’t form an actually infinite collection by adding one member after another.

If you imagine forming the collection from nothing—and thus commit the First-and-Last Fallacy—then this is true.

But it’s not true if you avoid the fallacy and imagine forming an actually infinite collection from a previous collection by adding to it.

The previous collection just needs to be actually infinite as well. If P is an actually infinite collection and you add 1 to it, E will be actually infinite as well.

And this is what we find in the case of an infinite past. Let us envision an infinite past as the set of all negative numbers, ending in the present, “0” moment:

. . . -7, -6, -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0.

The set of all the numbers below 0 is infinite, but so is the set of all numbers below -1, all the numbers below -2, and so on. Each of these collections is actually infinite, and so we can form a new, actually infinite set by taking one of them and adding a new member to it.

Understood this way, Craig’s second premise is simply false. You can form an actually infinite collection by adding new members to an actually infinite collection—which is what we would have in the case of a universe with an infinite past, one that really does not have a starting point.

Conclusion

What we make of Craig’s argument will depend on how we take its second premise.

Taken in what may be the most natural way (forming an infinite collection from nothing—or from any finite amount—by successive addition), will result in the argument committing the First-and-Last Fallacy.

But if we take it in the less obvious way (forming an infinite collection by adding to an already infinite collection), then the second premise is simply false.

There may be other grounds—other arguments—by which one might try to show that the universe cannot have an infinite past.

But the argument from “successive addition,” “traversing an infinite,” or “getting there from here” does not work.

Depending on how you interpret it, the argument either commits a fallacy or uses a false premise.

Sometimes defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument defend its second premise (i.e., that the world couldn’t have an infinite past) by proposing a paradox involving counting.

The line of reasoning goes something like this:

A. Suppose that the universe has an infinite history (the kind of history you’d need to do an infinite countdown).

B. Suppose that a person has been counting down the infinite set of negative numbers (. . . -3, -2, -1) for all eternity, and they finish today, so today’s number is 0. It took them an infinite amount of time to reach 0 in the present.

C. Now suppose that we go back in time to yesterday. How much time was there before yesterday? Also an infinite amount of time! Given that, they could have counted down the infinite set of negative numbers so that they reached 0 yesterday instead of today!

D. So, we have a paradox: If the person had been counting down the negative numbers for all eternity, they could have finished today—or yesterday—or on any other day in the past, since there was always an infinite number of days before that.

E. There needs to be a sufficient reason why they stop on the day they did.

The Kalaam defender then challenges the Kalaam skeptic to name the sufficient reason, and if he’s not convinced by the answer, he rejects Step A of the argument—the idea that the universe has an infinite history—since there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with Steps B, C, D, or E.

What’s problematic about this line of reasoning?

Arbitrary Labels

To see what the answer is, we need to think about the arbitrariness of the labels involved in the countdown.

In Part B, the Kalaam defender chose to use the set of negative numbers, but he could have chosen something else.

For example, he could have chosen the digits of the irrational number pi (3.14159 . . . ) in reverse order (. . . 9, 5, 1, 4, 1, 3), in which case today’s number would be 3.

Or he could have used the Golden Ratio and chosen the digits of the irrational number phi (1.61803 . . . ) and reversed them, in which case today’s number would be 1.

Or he could have picked anything else, such as an infinitely long string of random numbers—or random words—or random symbols.

Any string will do for an infinite count of the past—as long as it’s an infinitely long string.

The point we learn from this is that the labels we apply to particular days are arbitrary. It depends entirely on what labels we choose. We can pick any labels we want and use them for any set of days we want.

Forward Counts

To underscore this point, let’s consider counts that go forward in time rather than backwards.

For example, we could choose the set of natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3 . . . ), assigning 0 to today, 1 to tomorrow, 2 to the day after that, and so on.

Or we could use the digits of pi, in which case today would be 3, tomorrow 1, the day after that 4, etc.

Or the digits of phi, so today would be 1, tomorrow 6, the day after that 1, etc.

Or we could use something else—such as an infinite string of random numbers, words, or symbols.

We can pick whatever labels for a set of days, beginning with today, that we want!

A Count-Up Paradox

Now consider the following line of reasoning:

A*. Suppose that the universe has an infinite future (the kind of future you’d need to do an infinite count going forwards).

B*. Suppose that a person starts counting the infinite set of natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3 . . . ) today, so that today’s number is 0, tomorrow’s is 1, the next day is 2, etc.

C*. Now suppose that we go forward in time to tomorrow. How much time is there left in the future of the universe? Also an infinite amount of time! Given that, the person could start their count of the infinite set of whole numbers so that they begin with 0 tomorrow instead of today!

D*. So, we have a paradox: If the person counts the set of whole numbers for all eternity, they could have started today—or tomorrow—or on any other day in the future, since there will always be an infinite number of days after that.

E*. There needs to be a sufficient reason why they start on the day they do.

If we’re challenged to name the sufficient reason why the person starts counting on the day they do, what will our answer be?

Mine would be, “Because that’s how you set up the thought experiment! You made this determination in Step B*. You could have chosen to start the count on any day you wanted (today, tomorrow, yesterday—or any other day), and you chose the set of numbers that would be used to label these days. Your choices are the sufficient reason for why the count starts and why it labels the days the way it does.”

Turn About Is Fair Play

And this is the answer to the original line of reasoning we presented. The same logic is present in A-E that is present in A*-E*, so the answer is the same.

The reason that the original countdown stopped today, which was labelled 0, is because those were the choices made in Step B. The person setting up the thought experiment chose that the countdown stop today, and he chose that it would stop with 0.

Once again, it is the choices that the person made that determine when the count stops and what it stops on.

There is only a “paradox” here if you lose sight of the fact that these choices were made and demand a sufficient reason over and above them.

To say—in the first case—“I know I made these choices in Step B, but I want a reason over and above that to explain why the countdown doesn’t stop on another day” is the same as saying—in the second case—“I know I made these choices in Step B*, but I want a reason over and above that to explain why the count doesn’t start on another day.”

No such reasons are needed. The choices made in Step B are sufficient to explain why the countdown works the way it does, just as the choices made in Step B* are sufficient to explain why the count-up works the way it does.

So, like a lot of paradoxes, the “countdown paradox” has a perfectly obvious solution once you think about it.

God as the Decider

Now let’s apply this to the question of whether God could have created the universe with an infinite past. In this case, we’re doing a thought experiment where God is the one making the choices.

A**. Suppose that God creates a universe with an infinite past (the kind you need for an infinite countdown).

B**. Suppose that–within this timeline–God creates a person (or angel, or computer, or whatever) that counts down the negative numbers so that he finishes today, and today’s number is 0.

Why didn’t the person stop counting on some other day or with some other number? Because that’s not what God chose. He chose to have it happen this way, with the person counting the number -2 two days ago, the number -1 one day ago, and the number 0 today.

Could he have have done it differently? Absolutely! God could have made different choices!

In fact–to go beyond what we’ve stated thus far–God may have created other people doing just that.

C**. Suppose that God also created a second person who has been counting for all eternity such that he ended yesterday with the number 0.

D**. Suppose that God further created a third person who has been counting for all eternity such that he ended two days ago with the number 0.

These are also possible, and we can modify our thought experiment such that God creates any number of people we like, finishing an infinite count on any day we like, with any number (or word or symbol) we like.

In each case, it is God’s choice that is the sufficient reason why the person finished when he did and with what he did.

The situation is parallel to the following:

A***. Suppose that God creates a universe with an infinite future (the kind you need to do an infinite count going forward).

B***. Suppose that–within this timeline–God creates a person who starts an infinite count today, beginning with the number 0.

As before, we can include any number of counters we want:

C***. Suppose that God also creates a second person who begins counting tomorrow, starting with the number 0.

D***. Suppose that God further creates a third person who begins counting the day after tomorrow, starting with the number 0.

As before, we can modify our thought experiment to include any number of counters we want, they can start on any day we want, and they can start with whatever number (or word or symbol) that we want.

Yet in these scenarios, it is God’s choices that determine who is created, when they start counting, and how the count works. These choices are the only reasons we need to explain what is happening.

If there is no unsolvable paradox preventing the scenarios described in A***-D***, then there is no unsolvable paradox preventing the scenarios described in A**-D**–or in any of the previous scenarios we’ve covered.

There just is no problem with the idea of a person doing an infinite countdown ending today–any more than there is with the idea of a person beginning an infinite countdown today.

Do they?

Before we began, I want to lay my cards on the table and say that I’m a fan of Sabine Hossenfelder. She’s smart, well qualified, and a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.

I appreciate her commitment to explaining physics in comprehensible terms and her willingness to challenge ideas that are fashionable in the physics community but that are not well supported by evidence.

She also doesn’t reject religious claims out of hand—as many do. Instead, she typically concludes that they are beyond what science can tell us, one way or the other.

A Finely Tuned Universe?

In her recent video, she notes that many people argue that the laws of physics that govern our universe seem finely tuned to allow life to exist. Even slight changes in the constants they involve would prevent life from ever arising.

An example she cites is that if the cosmological constant (i.e., the energy density of space) were too large, galaxies would never form.

Similarly, if the electromagnetic force was too strong, nuclear fusion would not light up stars.

Given all the values we can imagine these constants having, it seems unlikely that the laws that govern our universe would be finely tuned to allow life to exist just by random chance, so the question is how to explain this.

God or the Multiverse?

One proposed explanation is that the universe isn’t finely tuned by chance. It’s finely tuned by design.

Some entity with immense, universe-spanning power (i.e., God) designed the universe to be this way, and in religious circles, this type of argument is known as a “design argument” for God’s existence.

Another proposed explanation is that our universe is finely tuned for life by chance. But since it would be improbable to get a finely tuned universe with a single throw of the dice, it’s inferred that there must be other throws of the dice.

In other words, our universe is just one of countless universes that contain other laws and constants, and we just happen to be living in a universe where the things happen to come up right for life to exist.

(After all, we wouldn’t be here if they didn’t.)

Such a collection of universes is known as a multiverse.

God and the Multiverse?

From a religious perspective, the multiverse hypothesis can look like an attempt to get around the obvious implication of the universe’s apparent design—i.e., that it has a Designer.

However, that doesn’t mean that the multiverse doesn’t exist. If he chose, God could create a vast array of universes, each of which have different laws, and not all of them may contain life. (After all, most of our own universe does not contain life!)

Similarly, from the perspective of someone who believes in the multiverse, multiple universes wouldn’t rule out the existence of God, because you could still need a God to explain why the multiverse exists at all.

The God hypothesis and the multiverse hypothesis thus are not incompatible.

Both Are Possibilities

Dr. Hossenfelder acknowledges that both God and the multiverse could be real, but she says—correctly—that this would not add to our knowledge of how our universe works.

If God exists, that doesn’t tell us what the laws of our universe are. We still have to discover those by observation.

And if the multiverse exists, that also doesn’t tell us about the laws of our universe. Observation is still necessary to figure them out.

Circular Reasoning?

Her claim is that the fine-tuning arguments for both God and the multiverse don’t work—and, specifically, that they involve circular reasoning.

She fleshes out this claim along the following lines:

1. To infer God, the multiverse, or anything else as the cause for why our universe seems finely tuned, you need evidence that our universe’s combination of constants is unlikely.
2. However, the only evidence we have is what we have measured, and—precisely because the constants are constant—we always see them having the same values.
3. Therefore, we have no evidence that the combination we see is unlikely.
4. So, advocates of these views must assume what they need to prove—that the combination is unlikely—and that’s circular reasoning.

The Pen Objection

Dr. Hossenfelder seeks to head off an objection to her argument by pointing to a parallel case: Suppose you saw an ink pen standing upright on a table, balanced on its point.

It seems very unlikely that a pen would be balanced in this way, and so you’d suspect there was a reason why the pen was standing like this—perhaps a special mechanism of some sort.

But, she says, the reason that we can rationally suspect this is because we have experience with pens and know how hard it is to balance them this way.

Therefore, it would not be circular reasoning to propose an explanation for the oddly balanced pen.

However, the only experience we have with the constants of nature is the set we see. We thus can’t estimate how likely or unlikely they are to occur, because we don’t have evidence about the probability of this combination of constants.

What Do You Mean by “Evidence”?

The problem with Dr. Hossenfelder’s argument is the way she uses the term “evidence.”

In the video, she seems to assume that “evidence” must mean empirical evidence—that is, evidence derived from observation using the physical senses (and their technological extensions, like radio telescopes and electron microscopes).

This is the kind of evidence used in the natural sciences, and so you also could call it “scientific evidence.”

However, this is not the only kind of evidence there is.

Fields like logic, mathematics, and ethics depend on principles—sometimes called axioms—that cannot be proved by observation.

The evidence we have for them comes in the form of intuitions, because they seem either self-evidently true or self-evidently probable to us.

Since each of these fields is part of or closely connected with philosophy, we might refer to this intuitive evidence as “philosophical evidence.”

Whatever you want to call it, it’s evidence that we depend on—certainly in every field that involves logic, mathematics, and ethics.

Science involves all three, and so, while the scientific enterprise depends on observational evidence, it also depends on intuitive, philosophical evidence.

Do We Lack Observational Evidence?

It’s true that we can’t observe other universes, and so we lack observational evidence of the laws and constants that might be at play in them.

But does this mean that we lack any observational evidence that constants could have different values?

Confining ourselves strictly to our own universe—the only one we can observe—we see that not all constants have the same value. For example:

• The strong coupling constant is about 1
• The fine-structure constant is about 1/137
• The top quark mass is about 1/10^17
• The bottom quark mass is about 3/10^19
• The electron mass is about 4/10^23

Clearly, we see things that we regard as constants with different values, even in our own universe. The constants I’ve just listed span 23 orders of magnitude!

Why do all these dimensionless constants have different values?

That’s a natural question to ask!

And so, one could argue that we do have observational evidence that constants can have different values—not from universe to universe but from constant to constant—and that leaves many people asking why.

Variable Constants

Further, we even have evidence that some of these constants may vary over time.

In particular, we have evidence that the fine-structure constant—which deals with the strength of the electromagnetic interactions—may have varied slightly over time within our universe.

Dr. Hossenfelder says in her video that this “has nothing to do with the fine-tuning arguments,” but this seems false.

If we have evidence that some things scientists initially took as constants aren’t constant after all, then it further raises the question of why they have the values they do.

The Evidence of Intuition

I’m not at all convinced that we don’t have observational evidence that invites us to ask why the constants we see in our universe have the values they do.

However, even if I were to waive this point, we still have one other line of evidence: direct intuition.

People who study the constants can imagine them having different values. We can, for example, imagine the electron mass being twice—or half—what its measured value is.

That makes it rational to ask why a constant has the value it does. As theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman famously said about the fine-structure constant:

It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.)

Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to pi or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the “hand of God” wrote that number, and “we don’t know how He pushed His pencil.” We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don’t know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out – without putting it in secretly!

In Search of Explanations

Finding out the explanations for things is a key part of the scientific enterprise. The same is true of the philosophical enterprise.

We have a powerful (philosophical) intuition that things we encounter have explanations, and thus we seek them.

In philosophy, this intuition is sometimes framed as the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and while precisely how to formulate the principle is controversial, some kind of sufficient-reason quest is behind the scientific enterprise.

It would not do at all—and it would not be scientific at all—to encounter phenomena like stars shining, plants growing, and objects falling and say, “Those are just brute facts that don’t have explanations.”

Our intuition tells us that they need explanations, and it is the task of science to find them—to the extent it can—based on observation of how they work.

When we discern that many of these phenomena can be explained in terms of a set of underlying laws and constants, it’s then natural to ask what the explanation for these is—particularly when we notice that if these things were even slightly different, we wouldn’t be here.

The Limits of Science

Ultimately, Dr. Hossenfelder doesn’t deny that explanations for these things exist. She specifically says:

But this does not mean god or the multiverse do not exist. It just means that evidence cannot tell us whether they do or do not exist. It means, god and the multiverse are not scientific ideas.

The problem with this is how she’s using the word “evidence.” She’s taking it to mean empirical/observational/scientific evidence.

And it’s true that, at least in any conventional sense, you can’t do a laboratory experiment that shows that God exists—or a laboratory experiment that shows the multiverse exists.

Consequently, both ideas are beyond what can be proved scientifically.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t argue for them on other grounds. You can, in fact, argue for them based on your intuitions about what needs to be true in order to explain the constants as we see them.

This makes God and the multiverse subjects of philosophical argumentation rather than scientific demonstration.

Not Circular Reasoning

And that means that the charge of circular reasoning is false.

It would be circular reasoning to simply assume that it’s improbable the values of the constants we see in our universe should have the values they do.

But it’s not circular reasoning to say, “I have a strong intuition that this calls for an explanation” and then reason your way to what you think best explains it—even if that explanation lies beyond what’s scientifically measurable.

In other words, just because you’re doing something beyond science, it doesn’t mean that you’re simply begging the question.

The Return of the Pen

Let’s apply this insight to the ink pen example that Dr. Hossenfelder brought up.

Even if I’d never before seen a pen–or any similar object–it would make sense, when I first encountered one, for me to ask why it is the way it is.

Just like scientists and philosophers ask this for anything else they encounter.

I don’t need to know how likely or unlikely it is that an ink pen would be balanced on its point. The fact I can conceive of it being otherwise makes the question of why it’s standing rational.

Just asking the question is not begging the question.

And neither is having an intuition that it’s unlikely to be standing on its point (or in any other position) without an explanation.

Tying up Loose Ends

To keep things simple, I haven’t responded to everything Dr. Hossenfelder says in her video, since I wanted to keep things focused on her main argument.

However, I would like to circle back to the God hypothesis and the multiverse hypothesis as explanations for the apparent fine-tuning of our universe.

Personally, I like the idea of there being multiple universes—not for scientific or philosophical reasons, but just because I think it would be cool.

I’d also be fine with them having different laws and constants governing them. That would only add to the coolness.

But—speaking philosophically—there would still need to be a reason why the whole collection of them exist and why the laws that govern them vary from one to another.

Elsewhere, I’ve written about this as a “cosmic slot machine”:

If there is a multiverse with every possible combination of natural laws in the universes it contains . . . what is driving the change of laws in each universe? If there is a cosmic slot machine, whose innards cause the constants to come up different in each universe, why is that the case?

To explain the existence of such a cosmic slot machine, we’d need to appeal to something beyond the multiverse itself.

And so, whether or not there is a multiverse, I favor the God hypothesis.

St. Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence often gets a bad rap, not just from atheists but even from many Catholics. For one thing, it can be a difficult argument to understand. Though its premises are rather simple, something about it makes us think we are being tricked. For another thing, we know that eminent authorities like St. Thomas Aquinas have expressed their discontent with the argument.

Nonetheless, I think it is wrong to discard the argument without a second thought. Indeed, I think there is still much of value to be gleaned from it. For simplicity’s sake, here’s a basic sketch of the argument:

1. God is the greatest conceivable thing.
2. But if something is only in the mind and not in reality, then a greater thing can be conceived.
3. So, God cannot only be in the mind.
4. Therefore, God exists in reality.

In short, the very idea of God necessitates his existence. Thus, the Psalmist is right when he writes, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1). Whether or not this is a perfect representation of Anselm’s argument, it should serve our purposes today.

I would like to set aside for now the objections against it as an argument for God’s existence, not because it’s not an important question. It is indeed a very important question! But before defending the argument, we have to understand better what Anselm was saying. In fact, unbelievers who point out what they believe to be its weaknesses tend to miss Anselm’s meaning, and thus end up “defeating” a straw man. Engaging in an argument without clarifying meanings is never a good idea.

Christian apologists have long been frustrated to deal with popular skeptics railing against God as something other than what he truly is. Comparisons of God to the tooth fairy or Santa Claus are often flippantly made, particularly among the New Atheist types. Pathetic as such caricatures are, they betray a conception among non-believers that God is a finite creature. But for St. Anselm, that is precisely what God is not.

In an age when religious indifference is rampant and serious contemplation of spiritual things is scarce, St. Anselm’s argument is valuable because it takes on the form of a spiritual exercise.

In reality, God is not a thing at all—things in the sense of “beings in the world” have limitations. They can always be imagined to be greater in some way. But as Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe writes, “God cannot be a thing, an existent among others. It is not possible that God and the universe should add up to make two.”

What he means is that God’s mode of existence is completely different than everything else. Indeed, God is the creator of everything, and keeps it in being every moment it exists. This is the kind of God St. Anselm has in mind when he imagines “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.”

The Anselmian proof invites us to do away with the caricatures—a challenger cannot even begin to refute the proof until he seriously entertains the notion of God presented by Anselm. From that starting point, then, all lesser kinds of “divinities”—from Zeus to the Flying Spaghetti Monster—are necessarily ruled out. We must ask the question soberly: what is the greatest conceivable thing? It is certainly not a beast composed of pasta.

There is more than one way to approach the question. We can think about God as unrestricted existence—that is, existence itself. Or in Aristotelian terms, we can think about God as being pure act and no potency—which just means that God is utterly perfect and lacks all possibility of further perfection. Technically (and as St. Thomas affirmed), to think of God as existence itself is probably the best way to think about “what” God is.

But there is another way to think about what it means for God to be, as Anselm put it, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Let’s think about this in concrete terms. What is greater—a God who loves everyone who loves him back, or a God who loves everyone unconditionally? Clearly the latter, for his love is perfect. Now, such “negative theology” can help us understand what God isn’t, but it proves nothing about whether such a thing exists. Still, it can help to clarify the nature of the thing considered—the first step of serious argumentation.

In his influential book, The God of Faith and Reason, philosopher Robert Sokolowski considers another contrast, one that sheds light on St. Anselm’s meaning of God. The first “god” Sokolowski asks us to consider is one who becomes greater as the result of his creation. In this first case, “god + the world” is greater than the god alone. He contrasts this version with another in which God is so great that his creation adds nothing to his perfection. In the latter case, “God + the world” is not greater than God alone. And clearly, argues Sokolowski, this latter God is a greater conception of God than the former. Indeed, no greater God could be conceived. And there are important implications that follow from this.

One implication is that if God creates but gains nothing for himself by doing so, then it follows that God’s act of creation is completely gratuitous and unsolicited. We—the created—have everything to gain by virtue of the gift of our existence.

So, aside from what it contributes to the debate about God’s existence, St. Anselm’s ontological proof helps us to re-establish who God is and what it means for us to exist. It gets us thinking about the big questions again, for we have been created for our own good by a God who is unlimited in perfection. Our lives, then, should be lived in a way that reflects uncompromising gratitude, humility, and trust in God.

If St. Anselm’s argument fails as a proof for God’s existence, it nonetheless does great service in establishing a firm starting point for determining what it is we are trying to prove in the first place. Moreover, it compels us to think seriously about whether such a grand contention could be true.

When I saw that the New York Times had published an argument against the existence of God with a URL that contained the phrase “philosophy-God-omniscience,” it brought out my inner Catholic-apologist-geek. I became excited at the prospect of teasing out a philosophical puzzle.

But the only puzzle I came away with was this: how could a philosopher at a large public university publish a paper on the existence of God—in the nation’s most prestigious newspaper—that wouldn’t pass muster in a freshman philosophy class?

In his piece, titled “A God Problem,” Peter Atterton asks, “Does the idea of a morally perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing God make sense? Does it hold together when we examine it logically?”

Let’s find out.

Atterton first sets his sights on God’s omnipotence with the “paradox of the stone” as it often appears in the form of a question:

"Can God make a rock so heavy that not even he could lift it?"

Atterton notes, “If God can create such a stone, then he is not all powerful, since he himself cannot lift it. On the other hand, if he cannot create a stone that cannot be lifted, then he is not all-powerful, since he cannot create the unliftable stone. Either way, God is not all powerful.”

The answer to the seeming paradox depends on your definition of omnipotence. If you think it means God can “do anything” then he can make a stone he can’t lift and he can lift a stone he can’t make. But this solves the paradox only by throwing logic out the window (which as Atterton notes, some philosophers both past and present have been willing to do).

Fortunately, there’s no need to pay such a high price. When we define divine omnipotence correctly, as “the ability to make the possible actual” or “the ability to perform a logically possible task,” the paradox evaporates.

To put it another way: God can do anything but some strings of words don’t even count as “anything.” You might be able to say terms like “square circles” or “married bachelors” but those terms are as meaningful as a random string of letters like “jorshplat.” (Can God jorshplat? If you say no, is he therefore not omnipotent?)

The philosopher George Mavrodes notes that “a stone too heavy for God to lift” is simply another way of uttering the logically contradictory (and thus nonsensical) phrase, “a stone that cannot be lifted by him whose power is sufficient for lifting anything.”

But Atterton thinks even the “logically possible” explanation doesn’t work because God could have created a logically possible world without evil. “If God is morally perfect,” he writes, “it is difficult to see why he wouldn’t have created such a world. So why didn’t he?”

At this point, Atterton has taken his philosopher’s sights off omnipotence and switched his target to the attribute of omnibenevolence, or the fact that God is all-good, by appealing to the well-worn problem of evil.

Anyone with a basic understanding of it (much less someone with a PhD, as in Atterton’s case) should know that a suitable discussion of the problem of evil is going to take more than a paragraph. And yet that’s all he gives it. He writes, “The standard defense is that evil is necessary for free will,” and quotes Alvin Plantinga’s correct observation that creatures capable of moral good are also capable of moral evil. Atterton then replies to the free will defense by simply saying it don’t explain the problem of physical evil (like cancer or the harm earthquakes cause to humans) or the problem of animal suffering.

Atterton would have been better off dedicating his whole column to these problems instead of briefly discussing and then giving up the paradox of omnipotence or the problem of evil. If he had done this, then he would have had space to address one of the many replies theists have given to these problems including:

• the connection between the moral evil of original sin and our fallen, human natures;
• the opportunities for humans to exhibit moral virtues like courage and compassion;
• the necessity of pain and destruction in a finite, material world that is journeying towards perfection;
• common misunderstandings we have about the nature and ultimate purpose of non-human animal suffering. Our inability to see God’s eternal plan and know the greater good he can bring from any evil be it moral or physical.

The answer to the problem of pain is the same as the answer to the problem of evil: an all-good God can allow evil and pain to exist if he has a good reason for doing so, and the burden of proof is upon the atheist to show that no such reason or reasons exist.

Even philosophers of religion (which is not Atterton’s area of expertise) who themselves are not religious agree that this burden cannot be met. The agnostic scholar Paul Drapersays that “theists face no serious logical problem of evil” and the late atheist J.L. Mackieadmitted, “The problem of evil does not, after all, show that the central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another.”

Finally, Atterton gets to the section I was most interested in hearing about: the alleged logical contradictions involved with God’s being omniscient. One of the most meticulous critiques of omniscience comes from philosopher Patrick Grim (though well-refuted, ironically, by atheist Jordan Howard Sobel), and I was hoping Atterton would offer a similarly well-thought-out argument.

But instead all we get is this relatively simple argument:

"If God knows all that is knowable, then God must know things that we do, like lust and envy. But one cannot know lust and envy unless one has experienced them. But to have had feelings of lust and envy is to have sinned, in which case God cannot be morally perfect."

Just as the paradox of the stone is resolved by providing a more coherent definition of omnipotence, the “paradox of sinful knowledge” is resolved by providing a more coherent definition of omniscience. For example, if you define omniscience as knowing only and all propositional knowledge (or truths like “Fred is six feet tall” or “E=MC²”) then there is no puzzle about God having sinful experiential knowledge like feelings of lust or malice.

But you can also define omniscience more comprehensively as the knowledge of all real or possibly real things. Since evil is an absence of good it is not a “real thing” for God to know but a privation or absence God recognizes. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, “by the fact that God knows good things, He knows evil things also; as by light is known darkness.” God perfectly knows our human emotions because he sustains their very existence. As a result, he knows when they lack something like charity that causes them to become evil.

However, since God is unlimited and perfect being that does not change it doesn’t make sense to say God has emotions or feelings. But this fact about God doesn’t detract from his attribute of being all-knowing. As I wrote in my book Answering Atheism, “Since the statement ‘God is afraid’ (and others like it) is meaningless, it can’t be true. If it can’t be true, it can’t be known. And if it can’t be known, then it can’t contradict God’s omniscience, which involves his knowledge of only all real or potentially real things.”

Arguments like Peter Atterton’s do serve at least one useful purpose: they show how a confused or incorrect understanding of God can lead to rejecting God. Atheist Richard Carrier correctly notes, “Arguments from [God’s] incoherence aren’t really arguments for atheism, but for the reform of theology.”

If our understanding of God seems to be illogical, all this may show is that we must commit to loving the Lord with all our mind (Luke 10:27) and seek his help to elevate our minds to understand him. The Catechism puts it well:

God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God—“the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable”—with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God (42).

In my title, the word, “proof,” is in quotation marks, because this article is not intended as a strict proof for God’s existence. Many may well not be impressed by the argument at all. Still, it may have some merit, since it might at least give skeptics, agnostics, and atheists some pause for thought.

Most children are taught in their early years to believe in the fictional character who lives at the North Pole. Indeed, like St. Thomas Aquinas’s own Five Ways to prove God’s existence, a similar such set of arguments has even been posed for proving Santa Claus’s existence, using a “Thomistic” approach.

Most young children come to believe in Santa’s existence, even though the stories of how he operates on Christmas Eve cause some puzzlement on the part of a few believers. After all, they think, “Would their parents actually lie to them?” Nonetheless, over time, an evil skepticism begins to lead some to doubt certain details, and finally, even to doubt the existence of Santa altogether.

His story’s coherence seems increasingly questionable. Can reindeer really fly, when they don’t have wings? Isn’t he just too fat to fit down most chimneys? How could he possibly visit every home with children on the planet in just a few hours? Of course, such doubts ought not be mentioned to younger children, lest their innocence be corrupted!

Finally, the sad truth dawns – at least for older children and adults: Santa simply does not exist. Perhaps, his story is reframed in terms of an ancient bishop, Saint Nicholas, whose exploits seem more credible. Sadly, it is now all too clear that the essential attributes of Santa Claus are simply not coherent. The fantasy of the Jolly Old Elf falls of its own weight in a volley of face-saving ex post facto denials, like, “I always knew that he really could not fit down a chimney and that no one could drink all that hot chocolate and survive.”

The Parallel to God

My thesis is simple. The classical conception of God is often attacked as essentially incoherent, and thus, unbelievable. Just like Santa Claus, God is accused of being merely an incoherent myth that all should abandon upon reaching intellectual maturity. Theistic inconsistencies and absurdities are said to abound. So, let us look at some major divine attributes according to classical theism and raise the typical objections. Possible defenses will be offered as well.

1. Objection: God is claimed to be a pure spirit, but how can a spiritual entity give what it does not have, namely, the positive reality of physical substance?
 

Reply: Being physical is actually a limitation on being. So, God is causing the positive perfections of things, while physical things exist solely with the limitations of time and space.

2. Objection: God is supposed to be absolutely simple: not composed of parts, principles, or things. But the more perfect things we experience entail greater complexity. So a simple God would be imperfect.
 

Reply: More complex physical things are more perfect, but among spiritual beings, it is God’s lack of composition, even between essence and existence, that enables him to have the perfection of existence without any limitation, that is, to be the infinitely-perfect Infinite Being.

3. Objection: God is supposed to be all good. But he both permits evil to exist and even causes it through punishments. So God must not be all good.
 

Reply: God is so good and so perfect that he permits evil to exist, and brings greater good out of it.¹ Besides, even atheist J.L. Mackie finally admits that Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense explains how evil can be logically consistent with God’s goodness.

4. Objection: God is the Infinite Being. But other beings than God exist, so he must not possess all possible being.
 

Reply: All perfections of being found in creatures come from God as First Cause. So, this does not limit God’s being, but merely shows his being or perfection includes all that which is found in creatures.

5. Objection: Unicity means there is only one God. But how do we know that creation was not made and governed by a committee, as David Hume suggests?
 

Reply: Since God is infinite, if there were two of him, they must differ. If they differ, one lacks what the other has – meaning one is merely another finite being. Logically, there can be solely one Infinite Being. All the rest must be finite and not God.

6. Objection: Omniscience means God knows everything. But he cannot know future events caused by free will, since they cannot be predicted by knowing present reality. So he lacks omniscience.
 

Reply: God exists outside of time in his eternal “now.” So, he knows all things – past, present, and future – by his knowledge of vision.² He need not predict future events, but rather, “sees” even future free choices taking place in his “present.”

7. Objection: Omnipotence means God can do or make anything. But he cannot make another God or a rock bigger than he can lift. Nor can he do evil. So he is not all powerful.
 

Reply: Such examples are contradictions in being, which are not real “things,” since a thing is something that can actually exist. Thus, nothing limits God’s omnipotence, since God can do or make any “thing.”

8. Objection: God is immutable and eternal. But, if God cannot change, that is a limitation on his infinite being. Besides the world changes through time, so his knowledge of it must change as well.
 

Reply: God already possesses all existential perfections, so he does not need to change to become more perfect. Being eternal, God is outside time and knows creation all at once, even in its temporal progression – which is a limit on creatures, not on God.

9. Objection: God is omnipresent, meaning he is present in all things. But that would amount to pantheism, since it would identify God with the world.
 

Reply: God is present in all things, but only as a cause is present to its effects by way of creative power. Since a cause is an extrinsic sufficient reason to its effects, God cannot be identical to his physical creatures. Nor, as a pure spirit, is he physically locatable.

10. Objection: God is a person, with intellect and will, who can love his creatures. These are anthropomorphisms, whereby we mistakenly make God into our image. Clearly, a transcendent deity would not be constrained by such humanlike properties.
 

Reply: No, these are perfections found in creatures that must come from the Creator, who possesses them, since he could not give what he does not have. Given the divine simplicity, God not only has these properties, but he is them by his very essence. Thus, in God intellect, will, and all activity are identical with the divine substance itself.  Yes, God really is love.

The Trinity

Objection: I will now consider just one central Christian theological concept, not because it is theological, but because (1) it is a major claim about God in human history and (2) it poses a major challenge to the coherence of God’s nature. I refer to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, which appears to conflict with (1) divine simplicity and (2) the belief that there is only one true God.

Christians claim that God is somehow three in one: a single being, yet three distinct persons. Small wonder that both our Jewish and Muslim brethren view this doctrine as little more than placing a thin veil over blatant polytheism! It sounds clearly like belief in three Gods, not one.

Reply: It took about three centuries to settle on proper doctrinal language. By then, Christian theology employed a distinction between “nature” or “substance” and “person” to avoid evident contradiction: God is three distinct persons in one divine substance or nature.
 
As to the Trinity’s metaphysical possibility, it can be illustrated by analogy to our own human consciousness. For, within my single act of consciousness, there is a real relational distinction between (1) myself as knower and (2) myself, as object of a self-reflective cognitive act.
 
Thus, while my act of knowing is a single spiritual act, this distinction between terms within my consciousness shows that there can be really distinct terms within the same spiritual act. Thus it is that the internal divine processions may be compared with human self-knowledge and self-love as spiritual activity having distinct terms which, it is solemnly defined, constitute really distinct Persons that, nonetheless, share the same substantial nature such that they are identical in all other aspects.³
 
Thus, given the above explanation of the metaphysical possibility of the Trinity, God retains absolute simplicity, since he is composed of neither things, nor parts, nor even principles. Not things, since the divine Persons possess the same, unique divine substance; not parts, since, being spiritual, God has no physical parts; and, not even principles, since the terms of the internal divine processions possess an identical nature – a nature which, as First Cause and Pure Act, has not even the essence/existence composition found in every creature. Moreover, since the Trinity of Persons in God entails but a single substance and since, as shown in point five above, there can be but one Infinite Being or God, the charge of polytheism is refuted.

The Point

This article’s aim is not merely to show that it makes more sense to believe in God than in Santa Claus. That would hardly be much of an achievement. Still, very few adults believe in Santa, whereas belief in God is widespread among adults.

Santa has the problem of numerous highly debatable properties, such as flying reindeer – one with an illuminating nose, the ability of the obese to descend chimneys, visiting billions of homes in just a few hours, and a pile of ill-paid elves making toys. But God also suffers highly incredible properties, many needing explanation in early Christianity, since Scripture mentions them without philosophical proof.

My central hypothesis is that, if such an incredible entity as God does not actually exist, his concept ought to readily fall apart under examination as does poor Santa Claus’s. There should be a number of clear, unequivocal, unanswerable paths showing that God’s nature is totally incoherent and self-contradictory.

But God’s concept is at least defensibly coherent.

Now I realize that many skeptics will reject the defenses of this or that or all divine attributes. I will be shocked if they do not instantly claim that the God of classical theism has already been exposed repeatedly as incoherent and self-contradictory.

But, that is not to the point. The point is that intellectually rigorous defenses exist.

There is no way to explore every alleged divine attribute in this short piece, but I have considered the main ones above.

As stated earlier, I do not offer all this is a genuine proof of God’s existence. Still, it is very curious how God’s complex and mind-bending conception is not able to be laughed out of court at first blush, especially in light of all the criticisms that have been launched against belief in such a being.

Skeptics will probably have a field day deconstructing the point and counter-point arguments about divine attributes offered above. They are not intended as complete arguments, since each one could take a complete paper in itself to properly flesh out with scholarly precision and force. That is not my point.

The much broader point I am making is that the classical concept of God’s nature is highly complex and unexpected. Also unexpected would be that such an unbelievable God would be so coherent as to be believable to many, even after scholarly debate.

I leave it to readers to draw their own inevitably radically-diverse conclusions.

The fifth way is taken from the governance of things. For we see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, which is apparent from this: that always, or more frequently, they act in the same way, so as to obtain that which is best. Hence it is plain that they achieve their end, not by chance, but from intention. However, those things which do not have knowledge do not tend toward an end unless directed by something with knowledge and intelligence -- as the arrow [is directed by] the archer. Therefore, there exists some intelligent being by whom all natural things are directed to an end: and this we call God.
 
—Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3, c.  (Leonine edition, translation mine)

The Quinta Via's Setting

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote his five ways to God’s existence in the very first pages of his Summa Theologiae (1265-1274), the finest, most mature synthesis of his philosophical and theological thought – a work designed both for educated laity and seminarians. Since God’s existence is the foundation on which logically rests the entirety of his multiple volume masterpiece, giving but a short paragraph’s treatment to each “way” clearly signifies that no complete scholarly demonstration was ever intended. Rather, the “ways” are merely short summaries of St. Thomas’ take on classical arguments his students already knew well.

Hence, expecting fully developed philosophical proofs in the five ways is a major error.

Crucially, the quinta via (fifth way) is not an argument from design, like that of William Paley (1743-1805), who reasoned from extrinsic finality that, like a watch, the world exhibits deliberate design because of perfect coordination of its parts. Rather, St. Thomas argues from intrinsic finality that all natural bodies lacking knowledge act for an end, thereby revealing that they are moved by an intelligent agent, whom we call God.

St. Thomas maintains that natural bodies act for an end “so as to obtain that which is best” because they are moved by natural appetite. Since he maintains (1) that natural appetite seeks what is fitting to a thing and (2) that what is fitting to a thing perfects it, it follows that natural bodies are acting for “that which is best.”¹ Nonetheless, maintaining that natural bodies attain “that which is best” is not essential to his argument, since, as will be shown, it is rationally demonstrable that natural bodies attaining merely definite ends require an intelligent director.

Every Agent Must Act for an End

Central to the quinta via is the principle of final causality, which entails two distinct claims, namely, (1) that every agent must act for an end, and (2) that there must be pre-existing intellectual knowledge of the end. This latter claim is the most mysterious one made by Thomistic metaphysicians regarding the fifth way – a claim without which the argument fails to attain any significant traction. Conversely, successful defense of both aspects of final causality proves why it cannot be “explained” as just some form of efficient causality.

An agent is anything that does something, produces an effect. It matters not whether agents are considered macroscopic wholes, like an animal, or just subatomic particles regulated by physical laws. Either way, things appear to act regularly the same way, unless something impedes their action. An example would be classification of chemical elements according to behavior. Were these not consistent in activity, natural science would become unintelligible chaos. Nonetheless, regularity of behavior is not essential to prove the need for an intelligent director. Merely showing that every agent must act for a definite end suffices.

That every agent must act for an end is demonstrable through the principle of sufficient reason. Since agents of a given nature always tend to a certain result or end, there must be a sufficient reason for such regularity. Yet, even were the end not attained regularly, a sufficient reason would still be needed to explain why a certain definite end is achieved as opposed to any other.

The Angelic Doctor explains the role of intention in agents moving toward an end in his Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 1, a. 2, c:

“But an agent does not move except from an intention to an end. For if the agent were not determined to a certain effect, it would not do this rather than that: therefore, in order that it produce a determinate effect, it is necessary that it be determined to a certain one, which has the nature [rationem] of an end. This determination, as in the rational nature, would be the “rational appetite,” which is called the will; so, in other things, it would be through natural inclination, which is called the "natural appetite."²

If an agent were totally indifferent to multiple possible effects, no sufficient reason would explain why a specific outcome occurs, making production of a definite effect impossible.  But every agent produces a definite effect. Hence, every agent must act toward a definite end.³

Because St. Thomas views chance as an event happening outside the intention (even understood as natural appetite) of an agent, he maintains that chance presupposes intention to an end. Thus, he sees chance as no threat to final causality.⁴

Moreover, if a reason determines why a specific end comes to be, it must act on the agent from the inception of its agency.

The text cited above refers to things with rational natures. It also refers to “other things,” wherein a determination ”to a certain effect“ is caused by their “natural inclination, which is called the ‘natural appetite.’”⁵

Here St. Thomas maintains that non-knowing agents cannot act solely by themselves so as to attain a determinate end: “But those things that lack reason tend to an end by natural inclination, as if moved by another and not by themselves: since they do not know the nature of an end [as an end], and thus, they are able to ordain nothing to an end, but can be ordained to an end solely by another.”⁶

Things lacking reason cannot explain how they attain their ends through their own causality alone, “since they do not know the nature of an end [as an end], and thus, they are able to ordain nothing to an end.” This last clause logically implies that the property of being able to ordain anything to an end necessarily implies the ability to “know the nature of an end [as an end].” Thus, irrational agents must tend to an end “as directed or led by another”, whom St. Thomas maintains is God himself.⁷

There Must Be Intellectual Knowledge of the End

The most mysterious part of final causality is this claim that even non-knowing agents must be directed to their ends by some intellectual agent. St. Thomas makes this evident when he says that nothing can ordain anything to an end, unless it can “know the nature of an end [as an end].”

This text is critical, since it shows that St. Thomas insists on there being intellectual knowledge of the end, not because of “regularity” in attaining an end, but simply because of the need to know the nature of an end as an end – for to know the end as an end is to know it abstractly, which entails intellectual apprehension.

The dictum that what is first in the order of intention is last in the order of execution⁸ means, not that the end exists in extramental reality before it is caused by the efficient cause, but rather that the end exists as intellectually known before the agency of the efficient cause can take place. Paradoxically expressed, “the end must exist before it exists.” But “existence” must be understood in two senses: (1) in extramental reality, and (2) in intramental reality, that is, as known by an intellect. It is in the latter sense that the end is the first of all causes, the cause of all causes.

Thus, the proper meaning of “the end exists before it exists” is that the end must exist intramentally before it can exist extramentally.

As will be shown below, this explanation applies even to non-knowing natural bodies.

Philosopher Jacques Maritain, a leading contemporary Thomist, argues that final causality entails intellectual knowledge of the end. In his Preface to Metaphysics, Maritain points to the “relation of the agent to its action, an action distinct from itself.”⁹ He considers hydrogen and oxygen which are determined to interact so as to produce water, which manifests a real relation of their essence to making water. “To be determined to a term presupposes an ordination, a relation to that term.”¹⁰ The term, in the case of hydrogen and oxygen, is the effect of their union, namely, dihydrogen oxide or water. So, the relation entails (1) the hydrogen and oxygen as separate elements, and (2) the product of their union: water. Maritain then follows the logic to its inexorable conclusion:

“… How can there be a relation, an ordination between two things which do not exist in any fashion, or between a thing that exists and a thing which does not? For a relation or ordination to exist between two terms both terms must exist. Therefore an effect of an action must somehow exist if the agent is to be determined, ordained or inclined toward it. What does this mean? It means that the action or effect must exist before it is produced or realized.
 
But how in the name of heaven is this possible? Only if the action or effect exists as present in thought, with the existence of knowledge. Only in this way can it exist – in thought – before it exists in reality.”¹¹

Maritain summarizes his demonstration, tying its force back to the principle of sufficient reason:

“We see, therefore, that the sufficient reason for an agent’s action, that which determines it to a particular action or effect rather than any other is the effect, the action itself – not as produced and accomplished, but as that which is to be produced, accomplished and therefore as preconceived by a thought, so as to preordain the agent to that action.”¹²

From this preeminent metaphysician’s proof, it is evident why St. Thomas insists that things lacking reason cannot explain how they attain their ends through their own causality alone, “since they do not know the nature of an end [as an end], and thus, they are able to ordain nothing to an end.”¹³

Therefore, the complete principle of final causality – a universal metaphysical principle applicable to all agents, intellectual or not – is as follows: Every agent must act for a determinate end, and that end must be intellectually known prior to the agent’s action that produces the end in reality.

Nor need this intellectual knowledge of the end be had exclusively in the case of rational creatures, such as human beings. For, as St. Thomas points out, such intellectual knowledge must also obtain in the case of things lacking knowledge, such as natural bodies. In this latter case, he tells us that the intellectual knowledge is had by God, who directs all things to their proper ends by means of the divine governance. Such is the line of reasoning put forth in the quinta via.

One of Many Intelligent Governors?

Regardless of whether one views “natural bodies” as subatomic entities or as the macroscopic wholes that common sense affirms, the vast majority of such agents lack rational natures. This logically entails that one or more intelligent causes must direct or govern such natural bodies to their proper ends. Since the quinta via is actually an argument from governance of the world, the ultimate question is whether or not all this directed agency must be ascribed to a single intelligent being “by whom all natural things are directed to an end.”¹⁴

St. Thomas makes no explicit attempt to prove that there is but a single intelligent governor of all natural bodies in the fifth way. He merely asserts it. Still, later in the Summa Theologiae, he does give an argument for the unicity of God based on (1) the evident unity of the cosmos and (2) the principle that “things that are diverse do not come together in one order unless they are so ordered by one being.”¹⁵

Deeper Metaphysics

When a natural body is moved by its “natural appetite” to a certain end, the end may be conceived as anything broadly in keeping with the activities of that agent’s nature. A rock rolling down a hill might be thought to fulfill its end merely by reaching any lower level. But, following Maritain’s reasoning, it is not just some “broadly conceived end” that constitutes the pre-known terminus. Rather, it must be the “exact end as actually achieved” that is pre-known, since that unique reality is one of the two terms involved in the action.

As Maritain observes, “For a relation or ordination to exist between two terms both terms must exist.”¹⁶ But the agent’s action or effect does not exist in some “broad way,” since what actually comes to be cannot be a “generalized” end, but some real entity, complete down to its least unique existential content.

Again, the sufficient reason for a given end being reached cannot be merely a reason for some abstract, broadly-defined terminus ad quem. Rather, it must be a unique reason for the concrete existential conditions of what actually comes to be. Just as when one aims to graduate from college, he does not achieve this end abstractly, but rather with a concrete, unique set of courses and grades. So, too, the end “foreknown” by the intelligent director of non-knowing agents must be foreknown in its unique existential details, not merely as some “broadly conceived end.”

Among beings who do not qualify as such an intelligent director are human beings, whose knowledge of the end is limited to “broadly conceived ends” – since our inherent epistemic limits preclude perfect knowledge of anything, much less ahead of time.

Indeed, what kind of mind can possess such perfect knowledge of anything down to its least existential detail, its intrinsic metaphysical composition? And do so even before the thing effected comes into being? Such knowledge, not only exceeds the boundaries of all material technology, but, perhaps as well, that of any finite knower bound by the restrictions of temporal existence.

Does not this kind of knowledge of the actually achieved ends of all finite agents hint at the existence of an intelligent governor who transcends the limits of time and space? Could this be how the fifth way leads ultimately to a single Intelligent Governor of all finite agents, who is God?

The Fifth Way's Explicit Claims

Maritain employs an example of a chemical reaction that appears to have universal regularity. But the force of Maritain’s reasoning for the need for an intelligent director to an end applies even if no universal laws of nature exist and every conceivable agent has a unique end. Despite the fifth way’s statement about “natural bodies” acting “always … in the same way,” that claim of regularity is not essential to its argument. What is essential is the need, as Maritain puts it, for the end to be “preconceived by a thought, so as to preordain the agent to that action.”¹⁷ That is why St. Thomas points out elsewhere that there is a need to “know the nature of an end as an end.”¹⁸

The fifth way’s argument actually advances just two essential claims:

(1) “Things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for a [definite] end.”

(2) “Those things which do not have knowledge do not tend toward an end unless directed by something with knowledge and intelligence.”

Both claims have been demonstrated above, employing texts from St. Thomas as well as added arguments, such as Maritain’s. St. Thomas concludes from these premises: “There exists some intelligent being by whom all natural things are directed to an end.”

Skeptics will see mention of regularity in the behavior of natural bodies as a faulty overgeneralization from particulars, since the claim that all natural bodies “act in the same way, so as to attain that which is best” fails to be proven. Yet, St. Thomas’ mention of regularity in nature underlines the seeming universal governance by God of the whole world as known by both common sense – and also by natural science, since science necessarily operates by presuming the regularity of all cosmic phenomena.

As I have shown above, the fifth way has more fertile implications than its explicit claims appear to indicate.

According to the First Vatican Council, the existence of God can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason through those things that have been created. (De Fide)¹ Pope Pius X specified this statement more exactly by affirming that God’s existence can be known “as a cause is known with certainty through its effects, from those things that have been made, that is, by the visible works of creation….” (Sententia fidei proxima).²

Since every being must have a sufficient reason for its being or coming-to-be, an effect is properly defined as any being whose sufficient reason is not totally within itself. To the extent that a being fails to fully explain itself, some other being must be posited which supplies that reason which remains unexplained by the effect. That extrinsic sufficient reason is called a “cause.” Thus, while every cause is a sufficient reason, not every sufficient reason is a cause. God is his own sufficient reason, but it would be absurd to say that he is his own cause.

Since all human knowledge begins in sensation, it is reasonable that all proofs for God’s existence must begin with data taken from sensible creation. This starting point is then shown to be an effect of a cause – with a possible chain of intermediary causes leading back to an uncaused first cause, which can subsequently be demonstrated to be God.

Efficient Causality in St. Thomas' First Way

 
While St. Thomas Aquinas’ famous five ways to prove God’s existence, as presented in his Summa Theologiae,³ employ more than just the efficient, or making, cause (for example, the fifth way is clearly focused on the final cause), demonstration of God’s absolute simplicity can be accomplished by focusing exclusively on efficient causality.

The first way begins with the observation that “it is certain and most evident to the senses that some things are in motion.” As has been proven in an earlier article, “whatever is in motion must be being moved by another.” That “other” is a cause of motion or coming-to-be (causa fieri), which cause may be either an efficient, or making, cause – or, it may be a final cause. While modern readers of the argument from motion quite naturally tend to think of the movers as efficient causes of motion, it may come as a surprise to some to learn that Aristotle had in mind also final causes – so that his unmoved first mover moves things in motion by means of attraction, not efficient causality.

The modern understanding of causality as it takes place in motion tends to be influenced by David Hume -- so as to think of it as sequences of “events” in which prior ones causally influence subsequent ones. But, such “causality” does not meet metaphysical criteria, since a delay of even a nanosecond between cause and effect would entail that the cause might be non-existent by the time the effect is produced. Clearly, an effect, which is deriving some existential perfection from an efficient cause, cannot be receiving it from a non-existent cause. Hence, the cause as causing and the effect as being effected must be simultaneous. Thus, efficient causes of motion must be simultaneous with the motion they cause in another.

In both the first and second ways, St. Thomas affirms the principle that there can be no infinite regress among intermediate causes, which is evident in that no intermediate cause is a fully sufficient reason for its own effect, which is the reason it is called an “intermediate cause.” Were all causes intermediate, then, regardless of number, the complete sufficient reason for the final effect would never be fulfilled – which is impossible. The impossibility of an infinite regression among proper causes has also been demonstrated in an earlier article.

Moreover, motion entails the production of “new existence” with respect to the thing being moved, so that it is not merely “motion” that the unmoved first mover causes, but the very existence of the new perfections of existence manifested by any change in being. The unmoved first mover is an efficient cause of new existence in all things in motion, even if that new existence is merely in the order of accidental being in the Aristotelian sense. The need for a “universal donor” of new existence has also been demonstrated in an earlier article.

Moreover, potency is what is able to be, but is not; act is what actually exists. Thus, motion is the progressive actualization of potency. Since things in motion must be moved by another, and since no infinite regress of moved movers is possible, there must be a first mover in which no motion occurs. But the total absence of motion means that the unmoved first mover acts to cause motion, and yet has itself no potency being progressively actualized, that is, it is pure act as the efficient cause of motion in things.

This unmoved first mover must also the “universal donor” of new existence, since both entities have the identically same role in accounting for the coming-to-be of all the new existence manifested through motion in the world.

Efficient Causality in the Second and Third Ways

 
While the first way deals with causes of coming-to-be (causa fieri), the second way deals with causes of being (causa esse). Since modern physics tends to challenge the simultaneity of macroscopic examples of such causation, suffice it to point out that (1) unless simultaneity existed in causes of motion, no motion could occur, since a “past” mover cannot “presently” move something, and (2) it is possible that the second way immediately enters the metaphysical order with causes that sustain existence which immediately transcend the physical order. As shown in a previous article, the very existence of the cosmos requires an infinitely powerful Creator.

Whether we consider efficient causes of coming-to-be or of being, it really does not matter, since what is absolutely evident is that, unless causes exert causation through immediate and direct influence on the effect, no effect can be produced at all – for the same reason that an effect needs a cause in the first place, namely, an existential need in the effect must be met here and now by an actually acting cause.

In a proof for the eternity of God that is found in his Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas takes as his starting point things whose existence or non-existence is possible. He argues, “But what can be has a cause because, since it is equally related to two contraries, namely, being and non-being, it must be, if existence accrues to it, that this is from some cause.”⁴

The third way of the Summa Theologiae is far too complex to treat in detail here, but I have explained it more fully elsewhere.⁵ It is not an argument from the contingent to the necessary, as it is so often mischaracterized, but rather an argument from the possible and necessary to being per se necessary. Using the notion of the possibles as expressed in the Contra Gentiles, it is evident that not all beings can be merely possible beings, since possible beings are caused beings and no infinite regress among proper causes is possible, as has been shown. There must be an uncaused first cause in any regression of possible beings, and that first cause cannot itself be another possible being, since all possible beings are caused.

Hence, some being must exist whose existence is not merely possible to be or not be, but rather must necessarily exist. St.Thomas then traces from necessary beings that receive their necessity from another to that being which is necessary through itself, namely, God – again, since “it is impossible that one should proceed to infinity in necessary things which have a cause of their necessity, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes.”⁶ This necessary being must account, not only for its own necessary existence, but also for the existence of all other things – both necessary and possible, as defined in the third way.

All of the above has been intended simply to show that some of the classical proofs for God’s existence demonstrate that an uncaused first cause must exist and, as St.Thomas observes, that that first cause fulfills the nominal definition of the classical meaning of God. Moreover, this first cause must cause the very existence of the cosmos – in both the substantial and accidental orders.

Just how well this uncaused first cause fulfills the classical definition of God depends upon our understanding of its nature.

Proof of Divine Simplicity

 
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the first cause meets one of the essential attributes of the classical meaning of God, namely, the divine simplicity. Divine simplicity means that God is not composed of parts, principles, or things.

The critical importance of establishing that God is the absolutely first cause, not only of the coming-to-be of things, but of their very existence, is that being a first cause of existence precludes any form of composition in God.

St. Thomas makes two clear points here. First, God is truly and absolutely simple “because every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent on them; but God is the first being” and second, “because every composite has a cause -- for things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite. But God is uncaused, … since he is the first efficient cause.”⁷

As the first efficient cause, God can have no prior cause to combine any principles, parts, or things in order to make him a composite whole. Since a composite presupposes the prior component parts that make it up, the composite would then depend on those prior parts. God, as absolutely first cause, can depend on nothing prior to himself. Hence, he cannot be a composite of any type.

Again, any composite requires some principle of unity. If that principle comes from without, then the composite cannot be the first cause, since something is prior to it. If either component part accounts for its correlative component part, then they cannot be distinct parts – since nothing can give what it does not have – in which case there would be no composition, but only identity.

Moreover, what is composite is made up of diverse components, and diverse things can only be united by some causal agency. But, God, as the first cause, has no cause. Therefore, composition in God is impossible.

Meaning of Divine Simplicity

 
This means that God cannot be a composite of any potential principle and active principle, such as primary matter and substantial form, or substance and accident, or essence and existence.

The deepest truth about divine simplicity is that in God essence and existence are identical. God cannot have an essence to which is added existence, for whatever is found in anything either flows from its essence or comes to it from some extrinsic cause.⁸ But God is the first cause, and so, his existence cannot come from some extrinsic cause. The only alternative is that his existence comes from his very essence. But nothing can give what it does not have. Therefore God’s essence must already contain its very existence. His essence is identical with his existence. This is as simple as any being can be, since in all created things, existence is caused – meaning that existence is something added to essence. But in God this is not the case. He simply is his own act of existence.

God is a pure act of existence – infinite in virtue of that act being received and limited by no essence – Pure Act limited by nothing at all. Pure Existence limited by nothing constitutes the Infinite Being.

This means that God is not composed of form and matter. Hence, he is not a material body. In him, there can be no composition of substance and accident. Whereas in man, will is distinct from substance; in God, they are one. Nor is intellect distinct from substance. But if God’s will and intellect are identical to his substance, then his intellect is also identical to his will. So, too, his acts of willing are identical to the divine substance which is identical to his acts of knowing, making his willing and his knowing to be one and the same.

The various distinctions between substance, faculties, and acts found in man arise because of the composite nature of his being. First, as a creature, we are composed of essence and existence. As a material being, we are composed of substantial form and quantified primary matter. Having accidental qualities that change through time, we are composed of substance and accidents. Our powers are distinct from their operations. And potency is distinct from act in each of these composites.

But, in God -- as the absolutely first cause of all things, who himself is caused by nothing – who is his own sufficient reason for existing and being what he is in every way possible – in the one true God, all these creaturely distinctions are obliterated.

That is the meaning of the divine simplicity: Pure Existence, with no limiting essence and no real distinctions in God between principles, parts, or things.⁹

There are many other divine attributes, such as God’s perfection, goodness, infinity, immutability, eternity, omniscience, omnipotence, and so forth, which cannot be treated of in this short article, and would therefore be off topic for consideration here.