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From: William Lane Craig <[email protected]>Subject: Question of the Week - "God" and "the Cause of the Universe"
Date: June 25, 2012 6:35:36 PM GMT+08:00To: [email protected]
Reply-To: William Lane Craig <[email protected]>
#271
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"God" and "the Cause of the Universe"
Question:
Dr. Craig, I was wondering what the relationship between the proper name 'God' and the definitedescription 'The cause of the universe' is. A widely held belief amongst philosophers of language is thatdefinite descriptions do not have the same referent in every possible world. For example, 'The man thatwon the election in 2008' is not necessarily Barack Obama. It may have been the case that John McCainwon. So what about the definite description 'The cause of the universe'? If this doesn't have God as areferent in all possible worlds, then there is a possible word in which God is not the cause of theuniverse. Does this entail that there is no God? If God exists, does he have to be the cause of theuniverse out of necessity?
HaigenUSA
Dr. Craig responds:
This is an interesting question, Haigen. To answer it straightforwardly, I’d say that God is the cause ofthe universe, where “is” is to be understood here, not as the “is” of identity (as in “Mark Twain is SamuelClemens”), but as the “is” of predication (as in “Mark Twain is the most famous American humorist.”)“God” is in this case a proper name which we use to refer to God and the definite description “the causeof the universe” is a predicate which takes “God” as its subject.
So is there a possible world in which God is not the cause of the universe? Yes, indeed! Since creation isa freely willed act of God, God could have refrained from creation and so existed alone without auniverse. In such possible worlds, God is not the cause of the universe because there is no universe! SoGod is not the cause of the universe out of necessity. He has this property contingently.
A more interesting question is whether there is a possible world in which the cause of the universe issomething other than God. Traditionally, Christian theology has taken creation ex nihilo to beexclusively the prerogative of God. No finite creature has the power to create a material thing fromnothing. (That’s why, by the way, we find no instances, apart from divine acts of creation, of materialthings beginning to exist without material causes. For a material thing to come into being without amaterial cause requires an efficient cause of infinite power. It follows that cause of the universe must bea being of infinite power.) So there is no possible world in which something other than God is the causeof the universe.
Obviously the possibility of a world in which God is not the cause of the universe doesn’t entail that Goddoes not exist. On the contrary, in such worlds He’s the only thing that exists! On the other hand, if youthink there is a world in which something other than God is the cause of the universe, then you shouldgive up the principle that only God can create a material thing ex nihilo. In such worlds, God would bethe cause of the cause of the universe (e.g., a super-powerful angel to whom God delegated the task ofcreation). But there is no reason to think that there are worlds like that.
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