TY - JOUR AB - I argue that the following two claims provide us with sufficiently strong reason to conclude that God came into existence from nothing a finite time in the past: (1) that God is omnitemporal; and (2) that there is a first moment of time. After defending the possibility of God beginning to exist ex nihilo from various objections, I critique two alternative attempts at providing an account of the relationship between an omnitemporal God and the beginning of time (that of Alan Padgett and William Lane Craig). I show that these either fail to be an alternative to my own model or are less supported by the relevant evidence. AU - Kabay, Paul Douglas DO - 10.5840/forphil200914125 KW - beginning; Craig, William Lane; eternity; existentialism; God (Christianity); Padgett, Alan; religious aspects; time M1 - 1 M3 - Article N1 - Craig, William Lane. The Kalām Cosmological Argument. New York: The Macmillan Press, 1979. Craig, William Lane. “God, Time and Eternity.” Religious Studies 14 (1979): 497–503. Craig, William Lane. The Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination. London: Kluwer, 2000. Craig, William Lane. “Naturalism and Cosmology.” In Naturalism A Critical Analysis, edited by William Lane Craig, and James Porter Moreland, 215–252. New York: Routledge, 2000. Craig, William Lane. Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001. Craig, William Lane. God, Time, and Eternity: The Coherence of Theism II: Eternity. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001. Craig, William Lane. “The Elimination of Absolute Time by the Special Theory of Relativity.” In Time: Essays on Divine Nature, edited by Gregory E. Ganssle, and David M. Woodruff, 129–152. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Craig, William Lane. “Theistic Critiques of Atheism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, Michael Martin, 69–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Craig, William Lane, and Paul Copan. Creation out of Nothing: a Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004. Craig, William Lane, and Quentin Smith. Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993 DeWeese, Garrett J. God and the Nature of Time. Burlington: Ashgate, 2004. Ehring, Douglas. “Non-Simultaneous Causation.” Analysis 47, no. 1 (1987): 28–32. Ganssle, Gregory E., and Paul Helm, eds. God & Time: Four Views. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001. Guminski, Arnold T. „The Kalam Cosmological Argument: The Question of the Metaphysical Possibility of an Infi nite Set of Real Entities.” Philo 5, no. 2 (2002): 196–215. Helm, Paul. Eternal God: A Study of God Without Time. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Kabay, Paul. “Can God Satisfy a Book Worm: A Reassessment of the Concept of Infi nity Presupposed by the Kalam Cosmological Argument.” Philosophia Christi 8, no. 2 (2006): 363–381. Le Poidevin, Robin. “The Principle of Reciprocity and a Proof of the Non-Simultaneity of Cause and Effect.” Ratio 1, no. 2, (1988): 152–162. Milner, Robert C. “The Dependence of Descartes’ Ontological Proof upon the Doctrine of Causa Sui.” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 58, no. 4 (2002): 873–886. Padgett, Alan G. God, Eternity, and the Nature of Time. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000. Smith, Quentin. Language and Time. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. PY - 2009 SN - 1426-1898 (paper) 2353-7043 (online) SP - 119–131 ST - Did God Begin to Exist ex Nihilo T2 - Forum Philosophicum TI - Did God Begin to Exist ex Nihilo UR - http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=43609056&lang=pl&site=ehost-live http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=forphil&id=forphil_2009_0014_0001_0119_0131 VL - 14 ID - 82 ER -