Paul Douglas Kabay and Paul Kabay

Did God Begin to Exist ex Nihilo

Article
14/1 - Spring 2009, pages 119-131
Date of online publication: 15 juin 2009
Date of publication: 01 juin 2009

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Cite this article

Kabay, Paul Douglas. “Did God Begin to Exist ex Nihilo.” Forum Philosophicum 14, no. 1 (2009): 119–31. doi:10.35765/forphil.2009.1401.09.

Bibliography

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 Infinity 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.

Copyright