Brian Davies in The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil says that the existence of God is not derived by God from anything. He doesn’t need anything to exist. He doesn’t depend on anything. God does not cause himself because that would be like God existing before himself to make himself. God does not make himself and nothing causes him to exist because existence is his by nature (page 65, 66, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil). What do we mean by saying existence is God’s by nature? We mean that his essence is the same thing as his existence. His nature is his existence. There is no distinction. This is the same thing as simply saying that God is uncaused. Davies says that saying this is not the same as saying God is a necessary being, a being that somehow has to exist. In other words, it just isn’t possible for there to have been nothing – there had to be a God. Davies is not rejecting the necessary being thinking but just saying he doesn’t need it – the essential is in having a God who is uncreated and causeless.
The argument from necessity cannot be discussed properly without discussing eternity.
There are only two definitions of eternity and one is the opposite of the other.
1) Eternity is like a present moment which didn’t have a past or future. So the present there doesn’t change and it is like a static present moment. That is what it consists of.
This makes eternity necessary. It has to exist. Even if there is nothing it has to exist and is an aspect of nothing. Another word for it is timelessness.
Time then is often seen as unnecessary so it must be created by a necessary being. Is each moment of time happening all at once in the “moment” of eternity? Time proceeds from eternity so it would be. The two have to run together at the one time. Eternity cannot change so it is always there.
2) Eternity is time that had no beginning or no end. It does change.
It could freeze so that there will be no future. It follows that each moment is unnecessary. For example, there doesn’t have to be a next moment. So it follows that from start to finish there was no need for any moments at all.
The necessary being or God would have to be eternal in the first sense. Eternity the state of permanence is the right state for him and if time is not a thing but changes then it could happen that God could end up frozen if time stops. He wouldn’t be almighty then.
The idea of God being that kind of eternal is so odd that it shows there is something wrong with the concept. Or at best it shows it is such a mystery that you cannot comment on what time or anything is or how things came to be.
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