8/19/2019 Question of the Week: Must Some Contingent Being or Other Exist

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From: William Lane Craig Subject: Question of the Week - Must Some Contingent Being or Other Exist?

Date: November 28, 2011 7:35:47 PM GMT+08:00

To: lowellgomezperez@aol.comReply-To: William Lane Craig

#241

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Must Some Contingent Being or Other Exist? 

Question:

Greetings Dr. Craig,

While I am a non-Christian, I deeply admire your research and work, which is why I am writing to askyou about a critique you gave to Bede Rundle's position that it is necessary that something or otherexist (namely, some physical Universe or other), but nothing in particular exists necessarily. You pointedout:

Alexander Pruss has pointed out that Rundle's view has an extremely implausible consequence. It'splausible that no conjunction of claims about the non-existence of various things entails, say, thata unicorn exists. After all, how could the fact that certain things do not exist entail that someother contingent thing does exist? (Reasonable Faith, pg. 110)

While at first I found your criticism quite compelling, I realized that theism suffers from the samedifficulties that you pointed out in Rundle's position. For instance, classical theism holds that God is anecessary being (a being who exists in all possible worlds), but this being also has contingentproperties. There are possible worlds in which some properties obtain (such as the property of creatingthe Universe), and there are other possible worlds in which some properties don't (in a possible world,God the Son didn't have the contingent property of becoming flesh).

I mention this because the relevant claim that some contingent property or other must exist necessarilyis a position that the theist must hold in relation to God Himself. If God chose to refrain from creatingthe Universe, then He possesses the contingent property of not actualizing a world (or rather, He'actualized' a possible world in which the physical Universe didn't exist). Either way, He made adeliberate choice to refrain from the act of creation. So there are two different collections of possibleworlds: Ones in which He exercises His free agency in actualizing physical states of affairs, and others inwhich He actively refrains from creating anything, and thus by consequence, actualizes a possible worldin which no creation occurs.

 Jay Wesley Richards, for whom you wrote an endorsement, writes:

God might just as well have enjoyed the contingent property of not having created any world. Thiscontingent property would still have been the product of his will. If--contrary to fact--God had sochosen, he would have had at least this one contingent property. Since God is free to create or notto create this or any other world distinct from him, this is how it should be...That property--butnot any contingent property in particular--is a part of God's essence (though not, in any untowardsense, a part of God). (The Untamed God, pg. 183)

It seems to me that the accurate position of the Christian (or any other theist) is that it is necessary thatGod possess some contingent property or other, but there is no particular contingent property that Godpossesses necessarily. Am I going in the right path, or am I missing some important aspect of yourargument? Thank you for taking the time to read this.

ArielUSA 

Dr. Craig responds:

8/19/2019 Question of the Week: Must Some Contingent Being or Other Exist

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For those who lack the background to understand this question, let me say that Ariel is talking about aproposed escape from the Leibnizian cosmological argument from contingency for the existence of Godas a metaphysically necessary being. In opposition to the premiss

1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its ownnature or in an external cause.

Rundle makes the novel suggestion that although there is no being that exists by a necessity of its ownnature, nevertheless something or other exists in every possible world. That is to say, there is nopossible world in which there are no contingent beings. So ultimately it is just inexplicable whycontingent beings exist. None of them exists necessarily, nor is there a metaphysically necessary beingwho causes them in any world in which they exist. There isn’t even any world in which something(s)necessarily exists and no contingent beings exist. Contingent beings just appear in every possibleworld, end of story.

This is a bizarre view on its face. But Alexander Pruss has raised an intriguing philosophical objection toit. A conjunction of statements about things that do not exist—e.g ., “Horses do not exist, andmountains do not exist, and leaves do not exist, and pencils do not exist, and so on” would not seem toentail that a specific thing, say, unicorns, does exist. But on Rundle’s view a conjunction predicatingnon-existence of every contingent thing other than unicorns entails that unicorns exist! For something contingent has to exist on Rundle’s view, and it can’t be any of those other things, so it must beunicorns, which seems crazy!

Now your point, Ariel, seems to be that the theist himself holds that, necessarily, there are contingenttruths. For as you rightly point out, God Himself will have contingent properties in different worlds. Justas Rundle holds that necessarily, there are contingent beings, so the theist holds that necessarily, thereare contingent truths.

But I don’t see where your reply to Pruss’ objection goes from there. Given the theist’s claim that Godexists in every possible world, it’s hard to see how an analogous argument against the theist would go.Suppose, for example, you say that no conjunction of statements about what God does not createentails a statement that He created unicorns. No problem! For God could have created nothing at all,and so the untoward consequence does not result.

I suspect that what lies behind your argument is the conviction that on theism there are contingenttruths for which there is no explanation. That contention is plausible, though mooted by Pruss himself.But while that might have troubled Leibniz, committed as he was to a strong Principle of SufficientReason, which held that there is no fact or truth for which there is no explanation, the genius of StephenDavis’ formulation of the argument from contingency, which I follow here, is that its first premiss is avery weak form of the Principle of Sufficient Reason which requires merely that things do not existwithout an explanation of their existence. It is entirely compatible with there being truths which arebrute facts about the world. (What it will require is that the propositions which are the bearers of thosecontingent truth values must have an explanation, not of their truth value, but of their existence, and

that can be provided by the theist.)

Thus, I don’t see that the theist’s holding that necessarily, there are contingent truths occasions anyproblem for theism parallel to the problem which Rundle’s view would occasion for atheism.

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