182 ARGUMENTS: MONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONS3 The inclusive strategy: prove it the case that the world is
everlasting and dependent or that the world is not everlasting past;
then infer to there being either a necessarily independent being on
which the dependent everlasting world depends or a necessarily
independent cause of the world beginning to exist.
Which strategy a philosopher chooses may, but need not, depend on
what her religious beliefs are. A Christian, like Augustine, who believes
that God created time and the universe together (that God’s creating a
universe is both necessary and sufficient for there being time) will
suppose that the universe is everlasting in one sense – there is no time
at which there was no universe – but will also suppose that it is
impossible that there be a time T1 at which the universe was not created
and then another later time T2 at which the universe was created. We
might call this universe-time-together creation view. In another sense,
in holding this view, she will deny that the world is everlasting; on her
view, there will have been a first time – time will go back so far, and no
further. But a Jewish, Christian, or Muslim monotheist might perfectly
well hold that time has no beginning and that God created the world at
some time prior to which time flowed but no universe existed. We can
call this the creation in time view. A monotheist might even hold that
the universe has always existed, and the doctrine that God created the
universe entails that the universe always depends on God for its
existence, has always done so, and will do so as long as it exists at all.
We can call this the beginningless creation view. On this view, God
created the universe entails The universe has always existed in such a
way that it depends on God, God does not depend for God’s existence on
there being a universe, and were God to cease sustaining the universe in
existence, it would not exist but God would still exist. But there being a
first time, or a first moment at which the universe began to exist, will
not be entailed. A monotheist can accept any of these alternatives.
Typically Jewish, Christian, and Muslim monotheists have accepted
either a universe-time-together or a creation in time perspective. Hindu
monotheism, by contrast, holds to a beginningless creation perspective.
This has largely to do with their interpretations of their religious texts.
A philosopher might think that one could not decide between these
alternatives by appeal to anything other than Scripture, and wish to
base his arguments only on what he thought was philosophically
accessible. In this case, the third strategy may well seem attractive.^12 In
any case, each strategy will require its own version of the general thesis
that whatever can be explained has an explanation – its own formulation
of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR).