“If God made the Universe, who made God?”


There is something of a meme in Christian apologetics circles, especially those that endorse the Kalam or other cosmological arguments. The meme is “bUt WhO cReaTeD gOd??” It’s a meme that ridicules people who object to cosmological arguments by asking the above question or similar questions.

The question “who created God” is really an objection aimed that the causal principles in cosmological arguments. Basically, if everything has a cause (causal principle), then God must also have a cause! 

The consensus amongst most apologists is that such an objection is one of the weakest against (modern) cosmological arguments because it fails to realize that the causal principles utilized in such arguments are limited in scope. The Kalam Cosmological Argument, for example, uses a causal principles that only applies to things that began to exist. So when the question is asked “but who created God?” Or “but what caused God?” The answer is immediately given that God does not need a cause because He did not begin to exist.

With this in mind, observe the following quotation from Cornelius Van Til:

Now the only argument for an absolute God that holds water is a transcendental argument. A deductive argument as such leads only from one spot in the universe to another spot in the universe. So also an inductive argument as such can never lead beyond the universe. In either case there is no more than an infinite regression. In both cases it is possible for the smart little girl to ask, “If God made the universe, who made God?” and no answer is forthcoming.

Imagine the reaction of Christian philosophers and apologists to this quote. It would be said, “Ah, yes! Our suspicions have been confirmed! Van Til was a terrible philosopher, an idiot, and Presuppositionalism should not be taken seriously!”

But like a lot of things involving Van Til, one must look beyond the surface and try to understand. Van Til here makes an outstanding point. Van Til is posing the question “if God made the universe, who made God?” not as an objection to the causal principle used in cosmological argument but as an objection to the ability of cosmological arguments (as commonly stated) to prove the existence of an Absolute God.

Deductive and inductive arguments are incapable of proving the existence of an absolute or transcendent God because they cannot move beyond the universe. Cosmological arguments (and the other arguments commonly employed by traditional apologists) move from some fact of experience (causation, the appearance of design or fine-tuning, motion, purpose, beauty, etc.) and reason in a straight line to the conclusion that there must be a First Cause, Designer, etc.

The problem is that if the existence of a being can be proved using deductive or inductive arguments, then that being must be exhaustively comprehensible. That is, such a being must be fully penetrated by the light of human reason and logic. This must be the case or else such a being cannot be proved by deduction or induction. There cannot be any mystery or darkness about this being. As long as we can acquire the relevant facts, we can reason and deduce the existence of this being. The issue is that such a straight line movement places this being on the same metaphysical plane as humans. A being whose existence can be logically deduced from facts in the universe must exist on the same level as those facts. Such a being, then, cannot be transcendent or absolute. In short, such a being must exist in some more fundamental Reality along with man. He and man are merely two different aspects of a larger, more fundamental Whole. Sure, he may be more powerful, knowledgeable, etc, but he can never be absolute, transcendent, or infinite since he occupies the same metaphysical plane as man who is finite and temporal. The question “who created God” then is basically asking what is that more fundamental Reality—that metaphysically ultimate principle—that governs both God and man? The proponent of the traditional arguments cannot answer this question. He has not proved a God that is transcendent or absolute—he has proved a finite god.

Van Til’s point is simple: if your god can be proved using deductive or inductive arguments, then your god cannot be transcendent or absolute—he must be correlative with the universe. And a god that is neither transcendent nor absolute is no god.

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