While the Catholic Church holds that it is possible to prove the existence of God, it does not have teachings on specific versions of arguments for God’s existence and whether or not they work.
As a result, it does not have a teaching on the Kalaam cosmological argument, and Catholics are free to use it or not, depending on whether they think it works.
Catholic Liberty
Historically, major Catholic thinkers have taken different positions on the issue. St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) thought that the argument is successful, while his contemporary St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) famously thought that it does not.
Both of these men have been declared doctors of the Church, meaning that they are among the best, most highly honored theologians.
A key premise of the Kalaam argument is that the universe has a beginning, which is certainly true. The question is how we can show this to a person who doesn’t already believe it.
Back in the 1200s, modern science had not yet been developed, and this premise had to be defended on purely philosophical grounds. On that score, I think St. Thomas Aquinas was right, and the philosophical arguments that have been proposed to show that the universe must have a finite history do not work.
However, in the 20th century the Big Bang was discovered, and current cosmology is consistent with the idea of the universe having a beginning. As a result, I think a properly qualified version of the Kalaam argument can be used, based on modern science.
Catholic Limits
While Catholic teaching allows great liberty when it comes to apologetic arguments, there are limits.
These limits are established by other teachings of the Church, and Catholic apologists need to be aware of them.
When it comes to the Kalaam argument, this is important because not all of the versions of it in circulation rely on assumptions consistent with Catholic teaching.
In particular, the foremost proponent of the Kalaam argument today—William Lane Craig—articulates it using concepts that clash with Catholic teaching, and Catholics who wish to use it need to be aware of this so that they can do the necessary filtering.
Specifically: Craig (who is not Catholic) holds that God is not eternal in the sense that the Church understands.
He does hold that God has always existed and that God would exist if the world (including time) had never come into being. However, he holds that due to the creation of the world, God exists inside of time rather than outside of it.
Eternity and Catholic Teaching
The classic definition of eternity was given by the Christian philosopher Boethius (c. 480-c. 525). He defined eternity this way:
Eternity, then, is the complete, simultaneous, and perfect possession of everlasting [Latin, interminabilis = “interminable,” “unending”] life; this will be clear from a comparison with creatures that exist in time (The Consolation of Philosophy, 5:6, emphasis added).
Eternity, then, is “the complete, simultaneous, and perfect possession of unending life.” It is something possessed by God and not possessed by creatures that exist in time. We may be everlasting—and we will be, for God will give us endless life—but God is fundamentally outside of time.
Boethius’s definition became standard in Catholic thought, and it was the definition in use when in 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council taught:
Firmly we believe and we confess simply that the true God is one alone, eternal, immense, and unchangeable, incomprehensible, omnipotent, and ineffable (DS 800).
The same definition was standard when in 1870 the First Vatican Council taught:
The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God, creator and lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding and every perfection (Dei Filius, 1:1; DS 3001).
St. John Paul II made the implications of this more explicit when he taught:
These facts of revelation also express the rational conviction to which one comes when one considers that God is the subsisting Being, and therefore necessary, and therefore eternal.
Because he cannot not be, he cannot have beginning or end nor a succession of moments in the only and infinite act of his existence.
Right reason and revelation wonderfully converge on this point.
Being God, absolute fullness of being, (ipsum Esse subsistens), his eternity “inscribed in the terminology of being” must be understood as the “indivisible, perfect, and simultaneous possession of an unending life,” and therefore as the attribute of being absolutely “beyond time” (General Audience, Sept. 4, 1985).
Catholic teaching thus holds that God is eternal in the sense of being “absolutely beyond time” and that for him there is no “succession of moments in the only and infinite act of his existence.”
Everything God knows, he knows at once, and everything God does, he does at once. He doesn’t learn something, wait a little while, and then learn something new. Neither does he do something, wait a little while, and then do something new. His knowledge and his actions are all timeless and simultaneous.
Implications for Time
The fact that God is outside of time has implications for how we view time itself. Two key concepts we need to understand are called eternalism and presentism.
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- Eternalism is the view that the past, present, and future are all real from the ultimate perspective—that is, the perspective of God in eternity.
- Presentism can be understood different ways, but here we will be concerned with what can be called “strict presentism,” which means that from the ultimate perspective, only the present is real. The past and the future do not exist at all.
If God is eternal, it is very difficult to see how presentism can be true. In fact, I would say that the ideas of divine eternity and strict presentism are mutually exclusive.
The reason is that, as John Paul II stated, there is no “succession of moments” for God. The “eternal now” in which God dwells constitutes “the only and infinite act of his existence.”
This means that everything that God does, he does simultaneously, and that includes creating all the different moments in time that we inhabit.
Thus, in his timeless, eternal now, God is simultaneously creating the stretch of time that we call 2021 . . . and the stretch of time we call 2022 . . . and 2023 . . . and so on.
But if God creates something, it is real from his perspective, and so 2021 is just as real to God as 2022 and 2023 and every other year in the history of the universe.
For God, our past, present, and future are equally real, and that implies eternalism.
Catholic Presentism?
There are Catholic thinkers who refer to themselves as presentists, but I am not aware of any who hold the strict presentism.
The response I’ve received when pointing out the fact that God must be eternally and simultaneously creating all the moments in history has been to the effect of:
Yes, of course, from God’s perspective, all of history must be real.
What I want to emphasize by speaking of presentism is that from our perspective in time the past is no longer real, and the future is not yet real. The passage of time is not an illusion.
And I agree with that. The passage of time is not an illusion. We are clearly moving through time, and if you take time as your frame of reference rather than eternity, the past and the future aren’t real, but the present is.
If these points are agreed to, whether one wants to call one’s position eternalism (viewing things from God’s eternal frame of reference) or presentism (viewing them from our temporal frame of reference) may be more a matter of semantics than substance.
But this Catholic presentism is not the same as the strict presentism described above, because that view holds that the past and the future are not just unreal from our perspective, but from God’s too. They simply don’t exist at all.
The eternalist (or Catholic presentist position we’ve described) has implications for the Kalaam argument. In particular, it has implications for two of the premises in Craig’s key arguments.
Actual Infinities
One of Craig’s key arguments goes like this:
1) An actually infinite number of things cannot exist.
2) A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things.
3) Therefore, a beginningless series of events in time cannot exist.
Here the problematic premise is the first.
The Christian faith holds that God will give us endless life in the future. We will not pass out of existence either at our death or at any point thereafter.
Viewed from within time, this endless existence is a potential infinite—meaning that we will experience an unlimited number of days, but those days don’t all exist at the same time.
However, from God’s perspective outside of time, they do all exist, because God is simultaneously creating each one of them, making them real from his perspective.
As a result, there are an actually infinite number of days from God’s perspective, and so actual infinities can exist in that frame of reference.
This means that the first premise of the argument is false from this perspective, and that fact undermines its conclusion.
On eternalism, the Christian faith implies that an actual infinity of future days does exist, and that implies that an actual infinity of past days can exist.
Speaking from our perspective inside time, this past infinity of days wouldn’t all exist at once—meaning they’re not an actual infinity from our perspective any more than the infinity of future days ahead of us is.
In fact, this corresponds to the view of Aristotle (who pioneered the concept of non-actual infinities). He held that the world had existed endlessly into the past, but this wasn’t a problem because all those days didn’t exist at the same time, making them a non-actual infinity.
Forming an Infinite by Successive Addition
Craig’s other key argument goes like this:
1) The series of events in time is a collection formed by adding one member after another.
2) A collection formed by adding one member after another cannot be actually infinite.
3) Therefore, the series of events in time cannot be actually infinite.
Here, again, the problematic premise is the first.
(Actually, the second premise also either involves a fallacy or is just false, but we’ll focus on the first one here.)
While it may be true that, from a perspective inside time, events grow in number by adding one new event after another, this isn’t true from God’s perspective.
On Christian eternalism, God exists in a single, timeless moment and does all of his creating activity simultaneously.
He thus is not creating the different years of history in a one-after-the-other fashion. He creates all of them at once, including the infinite years of life ahead of us. From the eternal perspective, Flash! An infinity of future years exists.
And so, the first premise would be false.
Craig’s Position
Craig appears sensitive to these considerations, and thus he is a strong advocate of strict presentism—to the point that he is willing to say that, since the creation of time, God has a temporal mode of existence.
I think this is something he would have to do, because if the present is the only thing that exist, it would force changes in God’s knowledge.
For example, at one moment, God would know “It is currently 12:00 p.m.,” but then a minute later he would know “It is currently 12:01 p.m.” This is because God knows whatever is true, and if only the present is real then what is true changes from moment to moment.
God’s knowledge thus would have to change to keep up with changing reality, and so God would be changeable rather than changeless, and thus subject to time.
The alternative would be to say that, from his perspective outside of time, God knows things like “At point X in time, it is 12:00 p.m. and at point Y in time, it is 12:01 p.m.” This allows God to know both facts about time simultaneously, in a changeless manner that preserves his eternity.
These two ways of looking at things are often framed in philosophical discussions in terms of the “A-theory of time” and the “B-theory of time.” Without getting into the weeds, the A-theory is associated with (but not the same thing as) presentism, while the B-theory is associated with eternalism.
Also important to the discussion is the distinction between “tensed propositions,” which change their truth value over time (e.g., “It is now 12:00 p.m.”) and “tenseless propositions,” which do not (e.g., “At point X in time, it is 12:00 p.m.”).
Tensed propositions are important for the A-theory (also called the “tensed theory of time”) and presentism, while a tenseless understanding is important for the B-theory (or “tenseless theory of time”) and eternalism.
If you read Craig’s works and watch his presentations, he frequently appeals to tensed propositions, the A-theory, and presentism in order to defend his philosophical arguments for the universe having a beginning.
They are key to his presentation. In fact, he has said that he thinks that the importance of the tensed theory of time for the Kalaam argument cannot be overstated.
He’s also acknowledged that if the B-theory of time or an atemporal understanding is true, it would damage to his presentations. He would abandon the argument from successive addition (as we noted should be done, above) and that he would have to reformulate defenses of other aspects of the argument, though the scientific evidence points to the universe having a beginning.
Implications for Catholic Apologists
In light of what we’ve seen, Catholic apologists need to be aware that they cannot simply take Craig’s presentations of the Kalaam argument and make them their own, repeating them as if they were all consistent with Catholic teaching.
Instead, they need to use critical thinking to sort the elements that are from the elements that aren’t.
In particular, they need to be aware that the Church disagrees with Craig when it comes to God having a temporal mode of existence and having knowledge that changes (as with tensed propositions and the A-theory of time).
For a Catholic, his arguments dealing with the A-theory and tensed propositions need serious revision or abandonment.
Similarly, if God creates all the moments of time simultaneously from the perspective of his eternal now, it has implications for the past and the future, as well as the present, being real.
This undermines the premises of the two key philosophical arguments Craig makes for a finite history (i.e., that actual infinities cannot exist and that the events in time are formed by successive addition from God’s perspective).
While Catholic teaching has serious implications for the kind of arguments that can be used in support of the overall Kalaam argument, and while careful discernment is needed on this point, I agree that the argument is still sound.
I disagree with Craig that the philosophical arguments for the universe having a beginning work, but I agree with him that the scientific evidence does point in this direction, and so I ultimately agree with him that a reformulated version of the argument can be used.
