On Divine and Natural Contingency and Divine Existence

From the coinage of the notion of rational numbers, to Einstein’s theory of Relativity, it has been put forth throughout history that contingency is necessary to conceptualize any thing at all. But, do contingent things necessarily exist? Or are these notions of contingency and dependency an illusion of what seems actually bluntly obvious? And what nature does God partake?

We know of too many who have advocated that contingency is vital for all conception of things. From the dependency of finiteness on the existence of infiniteness, to the relationship between absolute variables, it seems that one cannot conceive fully of one without having put it in relation to another of similar, but not identical, properties. Therefore, if things can be conceived in relation unto one another, they are considered rational only to the extent that their relationship holds true. To materialize something in no relation to any other would thus make things arbitrary or even irrational.

God is perfect. Since God is said to be the creator or designer or guider or mirror of all things existent, God is good in the sense that there is existence rather than non-existence. Which is to say, that whatever that which we say that causes something to exist rather than not is thus good. Thus, one associates goodness to coherence only to the extend that whatever that seems coherent only pertains to that of humans’ rationality – this sense of rationality being that of or from God himself. God must be coherent in his nature, and thus rational in the sense of being contingent. We may now attempt to define God through rationality and begin to argue so.

That first we must say that if God is coherent, and therefore rational, God’s nature is thus necessarily contingent upon some other – and in this case, it would be the universe or reality itself. Such a nature thus runs into direct conflict with the notion that God is innately coherent, needing no other to explain its own existence, thus being non-contingent. So, we suppose that if God is coherent in his existence, then his existence depends upon the very fact of the universe. God is dependent upon the very fact of reality, and the existence of reality depends solely on God’s existence. The simpler example is that we cannot call a woman a mother unless she has a child. Thus, the notion of a mother is dependent upon the existence of her child while the child’s having this title of a child is dependent upon having a mother.

The failure of the analogy as given above is that the former being and exist independent of the latter one. However, if we take that the primary function of the former – not in terms of identity status but by object of existence – then for the former is indeed dependent upon the latter’s existence. Perhaps the better analogy is that of anti-virus programs and computer viruses. In this example, the very existence of the former is to serve its primary function, which is to destroy or inactivate the activity of the computer’s viruses. The problem in this analogy, however, the latter came into existence before the former. Of course there are errors in all analogies. So just try to understand what I intend to say here.

Perhaps the clearest inquiry that follows would be that if God’s primary function of its existence is for the very fact of the universe. Which is to say, is it possible for there to be a justification for God’s existence other than that of the existence of the universe? I see no other explanation as yet other than that of through the very existence of our universe. If my current knowledge holds true, then it has to be that God’s existence hinges upon the very fact of the universe. Thus, God is not unexplained, but rather conceived only thorough the universe, and therefore is explained only through reality.