The 4 Options: The Power of Being

Before addressing a skeptic’s predictable response to option 4  (next post), I need to unpack a critical concept – the power of being.

The problems noted last time should reveal that illusion, self-creation, and self-existence respectively are absurd options for the cause of the universe. So this calls into question the fourth possible cause, a being that is self-existent and eternal.

If a person stops to think about it for just a minute, it should be obvious that if there were ever nothing, then there would still be nothing. Everything in a natural world must rely on something before it for its cause. Therefore, the ultimate cause can not be natural. Nothing in the natural world has the power of being within itself – the power to exist independently of a cause.

So unless there is a first cause possessing the power of being outside the natural world, then there would never be anything else. This being would qualify for the title, “God.”

Jesus attests to this power: For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself (John. 5:26). Quoting the Cretan poet Epimenides, Paul explains on Mars Hill that in the one true God, “… we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)

We’ll see the skeptic’s likely response to this line of reasoning next time.