Friday question: The possibility of an eternally created universe

In his highly popular book, A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking describes a model of the universe wherein the universe is finite though without a beginning. He then goes on to infer that from the lack of beginning for the universe there is no need for a creator. His inference here appears to be based on the assumption that we infer a cause for something if that thing has a beginning, but if the thing does not have a beginning we do not infer a cause thereof: whatever has no beginning has no cause.

This serves to locate Hawking in the medieval discussion of whether or not there could have been an eternally created universe (though I’m sure Hawking doesn’t realise it!). Many thought the idea of an eternally created universe was impossible, for, following the same line of thought as Hawking, many reasoned that if there were no beginning for the universe, then there is no need for a cause and thus no need for a creator. As with most philosophical issues, Aquinas thought a little deeper on the matter.

Aquinas reasoned that there is a distinction between the following claims: (i) x began to be and (ii) x was caused to be. He argued that (i) and (ii) are not identical yet for the most part they are simultaneous. (i) points out that there is a temporal dimension to a thing’s being whereas (ii) points out that a thing is dependent on another for its being. Now, it does not seem clear that every instance of (ii), i.e. every instance of a thing’s being caused to be requires an instance of (i), i.e. that thing’s beginning to be. For example, imagine that the sun and the moon are both eternal and thus neither began to be. Now, the moon is illuminated by the light of the sun, in which case the illumination of the moon is caused by the sun, in which case the moon depends for its illumination on the sun. However, given that ex hypothesi sun and moon are eternal and therefore never began to be, the illumination of the moon did not begin to be. Consequently, we here have a case of (ii) without (i), that is, something’s being caused to be without its having a beginning.

Now, Thomas argues that the case is the same with the universe. We can know one way or the other that the universe is caused to be if it displays any characteristic that it cannot account for of itself, in which case it will be dependent on another. We can know that the universe began to be if we can show that at some distant time in the past it had a beginning. Thomas rejected all the arguments purporting to show the beginning of the universe as successful (today it might be said that we have better arguments), but this did not mean that he thought the universe to be uncreated, for he argued that insofar as everything in the universe exists but not essentially, all things in the universe depend on something other than themselves for their existence. Thus, the createdness of the universe was guaranteed for Thomas not in its having a beginning, but in its being dependent in some respect. Consequently, he envisioned the possibility that an eternal universe could be caused insofar as everything in that universe were dependent in the line of existence.

Thus, the defender of the createdness of the universe is not necessarily defending its having a beginning. The defender of the createdness of the universe is defending the view that the universe is dependent in some respect, and the respect in which it is dependent cannot be accounted for without a being of a wholly different kind than those that constitute the universe.

So, to finish with a question, I would like to ask: is there any way of justifying the principle, often assumed in these discussions, that what does not have a beginning does not have a cause?

This is a précis of an article of mine published in Religious Studies, ‘A Thomistic Metaphysics of Creation’, available on the Religious Studies website.