3.4 A Philosophical Portrait of the First Cause

We have seen that if the universe began to exist, and if everything that begins to exist has a cause, it logically follows that the universe has a cause.
But what kind of cause could account for the very existence of everything that exists? A philosophical analysis of the necessary conditions for such a cause reveals several essential properties:

1. A Non-Physical Cause

   • The cause of the universe cannot be physical or material, for the simple reason that matter itself began to exist with the universe.
     If matter has a beginning, its cause cannot be composed of what it brings into being. The cause must therefore be immaterial, independent of particles, fields, or physical laws.

   • This rules out a purely naturalistic or materialistic explanation for the origin of the universe — nature cannot bring itself into existence.

2. A Timeless Cause

   • According to current cosmological models (general relativity, the standard model), time itself begins with the universe.
     This implies that the cause of the universe must exist beyond time: it is eternal, or at least timeless prior to creation.

   • Such a cause is not subject to the succession of moments or the passage of time — it exists in a state of eternal simultaneity.

3. An Extremely Powerful Cause

   • Bringing an entire universe into existence — containing hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars — requires unimaginable power.
     Even if this cause acted only once (at the moment of creation), the magnitude of such an act surpasses anything we can observe or conceive.

   • This is not a relative or mechanical kind of power (measurable energy or force), but ontological power — the ability to bring being forth from nonbeing.

4. A Personal or Intentional Cause

   • This is one of the most debated aspects: did the cause of the universe act intentionally?
     Some philosophers (notably William Lane Craig) argue that only a will can produce a temporal effect from a timeless cause.

   • An impersonal cause, such as a physical law, produces its effects necessarily and eternally — if the conditions are met, the effect follows automatically.
     Yet in the case of the universe, we see an effect (the Big Bang) that has a definite beginning, while its cause would have existed timelessly.
     Why did the universe begin 13.8 billion years ago, rather than much earlier — or never at all?

   • The best explanation is that there was a decision to create — which implies intelligence and will.