The Necessity of God ’ s Existence

The traditional thesis that God exists necessarily I could as well not exist. Had I fallen from the cliff last year, I would not exist now. Furthermore, had my parents not met, or had God not created a universe, I would never have come into existence. At any rate, there are many ways the world could be without me, or even without anybody like me. It is, in this sense, possible that I do not exist. The same is true for the sparrow who wake me up this morning, the bread I had for breakfast, the sun, and the moon. All these things, like you and me, exist contingently. God has traditionally been taken to be different in this respect. Whilst a world without me is a perfectly possible alternative to the actual world, a world without God is not a possible alternative to the actual world. God exists necessarily. Avicenna, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus, as well as many later authors, e.g. Leibniz, held this view in one or another form. 2 Anselm, for example, expressed this view by saying that God " cannot even be thought not to exist " and that God, of all things, " most truly " exists and, of all things, possesses existence " to the highest degree " (Proslogion, §3, p. 88). In his Reply to Gaunilo (§1, p. 112), explaining what he means by this, he says that " if this being [God] were to exist, it would not be capable of not-existing ". God, if he exists at all, exists necessarily (" ex necessitate "). 3 Anselm explains at some length under which circumstances a thing " cannot be thought as not existing " (see Reply to Gaunilo, §1, p. 112f, and §4, p. 115). He points out that something which has parts " can possibly not exist " (§1, 113) because it can be broken up. His conclusion seems to be that something exists necessarily if, and only if, it exists at all times and if it does not consist of parts and is therefore imper-ishable. 4 My task in this article is to explore what the claim that God exists necessarily should be taken to mean and whether, if God exists at all, it is true. I shall argue that it is true if it is interpreted with the right concept of necessity. I should …