So this is the problem I'm having, is you say he wills the universe into being at that moment.
But how can we make sense of a term like "at that moment" if this being is timeless? Because
as you say, if it's an infinite being, the question is, if that cause is sufficient and infinite, then
the effect should also be infinite, implying that there was no sufficiency up to a certain point.
But how can you talk about points with no time? [Craig] This is a great question,
and the question here you're raising is, which one is explanatorily prior?
God's decision to create the world is simultaneous with the origin of the world. They're at the same
moment, the first moment of time, so which is explanatory prior? Is it the moment of time, and
it is at that moment that God chooses? Or is it rather that God makes a free choice and therefore
that is the first moment of time? And I would say it's the latter. God's free choice is explanatorily
prior to the existence of the first moment of time, because in the absence of some sort of
an event, there would be no time, it would just be timelessness. You need something to happen
in order for time to exist, and what happens is that God freely chooses to create the universe.
So it's all about explanatory priority here. [Alex] So the insufficiency of the cause before, let's say,
it's the wrong language, but before the universe exists, the insufficiency of the cause which
means that it hasn't existed yet, is prior in explanation rather than prior in time?
[Craig] Well what I'm trying to say is that what you call the insufficiency of the cause is due to the fact that
the free will of this being has not chosen to create the universe. This being has not
made such a decision. But the instant that such a decision is made, time comes into being. Indeed, the
decision is explanatorily prior to the first instant of time. [Alex] Yeah. When you say... it's
because of the freedom of the being and the free being hasn't made the decision, it feels
like it's begging for the word "yet" to be on the end of that. It hasn't made the decision yet,
[I know!] But it's like we're carefully avoiding that language because of the complications
of time, but it seems like the explanation that you're giving it feels to me like
naturally it invokes a sense of time. I still don't quite see how it works without time. [Craig] Well
you just have to be very careful if you're going to be philosophically precise to use
tenseless verbs in your sentences, and not use temporal particles, like "before"
or "yet" and things of that sort. And I think that we can avoid those and make coherent statements.
For example I said "sans the universe, God exists timelessly." That's a tenseless verb.
Sans the universe God does not freely choose to create the universe. So I think that these
statements can be correctly made if we just watch our tenses and our adverbs.