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Nothing Can Create Itself

In his writings on the existence of God, Jonathan Edwards writes, “It is acknowledged by all to be self-evident that nothing can begin to be without cause, neither can we prove it in any other way than by explaining it…If we suppose a time wherein there was nothing, a body will not of its own accord begin to be. The understanding abhors that something should be when there was no manner of reason why it was. So, it is equally self-evident that a being cannot begin to be, as to the manner of its being, without a cause. When a body has been perfectly at rest how should it begin to move without any reason, either within itself or without…If a body is a moving body, there must be some reason or cause why it is a moving body, and not a resting body. It must be because of something, otherwise there is something without a cause, such as much as when a body starts into being of itself.

“So, if two bodies are of different figures, there is some reason why this is of this shape and that of the other. When one body moves with one degree of velocity and another of another, when one body moves is of one bigness and another of another, when one body moves with one direction and another of another, one rests on this place, another, another, it is exceedingly evident that there must be some cause or other for these things…There can be absolutely no reason or cause why it should be so any more than why it should be infinite other ways. Then I say it wasn’t so from eternity.

“It is evident that none of the creatures, none of the beings that we behold are the first principle of their own action; but all alterations follow in a chain from other alterations. Therefore, there must necessarily be something in itself active so as that it is the very first beginning of its own actions. There has to some necessary being that has been the cause of all the rest. It cannot be matter itself since it does not have the nature of matter.

“The existence of our own souls, which we know more immediately than anything, is an argument of exceedingly glaring evidence for the existence of a God…When we walk in stately cities or admire curious machines and inventions let us argue the wisdom of God as well as of the immediate contrivers. For those spirits who were the contrivers are the most wonderful contrivances.”

The first line to God’s revelation assumes His eternity; for He is before all things; and as we know ex nihilo nil, out of nothing comes nothing. He and no other must have always existed. It therefore implies God’s omnipotence; for He creates the universe of things. In other words, God did not take matter that already existed and “formed” the heaven and the earth; but He created. He ex nihilo, out of nothing, “created”” what He wanted to exist. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” implies His absolute freedom in doing what He chose to do, for He began a new course of action.