First Principles

Christian philosopher Etienne Gilson writes that there is only one way “open to us if we wish to arrive at the conclusion that God exists. It consists in starting from the consideration of things and in inferring from their existence, such as it is given in sense experience, the existence of a Being that is not given in sense experience.”¹ Thus, in order to begin the demonstration of the theistic worldview, one should locate those truths of existence that cannot be denied and from there infer the existence of God. Such undeniable truths exist in what is known as first principles which are foundational to all knowledge.

Geisler notes that “first principles are undeniable or reducible to the undeniable. They are either self-evident or reducible to the self-evident. And self-evident principles are either true by their nature or undeniable because the predicate is reducible to the subject. That the predicate is reducible to the subject means that one cannot deny the principle without using it.”² Thus, first principles are non-negotiable, self-evident truths upon which all knowledge is built, and therefore rational discourse is impossible apart from their employment. Of the twelve first principles that can be set forth, the first five are sufficient to establish the existence of the theistic God. These five are:

Existence (principle one) cannot be denied. As Geisler notes, “It is undeniable that something exists. No one can deny his own existence without affirming it. One must exist in order to deny that he exists, which is self-defeating.”⁴ Stuart Hackett quips that “it will probably not occur to anyone to deny the existence of anything at all. But if he does, we can easily prove either that he is mistaken, or that his statement is not a refutation of the argument, or both. He is mistaken because he at least exists to effect the denial, which is therefore self-contradictory.”⁵                            

Once I rightly admit that “I exist,” I must then inquire as to the cause of my existence. In other words, the truth that something undeniably exists leads us to the principle of causality (principle five), which can be acceptably stated as “every effect has a cause,” “every thing that comes to be is caused by another,” or “nonbeing cannot cause being.”⁶ R.C. Sproul comments that, “The ‘law of causality’ is usually linked with the word effect. This law is often called the ‘law of cause and effect’…. We usually define effect as that which has an antecedent cause. Cause and effect, though distinct ideas, are inseparably bound together in rational discourse. It is meaningless to say that something is a cause if it yields no effect. It is likewise meaningless to say that something is an effect if it has no cause. A cause, by definition, must have an effect, or it is not a cause. An effect, by definition, must have a cause, or it is not an effect.”⁷ 

Cause and effect are two sides of the same coin called the principle of causality. In addition to being true by definition as noted by Sproul, the principle also states what seems to be obvious, that being cannot come from nonbeing. That nonbeing cannot cause being should be self-evident, for a caused being is an effect, but nonbeing cannot be the cause of an effect since it is nothing, that is no-thing. Commenting on causality, Geisler points out that “nonbeing is nothing; it does not exist. And what does not exist has no power to produce anything. Only what exists can cause existence, since the very concept of ‘cause’ implies that some existing thing has the power to effect another. From absolutely nothing comes absolutely nothing.”⁸

Thus, Sproul concludes that “reason demands that if something exists, either the world or God (or anything else), then something must be self-existent.”⁹ In other words, since something now exists (principle one), and nothing cannot produce something (principle five), there could never have been a time when there was nothing. For if it was ever the case that nothing existed, then nothing would still exist. But something does exist, thus reason demands the existence of a self-existent something. This self-existent “something” is rightly called the Necessary Being. Hackett defines the Necessary Being as “one whose determinate character is completely self-contained, one that has within itself all the conditions of its existence and that faces no limitations which are not self-involved. Now such a being must transcend the temporal series by reason of the fact that it must be absolutely changeless and devoid of succession, whereas the temporal series is characterized by just such marks of change and succession….”¹⁰ 

Geisler elaborates that “a Necessary Being is by definition a mode (kind) of being that cannot not be. That is, by its very mode (modality), it must be. It cannot come to be or cease to be.”¹¹ Since a Necessary Being has no beginning, it is not subject to the principle of causality (“everything that begins has a cause”) and is thus the only adequate explanation for the existence of those things that did have a beginning, i.e. all limited and contingent beings. All that remains is to discover what (or who) is the self-existent, Necessary Being and reason affords us only four possible candidates: myself (or some existing self), a part of the universe, the universe as a whole, or God. ¹²

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^[1] Etienne Gilson, The Elements of Christian Philosophy (New York: Mentor-Omega, 1963), 53.

^[2] Geisler, BECA, “First Principles,” 250.

^[3] Ibid. Principles two, three, and four are restatements of the basic laws of logic.

^[4] Geisler, Christian Apologetics, 239.

^[5] Stuart C. Hackett, The Resurrection of Theism: Prolegomena to Christian Apology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1957), 194.

^[6] Geisler, BECA, “Causality, Principle of,” 120.

^[7] R.C. Sproul, Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), 171.

^[8] Geisler, BECA, “Causality,” 121.

^[9] Sproul, 179.

^[10] Hackett, 196.

^[11] Geisler, BECA, “First Principles,” 252.

^[12] Hackett, 198.