Re: God is perpetually creating the universe from moment to moment
Matthew McMahon quotes Johnathan Edwards
First question: do created “things” (and things can be anything, but for our purposes “things” are going to be apple trees) have power in and of themselves to exist? The answer to this is “no.” If that is true, then this next proposition comes into play: apples trees exist either by an antecedent existence or by the power of a Creator. This seems to be obvious and just a more sophisticated way of saying the former but keeping with the line of thought. Edwards states, “It is plain, nothing can exert itself, or operate, when and where it is not existing [because] what is past entirely ceases when present existence begins…it does no more co-exist with it, than it does any other moment that had ceased twenty years ago.” What Edwards is saying is that the past has no power to sustain that which is in the present or that which is in the future. If this is true, and no thinking person could say otherwise, then each successive moment must be the effect of God’s power. God, then, is continuously upholding the apple tree upon every moment of its existence. Edwards then says, “God’s upholding created substance, or causing its existence in each successive moment, is altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing, at each moment, because its existence at this moment is not merely in part from God, but wholly from him; and not in any part, or degree, from its antecedent existence.” God, then, continually recreates the apple tree in each moment that it exists. Its existence hinges on the reality that God continues to create it in that manner. Its past existence does not hold the existence of the tree in its present state, thus God must recreate the tree instantaneously moment to moment. Edwards explains this “philosophically” in this way, “If the existence of created substance, in each successive moment, be wholly the effect of God’s immediate power, in that moment, without any dependence on prior existence, as much as the first creation out of nothing, then what exists at this moment, by this power, is a new effect; and simply and absolutely considered, not the same with any past existence, though it be like it, and follows it according to a certain established method. And there is no identity or oneness in the case, but what depends on the arbitrary constitution of the Creator; who by his wise sovereign establishment so unites these successive new effects, that he treats them as one, by communicating to them like properties, relations, and circumstances; and so, leads us to regard and treat them as one.” I agree.
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