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After deducing the existence of One God, we can now finalise our rational understanding of His Nature. However, the initial deduction of His Nature is arrived at by negation, that is, we know what God cannot be, and, therefore, by implication what He must be. I call these attributes of the first-order.
First-order divine attributes
God is:
- the Creator, because He is the Uncaused sole Cause and therefore cannot be caused or created
- eternal, because He created time and cannot be temporal
- immaterial, because He created matter and energy and cannot be material
- transcendent, because He created space and cannot be spatial
Second-order divine attributes
From these first-order divine attributes, we can further deduce second-order divine attributes that God is:
- one, by Ockham’s Razor, absence of immaterial conceptual differences and finite regression
- self-sufficient from all material causes, because He created all material things, and from all immaterial causes, by finite regression
- is not immanent, because He would then cease to be immaterial
- is all-powerful, because the universe was created without a material cause
- is personal with an independent Will, because He chose to create the universe at a particular time
- is all-knowing, because He created matter, energy, space and time, and therefore must know everything about them before He created them
Eternality
We can now elaborate further on eternality. Eternality can be defined as:
- infinite-omnitemporality, which is existence at every point in infinite time
- timelessness, which is simply existence beyond time
God cannot be infinite-omnitemporal because He created time and therefore cannot exist in time, in the same way that God cannot exist in the material universe because He created matter, energy and space and therefore must be immaterial and transcendent. Infinite-omnitemporality would mean that God created Himself. This would mean simultaneous existence-nonexistence which violates the law of non-contradiction and is a logical impossibility. God can, however, be timeless-eternal, because He transcends His creation. He transcends time. He exists beyond time in the same way that He exists beyond matter, energy and space, all of which He created. Therefore, God is timeless-eternal.