On God, Creation, and the Logical Necessity of a Finite Past

The classical understanding of creation out of
nothing has traditionally held that God's creation
of the universe had to involve a moment of temporal
initiation. However, in attempting to understand the
essence of creation by appealing solely to the
distinction between the ontological necessity of the
Creator and the ontological contingency of the
created, many philosophers and theologians have
contributed to the eclipse of this feature of the
classical notion. This book examines the primacy and
sufficiency of that distinction. Finding this
distinction, by itself, to be injurious to the
classically conceived Judeo-Christian God, it argues
that the concept of creation out of nothing must
also incorporate the idea of temporal initiation.
Therefore, an investigation into the question of the
eternity of the world is paramount to its success.
Following historical and systematic examinations of
this question, it concludes with a meditative
reflection that attempts to ground a method for
clarifying divine creation in subjective experience,
rather than in objective theory, due to the
irreconcilable incongruities that seem to result
from the purely rational approach.

Autorentext
Micah Petillo was born in 1981 and grew up Massachusetts. He
studied at Saint Anselm College and Boston College, where he
earned Bachelor s and Master s degrees in Philosophy. Currently,
he holds a position teaching Philosophy at a small New Hampshire
college and lives, as he has always wanted, with his wife in a
small New Hampshire town.