This is a Q&A blog post by Talbot School of Theology’s Visiting Scholar in Philosophy, William Lane Craig.

Question

I was arguing with a pantheist friend recently and he said that "even if God existed, existence as such is a higher category than him", because if we think of existence as a Venn diagram, existence is the big circle and God is the small one. The reason is, there are many other things in existence along with God. And if we simply say that existence itself is God, that's the same as saying that existence equals existence, which is a tautology. So we run into some problems with both definitions. What is the solution?

William Lane Craig’s Response

I certainly do believe that God is not all that exists. In addition to God, there also exist beings created by God. So there are two types of existence: necessary existence and contingent existence. God alone exists necessarily, whereas other things exist contingently.

So if we were to draw a circle representing everything that exists, God would be designated by a smaller circle within it. But the error of your pantheist friend is thinking that that larger circle is itself something that exists. That’s just a category mistake, saying that existence exists. Things exist; existence is not a thing.

Since existence itself is not a thing, there is no problem with the theistic view that God is not a part of anything.

It is the pantheist himself who says that God is everything that exists. So, ironically, it is your friend who confronts the supposed problem of tautology.

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