Why a World?

As Christians, we believe that God the Father created all that is through Christ -- "Through him [the Word, or Christ] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." (John 1:3) Occasionally it has occurred to me to wonder, why a world? What purpose does the physical universe serve in God's plan? I got many of these ideas from C.S. Lewis, though a few may be original.

What can we learn about God's plan? First, we know that the Father begot the Son -- "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14) The Father is sufficient in Himself; He needs nothing. Everything that is or could be is contained in Himself. We can see that it was good to beget the Son, because God is good and He chose to do so. He did so, in the words of the Nicene Creed, "before all worlds." Therefore it pleased God the Father to create something separate from Himself of the same kind as Himself. Having begotten Christ, the Father says "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." (Matthew 17:5)

Perhaps the most likely reason for God to create what we know is to create spiritual creatures who could share in His glory -- less than Christ, but possessing the free will necessary to choose to love their maker. While of course I can't know for certain, I see no other viable reason for God to do so. I'll proceed from the assumption that this was His motive, to the extent that I'm capable of understanding His reasons.

If many spiritual beings were His intent, why not make many Christs? Well of course when it comes to God it's close to meaningless to talk about "what if" -- for us, if some circumstance had been different, things could have happened differently. For God, things are determined by His unchanging, eternal nature. He is subject to no external forces, and as such could never fail to enact His will. However, even then there is a logical difficulty with the concept of God begetting many Sons. In what way could they differ from each other? Each would be a perfect reflection of the Father; each would be all-knowing and all-powerful, as granted by the Father; each would have the same relationship to the Father. In John 1:1 we read that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." How could there be another Word? How could it be different, when the Word is eternal and unchanging and true? The only thing it could be to allow multiplicity would be "incomplete," in which case it is less than Christ.

We see, then, that the idea that God could beget more than one Son seems a logical impossibility. So, if God chooses to create many creatures capable of loving Him, they cannot be of the kind that Christ is. They must be smaller, less than Christ -- containing less of the Father's essence. They must be created, not begotten. So let us assume that God now chooses to create lesser beings. What form then will these creatures take?

Perhaps we would assume that these creatures could be purely spiritual, in the way that God probably is (though this is not certain; Genesis 3:8 says in part "Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day"). This brings up a difficulty, however. Imagine two purely spiritual beings, consciousnesses outside of space or time. How would they interact? If they could "touch" each other at all, how would they distinguish between themselves, with no obvious boundaries between them? How would they process ideas between them, without time? It's difficult to conceive how this could work.

So perhaps in order for minds to communicate with each other, they require some sort of idea of space and time -- space, to allow them to separate themselves from each other; time, to allow them to present ideas, process received information, and produce new statements. This is not enough, however. They still have no method of communication, so we need matter of some kind. These entities need some amount of matter over which they have power to use to communicate with each other. They must not have too much power, however: if one is entirely in control of its surroundings, no other would be able to use those surroundings to communicate. Therefore we need some sort of neutral outer world, which the different consciousnesses can all affect in the same way. That way they can all use the same methods to make sounds through the air or gestures carried by reflection of light which enable communication.

In attempting to envision some way many for souls to exist and interact with each other, we have already arrived at something quite akin to the world we know. As it is with God, the way He made things is the only way they could be, because He is all-powerful and because His nature does not change. So, while this is not a definitive proof by any means, I believe it's a useful theory for why there is a universe and what purpose it serves.