#960 Is God Part of Existence?
October 05, 2025Hello Dr. Craig.
Wanted to thank you for all of your work! You have encouraged my interest in intellectual exploration of the theological world.
To my 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 = existence, which is a tautology. So we run into some problems with both definitions. What is the solution?
Thanks.
Shota
Georgia
Dr. craig’s response
A
It’s wonderful to hear, Shota, that even in far away Georgia people are accessing and using the resources of Reasonable Faith! Readers who don’t know where Georgia is should take a look at a global map.
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.
- William Lane Craig