GOD

Even within the Christian tradition, there have been different ideas of God.  Here are a few points on the traditional orthodox notion of God to which Clarke, Paley, and many others would subscribe.

• God exists necessarily, that is, God cannot fail to exist (what’s involved in the word “cannot” is a matter of dispute).
• God is a person (not a set of laws, or some sort of impersonal force) endowed with free will.  As such, God has a moral and personal relation with us.
• God is a perfect being in the sense of possessing all the positive attributes to the highest possible degree. 
• God’s attributes are divided in metaphysical and moral. The former are attributes that God has of necessity; the latter God has chosen to have.
• The most important metaphysical attributes are
• Simplicity (there is no multiplicity in God).  This is taken to entail that God is an immaterial being
• Unchangeability (God does not change)
• Omniscience (God is all-knowing)
• Omnipotence (God is all-powerful)
• The most important moral properties of God are
• Justice
• Omnibenevolence (God is all-good).

God is also taken to be eternal.  However, there is disagreement on what the notion of eternity involves.  Typically, one distinguishes two senses of eternity:

• Sempiternity, that is duration throughout the totality of time.  So, a sempiternal being exists in time and throughout time: there is no time at which such a being does not exist
• Eternity proper, that is, a-temporal duration.  So, an eternal being exists outside time.