Whilst for some mothers the sense of an unwelcome beginning related to a general feeling of distress in their new life as a mother, for others this theme was exemplified by reference to the temporal beginning of life; an unexpected or difficult birth experience.
Plutarch maintains that the cosmogony of the Timaeus must be interpreted literally, which means that the world had a temporal beginning (Plat. Quest. 1001B-C, De an. procr.
If this is right, then even a God who is in time could ground the existence of a series of contingent beings with no temporal beginning.
What William means by this is that the effect of God's eternal will is a world with a temporal beginning.
He then presents and refutes arguments that the world has no beginning, and provides his own positive arguments that the world must have a temporal beginning, a first instant of its existence.
If one believes in creation ex nihilo, however, as Alston does, one might nonetheless claim that creation ex nihilo does not necessarily mean a temporal beginning to the act of creation.
Hume's second objection is that God cannot be the causal explanation for the existence of a series of contingent beings that has no temporal beginning, since any causal relation "implies a priority in time and a beginning of existence" (Part IV).
The issue of a temporal beginning for the universe became of secondary importance through the influence of Aquinas's work, but further distancing has occurred with the rise of modern science and the desire to avoid theologies that generate empirical predictions.
Bonaventure on the Temporal Beginning of the World," The New Scholasticism, 63, no. 2 (Spring, 1989), 206-228; MaTheologicallz, "Theologicandand Philosophical Dependencies in St. Bonaventure's Argument Against an Eternal World and a Brief Thomistic Reply," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72.1 (Winter, 1998), 75-82.
The verb "created" (which Origen prefers to the alternative reading "possessed") does not imply that the Son has a temporal beginning, but that, having no other substrate than the Father's will, he expresses that will more perfectly than the things that are "made" from matter.
