And this all men call god

Abstract

Philosophical discussion of theistic arguments mainly focus on their first (existence) stage, which argues for the existence of something having some very general, if suggestive, feature. I shall instead consider only the second (identification) stage of one such argument, the cosmological argument from contingency. Taking for granted the existence of an absolutely necessary being, I develop an extended line of argument that supports the more nearly theistic claim that such a being is a transcendent, personal cause of our contingent universe.