Contingency and Necessity: Metatheological Considerations

This paper addresses two questions. The first inquires about the line between the contingent and the necessary, and the second about how to explain contingency itself. The goal is a unified explanation of the two. In doing so, we favor approaches that offer plausible explanations even if we agree that no explanation may be needed, resisting only the stronger claim that no explanation is possible. Then we embrace the idea that a unified account of these two aspects of contingency is to be preferred over alternatives, leading to important metatheological results. Those results involve two different approaches to what is fundamental to the nature of deity, and the argument shows a preference for endorsing Creator Theology over a rival Worship-Worthiness approach and, by implication, over Perfect Being Theology as well.