ABSTRACT
From God, the one necessary being, this chapter turns to his relation to whatever else may exist, which can be only finite and merely possible realities. It firstly considers cosmism and acosmism. The former holds that only the universe exists and can take two principal forms: that which affirms that the universe has a merely possible existence; and that which explicitly or implicitly holds the universe, its structure, and sometimes everything within to exist or happen necessarily. The chapter reviews the principal forms of cosmology which, in one way or another, deny or compromise the necessity of God or the merely possible status of everything else, or both. They are that the one or the other does not exist; that they are identical or that God is within the world but not identical with it (pantheism or immanentism); or that God, although remaining infinite, is nevertheless made finite to some extent by the existence of the world.
