First cause
The prophets therefore sometimes omit intermediate causes, and ascribe the production of an individual thing directly to God, saying that God had made it. But we do not find, what is not possible, anything which is an efficient cause of itself; because such a thing would be prior to itself, which is impossible.
Hume: "How can anything, that exists from eternity, have a cause, since that relation implies a priority in time and a beginning in existence?"
First cause is that part of philosophy that ascribes to God as being the first cause and prime motivator of creation. Maimonides: "It is clear that everything produced must have an immediate cause which produced it; that cause again a cause, and so on, till the First Cause, viz., the will and decree of God is reached.
Aquinas: "If there was not a first there would not be a last, or anything in the middle.. we must postulate a First Efficient Cause; which all men name God."
