Question

Any reason we might give for which God created the world is not really a good one, because any need that God wanted to achieve through creating the world He could also achieve without creating it—and in general, what needs does He even have? So is the existence of God not a paradox? Because if He exists, then He created the world because of some need, but for the sake of a need He shouldn’t have to create the world. And true, you can tell me—as I saw in some of the answers—that asking why God created the world is anthropomorphism, and we can’t take categories from our world and use them to explain why God created the world. But the question is: based on what we know, aren’t we supposed to view this as a contradiction? Like what I saw you wrote regarding the question of divine foreknowledge and free choice—that it doesn’t help to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is above time, because from our perspective it is still a contradiction and we can’t adopt both conceptions. So here too, how can one adopt the conception that God exists when, from my perspective, there can’t be any need for which He created the world (mainly because what needs could He possibly have), but the existence of God seems to require that there be some reason or need for which He created the world?