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COSMOLOGY AND CREATION

It is fundamental to biblical theology that the universe owes its origin and continued existence to the will of God. The God revealed in Jesus is the creator and sustainer of heaven and earth. For contemporary theology this raises a number of questions for an understanding of the nature of creation, the dialogue between science and theology, and the content and practice of apologetics.

Within the scientific community, it is generally agreed, on the basis of the redshift of galaxies, the observation of the microwave background radiation, and the theoretical prediction of the observed hydrogen-to-helium ratio, that the origin of the universe is well described by the model of the hot Big Bang, with the universe expanding from a singularity some 15 billion years ago. Of course, no scientific model is without its problems, and the Big Bang leaves certain questions unanswered. Questions such as the age of the universe and the nature of the dark matter that is necessary for galaxy formation are at present unresolved. Although the model of the Big Bang has needed some careful refining, it has stood up remarkably well to thirty years of scrutiny and new observations (cf. D. Wilkinson, God, the Big Bang and Stephen Hawking [Monarch, 1996]).

However, the model of the Big Bang has led to various theological responses. They have been highlighted by various authors in the 1980s and 1990s but in fact have a long intellectual history stretching back before the concept of the Big Bang itself. They represent various ways of understanding both the creation and, in particular, the Creator. Therefore let us begin with an overview of the biblical understanding of creation.
 

Creation and the Origin of the Universe
The obvious place to start would be the early chapters of Genesis. Of course much has been written on Genesis 1 and its relation to modern science (cf. E. Lucas, Genesis Today [Scripture Union, 1989] and H. Blocher, In the Beginning [InterVarsity, 1984]). However, such an approach can ignore the many other places where the Bible talks about creation. In particular, passages in the NT, while reflecting the truths of Genesis 1, also build upon it. One such passage is contained in Paul’s letter to the Colossian Christians (Col 1:15-20).

From Colossians 1 we can notice a number of important themes. First, the Bible is rarely interested in cosmology for its own sake. Galileo said of the purpose of the scriptures, "The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes." The biblical teaching about creation is located in passages that are concerned with other issues such as worship, Christology, and salvation. Here in Colossians Paul is concerned to communicate the supremacy of Jesus.

Second, the creator God is revealed in Jesus who is the image of the invisible God. There may be some knowledge of God from the order or beauty of the universe itself, but if we want to know the Creator we need Jesus.

Third, at the heart of creation is Jesus Christ. Deep within the wisdom literature of the OT, God’s creative activity is described in terms of the figure of "wisdom" (Prov 8:22). This was a way of expressing in a figure of speech certain aspects of God’s creative character. In 1925, the scholar C.F. Burney pointed out that Paul in Colossians applies to Jesus everything that could be said of this figure. Paul is saying that at the heart of creation is not a divine attribute but a divine personality. He therefore is the ultimate answer to questions of the purpose of the universe, and any exploration of "his universe" through science is a Christian calling and ministry.

Finally, Jesus has no competitors in creation. Paul makes a point of listing in v 16 all the power structures of the universe. Commentators disagree on whether he is referring to supernatural powers such as demons or angels, or to earthly powers such as governments. What is clear is that he is saying that all these things owe their existence to Christ. He is not a rival to pagan gods but is supreme in all things. Christians have traditionally believed in the doctrine of "creation out of nothing." If something already existed out of which he then made the universe, then God would not be absolute. The doctrine itself emerged as late as the end of the 2nd century in the thinking of Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus. However, here in this passage Paul is reflecting such a doctrine. Christ does not use things already there or have to overcome rival forces; he brings into being all things. That in turn means that creation itself is distinct from God. He is related to it as he sustains it but he is different from it.
 

Big Bang or Big God?
Although all Christians agree that God is the source and sustainer of the whole universe, there is disagreement on how he does it. Within the Christian community itself there is a significant opinion that an acceptance of the Big Bang immediately denies the existence of a creator God. From this position a variety of scientific and theological arguments are put up against the Big Bang (cf. K. Ham, The Lie Evolution [Creation Life, 1990]; H.M. Morris, Scientific Creationism [Christian World, 1974]; J.C. Whitcomb and H.M. Morris, The Genesis Flood [Baker, 1961]; D.R. Humphreys, Starlight and Time [Creation Life, 1995]). These include pointing out scientific gaps in the Big Bang model; arguments for an age of the universe in thousands rather than billions of years; the authority of scripture means that we have to accept that the Big Bang is wrong; and God is more likely to create in seven days rather than over billions of years.

The evangelical community needs to acknowledge diversity on this issue, with believers equally committed to the authority of the Bible both agreeing and disagreeing with the Big Bang. There are scientific arguments to be debated such as the age of the universe, but the issue is one primarily of biblical interpretation. That is, are the early chapters of Genesis meant to be a scientific history of the universe or is their purpose primarily theological? Many are convinced that the literature of those early chapters is more theology and liturgy than science, and therefore they do not go against a model such as the Big Bang as our best current description of how God created. The scientific model is to be held together with the theological truth that the whole creation owes its existence to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. D. Wilkinson, God, the Big Bang and Stephen Hawking). Both are needed to understand fully the origin of the universe.

 We might ask the question, If the Big Bang is how God creates, why does he use a process that takes billions of years? The scientific answer is that it takes billions of years to make carbon inside stars for life to exist. However, we are still faced with the question, Why make carbon in that way? To that there is no answer, although we must be clear that such a process in no way lessens God’s creative power. Indeed, some see such an intricate, patient, and elegant process as part of the heavens declaring the glory of God (Ps 19:1).
 

A Brief History of Creation
In recent years, a new aspect of the cosmology debate has developed following the popularity of S. Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1998). Hawking himself has achieved international fame, including appearances on Star Trek and The Simpsons! This is due in large part to his remarkable personal story. Diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease while a young man he now communicates via a voice synthesizer where each word has to be laboriously entered. Yet his mind has probed the very depths of the universe, making him one of the outstanding scientists of our generation, if not of all time.

Among his many achievements, Hawking has suggested a possible solution to a fundamental problem with the Big Bang--namely, What happened at the first moment? Cosmology uses its knowledge of the physical laws to reconstruct a model of what happened in the past. In this it has been extremely successful with our current models, describing the universe well back to a time when it was only 10-43second old. This is a very small fraction of a second, but it is not zero. At that point our current theories break down, due to an inconsistency between general relativity and quantum theory. Current scientific theory is unable to give a description of the initial conditions of the expansion of the universe. Do we need God to "fix" the initial conditions of the universe? If science is unable to describe the initial moments, is this where God comes in to set the universe off?

What Hawking does is to suggest a possible way of uniting quantum theory and gravity (the realm of general relativity) to describe the beginning of the universe. One of the results of this is that he describes how the blue touch paper of the Big Bang lights itself. The core of this theory, in J. Barrow’s phrase, is that, "once upon a time there was no time" (J.D. Barrow, "Universe began in no time at all," The Observer [May 7, 1993]). Hawking is saying that the universe does have a beginning but it does not need a cause, for in the theory the notion of time melts away. For Hawking, the universe emerges from a fluctuation in a quantum field. No cause as such is necessary.

It must be stressed that there are many scientific difficulties with Hawking’s theory and it is not widely accepted. There are other proposals on how to deal with the problem of the laws breaking down. In addition, Hawking actually does not have a full theory. He makes his suggestions on the basis of what the theory would look like if he had a full theory. Furthermore, it is difficult to know whether quantum theory can be legitimately applied to the whole universe (cf. R. Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind [Oxford, 1989] and J.D. Barrow, Theories of Everything [Clarendon, 1991]).

Much more work is needed on these and other problems. Yet it raises some important theological questions. If Hawking is right, does God become redundant? Is C. Sagan right to describe Hawking’s book as a book about the "absence of God" (cf. P.W. Atkins, Creation Revisited [W.H. Freeman, 1993])?

Hawking questions the cosmological argument in temporal form. The universe may have a finite age but it does not follow that one can use a cause/effect argument on the universe to prove a Creator God. This is to be welcomed, for such an attempt to prove God runs into two major problems: the god of the gaps and deism.

The "god of the gaps" problem is the temptation that if science has a gap in it then insert God as the explanation (cf. C.A. Coulson, Science and Religion: A Changing Relationship [Cambridge, 1955] 7). The trouble is that, as the gaps became smaller and smaller in science, so God is pushed out into irrelevancy. The first moment of the universe remains for some as the last big gap. It was as if God was sheltering in its safety, but then Hawking came along and spoke out! And why not? The God of the Bible does not shelter in safe gaps.

This "god of the gaps" problem surfaces because of the mistake of confusing different types of explanation. Science and theology can give different but compatible explanations of the same thing. Some atheists such as R. Dawkins believe that once one has obtained a scientific explanation then that is all one needs. Some Christians believe that there are some things in the natural world that science should not explore because these things are "God’s work." Both are wrong.

The Bible understands that the whole universe is the result of God’ s working. He is as much at work in the first 10-43second as at any other time. A scientific description of that moment in time does not invalidate it as being the activity of God as any other event. Furthermore, such an attempt to prove the existence of God often leads to a picture of God that is closer to deism rather than the Bible. The deists believed in a god who set the universe off and then went away to have nothing more to do with it. Nothing could be further from the God of the Bible. Creation is not a single initial act, but the bringing into being and moment-by-moment keeping in being of the whole universe (Col 1:15-17; Heb 1:3).

Hawking questions a deistic god of the gaps. The biblical understanding of the creator God is very different, so Christians need not feel threatened by such scientific progress in cosmology. At the same time such progress has raised questions that science itself cannot answer. In this there are opportunities for Christian apologetics.
 

A "Theory of Everything" or a Search for God?
Hawking says that he is searching for "a theory of everything." People often interpret this as Hawking attempting to get a theory that would explain literally everything in the universe. This is not the case. Hawking is attempting to construct a theory that explains how the universe develops with time and its initial conditions. Such a theory, if possible, would not explain everything about science. For example, weather forecasting is based on chaotic systems that have virtually nothing to do with the Big Bang. In addition, a theory of everything leaves a number of other important questions about the universe unanswered. Science is successful because it limits its range of questions. There are many other remaining questions.

(1) Why the Universe?
Hawking himself states, "Although science may solve the problem of how the Universe began, it cannot answer the question: why does the universe bother to exist? I don’t know the answer to that" (Black Holes and Baby Universes [Bantam, 1993] 90).
The philosopher Leibniz had asked many years ago, Why is there something rather than nothing? This is not to resurrect the first-cause argument; it is to recognize that the purpose and meaning of the universe lie beyond science. The Christian will argue they find a natural answer in a personal God

(2) Where Do the Scientific Laws Come from?
If the universe emerges as a quantum fluctuation, we need to ask where quantum theory itself comes from Where does the pattern of the world come from and how is it maintained? This is not a "god of the gaps" argument as science itself assumes these laws in order to work. There is a long tradition stretching back to Newton who saw the laws of the universe as work of the divine lawgiver. Kepler was "carried away by unutterable rapture" as the correlation between orbital periods and mean diameters, which showed that the planets moved in elliptical orbits, was disclosed. Once again the Christian will argue that God is the natural answer.

(3) Why Is the Universe Intelligible?
Einstein once said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. Yet why should this be the case, that the mathematics of our minds resonates with the mathematics of the universe? Some writers, including J. Polkinghorne, suggest that the natural answer is that there exists a creator God who is the basis of the order in the universe and the ability of our minds to understand it (One World [SPCK, 1986]; Science and Creation [SPCK, 1988]).

(4) What Is Our Significance in the Universe?
Recently, there has been a growing appreciation of the anthropic fruitfulness of the universe, that is, the structure of the universe seems to be sensitively tuned to the existence of life (J.D. Barrow and F.J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle [Oxford, 1986]). This has led a number of high-profile scientists such as P. Davies or Sir F. Hoyle, who have no time for traditional Christian theism, to claim that, "science offers a surer path to God than religion" (P. Davies, God and the New Physics [Pelican, 1983] ix). Davies and Hoyle go too far, but it is fascinating that they find the anthropic arguments so compelling. These insights do not prove God but may point the way towards him. It illustrates a revival of natural theology, not in the sense of logical proofs but in pointers towards God (cf. D. Wilkinson, "The Revival of Natural Theology in Contemporary Cosmology," Science and Christian Belief 2 [2, 1990] 95-116). This position is consistent with the wisdom literature and other parts of the Bible which encourage Christian thinkers to seek evidence of God in the universe as well as in the Scriptures (e.g., Ps 19:1; Acts 14:7; 17:22-31; Rom 1:19-32).

 (5) Is There a Way to Know the Creator God?
The astronomer, Kepler wrote, "There is nothing I want to find out and long to know with greater urgency than this. Can I find God, whom I can almost grasp with my own hands, in looking to the Universe, also in myself?" (Life and Letters, Kepler to an Unidentified Nobleman [October 1623] 114-15).
 

We began this essay by suggesting that the answer to all these questions was actually to be found in Jesus Christ. These questions are raised by science but are unable to be answered by science. Sir R. Boyd, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of London, in commenting on whether Hawking’s theory would show us the mind of God, wrote, "The missing data in Hawking’s analysis of the ‘Mind of God’ is the mind of One ‘who made Himself of no reputation', whose love is unconditional and whose ‘Name is above every name'" (R. Boyd, Science and Christian Belief 6 [2, 1994) 143). With that "data," the Creator can be known, and cosmology in the further words of Kepler is "thinking God’s thoughts after him."

By David Wilkinson, Fellow in Christian Apologetics at St. John's College, University of Durham. He has a Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.