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9 - Trinity, motion and creation ex nihilo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2010

By
Simon Oliver
Edited by
David B. Burrell ,
Carlo Cogliati ,
Janet M. Soskice  and
William R. Stoeger
David B. Burrell
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Carlo Cogliati
Affiliation:
Peterhouse, Cambridge
Janet M. Soskice
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
William R. Stoeger
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The doctrine of creation ex nihilo apparently distinguishes theological cosmology from ancient Greek conceptions of a universe which has no temporal beginning (as in Aristotle) or a cosmos which is formed from pre-existent chaos, the khora (as in Plato's mythic cosmology, Timaeus). While the theological doctrine of creation marks a significant break from ancient Greek cosmology, more recently some have argued for a congruence between creation ex nihilo and contemporary Big Bang theories and the notion that the universe had a temporal beginning in the form of a singularity.

Does Big Bang cosmology confirm the doctrine of creation ex nihilo and the teaching that ‘in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’? Numerous cosmologists seem to interpret Big Bang cosmology in a way which precludes the notion of creation and a creator. For example, some account for the Big Bang in terms of a fluctuation in a primal vacuum known as ‘quantum tunnelling’ from nothing, from which the universe expanded according to what is known as inflation theory. ‘Nothing’ is defined by the cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin as a state with no classical space-time in which the basic categories of physics – space, time, energy, entropy and so on – seem to lose their meaning. This utterly uncaused emergence of the universe from nothing apparently accounts for the universe's existence without reference to anything beyond the universe itself. The universe is simply a brute fact.

Type
Chapter
Information
Creation and the God of Abraham , pp. 133 - 151
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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