Stephen Hawking, God and Creation

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. Thus read the opening words of the Bible in Genesis 1.1. But Professor Stephen Hawking’s latest research has led him to the conclusion that ‘the Universe can and will create itself from nothing’ by ‘spontaneous creation’, and thus there is no need to find a place for God in the creation of the universe.

Professor Hawking raises an important question. Is it essential to our faith to find a place for God in the physical creation of the universe? In my view, questions to do with the nature of the material world, its origins and development, are essentially scientific ones.

Faith is about something else. Faith offers wisdom as to how we understand the world in which we live, our relationships with God, with each other and with the earth. To read the Genesis account of creation as science is a category mistake, and one which sets up an unnecessary conflict between religion and science insofar as it is based on a false premise.

And yet there is no shortage of defenders of the position that God had a hand in the physical creation of the universe. Around 1650 Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh, taking an historical approach, named 4004BC as the date God created the heavens and the earth. Today in some quarters there is a renewed emphasis on Genesis as providing a scientific and historical account of Creation. In the USA there are even court cases to prohibit the teaching of evolutionary theories like those of Charles Darwin.

The proclamation of this view leads in turn to the relentless attacks by Professor Richard Dawkins on religion. Dawkins ignores contemporary theology, but nonetheless has a legitimate target in the promoters of creationism as a scientific theory.

We need to think of Genesis in a different way. The world in which the biblical writers lived was one where it was natural to think of a heavenly realm inhabited by gods, or God, who created and controlled the earth and all human forms of life. God was conceived in human-like terms, so that all the attributes of human thinking and action were ascribed on a much larger scale to God.

God was also regarded as pre-existent, and hence it was essential to find a role for such a God in the creation of the universe. But as scientists have extended their understanding of how the universe was made (eg the Big Bang, or evolution), the space left for God has diminished. A ‘God-of-the-gaps’ approach has ensued with the gap to be filled by God increasingly reduced as science discovers more.

There is no question that the concept of a human-like, pre-existent, divine being/creator lies at the heart of traditional religious thought. But how valid is that image in the 21st century? There are other concepts of God, equally biblical, such as God as love, or God as spirit, that remain at the heart of religion. Here’s a potentially heretical question: is the pre-existent creator image essential to faith?

My own faith and experience of God has these features:

• A sense of being part of something bigger than myself, an otherness that transcends human experience but yet holds all humanity and all creation in an inseparable unity. Here is mystery, something in the face of which we stand in awe, and an antidote to any tendency to self-centred arrogance. Psalm 8 captures it in the words ‘O Lord, our governor, how wonderful is your name in all the earth;…. who are we that you are mindful of us?’
• Then a sense that life and creation is a gift, unmerited goodness and grace, and that all life is to be treasured and sustained.
• We experience the divine mystery as love, and we are called as disciples to express that love through acts of compassion, in reconciliation, in working for justice and peace, and for the well-being of all people and the earth itself.
• The nature of the mystery, which we name as God, is expressed in the person of Jesus Christ, whom we name Son of God insofar as God’s nature is seen perfectly in him.
• A sense of connectedness to God and all life: all of creation is part of God’s one family, and hence even in the darkest of times we are never alone. Nor can we ever abandon our calling to care passionately for every other member of God’s family, which includes caring for the earth itself.

Now you will notice that I continue to use the word “God” as though God is a person, and here there is a paradox for me. My experience of God through prayer and worship, in all the encounters of daily life and in my contemplation of creation, is intensely personal, and yet the image of God as a person is not one I find helpful. In prayer and worship I use personal language about God, because my experience of God is personal, intimate and warm. God is not some cold intellectual or philosophical concept. God is mystery, yet a warm and loving mystery which embraces each one of us.

I imagine many of us would experience God in the way I have outlined – a mystery of love expressed fully in the person of Jesus Christ. But no words or pictures can capture the nature of this divine mystery. Our creeds, our liturgies, our images of God are all at best inadequate human attempts to express the mystery. They are pointers to God, like road signs pointing to a city, but they cannot capture the fullness of God, any more than a road sign can be confused with the city to which it points.

The image of God as pre-existent being, and hence necessarily having a role in the physical creation of the earth, is traditional and widespread. It brings us into conflict with science, and with people like Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins. Yet is it heretical to suggest that this is but one human image of God? There are other images, such as the Celtic images of God as spirit, as love, as life, flowing through all life and creation, which do not require a place for God in the physical creation of the universe.

In recent years I have come increasingly to the latter view. But one treads carefully where images of God are concerned. No image can be right or wrong. We must each find an image of God that works for us and best expresses our experience of God.

All civilizations have their stories of origin. Maori have the story of Rangi and Papa. We have the Genesis story. Neither should be seen as scientific accounts of how the world was made. But each story is rich in meaning as to the spiritual dimensions of life, and to how people relate to God, to each other and to the earth.

For myself I am happy to leave it to the scientists to explore the beginnings of the universe. Religion has a different task, and that is to help us experience the divine mystery that lies at the heart of life, and to experience and pass on the love of God which was seen so perfectly in the life, death and rising again of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a complementary task to that of science. We should never allow science and religion to be at loggerheads. Our faith points us to a God whose life-giving spirit flows through all life, including science.