Cosmos and Creation

Abstract

The activities of cosmologists and theologians have at least this in common: both are assuming that some sense can be made by man of the universe he inhabits, or, perhaps more precisely, of that which he constructs from his observations and experiences. To this extent both are assuming that the universe is a ‘cosmos,’ i.e., a general world order, a generally ordered entity. They also have it in common that both are aware of the limitations of their observations. The scientific cosmologist knows that the observable universe is only a finite population of galaxies and clusters of galaxies in a greater whole, a subsystem within the theoretical limits of observations (the distance at which the galaxies recede with velocities approaching that of light), limits which themselves need not exhaust a supposedly identifiable entity called “the universe.” Similarly the theologian knows in principle that he cannot ever know or say all that might conceivably be said or known of God and his relation to the natural world. Nevertheless the intuition that the universe is ordered, which observation and experience tend to validate, encourages man qua cosmologist and qua religious thinker to construct models in which that order is made explicit and is given interpretative potentiality. Later on I shall be referring to the models of creation which theologians have found useful and illuminating.