Keith Ward, Big Questions in Science and Religion 1: How Did The Universe Begin?

To be fair, Ward’s understanding of divine creation, in keeping with Aquinas and other famous Christian theologians, is not focused on God giving a temporal start to the universe, but on the dependence of the universe on God for its existence, not merely for its beginning (if it had one). But given that he adds this qualification, it might have been appropriate to drop the “how”, since even if the evidence for the “Big Bang” suggests that our visible universe was once much hotter and denser, there is no way to know whether this holds true of a wider universe, or of other universes, that lie beyond the range of what we can ever hope to see or detect. So the question of whether the universe had a beginning, and if so in what sense, remains an unresolved issue in cosmology.

Ward takes an interesting approach, one that is particularly appropriate when writing for those familiar with and interested in the Biblical texts relevant to creation. He begins with the Babylonian epic, which begins with a “great deep” from which gods themselves arise. Then he brings in the Genesis story, assuming without adequate justification that the deep, which also features in the Biblical account, is the creation of God, whereas there is a longstanding Jewish tradition of regarding it as simply having always been there, an idea important nowadays in Process Theology.

Ward, for those unfamiliar with his writings, is a Christian of a Liberal/Progressive sort, who is open to being critical of his own tradition as well as embracing insights from others. And so it is not surprising that he proceeds to consider “Three Problems with the Biblical Story”, including the most obvious, which is “Where did God come from?” His answer is that God, as traditionally understood by theologians, is more like the “formless deep” of the Babylonian epic, from which everything else arises, than many might think. He quotes Boethius’ description of God as the “infinite ocean of being” and adds his own reference to God as “a sort of limitless reservoir of all possibilities” (p.12).

Ward’s discussion of the possibility that what ultimately exists and “simply is” is consciousness leads quite naturally to a discussion of Indian ideas of origins. Indian philosophy explored the same basic subject as Descartes, but rather than it leading to a radical individualism and skeptical empiricism as in the Western tradition, it led to the conclusion that since the existence of consciousness cannot be denied without self contradiction, pure consciousness is what is really real and the ground of all other existing things.

The question of whether there is an ultimate spiritual reality is the heart of the matter, and religious traditions differ on whether this is a disembodied, purely spiritual reality that preceeds material existence, or rather a spiritual aspect of material existence. In either case, it would seem that there is no way to demonstrate that reality is one way or the other to the satisfaction of all. Those who experience reality as having a spiritual aspect will find explanations of origins in such terms plausible; those who do not, will not. But certainly the discussion of necessity as a philosophical concept is interesting if ultimately frustrating, and the question of why anything exists at all remains an intellectual puzzle whether one is asking it about the universe, pure consciousness, or a personal notion of God.

We consider these questions in the middle of cosmic history, without direct access to either the beginning or the end of existence, and were we in a position to see the beginning or the end, Ward suggests, it might be rather obvious one way or the other whether there is anything corresponding to creation and purpose in the universe. “But we, living in the middle of this cosmic drama, cannot see either its ultimate origin or its end” (p.27).

Ward sees it as a key component of a religious outlook that spirit can exist without embodiment. Process theologians would disagree, and would argue that the universe may be thought of as God’s body, and that God was never bodiless.

My own inclination is to respond to our current understanding by suggesting that, just as the “spirit” or “soul” of human beings seems to be an emergent aspect of our organism’s complexity, what is meant by “spirit” and “God” on a universal scale may likewise be something “emergent” or at least a reality that is not a separate substance alongside the universe, but the way it all relates together. But I shall say more about this when I get to Ward’s chapter on the soul. For now, I will simply observe that, from a reductionist standpoint, you are not reading my words on this screen. There are no words on the screen, only flickering pixels. Your mind interprets them as words. But your mind is likewise something which, no matter how minutely you were to be dissected, no scientist could pinpoint. Our sense of self emerges from the reality of our being in all its complexity. If that is how we now understand the human spirit, should we not think of Spirit in a similar way? This may well seem inadequate to future generations who know and understand far more than we do. But it seems an appropriate expression in terms of our current understanding of the universe and of ourselves.