Should the Christian Church be doing more to counter the Big Bang theory advanced by science?
No – I don’t think so. I’d say that the notion that the universe as we know it has a definable beginning – a primitive state if you like from which everything else comes – is by no means incompatible with Christian theology, very far from it! In the Middle Ages, St Thomas Aquinas said famously that in principle the doctrine of creation could cope with any number of histories of the universe. It didn’t depend on this or that theory about how and when the universe began because the doctrine of creation simply said whatever is at any point, is because God is first – which takes me to a cluster of questions about God and the universe in a nice, simple subject matter for a short answer! Is God bigger than the universe or is the universe bigger than God?’ ‘Is God limited by scientific laws? If the universe exists because God exists, God isn’t an object inside the universe. God isn’t a thing amongst other things. So that this Abbey this evening doesn’t contain a couple of hundred human person
