Theological Foundations of a "Beginning"

At this juncture, it is illuminating to probe into the theological thinking that is at work for pronouncing that the world has a beginning. As is well-known, while pondering over the statement in the Genesis : “In the beginning Thou madest the Heaven and Earth”, St. Augustine took seriously the question provoked by the philosophical temper of pre-Christian Greece, viz. “What was God doing BEFORE He made the Heaven and Earth?” Note the word ‘Before’. Augustine confronts the question and answers “Before Heaven and Earth there was no time...” and again “at no time then hadst Thou not made any thing, because time itself Thou madest”. We need to dwell on this answer in order to note how the very idea of beginning acquires a theological dimension, transforming the idea of absolute beginning of the world as absolute dependence of the creation on the creator. I am inclined to remark that the world has a beginning in this context is not intended as a piece of empirical information about the world but an unveiling of revealed truth which puts in relief the utter contingency of this world on a timeless Cause.

In fact, it is entirely on the basis of ethico-religious considerations, that even earlier than Augustine, the Jewish thinker, Philo of Alexandria had already argued against those in ancient Greece who found the idea of an absolute origination of the world to be an absurd proposition. Philo’s theological argument was: “Those who assert that this world is unoriginated unconsciously eliminate that which of all incentives to piety is the most beneficial and the most indispensable viz. providence. For it stands to reason that what has been brought into existence, should be cared for by its Father and Maker.”

Reflecting on the motivations that prompt these argumentations it is hard to conclude that the thesis - the world has a beginning - is meant to support a secular cosmologist; rather it is a declaration about the status of the world as it is revealed to the religious consciousness.

Indeed to take an overview of the cognitive situation where cosmological speculations and soteriological positions seem to have considerable bearing on each other, it calls for a careful disclosure of the concerns as these are expressed within their respective traditional frames of discourse. Thus, it may be observed, that generally speaking, in conventional usage as well as in theoretizations, a notion of beginning entails a reference to time. This is why the idea of the beginningless world-process can be rephrased by saying that there never was a time when the world was not. While reflecting on the idea of beginning of the world, Kant formulated its conceptual content in the following words..” Since the beginning is an existence which is preceded by a time in which the thing is not, there must have been a previous time in which the world was not, i.e., an empty time.

We have seen that such a reading could not have been of great use to a theologian as St. Augustine. For him the idea of beginning is impregnated with a profounder meaning that has theological import. This is also why it must not be taken to be providing with an empirical information about the world but as a technical word that forms a part of a theological vocabulary.

Contributed by: Dr. Anindita Balslev