HOME  INTERVIEWS  RESOURCES  NEWS  ABOUT

View by:  Subject  Theme  Question  Term  Person  Event

Ward, Keith. “God as a Principle of Cosmological Explanation."

In his paper Keith Ward moves ‘both ways’ between theology and cosmology. He begins with a summary of the traditional doctrine of creation: God is a non-spatio-temporal being, transcending all that is created, including spacetime, although immanent to all creation as its omnipresent Creator. Divine eternity is thus timeless, for God has neither internal nor external temporal relations. The act of creation is one of non-temporal causation. Whether there was a first moment is irrelevant to the doctrine.

Ward admits that this view of God is congruent with the block universe interpretation of special relativity, but he is highly critical of it. Ward maintains that the doctrine of creation does not entail a timeless God. Although God transcends spacetime as its cause, God is nevertheless temporal, since “. . . by creating spacetime, God creates new temporal relations in the Divine being itself.” Allowing God to have temporal relations makes it possible for God to act in new ways, make new decisions and bring into being in time an infinite number of new things. The inclusion of divine contingency along with divine necessity enriches the concept of omnipotence.

Ward distinguishes his view of God from that of process theism. He maintains God’s omnipotence and still affirms free will by appealing to divine self-limitation. The advantage over Whitehead is that God’s omnipotence will “ensure that all the evil caused by the misuse of creaturely freedom will be ordered to good . . .”

Ward then relates nomological models, which are dominant in physics and involve general principles and ultimate brute facts, to axiological models, which arise in the social sciences and describe the free realization of ultimate values. A nomological model realizes an aesthetic value, since the laws of nature are elegant and simple. An axiological model is ultimately factual, since values arise out of the natural capacities of sentient beings as described by physics and evolutionary biology. This inter-relationship is central to the Christian claim that “. . . goodness is rooted in the nature of things, and is not some sort of arbitrary decision or purely subjective expression of feeling.”

Quantum cosmologists attempt to offer a secular explanation of ultimate brute facts, but this minimizes the importance of freedom, creativity, and the realization of values. Theism can offer a comparable explanation of nature, but its advantage lies in its combination of nomological and axiological explanations. Theism is thus “the best possible intelligible explanation of the universe” and “the completion of that search for intelligibility which characterizes the scientific enterprise.” He urges that we reconstruct the doctrine of creation in terms of creative emergence, i.e., the novel realization of intrinsic values grounded in the divine nature and emerging through the cooperative acts of rational creatures.

Modern cosmology “sets the notion of Divine action in its broadest and most all- embracing context.” The laws of nature realize God’s purposes, understood as potentialities in the structure of reality and not interferences from an alien power. Miracles are “transformations of the physical to disclose its spiritual foundation and goal . . .” Thus theism “can be seen as an implication of the scientific attitude itself, and the pursuit of scientific understanding may be seen as converging upon the religious quest for self-transforming knowledge of God . . .”

Email link | Printer-friendly | Feedback | Contributed by: CTNS/Vatican Observatory

Topic Sets Available

AAAS Report on Stem-Cells

AstroTheology: Religious Reflections on Extraterrestrial Life Forms

Agency: Human, Robotic and Divine
Becoming Human: Brain, Mind, Emergence
Big Bang Cosmology and Theology (GHC)
Cosmic Questions Interviews

Cosmos and Creator
Creativity, Spirituality and Computing Technologies
CTNS Content Home
Darwin: A Friend to Religion?
Demystifying Information Technology
Divine Action (GHC)
Dreams and Dreaming: Neuroscientific and Religious Visions'
E. Coli at the No Free Lunchroom
Engaging Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence: An Adventure in Astro-Ethics
Evangelical Atheism: a response to Richard Dawkins
Ecology and Christian Theology
Evolution: What Should We Teach Our Children in Our Schools?
Evolution and Providence
Evolution and Creation Survey
Evolution and Theology (GHC)
Evolution, Creation, and Semiotics

The Expelled Controversy
Faith and Reason: An Introduction
Faith in the Future: Religion, Aging, and Healthcare in the 21st Century

Francisco Ayala on Evolution

From Christian Passions to Scientific Emotions
Genetic Engineering and Food

Genetics and Ethics
Genetic Technologies - the Radical Revision of Human Existence and the Natural World

Genomics, Nanotechnology and Robotics
Getting Mind out of Meat
God and Creation: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives on Big Bang Cosmology
God, Humanity and the Cosmos: A Textbook in Science and Religion
God the Spirit - and Natural Science
Historical Examples of the Science and Religion Debate (GHC)
History of Creationism
Intelligent Design Coming Clean

Issues for the Millennium: Cloning and Genetic Technologies
Jean Vanier of L'Arche
Nano-Technology and Nano-ethics
Natural Science and Christian Theology - A Select Bibliography
Neuroscience and the Soul
Outlines of the Science and Religion Debate (GHC)

Perspectives on Evolution

Physics and Theology
Quantum Mechanics and Theology (GHC)
Questions that Shape Our Future
Reductionism (GHC)
Reintroducing Teleology Into Science
Science and Suffering

Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (CTNS/Vatican Series)

Space Exploration and Positive Stewardship

Stem-Cell Debate: Ethical Questions
Stem-Cell Ethics: A Theological Brief

Stem-Cell Questions
Theistic Evolution: A Christian Alternative to Atheism, Creationism, and Intelligent Design...
Theology and Science: Current Issues and Future Directions
Unscientific America: How science illiteracy threatens our future
Will ET End Religion?

Current Stats: topics: >2600, links: >300,000, video: 200 hours.