The problem, I suspect, lies in assuming the homogeneity of space and time and the homogeneous universality of the laws of nature (a spacetime equivalent of Hume’s ‘dead folk stay dead’). In place of the concept of an undifferentiated unity of nature, I propose one of a differentiated unity, combined with heterogeneous laws. In short, without a view of nature as ‘heaven and earth’ it is hard to understand the transformation of nature in the ‘new heavens and new earth.’ This implies that even the discussions of ‘creation and cosmology’ may be problemmatic, although they have seemed highly positive in the literature so far. The point here is that, though modern science took the concepts of rationality and contingency from the ex nihilo tradition to build a philosophy of nature in which Newtonian and Einsteinian cosmology have flourished, it did not appropriate the concepts of the goodness and purpose which the ex nihilo tradition also offered, nor, and more importantly, did it accept the traditional distinction between ‘heaven and earth’ however that is understood philosophically. Finally, as Pannenberg as pointed out, it did not take the Boethian notion of time as ‘duration’, opting instead for the Augustinian concept of the dimensionless present and incorporating it into the parametric notion of time that underlies the calculus, the manifold-metric view of spacetime, and in general, modern physics.REF LAKE COMO PAPER