The Easter Vigil Story:
First Reading, the Creation*

INTRODUCTION

Before the Covid lockdowns, I had the privilege of being a lector for the Easter Vigil Mass at our local nursing home. The nun who made the arrangements set my readings as the first, the Creation story from Genesis 1, and the Epistle. “Since you’re a physicist” she told me, “the Creation should be of special interest to you.” Indeed it was. As it was at the first Easter vigil Mass I attended 27 years ago, when I was Baptized and Confirmed in the Church.

GENESIS 1: CARDINAL RATZINGER, “IN THE BEGINNING...”

During the first years after my conversion, I had a problem reconciling Genesis 1, the scriptural account of creation, with what physics told me about how the universe began. Fortunately in those early years I took a very fine course on the Old Testament, as part of a Diocesan Ecclesial Lay Ministry program. In that course I learned that one could interpret the Old Testament in different ways:

• literally (this would mean as the author intended it);
• figuratively (as an analogue or story);
• anagologically (as a mystical parable);

The priest who taught the course also told me to read Cardinal Ratzinger’s book, “In the Beginning…A Catholic Understanding of the Story of the Creation and Fall. That message resolved my concern:

“…the Bible is not a natural science textbook, nor does it intend to be such. It is a religious book, and consequently one cannot obtain information about the natural sciences from it. One cannot get from it a scientific explanation of how the world arose; one can only glean religious experience from it. Anything else is an image and a way of describing things whose aim is to make profound realities graspable to human beings. One must distinguish between the form of portrayal and the content that is portrayed.”— Pope Benedict XVI (writing as Cardinal Ratzinger), In the Beginning…

SCRIPTURE AND CREATIO EX NIHILO

Reconciling Genesis 1 and cosmology was no longer a problem; no need for cognitive dissonance.
But there was another difficulty. Catholic dogma states the universe was created out of nothing, “Ex Nihilo.” This is certainly consistent with the Big Bang hypothesis. Now where in the Old Testament does “Creatio ex Nihilo” occur? According to one of my friends, an expert in Hebrew (he was an Irish-American physician whose retirement was spent in Scripture scholarship) the Hebrew words, Tohu-Bohu, describing what was before Creation, do not mean “nothingness,” but rather “chaos, topsy-turvy.” Such a description agrees with a “quantum fluctuation” event as creation, favored by agnostic physicists who would like to negate the Big Bang explanation. Well, is there anything in the Old Testament to point to Creatio ex Nihilo? Here’s one quote:

I beseech thee, my son, look upon the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, and consider that God made them of things that were not; and so was mankind made likewise.—2 Maccabees 7:28, (KJV)

And in the New Testament, here’s another:

“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible”—Hebrews 11:3 (KJV)

THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH, ST AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS  AND CREATIO EX NIHILO

Creatio ex Nihilo as a doctrine was made secure by Theophilus of Antioch in the 2nd Century AD. He declared:

And what great thing is it if God made the world out of existent materials? For even a human artist, when he gets material from some one, makes of it what he pleases But the power of God is manifested in this, that out of things that are not He makes whatever He pleases.” [emphasis added].—Theophilus of Antioch, Letter to Autolycus, Chapter IV

St. Augustine of Hippo gave a final touch to this doctrine by positing that in addition to the creation of material stuff, time began at the instant of creation:

“…no time passed before the world, because no creature was made by whose course it might pass.” —” City of God,” book 11, ch.4.

This view is in remarkable accord with modern cosmology:

“For Augustine…God did not create time at a certain moment, but non-temporally caused all time to exist.” —Keith Ward, in “Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature”.

St. Thomas Aquinas has argued that reason alone cannot demonstrate that the universe was not eternal:

By faith alone do we hold, and by no demonstration can it be proved, that the world did not always exist—St. Thomas Aquinas, “Summa Theologica,” Part I, Question 46

CREATIO EX NIHILO: THE TRUTHS OF SCIENCE OR THE TRUTHS OF FAITH?

Nevertheless, there is empirical evidence that the universe began as a singularity in space-time some 14 billion years ago. Should we be happy that contemporary physics and Catholic teaching do not disagree? Perhaps, but we should acknowledge that the “truths” of science change, unlike Catholic doctrine, This was the argument that Abbe LeMaitre made to Pope Pius XII, to dissuade the Pope from incorporating Big Bang theory as official Catholic teaching.  Moreover, despite the empirical evidence that confirms the Big Bang, there are problems with the theory. I refer the reader to Essay 3, Creatio ex Nihilo, of my web-book, “A Science Primer for the Faithful,” for a discussion of these.

FINAL THOUGHTS

One final word: not only Creation, but also the wondrous, intricate design that yields the universe and biology as we know it—the Anthropic Coincidences—lead us to Psalm 19A as a celebration of the Trinitarian God as Creator:

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.” Psalm 19 (KJV)

That verse means more to me than the Big Bang Theory, but I’m happy that they are consonant.

Note

*This article was originally published in Catholic Stand.  The featured image is from: “In the Beginning. Stained-glass window at Church of Our Savior, MCC (Metropolitan Community Church), 2011 South Federal Hwy, Boynton Beach, Florida.jpg” (Wikimedia Commons image).