By Tofu Ho
I’m not a scientist, and nor am I a theologian, but I love reading books about the interface between science and theology. The reason is that I’m excited to discover scientific evidence for the existence of God. Over the years, I’ve accessed a number of books on science and theology. I have to admit I haven’t understood many things in those books, especially parts that are really heavy on scientific detail, which I find too ponderous to think through. All the same, this reading has been very useful. It has provided me scientific evidence that clearly points to a transcendent Creator who brought the universe—and you and me—into being.
From my reading on the subject, it appears that contemporary science now by and large accepts that the present universe is not eternal (in contrast to earlier belief) and that it actually came into being around 13.8 billion years ago, with an event that many refer to as the ‘Big Bang’. While atheists who accept this thesis might come up with different explanations for it, theists would say that the coming into being of the present universe clearly indicates that a Being (called ‘God’, and also by various other names) who pre-existed the universe brought it into existence. They would argue that the modern scientific findings about the universe not being eternal and of it having come into being a certain number of years ago clearly back the ancient belief in the existence of the Creator God. This is a position that I am inclined to believe in.
We are confronted with what theists take to be the basic fact of God having been in existence since eternity past, and we are also faced with what seems to be the confirmed scientific finding that the present universe is not eternal but that it has been in existence only since the last 13.8 billion years. For people who believe that the creation of the universe some 13.8 billion years ago was an act of God, an intriguing set of questions arises. It is a general belief among theists that God is eternal. This means that He has always existed. There was never a time when He was not. This being the case, the question arises: If God created the universe around 13.8 billion years ago, what was He doing before that? And, if God has been in existence since the eternal past, what made Him decide to create the present universe only 13.8 billion years ago and not before that? Was it that since eternity past God did not feel the need to create a universe, being quite happy without it, but that He later changed His mind and then, some 13.8 billion years ago, brought this universe into being?
Now, of course we cannot answer these questions with any degree of certainty using our puny intellects. For one thing, we can’t know the mind of God on our own. For another, we weren’t around prior to the creation of the present universe, and so we don’t know how things were then. Be that as it may, the questions mentioned above are interesting ones to muse on, even though we know that we can probably never find answers to them.
If the present universe (let us call it UA) was created 13.8 billion years ago, might it not be possible that there was a universe (let us call it UB) that existed before UA which when the term appointed for it by God was over, God caused to be extinguished or destroyed and to be replaced by UA? Similarly, might it also not be possible that before UB came into being, there was a universe—let us call it ‘UC’—that was in existence that finished its term and was blotted out and was replaced by UB? Might there have been a chain of universes coming into existence, being extinguished after the term appointed for them was over and being replaced by a new universe going all the way back into the eternal past? In other words, while this present universe (UA) is not eternal, as scientists now generally accept, might it be that some or the other universe has always been around since eternity past, with one universe being blotted out by God and replaced with a new one, all the way down to our present universe? If this is indeed the case, might it mean that creating, sustaining and then destroying universes, one after another, has always been an integral part of God's very nature, inseparable from who God is, and that there has never been a time in the eternal past when some or the other universe created by God has never existed?
If this is indeed so (and it may not be so), it would mean that even prior to the coming into being of the present universe, God was engaged in creating and sustaining universes (and all that they contain) perhaps for all time in the eternal past and that creating and sustaining a universe is not something that He decided to do only 13.8 billion years ago, with a sudden change of mind and plans, for the first time ever.