The first verse of the biblical book of Genesis is this: In the beginning God created heaven and earth.
Saint Augustine's, autobiographical classic, The Confessions, is a very serious work. Augustine is not known for his humour. However, a story given in the eleventh book of Confessions dealing with time and eternity is among the most humorous I have heard. According to it, somebody(apparently a theologian) was asked, what God was doing before creating heaven and earth. He replied that God was busy fashioning hell for people who asked such impertinent questions!
Augustine condemns this answer for taking the escape route of sarcasm to dismiss a difficult question. At the same time, even he was constrained to say that the question was not really relevant. His reason was this: Time is a property of the universe created by God. Before the universe was brought into existence, there was no time. There was neither a 'before' nor an 'after'. Hence any enquiry about a 'time before creation' is irrelevant as time itself began only with creation.
Interestingly, this position is fully endorsed by modern cosmologists. Stephen Hawking in his book 'A Brief History of Time' approvingly quotes Augustine. Ofcourse, while Augustine's time began with creation, for Hawking it began with a big bang. That, after all, is difference on a minor matter of detail!
No comments:
Post a Comment