The act of [God’s] creation is a continuing process. We reject the deistic idea that God simply lit the fuse to set off the Big Bang and then left the world to its own devices. Such an idea attributes too great a degree of autonomy to the world and the laws that govern its process. The Christian understanding is that the cosmos is not self-sustaining but is kept in being by a continuous act of will by its Creator. Too great a concentration of on the first two chapters of Genesis, or on an inadequate interpretation of them, has sometimes misled Christians into placing undue emphasis on a doctrine of creation conceived of as a doctrine of temporal origin. Hence the erroneous thought that Big-Bang cosmology, with its dateable point of departure for the universe as we know it, has a superior value for theology over the steady-state theory, which essentially supposed the universe to have been everlasting [. . .] Yet theology could have live with either physical theory, for the assertion that God is creator is not a statement that at a particular time He did something, but rather that, at all times, He keeps the world in being. The doctrine of creation is a doctrine of ontological origin. (John Polkinghorne, Science and Creation, 66-67).
Polkinghorne writes here: "The Christian understanding is that the cosmos is not self-sustaining but is kept in being by a continuous act of will by its Creator." From the Catholic perspective, holding that the most fundamental will (i.e. "first commandment") is the will to love, and that Deus caritias est, then it follows that this "continuous act of will by the Creator" is Love Himself willing/loving His creation into continuous being and goodness.
Since Being, Goodness, Truth, Beauty are all convertible transcendentals, then it follows that whatever is true about beings (whether articulated by science, theology, or philosophy) is true as a matter of having been willed by God Himself. Truth is truth. So, there can be no fundamental conflict between science and faith.
Polkinghorne writes here: "The Christian understanding is that the cosmos is not self-sustaining but is kept in being by a continuous act of will by its Creator." From the Catholic perspective, holding that the most fundamental will (i.e. "first commandment") is the will to love, and that Deus caritias est, then it follows that this "continuous act of will by the Creator" is Love Himself willing/loving His creation into continuous being and goodness.
Since Being, Goodness, Truth, Beauty are all convertible transcendentals, then it follows that whatever is true about beings (whether articulated by science, theology, or philosophy) is true as a matter of having been willed by God Himself. Truth is truth. So, there can be no fundamental conflict between science and faith.
