The Living Universe - Duane Elgin [27]
Moving forward in history, in 1215 the Catholic Church put forth the idea of creatio ex nihilo as official church doctrine, declaring God to be “Creator of all things, visible and invisible . . . out of nothing.” In the 1300s, the great Christian mystic and theologian, Meister Eckhart, expanded on this theme and wrote “God is creating the entire universe, fully and totally, in this present now. Everything God created . . . God creates now all at once.”7 No declaration could be more specific or explicit concerning our universe as a continuously renewing system.
A number of Christian theologians now hold the view that God created our vast cosmos from nothing (ex nihilo) and that God upholds the universe through time (creatio continua).8 Continuous creation is the pouring forth of the universe in a continual flow, without ceasing, over billions of years.9 The world around us is seen as an ever-emerging miracle of divine generosity, continually emerging from an invisible source. Creation is always new, always fresh, and always alive. The Catholic Church now teaches that creation is always journeying towards its ultimate perfection. Evolution, therefore, poses no obstacle to genuine faith, as Pope John Paul II said in 1985. Instead, he said, “Evolution presupposes creation . . . creation is an ever-lasting process—a creatio continua.”
Although there are many differences within the Christian tradition, there exists a strong thread that sees our universe as a sacred body upheld by a divine presence in a process of continuous creation.10
Islamic Views
Islam has its roots in the same tradition of a single God as Christianity and Judaism. The word Islam means submission in Arabic, and Islam asks its followers to surrender their lives to Allah or God. This dynamic faith emerged in the seventh century with the prophet Muhammad (570–632), a native of Mecca in Arabia. Within a century of his death, an Islamic state stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to central Asia. Today, with nearly one and a half billion followers, Islam is the second-largest religion in the world.
Muslims believe Muhammad to be the final prophet of God. Over a period of twenty-three years, Muhammad received a series of revelations that were recorded by his followers. These revelations later became the Koran (Qur’an), the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be the word of God or Allah as revealed to Muhammad. Here the relationship of God to the universe is very explicit: “God is the Creator of everything; is the One, the Omnipotent.” Not only is God the source and originator of everything but also its sustainer: “God keeps a firm hold on the heavens and earth, preventing them from vanishing away. And if they vanished no one could then keep hold of them. Certainly He is Most Forbearing, Ever-Forgiving.” (Koran 35:41).
The Islamic view of God sustaining the universe is called occasionalism and describes the universe as being continuously reborn in a series of unique occasions or events.11 Al-Ghazali, who lived in the eleventh century, was a celebrated theologian and great synthesizer of Muslim thought. He advanced the Islamic view that our universe is not an ancient, static structure; instead, it is born anew at each moment—created out of nothing in a series of events by the will of Allah.12 Nothing continues to exist unless God constantly re-creates it. The book that you are holding now will be, in a moment, a new “occasion” of the book that went before it. Nothing endures in time; rather, everything comes into existence freshly in each moment, only to disappear and be replaced an instant later by another fresh expression or occasion.
Another major Islamic teacher is Ibn Arabi, who lived in the thirteenth century. Arabi wrote more than 300 works and had a powerful influence on Islamic spirituality. Even during his lifetime, he was considered one of the great spiritual teachers within Sufism,