COSMOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

The term "cosmology" comes from the Greek kosmos ("world") and logos ("reason for" or "study of"). Traditionally, cosmology was considered to be that branch of metaphysics ("after physics") which concerns questions about the origin, nature, and the structure of the world or universe. Cosmology was distinguished from ontology ("study of being") by the difference of level of study, ontology is concerned with the analysis of being in general, whereas cosmology is concerned in particular with the analysis the being or nature of the world, the cosmos. The branch of cosmology that dealt with the origin of the cosmos was called "cosmogony" from the Greek kosmos ("world") and gonos ("origin" or "birth", from gignomai, "to become", "to be born", "to be"). Cosmogony is a sub-discipline of cosmology that seeks to explain the origin of universe, which explanation is called a cosmogony. The German philosopher, Christian Wolff (1679-1754), popularized the term "ontology" and introduced the term "cosmology" to designate the science of the world or universe and to separate it from ontology, theology, and psychology. In recent years, with the decline of speculative philosophy, the term "cosmology" has been used to designate the science of the origin and development of universe as well as its present structure. And recently the cosmologists have been usually scientists, astronomers, theoretical physicists, and mathematicans, such as, de Sitter, Eddington, Friedmann, Lemaitre, Bondi, Gold, Hoyle, and Gamow, who have speculated on the origin and development of the universe, as well as its present structure.

THE SCIENCE OF COSMOLOGY.

1. Special Relativity.
2. General Relativity.
3. The Big Bang Theory.
4. Supersymmetry.
5. Grand Unified Theory.
   1. SuperString Theory.
   2. Twistor Theory.
   3. Black Holes Theory.
6. Theory Of Everything.
7. Before the Big Bang.
8. Conclusion.
   1. Laws of Thermodynamics.
   2. Theory of Relativity.
   3. The Age of Reason.
   4. The Relativity of Space and Time.
   5. The Biblical View of Space and Time.

From the Christian view of reality, all these proposed solutions to the problems of cosmology attempt to solve it by either ignoring God or reducing God to an impersonal being, an super "It", and ignoring the fundamental ontological difference between God as the Creator and all other beings as created by Him. Augustine's solution has dominated Christian theology; that is, that God is timeless, beyond time and space, and that time with space was created by God when in the beginning He created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1). This solution is only partially correct; God created space and time (space-time) when He created the heavens and the earth. But as we saw above, Augustine borrowed the Neo-Platonic concept of God (the one Being) as timeless, and interpreted it as an "eternal now", without a before or after, without a beginning or end. This solution of Augustine's has raised many problems: for example, if God is timeless, then how could the Son of God (the second person of the Trinity) become a man and enter into time? And how could God make a decision of His will to create the heavens and the earth?

("Worthy art thou, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for thou didst create all things,
and by thy will they existed and were created." Rev. 4:11)

"...that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years,
and a thousand years as one day."

God not only created our relative space and time, but He also created matter and energy. The general theory of relativity describes not only the origin of this relative space and time, but also implies the beginning of matter and energy. According to the first sentence of the Bible, the universe, the "heavens and the earth," were created a very long time ago (see Psalm 90:2-6 and Isaiah 46:8-10).

"² Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.
³ Thou turnest man back to the dust,
and sayest, 'Turn back, O children of men!'
⁴ For a thousand years in thy sight
are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.
⁵ Thou dost sweep men away; they are like a dream,
like grass which is renewed in the morning:
⁶ in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers."
(Psalm 90:2-6)

"⁸ Remember this and consider,
recall it to mind, you transgressors,
⁹ remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
¹⁰ declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, 'My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,'"
(Isaiah 46:8-10).

Does this big bang takes place in the gap between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis 1?
Genesis 1:1 declares the creation of time, space, energy and matter.
Is there a gap between verses 1:1 and 1:2, in which the expansion events of the big bang model takes place? This gap theory was proposed as early as 1814 in England by the brilliant and capable Dr. Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847). He proposed that there was gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 for a succession of pre-Adamic catastrophes after the creation of the heavens and the earth in verse 1 and before the condition of the earth to be without form and void in verse 2. All the time that the geologist needed could be found in this time gap between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2. This proposal became known as the "gap theory" and was the favorite one in the early twentieth century with the Fundamentalist in their controversy with the evolutionist. The proponents of this theory postulated a time interval of indefinite duration between the first and second verse of Genesis 1. According to this theory, God created a perfect world as recorded in Gen. 1:1. This world was turned over to Lucifer who conducted the worship of God in the temple of God located in a mineral garden of Eden on earth. This exalted position was too much for Lucifer and, becoming filled with pride, he sought to exalt himself as god. He and those who followed him thus fell and judgment was passed by God upon them and the earth. The earth became without form and void. For countless million of years the earth was left alone and during these years the various geologic formations took place. Some even argued that the ugliness of the dinosaurs and the great beds of fossils being vast cemetries were the results of God's judgement on the sin of Lucifer. Somewhere around 4000 B.C., God recreated or reconditioned the earth in six literal 24-hour-days recorded in the rest of Genesis 1. This theory is supposed to harmonize Genesis and geology on the grounds that there was a very long period of time between Genesis 1:1 and Gensis 1:2 for all the geologic events to take place.

There is no Scriptural basis for this interpretation of a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. The Scriptural basis for this theory is supposed to be in the second verse of Genesis 1. In 1876, G. H. Pember in his book Earth's Earliest Ages argues that the Hebrew word asah translated "made" in verse 7 does not refer to creation out nothing but to recreation or making over. According to Pember, the original heavens and earth was created out of nothing (Hebrew, bara), but the things of the six days are made (Hebrew, asah), not created. The Hebrew words tohu va bohu, which are translated "without form and void" in verse 2, according to Pember, refers to something once in a good state, but now in need of repair and recreation. According to Pember, these words tohu va bohu express "an outpouring of the wrath of God". And the Hebrew conjunctive waw, usually translated "and", should be be translated here in verse 2 as "but", indicating a break between the two verses. Also, according to Pember, the Hebrew verb hayah, usually translated "was", should be translated here as "become". Thus according to Pember, Genesis 1:1-2 should be translated,

"¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;
² but the earth became ruined and empty
and darkness was upon the face of the deep."

"¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;
² and the earth was without form and void,
and darkness was upon the face of the deep...."

This gap theory was also espoused by Harry Rimmer, who was one of the outstanding spokesman for Fundamentalism in matters of science and the Bible until his death. Rimmer's views are found in his book Modern Science and the Genesis Record (1937). He rejected the day-age interpretation of Genesis 1 and argued vigrously for 24-hour solar days, although he admitted that he could not prove with finality whether the Hebrew word yom means a 24-hour day or a period of time. He asserted that the day-age theory was a concession to evolutionary geology and he followed Pember in accepting the gap theory and his interpretation of Genesis 1:2. He assered that the "and" at the beginning of verse 1:2 should be translated "but". He appealed to the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate for support. He appealed also to Isaiah 45:8 to prove that God did not make the world a waste. He argued that a waste world must be a judged world. He claimed that the Hebrew had no word for "become", so the Hebrew verb hayah must be pressed into service and translated "become". And finally he appealed to Ezekiel 28:11-17 as the story of Satan's fall, causing the world to brought into the condition described in Genesis 1:2.

Rimmer also appealed to Ezekiel 28:11-17 as the story of Satan's fall, causing the world to be brought into the condition described in Genesis 1:2. But his interpretation of Ezekiel 28 has problems. Although this passage has been applied to Satan, the passage is a message ("a lamentation") about the "king of Tyre" and not Satan (see verse 12). And the Isaiah 14:12-15 passage where Lucifer is addressed is in the middle of a prophecy ("proverb") against the king of Babylon (see verse 4). Even if these passages are applied to Satan, they do not say when this fall of Lucifer occurred. Other passages of Scripture have Satan in heaven after the creation man (Job 1:6-12; Rev. 12:7-13). This Revelation passage places the fall of Satan from heaven in the future, not at the creation of the heavens and the earth. And there is also the problem that it leads to the postulating of a pre-Adamic cataclysm in order to reconcile the Bible and geology by providing sufficient time for the geologic strata. But there is no evidence in the orthodox system of historical geology for such a cataclysm. And no geologist would accept the gap theory for this very reason.

If this gap theory does not have Scriptural support in verse 2 of Genesis 1, then does this mean that there is no time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2?
No, there may be a time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. But if there is a time gap, then what happened during that time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2?
First, there was no pre-Adamic cataclysm caused by God's wrath against Satan in the time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 and Genesis 1:2 does not teach that the earth became without form and void but that the earth was without form and void. That is, it does not teach that God created a perfect world that was destroyed in time gap between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2, becoming "without form and void"; it was without form and void. There was no collapse of the earth in the time gap but the expansion of the universe.
Second, Genese 1:1 declares the creation of time ("In the beginning"), space ("the heavens"), energy and matter ("the earth"). This is the beginning of the expansion of the universe; it is the first event of big bang model.
And third, in the time gap between verses 1:1 and 1:2 of Genesis 1, the rest of the events of the big bang model did take place, but not the historical geological events. For the earth had not been formed until Genesis 1:3. The earth did not become without form and void but was without form and void. And in the following six days of creation the earth was given form and became inhabited.

Laws of Thermodynamics.

The two most basic laws of all the laws of modern physical sciences are the laws of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics is the law of energy conservation, affirming that although energy can be transformed from one form to another, the total amount remains unchanged and constant; that is, energy is neither being created or destroyed at the present time. The second law of thermodynamics states that, although the total amount remains unchanged, there is a tendency for it to become less available to perform useful work. That is, in any closed mechanical system in which work is being accomplished through energy conversion, the "entropy" increases, where entropy is essentially a mathematical formulation of the non-availability of the energy the system. Thus thermodynamics operates with the two master concepts of energy and entropy, and with the two laws of thermodynamics. These two laws provide the very foundation upon which the great superstructure of modern science and technology is built. All the various geological processes as well as other physical, chemical and biological processes operate in accordance to these two laws. In none of them is there any energy or matter (matter ia regarded as a form of energy according to the theory of relativity) being created.

Theory of Relativity.

All motion is relative, relative to a frame of reference. Motion on earth is usually made with reference to the earth as the frame of reference. The Ancient Greeks philosophers Aristote and Ptolemy made the earth the ultimate frame of reference for all motion in the universe.
In the Pre-Newtonian Era (16th & 17th centuries A.D.) there was a revolt in astronomy against Aristotelian-Ptolemaic geocentric view of the universe by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo
and in Newtonian physics against Aristotelian physics by Galileo and Isaac Newton.
This revolt was not against Christianity and it was not invented to malign or discredit the Bible. This revolt was against Aristotelian- Ptolemaic geocentric view of the universe.

This Aristotelian geocentric astronomical views were incorporated into the Christian Theology in late Middle Ages, so that the view of the cosmos is geocentric and the celestial motion is considered circular and uniform. The Ptolemaic astronomical system supplied the details and thus became the authoritative and unquestionable teaching of the Church in the late Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 A.D.) in his voluminous work Summa Theologica published his systematic synthesis of Christian theology and Aristotelian science and philosophy, which became and remained until recently the official theology of the Roman Catholic Church since the Council of Trent (1546).

According to this Thomistic view of the universe, the earth is the center of the universe, because God had chosen it as the abode of man and as the stage for the whole drama of the salvation of man. The sun, moon and the planets revolved about the earth, each set in "crystalline spheres" concentric on the earth. God and the Savior dwelt in the outermost sphere as the heaven of the heavens. God as the "unmoved mover" kept the crystalline sphere of the stars in motion, and the planets beneath moved in their course by frictional resistance between the nest of concentric spheres. According to this view of the universe, hell is at the center of the earth and purgatory located at the antipodes opposite Jerusalem. The universe is finite and the sphere of the stars is not very far away. Dante's epic The Divine Comedy gives a poetic and dramatic picture of this cosmology. In this epic, the poet is able to travel through all the spheres in seven days; the abode of blessed is not far away. Even though the heavens are not far away, they are qualitatively different from the earth; the heavens are incorruptible and unchanging, whereas the earth is corruptible and changing.

In his work, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium Libri VI, or
Six Books on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543),
Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) was careful not to challenge the prevailing view of the universe. He kept the crystalline sphere of the fixed stars and the nest of concentric spheres in which the motion of the planets is circular and uniform. Copernicus departed from the Ptolemaic system in only two ways:
(1) the planets move about the sun as their center rather than the earth. That is, the earth, with the moon moving about the earth, is also moving about the sun, along with the other planets;
(2) there are no equants in Copernicus' system. But he kept the eccentrics and the circles of epicycles and deferents, because he still considered the motion of heavenly bodies as circular and uniform.
Neither did Copernicus challenge the Aristotelian concept of terrestrial motion. He presented his work as an alternate method of calculation and did not claim that it was necessarily true. Neither did he draw any implications of his work and certainly did not consider his work heretical. When it was finally published in the year that he died, 1543, it hardly caused a stir. The first copy of his book was delivered to him on his death-bed on the day he died, May 24, 1543.

In spite of Copernicus' attempt to avoid challenging the current Aristotelian world view, the astronomers of his day did not accept his modifications of it. Contemporary astronomers rejected his idea that the earth was in motion for two major reasons:
(1) the failure to find any stellar parallax,
[Parallax is defined as the angular, or apparent, shift in the position of an object due to a change in the position of the observer.
Stellar parallax is the annual shift of the stars that results from the earth's orbital motion. For the nearest stars it is observable with modern telescopes, but it is impossible to see and measure it with the naked eye, because of the great distances of even the nearest stars.] and
(2) that no explanation was provided for how such a massive a body as the earth could be kept in motion, or, if it was in motion, why things did not fly off of it or are not left behind.

Even though Copernicus tried to avoid drawing any implications of his modifications of Ptolemaic system, others did. The major implication that was drawn was that, if the earth is not the center of the universe, the Aristotelian concept of terrestrial natural motion of bodies to the natural place of the predominate element was wrong. Also the imperfect earth would be placed among the perfect heavenly planets to move in perfect circular and uniform motion, which is impossible for the earth in the Aristotelian world view. If Copernicus was right about the location of the earth, the whole of the Aristotelian world view would be destroyed. And since the Aristotelian world view was integrated into Christian theology by the Mediaeval scholastics as well as the Protestant scholastics after Luther and Calvin, the world views of Roman Catholic and Protestant theology was threatened. In particular the place of God in the third heavens was threatened.

The Copernican astronomy implied that the universe was very large. Since the stellar parallax was not observed, and, if the earth was in motion in an orbit about the sun, the base line for observing the stellar parallax would be the distance between the positions of the earth on opposite sides of its orbit six months apart, the calculations of the distance to the stars on this basis indicated that the stars must be very far away. Also Copernican view implied that, since the earth rather than the celestial sphere of the stars are in motion, the stars did not have to move. And if the stars did not move, then they did not have to be embedded in a rotating celestial sphere. That would mean that stars could be distributed throughtout space, the less bright stars being farther away. Thus the size of the universe might be infinite, since it could no longer be said to be finite. The possibility of an infinite universe put the place of God and angelic hosts in the heavenly sphere, even the very existence of God, in doubt. The Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who was executed by the Inquisition on February 17, 1600 for denying the Trinity, drew the conclusion from the Copernican astronomy that the universe was infinite and that the sun also is not at center of the universe, because the universe has no center. Bruno's views drew the attention of Roman Catholic Church to the Copernican theory.

Soon after the Roman Catholic Church became alarmed at the spread of Copernicanism, especially after Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) published in 1610 his Siderus Nuncias, Star Messager or Messager from the Stars, in which he announced some of early observations of the heavens with the telescope that seemed to support the Copernican astronomy. In 1616, Copernicus' book was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church for teaching that the earth moves, contrary to the teaching of the Church and Scriptures, placing it on the Index Expurgatorus in the year 1616 where it remained until 1620, when the "corrections" were published. From then on, any Catholic publisher was free to reprint the corrected Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, but no Catholic or Protestant publisher did so for nearly three hundred years.

The Scriptures that were being interpreted as supporting the Ptolemaic system of geocentric motion of all heavenly bodies were Psalms 93:1 and 104:5 and Ecclesiastes 1:4-5, all of which seem to say that the earth did not move.

"The Lord reigns; He is clothed in majesty;
the Lord is clothed, and girded Himself with strength;
Indeed, the world is firmly established; it will not be moved."
(Psa. 93:1 NAS)

"He set the earth on its foundations,
it can never be moved." (Psa. 104:5 NIV)

"⁴ Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
⁵ The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises."
(Ec. 1:4-5 NIV)

Galileo pointed out that regardless whether the earth appears to move or not, an earth-bound frame of reference by definition will always generates an immovable earth. That is, if the velocity of body on the earth with reference to the earth is v, then its movement relative to itself is
v×v = 0.
And if v is the velocity of the earth with reference to the sun,
then its movement relative to itself is also v×v = 0.
Thus the earth would not be moving with reference to itself.
(the magnitude of the vector product A×B of the two vectors A and B is
ABsin θ,
where A is the magnitude of vector A
and B is the magnitude of vector B
and θ is the angle between the two vectors.
When the two vectors are in the same direction, this angle θ is zero, then the sine of θ is zero and the vector product is zero. That is, the vector product of a vector A with respect to itself will always be
A×A = 0.
And the vector product of a velocity vector v with respect to itself will always be
v×v = 0.)
Since all motion on earth is made with reference to the earth, then the motion of the earth with reference to itself is zero; the earth will never be moving. Thus regardless whether the earth appears to move or not, an earth-bound frame of reference by definition always generates an immovable earth. And these Scriptures are referring to this fact, and not to geocentric view of the universe. And these Scripture passages were being misintrepreted as referring to the geocentric view of the universe.

There was a powerful group of professors in the Roman Catholic Church who completely rejected the heliocentric Copernican and Tychonic systems in favor of the traditional geocentric Ptolemaic system: these were the Aristotelians in the universities. Following the Christian-Aristotelian theology of Thomas Aquinas, which was the official theology of the Roman Catholic Church since the Council of Trent (1545-1563), even though the Council said nothing against the heliocentric system of the universe, they interpreted Scriptures as supporting the geocentric Ptolemaic system. Since, therefore, tradition and the Scriptures supported the Ptolemaic system, it was believed to be the unchanging, absolute truth. Thus these Aristotelian university professors rejected and attacked the astronomical views of Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler and Galileo as heresy.

Galileo came into conflict with the Inquisition for writing on the Copernican theory. He rejected the geocentric Aristotelian-Ptolemaic interpretation of the Scriptures. And he was convicted of an heresy. But the heresy of which Galileo was accused and convicted of, namely, the sun-centered universe, had never been officially declared by the Church to be a heresy, since neither the opinion of the Qualifiers, nor the decree of the Congregation of 1616, had been confirmed by infallible pronouncement ex cathedra or by the Ecumenical Council. On the contrary, had not Pope Urban VIII himself said that the Copernican opinion "was not heretical but merely reckless"? Thus Galileo was convicted of an heresy that was not an heresy.
Although officially convicted, clearly Galileo got off without any punishment.

The lack of a measured stellar parallax was the major obstacle to the acceptance of the heliocentric system. Tycho rejected the heliocentric system of Copernicus mainly because of the failure of his attempts to measure it by naked-eye observations. Galileo with his telescope was not able to observe any change in the angular separation of a pair of stars close together. Neither later were the Herschels able to observe it in spite of improvement in technique and larger telescopes. It was not until 1838 that German astronomer, F. W. Bessel, by telescopic observations actually measured a parallax of a third of a second of arc for the faint star 61 Cygni. Because the stars are so far away and the angles are so small that the shift (actually an elliptical loop) against the stellar background is hard to observe. The maximum parallactic displacement occurs in observation made six months apart, and defines the angle of the displacement. The largest parallactic angle observed is 0.756 seconds of arc, for the star Alpha Centauri, our sun's closest neighbor in space, was made by T. Henderson in 1839. Knowing the base line of the observation (the diameter of the earth's orbit of 186 million miles), it has been possible to calculate that Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light-years away (A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year at 186,000 miles per second), or 25 thousand billion miles. In 1840, F. G. Struve reported a parallactic angle of a quarter of a second of arc for Vega. Today the parallactic angle of thousand of stars have determined by photographic methods using large telescopes. The majority of the stars are so far away that their parallactic displacement cannot be detected, even with the best telescopes. This long sought observational proof of the earth's orbital motion about the sun was only observed 170 years ago.

The first popular demonstration of the earth's rotation on its axis was given by the French physicist, J. B. I. Foucault, at the Paris Exhibition of 1851. Foucault suspended a heavy iron ball by a long wire from the dome of the Pantheon at the Exhibition. When it was set swinging back and forth in a north-south line, it was observed that the plane of the oscillations of the pendulum would change direction slowing rotating in a clockwise direction when observed from above. Its rate of rotation was such that it would take about 32 hours to complete one rotation. In reality the plane of the oscillating pendulum is fixed in space as the earth rotates beneath it. If a Foucault pendulum was moved to the north pole, the plane of the oscillating pendulum would complete a 360 degree rotation in 24 hours. At the equator, a Foucault pendulum would show no rotation; that is, if the pendulum were set to swing in a north-south line (a meridian), this direction in space is maintained throughout the rotation of the earth. The apparent rotation of the Foucaut pendulum depends upon the latitude of the location of the Foucault pendulum.

The Age of Reason

The eighteenth century has been called the Age of Reason. It was given this name as the result of the system of mechanics that was discovered by Isaac Newton (1642-1727) at end of previous century. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Newtonian system was widely accepted, not only in England, but also in Europe, particularly in France. In his Principia (1687), Newton set forth, not only a system of terrestrial mechanics, but also of celestial mechanics; the solar system is governed by the same laws of mechanics as are the bodies on earth. Newton's work was not only the end of geocentric view of Ptolemy, but of Aristotelian view of physical reality as two separate realms, the terrestrial and the celestial, each with their own mechanics. It was the beginning of a new view of the universe that established, not only the heliocentric system, but an universal system of physical laws. Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo advocated the heliocentric system, but they were unable to overcome the Aristotelian dualism of two separate realms; Kepler discovered the three laws of planetary motion but he could not explain their motion. Galileo discovered the law of falling bodies, but he did not apply it to the motion of the moon in the heavens. Newton saw this application and extended the three law of motion he had discovered to heavens. For some time it was believed that there was a force that governed the motion of the planets and Gilbert, Kepler and Descartes proposed that the sun was the origin of that force. Newton discovered the law, the Law of Universal Gravitation, which explains the motion of the heavenly bodies by the force of gravitational attraction between them as well as the motion of falling bodies on earth. Thus Newton's work was a grand synthesis in two senses:
(a) it brought together the work of Kepler and Galileo, and
(b) it brought together the terrestrial and celestial realms,
both govern by one set of physical laws.

This new vision of nature and its laws captured the imagination of Newton's contemporaries and they produced a flood of adulation for Newton, such as was expressed by Alexander Pope's famous lines,

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be: and all was light,"

"Nearer to the gods no mortal may approach."

Newton's Principia was not easy reading, but its ideas could be easily understood, unlike the concepts of twentieth century physics, relativity and quantum theory. Many popular explanations of Newton's ideas were written. Five editions of Benjamin Martin's A Plain and Familiar Introduction to Newtonian Philosophy and seven editions of James Ferguson's Astronomy Explained Upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles were published by the middle of the century. Voltaire's Elements de la Philosophie de Newton, which was published in French, was translated into English. Count Algorotti's Newtonianism for the Ladies, originally written in Italian, was translated into French and English.

A high optimism about mankind and about what his reason could accomplish swept over Europe, England and America. In Germany it was called Aufklarung, The Enlighment, and in France the Age of Reason. The term has been used to characterize 18th century culture in England, France, and Germany. It was given this name as the result of the system of mechanics that was discovered by Isaac Newton (1642-1727) at end of previous century. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Newtonian system was widely accepted, not only in England, but also in Europe, particularly in France. In his Principia (1687) Newton set forth, not only a system of terrestrial mechanics, but also of celestial mechanics; the solar system is governed by the same laws of mechanics as are the bodies on earth. Newton's work was not only the end of geocentric view of Ptolemy, but of Aristotelian view of physical reality as two separate realms, the terrestrial and the celestial, each with their own mechanics. It was the beginning of a new view of the universe that established, not only the heliocentric system, but an universal system of physical laws. This revolution in the understanding of the physical universe impacted every phase of culture in the 18th century with the results of what is possible by man's reason. As a philosophical movement of the eighteenth century, it called for a critical examination of all previously accepted doctrines and institution from the point of view of rationalism.

This rationalism of eighteenth century was, not only an epistemology that held that reason, the universal and necessary, was the criterion of knowledge and that the deductive method, reasoning from innate truths, was the method for discovering the laws of Nature, but it also held that reality or Nature was governed by laws, both physical and moral, and that man could achieve happiness by discovering those laws and living by them. This philosophy was not limited to the intellectuals and academics; the mathematical deductive method of Descartes was widely understood and used. As Morris Kline says, in his Mathematics in Western Culture (Oxford University Press, New York, 1953, p.107),

"The mathematical interpretation of nature became so popular and fashionable by 1650 that it spread throughout Europe, and dainty, expensively bound accounts by its chief expositor, Descartes, adorned ladies' dressing tables."

Now the success of the Galilean-Newtonian science challenged the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic natural philosophy. Since the Roman Church had accepted this Aristotelian-Ptolemaic natural philosophy as the truth about the physical world, they were faced with a challenge to their authority. This was the situation in France in the eighteenth century. In England, as a Protestant country that did not recognize the authority of the Roman Church, the Protestant Church was not faced with this challenge. The English Protestant Christians abandoned the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic natural philosophy for the new science. Robert Boyle (1627-91), for whom the gas law is named, said,

"I look upon the metaphysical and mathematical principles... to be truths of a transcendental kind that do not properly belong to philosophy [science] and theology."

"The main purpose of natural philosophy is to argue from phenomena without feigning hypotheses, and deduce causes from effects, till we come to the very first cause, which is certainly not mechanical...And these things being rightly dispatched, does it not appear from the phenomena that there is a being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who, infinite in space, as it were in his sensory, sees things themselves intimately, and thoroughly perceives them, and comprehend them wholly by their immediate presence to himself."

In the General Scholium in his Principia, Newton concludes,

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and all powerful Being... This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as the Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God, pantokrator, or Universal Ruler, for God is a relative word, and has respect to servants; and Deity is the dominion of God not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God;.... And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and, from his perfections, that he is supreme, or most perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present; and, by existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space.... In him are all things contained and moved; yet neither affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresent of God... As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, nor touched; nor ought he to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing. We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance of anything is we know not. In bodies, we see only their figures and colors, we hear only the sounds, we touch only their outward surface, we smell only the smells, and taste the savors; but their inward substance are not to be known either by our senses, or by any reflex act our minds: much less than, have we any idea of the substance of God. We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes; we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion: for we adore him as his servants; and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate or Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing...."

For Newton there is no conflict between revelation and reason. In fact, he believed that reason was a general revelation of the same God that made himself known in the special revelation recorded in the Bible. And Newton was not alone; well into the eighteenth century there were scientists that were thoroughly satisfied that God's existence was securely established. Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), the great Swiss mathematician, believed that God's existence could be proved directly by means of the principles of mathematics and physics and that one could dispense with the indirect argument from the marvelous design of the universe.

But situation in France was different; the Roman Church forced a choice between revelation and reason, between the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic interpretation of Biblical revelation and the new Newtonian view of the physical world discovered by reason. The French intellectuals chose reason and the Newtonian view. In England, some intellectuals sympathized with this choice, like David Hume (1711-1776), who spend three years (1734-1737) in France working on his Treatise on Human Nature (1739), which fell, according to Hume himself, "dead-born from the press." His Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which appeared in 1748, had a similar reception, probably because of the skeptical conclusions about human knowledge. In 1779, his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion appeared in which he criticized the arguments for existence of God. Its purpose was to argue for skepticism concerning the knowledge of God.

The French philosophers of the eighteenth century became critics, attacking in the name of reason the medieval distortions of Christianity in the Roman Church. These attacks led to the French Revolution in which the authority of the French kings and the Roman Church was overthrown in the name of Reason. At the height of French Revolution, the goddess of Reason, in the person of a well-known actress, was enthroned in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Our Lady of Reason in the Temple of the Queen of Heaven. Thus the age of reason ended in this curious episode as a symbol and summation of the century. Atheism becomes the religion of Reason. This shows that atheism is not possible for man; man is a religious animal and he must have a God; he only replaces one god by another, and the true God by a false god. The god of atheism is no god.

The Relativity of Space and Time

Classical modern science understood space as a homogeneous medium existing objectively and independently of it physical content, whose rigid and timeless structure had been described by the postulates, axioms and theorems of Euclidean geometry. This space, that was self-sufficent and independence of the matter which it contains, was clearly defined by Issac Newton (1642-1727) in his Principia:

"Absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable."

The English physicist, Isaac Newton, demonstrated, at least to his own satisfaction, that, like space, there is Absolute Time, in addition to its relativities. He defined time as duration, which flows equably without any relation to anything external. As space in classical physics is regarded as a three-dimensional manifold of co-existing homogenious points, so time was regarded as one-dimensional manifold of successive instances. As the basic relation in space is juxtaposition, so the basic relation of time is succession. As the points in space are beside one another, so the instances of time follow one another. Both space and time were regarded as a manifold, and both were believed to be homogeneous. As in the case of space, the basic attributes of time follow from its homogeneity: its independence from its physical content, its infinity, its continuity, and its uniformity. The uniformity of time is the counterpart of the immutability of space; it might be more expressively designated uniform fluidity. Time flows uniformly. The independence of time in regard to concrete changes which take place in it was explicitly formulated by Newton:

"Absolute time and mathematical time, of itself and by its own nature, flows uniformly, without regard to any thing external. It is called duration. Relative, apparent and vulgar time, is some sensible and external measure of absolute time (duration), estimated by the motions of bodies, whether accurate or unequable, and is commonly used instead if true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a week." [1]

Isaac Newton had held to an absolute theory of space and of time, whereas his contemporary Leibniz argued that space and time are merely sets of relations between things which are "in" space and time. The Special Theory of Relativity has made it impossible to consider time as something absolute; rather, space and time are both relative to the motion of the observer. This view stands neutrally between the absolute and relational theories of space-time. According to the General Theory of Relativity the structure of space-time is dependent on the distribution of matter in the universe. A curvature is attributed to space-time, even in the absence of matter, and the inertia of a body depends in part on this cosmological distribution to the local metrical field and hence not solely on the total mass of the universe, as in a purely relational theory would require.

The German mathematican and physicist Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909) joined the three dimensions of space to the dimension of time to form a four dimensional space-time continuum, with time as the fourth dimension. In particular, he showed that the Lorentz transformations of special relativity correspond to a rotation of axes in space-time. He showed how natural the kinematics of special relativity seem, as opposed to Newtonian kinematics, in which the time axis is rotated without correspondingly rotating the space axis. Space-time is the four-dimensional continuum which includes the three dimensions of space (length, width and height) and the one of time to form the unity of space and time, called space-time. Minkowski contended that nothing can exist or be conceived of as physical apart from space-time; for every physical object must not only have length, width, and height but also duration of time. As a result, a complete description and location of an object must be given in terms of the four coordinates. Space-time is mathematically grounded in world-points, or durationless geometrical points, and become world-lines, or geometrical lines, because of their temporal dimension, that cut across the four dimensions of space-time. An enduring geometrical point becomes a geometrical line (or possibly a curve) in space-time. The universe of four dimensions (it could be called omniverse) includes space with all its events and objects as well as time with its changes and motions.

Einstein accepted the Minkowski space-time continuum as the basis of his Special Theory of Relativity. In his General Theory of Relativity, gravitation is reduced to or is the effect of space-time curvature and depends upon the masses distributed through out the universe. Thus the Newtonian concept of action-at-a-distance is discarded.

The Biblical View of Space and Time

There is no definition of time given in the Bible.
In the Bible time is mentioned, but not defined. The Bible does not view time abstractly as a problem, but concretely as the region in which God accomplishes his purposes.
The Bible not only mentions time, but also makes statements about time.

"But let this one thing be not concealed from you, beloved,
that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years,
and a thousand years as one day."
(II Pet. 3:8 ERS).

"For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has gone by,
or like a watch in the night."
(Psalms 90:4 NIV).
"I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the first and the last,
the beginning and the end."
(Rev. 22:13 NAS; see also Rev. 1:8; 4:8).

As to the second problem of God's relation to time and space, Augustine's solution has dominated Christian theology; that is, that God is timeless, beyond time and space, and that time with space was created by God when in the beginning He created the heavens and the earth. This solution is only partially correct; God did create time and space (space-time) when He created the heavens and the earth. But as we saw above, Augustine borrowed the Neo-Platonic concept of God (the one Being) as timeless, and interpreted it as an "eternal now", without a before or after, without a beginning or end. This solution of Augustine's has raised many problems: for example, if God is timeless, then how could the Son of God (the second person of the Trinity) become a man and enter into time? And how could God make a decision of His will to create the heavens and the earth?

("Worthy art thou, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for thou didst create all things,
and by thy will they existed and were created." Rev. 4:11)

"...that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years,
and a thousand years as one day."

END NOTES

[1] Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, scholuim I.