Читать книгу Catholicism For Dummies - Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Страница 52

Technically speaking, creation is the act of making something out of nothing, or creatio ex nihilo in Latin. (Changing something into something else is called transmutation and is a different subject entirely.) Catholics believe that God created the earth and the heavens, meaning that He made them out of nothing.

To grasp how profound this concept is, consider what scientists do in a laboratory. They mix elements to come up with new compounds, and they combine compounds to make all sorts of materials. And when they produce something that has widespread applications, such as plastic, their efforts revolutionize how people live. Their efforts can seem truly miraculous at times.

But who made the elements themselves? Who created the stuff out of which all other stuff is made? To literally make something out of thin air is something no scientist can do. Moving a potential thing into actuality is what a creator does, and Catholics believe that the Creator of heaven and earth is God.

The first chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, tells us that in the beginning nothing existed but God. His first act of creation was to make light: “and God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). If plastic has revolutionized the way we live, how much more revolutionary was the creation of light? (Keep in mind that scientists tell us the beginning of the physical universe took place after what they call the Big Bang. That super-stellar explosion just happened to cause an enormous amount of — you guessed it — light.)