.Christian Faith and the Cosmos: Reflections of an Astronomer
Choi Seung-Urn (Professor Emeritus, Seoul National University)
Introduction
I entered university in 1972 and, by chance, began studying astronomy instead of physics, which had originally been my intended major. During my undergraduate years, I took more physics than astronomy—classical mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical and quantum physics, and relativity—along with mathematics such as calculus and mathematical physics. These studies opened my eyes to the beauty of describing nature through mathematical language, a realization that often filled me with deep admiration.
In my master’s program, radio astronomy allowed me to understand interstellar space in ways optical telescopes could not. Researching the physical states and motions of the interstellar medium gave me profound joy and a sense that I was touching even a small part of the universe’s vastness. Entering the doctoral program at the University of Minnesota in 1979 broadened my horizons further. While preparing for my preliminary exams, I prayed for the first time, and the experience of that prayer being answered led me to begin attending church on January 1, 1980.
During my doctoral studies, I encountered advanced fields of astronomy, astrophysics, and physics, including contemporary cosmology. This foundation enabled me to follow developments in cosmology throughout my career. Even when the Big Bang model still had unresolved puzzles, it was clearly superior to alternatives. Today’s Standard Big Bang cosmology—integrating inflation, the accelerating universe, particle physics, and the ΛCDM model[1]—continues to reveal the universe’s mysteries, filling researchers like myself with awe.
Appointed as a professor at Seoul National University in 1985, I shifted toward astronomy education and later gifted science education, hoping to help students experience the same wonder I felt when discovering the universe.
After retiring in 2019, I devoted myself to historical and mathematical research on calendrical astronomy—from Hipparchus and Ptolemy to Islamic astronomy, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton—as well as traditional Chinese and Korean calendrical systems. Calendrical astronomy, which predicts the motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets, played a crucial role in the development of modern science, eventually enabling Newton’s formulation of universal gravitation and laying the groundwork for modern physics.
Alongside this scientific journey, my life of faith also unfolded. My early church experience in the United States supported me through linguistic and financial challenges. Returning to Korea, however, I was shocked by the dominance of Creation Science, which rejected the Big Bang, insisted on a literal six‑day creation, and dismissed my astronomical training as false.
Furthermore, they viewed me as a faithless believer and not a true Christian. Even later on, when I introduced and taught courses containing content related to natural science or science-and-theology at Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary (PUTS), their attitude toward me remained unchanged.
In the midst of this situation, I prayed and eventually enrolled in the Master of Divinity (M.Div.) program at PUTS. During that period, I had the opportunity to spend a year as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. At that time, Professor Paek Chung-Hyun, who currently teaches at PUTS, was pursuing his doctoral studies at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU). Through his introduction, I met Professor Ted Peters, confided in him about my distress, and received great comfort.
Although Creation Science remained influential, exposure to global science‑and‑theology scholarship gradually broadened my perspective. Following my retirement on August 31, 2019, and continuing up to the present year of 2026, I have mobilized all the scientific and mathematical expertise I accumulated throughout my career to conduct historical, mathematical, and astronomical research on the evolution of astronomical calendrical systems. This journey spans from Hipparchus around 140 BCE, through Ptolemy around 140 CE, to subsequent Islamic astronomy, Copernicus around 1530, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion after 1600, and finally Newton’s calculation of the Moon’s celestial position around 1700.
Alongside these studies, I am also investigating traditional Chinese calendrical astronomy from ancient times through the Qing Dynasty, the Si Tian Li (Shixian calendar) which was influenced by Western astronomy, and the various traditional calendars adopted by previous kingdoms throughout Korean history. Put simply, calendrical astronomy enables the prediction of the celestial positions of the Sun, Moon, and the five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), as well as critical astronomical phenomena like solar and lunar eclipses.
Despite declining interest in scientific theology within a shrinking church landscape, I believe God has entrusted me with this mission. My dual calling as astronomer and minister continues to motivate me to contribute to the growth of scientific theology in Korea.
Faith Capable of Engaging in Christian Theology and Science
During my years as a professor, I worked extensively in gifted science education. Although often perceived as fundamentally different from ordinary science education, gifted education simply expands the same processes—learning scientific knowledge through inquiry, observation, and experimentation—by widening the learner’s cognitive range. Scientific thinking must sometimes open and sometimes close: openness fosters creativity, while closure enables critical evaluation. Gifted education merely amplifies this dynamic interplay.
These intellectual movements become richer when combined with intuition and emotion. A learner’s “capital”—the sum of what they have seen, heard, read, experienced, and created—shapes how they think and act. Creativity requires initial openness; premature closure prevents growth. Critical evaluation also depends on one’s capital, but it is strengthened through dialogue with others who possess diverse and reliable intellectual backgrounds. When one’s surrounding community is narrow or homogeneous, meaningful dialogue becomes difficult.
For me, the essential theological task is an open and discerning faith, one that must be sustained by spirituality. Faith, too, arises from trust. Since becoming a Christian, I have often encountered pressure to adopt blind, unconditional faith. Yet I believe faith must remain open. Open faith does not belittle the faith of others; it recognizes that faith manifests differently depending on one’s circumstances and culture. My own faith is shaped by my intellect, emotion, and spirituality, and I do not wish to impose it on anyone else. I believe God grants faith in ways each person can understand.
Believers who hold to Creation Science also possess their own form of faith, and I do not wish to disparage it. I once tried to believe it myself. But through critical reflection grounded in decades of astronomy and physics, along with modest theological study, I came to advocate a theology informed by modern science rather than Creation Science. By teaching science and theology together, I hope to encourage Creation Science believers to adopt a more open faith and reconsider their views through the lens of contemporary scientific understanding.
Upon What Is My Faith Grounded?
Every believer likely has a different method for opening or closing their faith. In my case, because it is based on the level and scope of my own capital, it is bound to have limitations. While my faith shares many similarities with that of other believers, distinct differences certainly exist. Nevertheless, I must have my own grounds for my faith so that I may experience less self-doubt. As an astronomer, the experiences I have gained over the past 50-plus years in studying astronomy, physics, mathematics, and science education—including the history and philosophy of science—form my capital and often serve as my foundation.
Although I had come across the Bible before 1980, I had never engaged with it seriously. However, after I began attending church for the first time in 1980, I wanted to understand its contents. Yet, from the very first verse of Genesis—Genesis 1:1—I felt utterly suffocated: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
This verse came as a shock to someone like me, who knew the Big Bang theory as the sole theory explaining the origin and evolution of our universe. This was because the verse identified God as the agent of the universe’s creation. The Big Bang theory does not explain the generation of the universe at t=0. It does, however, beautifully explain how hydrogen and helium—the elements that make up most of the universe—were formed during the first three minutes of its existence, as well as the cause of the observed cosmic microwave background radiation. At the very least, while I could not know the ultimate cause of the universe’s origin, I had considered it a completely spontaneous event in which no one intervened. Yet, Genesis 1:1 asserted that God created the universe. At the time, I possessed no ground upon which to believe this. If I was to continue reading the Bible, this issue had to be resolved.
While studying advanced astrophysics, classical mechanics, quantum physics, and relativity, I gradually began to appreciate how hard countless scientists since Newton had worked across various fields of physics to understand the state and motion of everything from infinitesimal particles to the vast cosmos. In special relativity, the equation that even the general public has frequently seen,
E=mc2
was nothing short of a shocking equation. This formula demonstrates that mass and energy are essentially the same physical quantity, barely distinguishable from one another. In Newtonian classical physics, all physical quantities are distinct. Time, space, mass, and energy seem related, yet they remain separate. Mass is not energy. However,
explains how energy is released as mass is lost when hydrogen fuses into helium through thermonuclear reactions in the core of the Sun.
It also implies that energy can transform into mass. In other words, matter can be generated from light. Now, mass and energy have come to be treated as identical. Soon after, I looked into the field equations of general relativity. The first field equation derived by Einstein is:
Gμν=8πGTμν
The terms on the left side of the equals sign in this equation represent spacetime, while the terms on the right side represent matter and energy. That is to say, changes in spacetime can generate matter and energy, and changes in matter and energy can go beyond altering spacetime to actually generate spacetime itself. Spacetime and matter-energy are now treated as interconnected. We observe these very phenomena within the natural world we look out upon.
An equals sign in an equation allows us to anticipate the left side if we know the right side, because it expresses a relationship of equivalence rather than causation. Thus, they interact with one another. To believe the words of Genesis 1:1, I now needed to look at the first half of Romans 1:20. This verse states: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…” If I were to convert this into the form of an equation used in mathematics, it would become:
God’s Eternal Power and Divine Nature = All Created Things
Expressed differently, it can be written as:
Divine Action=Nature
In other words, the more we study and understand the natural world, the more we perceive God’s working. To put it another way, it means that the natural world came to be through the active working of God. Thus, Genesis 1:1 represents the outcome on the right side of the equation moving from the left side, whereas Romans 1:20 is interpreted in the opposite direction—meaning that when we look at the right side, which is all created things, we can discern the left side, which is God’s power and divinity.
Non-believers tell me that if I base my argument on biblical verses, I cannot declare nature to be the result of divine action. That is true. For those who do not believe, it is difficult to persuade them of God’s handiwork through any words, actions, or even miracles. This is why I seek, through spirituality, to remain sensitive to the operations of the Holy Spirit—that is, to the divine action of God.
Building on this scientific and theological foundation, I began seeking conceptual tools that could help me understand the work of the Holy Spirit more clearly. The notion of a ‘field’ in physics offered such a framework for reflection.
Understanding the Work of the Holy Spirit Through the Concept of “Fields”
My goal is not to explain field theory in full, but to draw on its basic structure as a conceptual aid. Rather than reducing theology to physics, I use the language of fields as an analogy for understanding the Spirit’s work. In this sense, it offers a helpful way to approach Ephesians 5:18: ‘Be filled with the Spirit.’
In classical mechanics, every object with mass generates a gravitational field. The Earth remains bound to the Sun because it lies within the Sun’s gravitational field, and even the Earth exerts a weaker field of its own. In general relativity, gravity is not a force but the curvature of spacetime caused by mass. Objects move along curved paths, appearing as though they are being “pulled,” even though gravity is a geometric effect.
This helped me imagine the Holy Spirit’s work as a kind of divine field. Just as a gravitational field extends to all objects with mass, God’s power extends to all creation—humans, living beings, the Earth, and the cosmos. I understood this as God’s common grace.
An electromagnetic field, however, acts only on charged particles. In this sense, the Holy Spirit resembles an electromagnetic field: it influences only those who “carry” the Spirit. A believer filled with the Spirit becomes sensitive and responsive to God’s work. My intention is not to prove theology through physics but to use physics as a conceptual aid.
Just as an object must be charged to respond to an electromagnetic field, we must receive the Holy Spirit to perceive God’s presence. Scripture urges us to thirst for the Spirit (John 7:37–39) and not to quench the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19). This selective influence of the Spirit corresponds to special grace. Believers who walk within this divine field come to perceive that all creation is God’s handiwork. Only with such faith does the rest of Scripture resonate deeply. Through astronomy—my intellectual capital—I have come to perceive God’s work in the universe through reason, emotion, and spirituality. This reflection on the Spirit’s activity naturally led me to consider the identity of Jesus Christ, whose divinity and humanity must be understood within the same theological horizon.
Perception of Jesus as God the Son
So far, I have briefly shared the basis of my faith regarding God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Now, there are a few things I would like to say about Jesus, who is God the Son. This is also based on my own personal way of understanding, so I hope you will listen with an open mind. God loved human beings—whom He created in His own image—so much that He revealed Himself within the space that we can perceive. In other words, He allowed humans to actually meet God. Furthermore, the Bible tells us that the resurrected Jesus can only be recognized through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And Jesus possesses both full divinity and full humanity. Many Christian scientists often use the principle of quantum superposition—one of the key concepts in quantum physics. Of course, this analogy does not imply that Jesus’ divinity and humanity can be reduced to quantum states; it simply offers a symbolic way to imagine the coexistence of two natures within one person.
Believers who have even a basic understanding of quantum physics utilize the wave-particle duality of quanta to understand Jesus as a being who holds both divinity and humanity. In the quantum double-slit experiment, if a quantum is not observed, it behaves like a wave, showing the diffraction patterns typical of light waves. However, if the quantum is observed before passing through the slits, it exhibits the properties of a particle, creating only two lines as if particles are passing through the two slits. In other words, a quantum exists in a superposition of both wave and particle states. To the people of His time, Jesus appeared just like an ordinary human being; His human attributes were fully manifested. Yet, at the same time, He directly performed the works of God; His divinity was fully revealed.
What is fascinating is that the Gospel writers connected astronomical phenomena to both the birth and the crucifixion of Jesus. Specifically, they spoke of the Star of Bethlehem at Jesus’ birth, and they noted that the sky turned pitch black at noon during His death. It is depicted as if the celestial phenomena were blessing the birth of Jesus and mourning His passing.
The Star of Bethlehem recorded in the Gospel of Matthew is discussed by various astronomers using celestial phenomena. One explanation suggests that around the end of 7 BC, Jupiter and Saturn were nearly in opposition and overlapped, making them look like a single bright star, and they exhibited retrograde motion for nearly three months. The Magi, who are known to have come from Persia to visit Jerusalem and Bethlehem to celebrate the birth of Jesus, were likely prominent astrologers of their time. Generally, in astrology, Saturn carries a negative meaning, while Jupiter is heavily used with a positive meaning. Although Venus is also bright, it always stays near the Sun. In contrast, despite being far from the Sun, Jupiter is the brightest planet in the night sky. In the language of astrologers, Jupiter eclipsing Saturn signifies that Jupiter—the planet of planets—overshadows all the negative connotations of Saturn. This would have been interpreted as an astronomical sign heralding the birth of the Messiah.
Furthermore, it is presumed that among the Jewish rabbis taken captive during the Babylonian exile, there were priests, prophets, or individuals well-versed in the Torah (like Daniel) who did not return to their homeland. These individuals likely shared the messianic prophecies, which are clearly presented in the Old Testament, with these Persian astrologers.
These astrologers were also outstanding astronomers. This era marked the transition from BC to AD. Around 140 BC, Hipparchus was already able to roughly predict the positions of the Sun, the Moon, and the visible planets on the celestial sphere. Later, around 140 AD, Ptolemy published the Almagest, through which he could predict the movements of the Sun, Moon, five planets, and eclipses (both solar and lunar) using a geocentric model, confirming them through observation. Around the time of Jesus’ birth, Greek astronomy must have been widely transmitted to Persia and Egypt. It is highly probable that their astronomical observations and calendar systems for predicting planetary positions were remarkably advanced. Studying Ptolemy’s Almagest helped me realize that while the precision of the observations and theories held by astronomers and astrologers from Persia to Egypt during this period cannot be compared to modern standards, it was nonetheless at a very sophisticated level.
Additionally, as mentioned in the Gospels, I understand the darkness that occurred when Jesus died as a solar eclipse. Of course, while a total solar eclipse only lasts for a few minutes, if the weather is overcast, people can easily perceive it as though it lasted for several hours. I was able to confirm that a total solar eclipse did indeed occur in that region around the time of Jesus’ death (specifically on November 24, AD 29).
I believe that the Gospel writers wove the astronomical phenomena they experienced into their accounts of Jesus’ birth and death. Consequently, it can be inferred that Jesus was born at least after the end of 7 BC, and passed away after November 24, AD 29.
Fact and Reality Through Critical Experience
Having lived my life as a scientist, I deeply value empirical data derived from experience. This applies not only to the data I have personally gathered but also to the empirical data collected by others. Data accumulated over a long period can lead to the formulation of laws or theories.
The history of astronomy illustrates how human understanding moves from provisional models toward deeper approximations of reality—a process that parallels the way theology approaches divine truth.
Ptolemy, for instance, utilized observational data from the Babylonian era to develop his model. In other words, properly observed data serves as the foundation for describing natural phenomena. Ptolemy employed the mathematical language of geometry. Granted, mathematical language is only communicable to those who speak it. However, among those who communicate through mathematics, differences in conceptual understanding are rarely permitted. Not all scientists use the language of mathematics. They utilize various languages to communicate with one another, and though they strive to understand the meaning through translation, difficulties in communication still arise. At times, the diverse meanings embedded within a language can obscure the intended message. If this ambiguity exists even within science, its scope widens significantly in fields outside of science. It seems as though the uncertainty principle of quantum physics applies here as well. I often experience that making a single meaning of a word precise tends to blur the overall meaning or context of the sentence as a whole. Consequently, grasping the exact meaning becomes a challenge.
Nevertheless, as empirical data (fact) accumulate in science, the laws or theories derived from them (the theories perceived as reality) begin to grow more sophisticated. Though the initial theories may appear crude by today’s standards, they successfully explained the data (facts) obtained through experience. Thus, during that era, these theories (the theories perceived as reality) seemed identical to ontological reality.
Let us return to Ptolemy’s geocentric model. Utilizing observational data accumulated since the Babylonian era—and even before—along with the astronomical theories and mathematical tools compiled by various scholars up to his time, Ptolemy meticulously refined the astronomical calendar developed by Hipparchus nearly 280 years prior. This highly sophisticated astronomical calendar was so impeccably crafted that its predictions of celestial positions and the phenomena of the sun, moon, and five planets held up remarkably well against actual observations. Therefore, because Ptolemy’s sophisticated model accurately described the factual (fact) state of affairs, it served as the reality (reality) that demonstrated the movements of the sun, moon, and five planets in the celestial sphere during that era. Indeed, this model was accepted as reality for nearly 1,400 years until Copernicus proposed his heliocentric model. Even when Copernicus introduced the heliocentric model, he still relied entirely on Ptolemy’s model to predict the position of the sun. For the moon, he merely shifted the center-aligned deferent geometrically to the position of a second epicycle. While he utilized the heliocentric model to describe planetary motion, it was essentially a geometric transformation of the geocentric model. Copernicus stubbornly adhered to uniform circular motion, yet even from our modern perspective, his model closely resembles reality—if only for the singular fact that he viewed the universe from a sun-centered perspective. Copernicus offered various explanations for switching to a heliocentric model.
However, throughout much of his writing, he presented his own model by synthesizing Ptolemaic astronomy, the observations and theories of post-Ptolemaic Islamic astronomers, and his own observational facts to critique Ptolemy’s geocentric model. Yet, because the Copernican model incorrectly described the motion of precession, the discrepancy between its positional predictions and actual observations was far too large. Despite this, Thomas Kuhn depicted Copernicus as a scientific revolution that transitioned science from pre-science to normal science. Unlike Thomas Kuhn, however, I view it as a theoretical framework that emerged through creative and critical thinking, arising from the accumulation of observational data (experience) and the increasing sophistication of theories by scholars prior to Copernicus.
Subsequently, Tycho Brahe synthesized the Ptolemaic and Copernican models through geometric interpretation, adopting a hybrid model that provided more accurate positional predictions. I believe this adoption was driven by theological motivations rather than scientific ones. Since the Christian church at the time did not tolerate a heliocentric model, Tycho Brahe likely adopted a hybrid system where the sun and the moon revolved around the Earth, while the other planets revolved around the sun. Mathematically, the Ptolemaic, Copernican, and Tychonic models share the exact same vector representation. Therefore, regardless of which model is used, the method for predicting the positions of the sun, moon, and five planets remains identical. Even though the heliocentric view was the true reality, the hybrid model appeared to be reality at the time simply due to its predictive accuracy.
The climax of the heliocentric model reached completion with Kepler, and as Newton theoretically elucidated the laws Kepler discovered, the heliocentric model became both a fact and a reality simultaneously. Of course, Newton’s theory became classical physics. Later, as this theory grew richer and observational data of nature continued to accumulate, it evolved into quantum physics in the microscopic world and relativity in the macroscopic world, thereby expanding the horizon of our reality. Even so, it remains uncertain whether we truly grasp ontological reality. I believe that through natural science, we are moving closer to reality today than we were in the past. We may simply have to accept the reality obtained through critical experience as ontological reality. While the reality derived from our critical experience is the existence perceived by us right now, it may not yet be ontological reality itself.
Here, I wish to define the reality I perceive now as the reality I can know, obtained through critical experience. Therefore, I believe that all disciplines, including astronomy, possess an epistemological reality while constantly approaching ontological reality. This concept is expressed by the term Verisimilitude (likeness to truth). Because I believe the discipline of theology also possesses verisimilitude, I view theology as a medium through which I am gradually coming to know and approach the reality of God and His workings, step by step.
This distinction between empirical fact and epistemological reality also provides a meaningful framework for approaching the resurrection, which cannot be verified through direct observation but must be received through accumulated testimony.
The Resurrection of Jesus
The resurrection of Jesus remains difficult for me to believe in a direct experiential sense. I cannot observe it myself; I must rely on the experiences of others. After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to many people who at first did not recognize Him but later became witnesses. Their testimonies function, for me, like observational data in science. Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ adds another data point. Through these witnesses, the gospel spread across the world, eventually reaching Korea.
The countless testimonies of the risen Jesus, along with the teachings preserved in the church, form the “theory” of Christianity. Paul’s confession in 1 Corinthians 15 became the foundation of resurrection faith. Although I lack direct personal data, I have come to accept the resurrection as an epistemological reality—a truth supported by the accumulated testimony of witnesses, the life of the church, and the resonance of faith within my reason, emotion, and spirituality. In this sense, the resurrection becomes real for me not through empirical verification but through the convergence of testimony, communal memory, and the lived experience of faith.
For me, this acceptance is as transformative as the incarnation itself.
Approaching the resurrection as an epistemological reality allows me to engage other foundational Christian claims—such as the creation account in Genesis—with the same critical and reflective posture.
Genesis: A Consideration of Cosmology and Standard Big Bang Cosmology
Genesis 1 presents a cosmology clearly different from modern Standard Big Bang cosmology. Some interpreters read the “light” in Genesis 1:3 as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), but I believe this light is better understood through John 1—namely as a theological, not astronomical, account of divine illumination and creative Logos. Genesis 1 reflects an ancient Near Eastern cosmology rather than a scientific description.
As an astronomer, Genesis reflects the ancient Hebrew worldview—geocentric, with a solid sky dome—representing the highest epistemological reality available to them, even if not ontological reality. Genesis 2:1 shows that the creation account was a meaningful cosmic description for its original readers. The essential message of Genesis 1 is that God created this universe and assigned roles to all things. Thus, I am uncomfortable with claims that ancient Hebrew cosmology is closer to cosmic reality than modern cosmology; such claims ignore the concept of verisimilitude and the growth of human understanding.
I believe the God who created the universe described by Big Bang cosmology is the same God who created me—this conviction arises from faith, not science. Therefore, rather than treating Genesis as scientific cosmology, I prefer to observe God’s providence through the evolutionary history of the universe revealed by modern astronomy.
Some Christians react negatively to the word “evolution,” associating it with randomness and atheism. But when we examine cosmic history, we can discern patterns of preparation and timing similar to the hidden providence in the Book of Esther. Human beings—bearers of God’s image—emerged within a vast universe that had been unfolding for billions of years.
The universe is about 13.8 billion years old, while Homo sapiens emerged only 350,000 years ago—equivalent to 2.19 seconds in a 24‑hour cosmic day. This suggests a universe long prepared for the arrival of life. We do not know how the universe began; at
it was a singularity of zero size, similar to a black hole singularity. Such states cannot be described by current physics. Below the Planck time and Planck length, energy becomes uncertain, causality breaks down, and the universe exists in a state of quantum fluctuation.
From this singularity, spacetime began. The Standard Big Bang Theory emerged from a century of observations: Friedmann and Lemaître deduced an expanding universe from Einstein’s equations; Hubble confirmed
Gamow explained primordial nucleosynthesis; Penzias and Wilson discovered the CMB; inflation, supernova observations, and ΛCDM refined the model. Today, the Standard Big Bang Theory stands as our best approximation of cosmic reality.
The universe evolved from a radiation‑dominated era to a matter‑dominated era and now into a dark‑energy‑dominated era. Acoustic oscillations in the CMB seeded the formation of the first stars, whose supernovae produced the chemical elements that formed Earth and life. Life on Earth emerged roughly 4 billion years ago—coinciding intriguingly with the onset of the dark‑energy era, though the connection remains unknown.
The cosmic evolutionary process reveals a universe filled with emergence. While biological evolution is not my field, its results are observable today and astonishing. We often fall into anthropocentrism, interpreting fine‑tuning and the Anthropic Principle as evidence that the universe exists for humanity alone. I distance myself from attempts to use fine‑tuning as proof of God’s existence through Intelligent Design or traditional natural theology.
- Barbour’s Misreading of Heisenberg
Barbour appeals to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to support a critical‑realist model of representation. But this misreads Heisenberg. Heisenberg understood uncertainty not as epistemic limitation but as ontological potentiality (dynamis). Drawing on Aristotle’s dynamis–energeia, he saw reality as a process of potentiality becoming actuality—a generative, not representational, ontology.[2] Barbour misreads Heisenberg’s concept of ontological potentiality as merely a representational deficiency, using it to justify critical realism. However, quantum field theory does not support his model; it actually undermines it.
- Cosmic Principle and Cosmic Christ
All things in the universe exist in interconnectedness. Geological change, biological evolution, and cosmic evolution are intertwined. Every creature fulfills its role within creation. Studying the universe is, for me, a way of conversing with God. I believe all creatures relate to God in their own ways and bring Him glory (Romans 1:20). This is the deeper meaning of the Sabbath in Genesis.
Just as the Copernican principle displaced geocentrism, I propose a Cosmic Principle that displaces anthropocentrism. The universe evolves not merely for humanity but for all creation. God sustains all things, allowing each to fulfill its role. Colossians 1:16–17 speaks of the CosmicChrist, through whom all things were created and in whom all things hold together.
Physical Laws and the Immutability of God
Scientific laws arise from generalizing observations of nature; the more inclusive a law is, the better it is. Kepler’s laws describe planetary motion, but Newton revealed the deeper cause: universal gravitation, acting everywhere and always. This insight expanded into classical mechanics, explaining not only the solar system but stars, galaxies, and cosmic structure.
However, as I noted earlier, the Anthropic Principle becomes incomplete—and ultimately unreliable—when it is treated apart from quantum field theory, where quantum fluctuations arise within continuous, wave‑like energy fields[3]. This framework differs fundamentally from the metaphysical assumptions of fine‑tuning arguments, which often drift toward anthropocentrism rather than a rigorous account of physical processes.
In modern physics, the Anthropic Principle is neither experimentally testable nor capable of making predictive claims, and it often relies on the multiverse hypothesis. It also tends to incorporate a teleological interpretation centered on the observer. By contrast, quantum field theory supports a universal theory of matter and energy and is accepted as a foundational, mainstream framework within contemporary physics.
As an astronomer and Christian, witnessing the immutability of physical laws led me to accept Genesis 1:1: the God who created the universe is changeless. Yet, since the universe began 13.8 billion years ago, my perception of God through astronomy is necessarily limited—like blind men touching different parts of an elephant. Science offers only epistemological reality, not full ontological reality.
Thus, understanding God from the bottom up through science is inherently limited. A more appropriate approach is top‑down: beginning with faith in God, then studying the universe as His creation to discern His providence.
Viewed through the Standard Big Bang Theory, God allowed the universe to unfold through a long, ordered process. From the creation of elementary particles, to the decoupling of light (CMB), to the formation of stars and elements, God worked through natural processes to bring forth life. We tend to focus only on results, but God governs the process itself. Each part of creation has a role, and emergence occurs at appointed moments. This is divine providence—God’s continuous governance of the universe He created with wisdom and love.
My expression “divine action = nature” does not imply pantheism, Spinoza’s God, or Newtonian deism. It reflects the Protestant doctrines of providence and concursus from a physicist’s perspective. Divine action is continuous creation (creatio continua) expressed through the lawful unfolding of nature.
Divine Action = Creatio Continua (Information‑Geometric Clarification)
To avoid misunderstanding, I express this concept using information semiotics.
A. Divine Action = Nature
Nature is the field in which divine action appears through:
- information flow
- geometric structure
- emergent interaction
Let nature be an information state space
Divine action is a geometric transformation:
where 
generates:
- formation
- stabilization
- semantic structuring
- emergence
Thus:
Nature is the state space upon which divine action continuously operates.
Information‑Geometric Representation (Amari–Ay)[4]
Nature can also be viewed as a manifold of probability distributions. Divine action is the generative flow on this manifold:
: state of nature
: divine generative flow
Thus:
Nature itself is the information‑geometric flow generated by divine action.
Divine Concursus = Creatio Continua
Concursus (God and creature acting together) and creatio continua (continuous creation) express the same structure:
- Concursus = interactive generation
- Creatio continua = temporal continuity
Let the creature’s natural action be and divine action be
:
Divine action does not replace natural action but works within it. Continuous creation means this joint flow persists through time.
Thus:
Finally, I expand the concept of divine election. Election is not only about salvation but also about assigning distinct roles within creation. God chose the Milky Way among billions of galaxies, the Sun among countless stars, Earth among many planets, and the Moon to shape Earth’s environment. Among living beings, God chose humans to bear His image and develop wisdom capable of studying the universe. This privilege is a role entrusted to humanity, enabling us to participate in God’s work and guide creation toward its divine purpose.
Conclusion
As an astronomer and a Christian, I have attempted through this essay to answer questions I consider vital to a life of faith—questions grounded in the science and mathematics I know—through my own theological reflection, even though I am not a theologian. For me, the essential theological task here is an open and closing faith, a faith that must be supported by spirituality.
Furthermore, because reality for me is a subjectively perceived reality shaped by empirical data and critical thinking, I understand it as a phenomenological reality. Within this framework, I wish to emphasize the principle of all things (an ecological principle) and divine election in God’s creation, rather than the anthropic principle.
I believe that this kind of theological reflection can provide Christians who adhere to creation science with an opportunity to critically examine their own assumptions, and I also hope it will help broaden our perspective beyond a church‑centered worldview into the public sphere of society. This approach to the life of the universe is regarded as highly significant in systems biology—particularly in connection with cosmic autopoiesis and the theory of the generation of all things—and it can retain its validity within the field of astronomy as well.
[1] The ΛCDM model is a cosmic expansion model that incorporates Dark Energy, Cold Dark Matter (CDM), and ordinary baryonic matter. It successfully describes the evolution of the universe from its early stages—around 300,000 years after the Big Bang, as revealed by the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)—to the present day, 13.8 billion years later.
[2] Barbour, Religion and Science, 110, 173.
[3] Although Einstein never accepted the Copenhagen interpretation, his field concept and theory of relativity provided, through Dirac’s contributions, the foundational structure for modern quantum field theory and the notion of vacuum fluctuations.
[4] Ay, Nihat, Jürgen Jost, Hông Vân Lê, and Lorenz Schwachhöfer. Information Geometry (Springer, 2017), 24–30. Manifolds of finite measures.