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Creation and conservation once more

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 1998

WILLIAM LANE CRAIG
Affiliation:
Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, California 90639-001

Abstract

God is conceived in the Western theistic tradition to be both the Creator and Conservor of the universe. These two roles were typically classed as different aspects of creation, originating creation and continuing creation. On pain of incoherence, however, conservation needs to be distinguished from creation. Contrary to current analyses (such as Philip Quinn's), creation should be explicated in terms of God's bringing something into being, while conservation should be understood in terms of God's preservation of something over an interval of time. The crucial difference is that while conservation presupposes an object of the divine action, creation does not. Such a construal has significant implications for a tensed theory of time.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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