WILLIAM LANE CRAIG a1 a1 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.
