So begins Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas. But beginning at the beginning isn't original to Thomas. Whether consciously or not, the playwright and poet seemed to be echoing the opening sentence of the first book in the Bible, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.' (Genesis 1:1). Interesting, that.
For until the middle of the 20th century, the scientific consensus was that there was no beginning. The universe, it was held, has always existed because matter is eternal. Not much need for a Creator, then. That consensus was shattered when scientists teased out the logical implications of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Real world evidence that the universe had a beginning came from the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, a lingering trace of the 'Big Bang'.
But as the old saying goes, 'nothing comes of nothing'. That presumably means the universe could not have created itself. Created itself from what, exactly? And so we're back to Genesis 1:1. Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow reflected his book, God and the Astronomers, "For a scientist who lives by faith in reason, discovering the universe's origin ends like a 'bad dream'. They have climbed the mountains of ignorance, but as they pull themselves over the final rock, they find a band of theologians and philosophers who have been sitting there for centuries."
That's the thing. Begin at the beginning, and you are confronted by an all-powerful, wise, and good Creator who exists outside of time and space. In other words, God. But how could we know such a transcendent being? Well, we could if he was pleased to reveal himself to us. Which is where Jesus comes in.
John opens his Gospel with these words, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Through him, all things were made.' (John 1:1-2). Then John says, ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14). He through whom the word was made entered his creation as man to bring us back to God by his sin-atoning death and mighty resurrection. The Bible begins at the beginning and concludes with Jesus, 'the Beginning and the End'.
* For various local parish magazines
