The Origins of the Universe

• The Catholic Church teaches that there is one, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient God that is responsible for creating the universe and everything in it.
• "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" - Genesis 1:1 clearly show God's power
• God's creative role is depicted in Genesis 1 as he creates the world in 6 different steps. Genesis 2 delves further into God's creation of humanity
• God's transcendence and his eternality are both present in both accounts and Catholics see Genesis as symbolic of God's nature such as omnibenevolence and omnipotence as everything he saw "was good".
• As Catholics read Genesis as symbolic, they are able to accept scientific theories about creation such as the Big Bang and Evolution. This is reinforced as Pope Francis claims that "there is not conflict between religion and science".
• Creation ex nihilo means to create from nothing. This is shown in the Bible and teaches about God's omnipotence.
• In Genesis 1, God creates the world without the need for any other materials. Catholics believe that the universe had no other beginning before God as he is the only eternal being.
• St Aquinas was a Catholic priest who supported the concept of ex nihilo. He developed causation to state that God was the "uncaused first caused". He used real-world examples of cause and effect to conclude that God caused the beginning of the universe.