The Father of Creation & The Creator of the Big Bang

George Lemaitre and the Hidden God Behind the Beginning

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For the average person in the 21^st century, the idea that the universe has a dynamic history is quite commonplace. A hundred years ago, however, this was far from the case. From the late 1700s through the first half of the 20^th century the predominant scientific worldview maintained that the universe is static and that it has remained essentially the same—without beginning or end—throughout all eternity. Then, in 1927, Belgian astrophysicist and Catholic priest Georges Lemaître proposed a theory of the expansion of the universe that would challenge nearly two centuries of scientific consensus by suggesting that the universe had dramatically changed over time and that it even had a beginning. While Lemaître saw his theory as a beautiful vision of how God’s creation of the universe is consonant with physics, among his scientific peers, his theory was met with skepticism, derision, and ridicule. Yet, Lemaître’s theory eventually would win the day, and it is now known as the Big Bang.  

Two ways to truth

Born in Belgium in 1894 to a devout Catholic family, at an early age Lemaître discovered that he was deeply gifted at mathematics, while simultaneously having endless questions about God. Fascinated by both science and theology, by age nine he had decided that he wanted to pursue two vocations: to become a priest and a scientist. As Lemaître reflects: 

I was interested in truth from the standpoint of salvation, as well as truth from the standpoint of scientific certainty. There were two ways of arriving at the truth. I decided to follow them both. Nothing in my working life, nothing in what I have learned in my studies of either science or religion has ever caused me to change that opinion. I have no conflict to reconcile. Science has not shaken my faith in religion, and religion has never caused me to question the conclusions I reached by strictly scientific methods.¹ 

Lemaître went to the Catholic University of Leuven in 1911 to study engineering, but his studies were interrupted in 1914 when World War I began, and he felt it was his duty to enlist. Receiving the Military Cross, and decorated for bravery, Lemaître was deeply troubled and forever changed from the dreadful carnage he had witnessed on the battlefields. Yet this experience strengthened his faith and also his resolve to become a priest. After the war Lemaître resumed his university studies, changing his focus to physics and mathematics, and he graduated with a Doctorate in Science in Mathematics in 1920.

That same year he enrolled in seminary and was ordained in 1923, while also continuing his scientific research on Einstein's theory of relativity. Turning towards mathematical astronomy, Lemaître then embarked for the University of Cambridge where he became a research associate in astronomy studying under Sir Arthur Eddington. Continuing his research at Harvard University and MIT, Lemaître earned a PhD from MIT in 1927 for his thesis, The gravitational field in a fluid. As a research scientist, Lemaître never ceased to be a priest; for, in Lemaître’s mind, the scientific study of the universe was at the same time a reflection upon the Mind of God. As Lemaître affirms: “Science is beautiful, it deserves to be loved for its own sake since it is a reflection of God's creative thought.”²

The reason for the universe is “Fiat Lux” 

In his vocation as a scientist, Lemaître was fascinated “by the ancient idea that light might be the primordial medium of the world,” a concept that he found theologically and scientifically satisfying.³ In his desire to link science and faith, Lemaître reflected on the meaning of Genesis and particularly the first words of God. While he cautioned that “Genesis is not a book of natural science,” Lemaître nevertheless pointed out, “that nothing prevents this biblical book from comprising some element of truth on the cosmos, since it had been inspired by the One Who Knows Everything.”⁴ Lemaître thus interpreted the Scriptural expression “the earth was without form, and void” as being an image of nothingness:

There was not even any light. It is impossible that anybody could subsist without radiating light, indeed everybody at a certain temperature emits radiation of all wavelengths (according to the theory of Blackbody Radiation). Physically, absolute obscurity is the nothingness. One cannot see how it would be possible to understand this tenebrae otherwise than in this absolute sense preceding the Fiat lux; there was absolutely no light, there was thus, absolutely nothing. There was only the Spirit of God that prepared to create in the empty immensity: Spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas.⁵

In the Beginning…

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When Einstein began to work on applying his theory of general relativity to the universe as a whole in 1917 his philosophical beliefs about the nature of the universe did not allow for an expanding universe with a beginning. This was so much the case that he even tweaked his own equations—adding an extraneous cosmological constant—to make sure that his model of the universe fit his presuppositions. In other words, Einstein “assigned a particular value to the cosmological constant so as to yield a static universe” that was, according to Einstein, neither “required by the theory as such” nor “natural from a theoretical point of view.”⁶

Lemaître, however, realized that Einstein’s equations could be interpreted to predict a non-static universe, and in 1927 he published the original version of what later became known as the Hubble Law, regarding the relation of the velocities and the distances of the “red-shifted” galaxies that are moving away from us. He also produced the first estimate of what would later be called “the Hubble constant” (even though Hubble himself would never support the interpretation of “his” law in terms of an expanding universe).

In the same year, Lemaître proposed a theory of an expanding universe with a beginning to space-time. Projecting the expansion of the cosmos back in time, Lemaître concluded that an initial “creation-like” event must have occurred where and when the fabric of time and space came into existence, a point that he called the “primeval atom.”⁷ Philosophically and theologically, Lemaître welcomed the idea of a cosmic beginning, and he believed that “the existence of this primitive atom” was “due to a primitive causality, a creative will which placed it there and which, for him, is God.”⁸ Lemaître’s science had a “strong theological relevance” for him and thus an initial singularity “was not something to be avoided, but a positive merit, a token of God’s creation of the world.”⁹

The majority of cosmologists at the time, however, found Lemaître’s proposal abhorrent. Indeed, in 1931, Lemaître’s former mentor Sir Arthur Eddington considered his expanding universe theory and remarked, “Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me” because this is merely a confusion between physics and a theology of creation.¹⁰ Einstein was likewise repulsed by Lemaître’s physical interpretation of his own equations. At a conference near Brussels, when Lemaître drew Einstein’s attention to his paper, Einstein responded, “Your calculations are correct, but your physical insight is abominable.”¹¹

His greatest adversary, though, was the cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle, a militant atheist who ridiculed Lemaître’s theory as mere theology. Hoyle invented the pejorative name “Big Bang” on his popular BBC radio show in 1949 to describe Lemaître’s theory, and, along with Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi denounced the Big Bang as a religious idea in disguise. They then developed another theory specifically to counter that of Lemaître’s—known as Steady State Theory.¹² Hoyle’s Steady State Theory hypothesized the continuous creation of matter within an eternal and self-sufficient universe—with no need for a beginning in time. Hoyle continued to reject the Big Bang theory till his dying day in 2001. 

The Hidden God

Although frequently accused by his detractors of doing fundamentalist Judeo-Christian apologetics, Lemaître never argued that his Big Bang theory proved the existence of God. For him, there could never be any question of “reducing the Supreme Being to the rank of a scientific hypothesis.”¹³ Rather, he believed that his physical theory led one up to the point where it was necessary to make a leap of faith. It is at this point, says Lemaître, “when human intelligence can go no further, then faith must step in.”¹⁴

Lemaître pointed out that his theory entailed the breakdown of physical reality at the beginning of space-time and that here our scientific investigations come to an end because it is impossible to continue physical reasoning. Lemaitre’s original paper on the Big Bang, published in the journal Nature, concluded: “I think that everyone who believes in a Supreme Being supporting every being and every acting, believes also that God is essentially hidden and may be glad to see how present physics provides a veil hiding the creation.”¹⁵ This, Lemaître reflected, “is consonant with Isaiah speaking of the Hidden God, hidden even in the beginning of creation.”¹⁶

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1.  Duncan Aikman, “Lemaître follows two paths to truth. The famous physicist, who is also a priest, tells why he finds no conflict between science and religion,” The New York Times Magazine (19th February 1933) 3, 18.

2. Georges Lemaître quoted in Eduardo Peláez, “The Big Bang and Creation,” Salvador Mérida, ed. Conjugando Ciencia y Fe. Argumentos en el año de la fe. Madrid, (CEU Ediciones, 2014).

3.  Georges Lemaître: Life, Science and Legacy Volume 395 of Astrophysics and Space Science Library, eds. Rodney D. Holder and Simon Mitton, (Springer Science, 2013), 3.

4.  Georges Lemaître quoted in Dominique Lambert, The Atom of the Universe: The Life and Work of Georges Lemaître, (Copernicus Center Press, 2015), 59.

5.  Georges Lemaître quoted in Lambert, The Atom of the Universe, 60.

6. Albert Einstein, Relativity, the Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition (Crown Publishers, 1961), 133.

7.  Georges. Lemaître, Un univers homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant, rendant compte de la vitesse radiale des nébuleuses extragalactiques, G. Lemaître, Annales de la Société scientifique de Bruxelles, Série A, 47, 49-59 (1927); Georges Lemaître, “The beginning of the world from the point of view of quantum theory,” Nature, CXXVII (3210), (1931a), 706.

8.  Mattia Da Re, Françoise Hiraux, Clara Laduron and Camille Mostaert, “Georges Lemaître, Father of the Big Bang theory” https://archives.uclouvain.be/exhibits/show/georges-lemaitre-en/beginning-or-creation/his-education

9.  John North and Roy Porter, The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology (New York: Norton, 1994), 526.  

10.  Eddington continues, “As a scientist I simply do not believe the Universe began with a bang…It leaves me cold.” Quoted in Simon Singh, Big Bang (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 280.

11.  Albert Einstein quoted in Studies in the History of General Relativity, eds. Jean Eisenstaedt and ‎A.J. Kox (Springer Science 1992), 442.

12.  See Helge Kragh, Cosmology and Controversy: The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe (Princeton University Press, 1999) 193, 253.

13.  Georges Lemaître, quoted in Helge Kragh, Matter and Spirit in the Universe: Scientific and Religious Preludes to Modern Cosmology, Volume 3 of History of Modern Physical Sciences (World Scientific, 2004), 145.

14.  Christopher Dwyer, “Two Paths to Truth: A Tribute to Georges Lemaître” New Blackfriars, (1994), 475.

15.  A copy of the original typescript, with the last paragraph crossed out by Lemaître has been reproduced in Dominique Lambert, L’itinéraire spirituel de Georges Lemaître, (Bruxelles: Lessius, 2007), 120.

16.  Georges Lemaître, quoted in Georges Lemaître: Life, Science and Legacy, 16.