Creatio continua

The creatio continua (Latin for "continued creation", from creare "to create" and continuus "continuous, uninterrupted") is a theological concept formulated by Augustine, according to which creation is an ongoing, unfinished process and therefore nature is always open to God's active intervention, as can be seen, for example, in the causally inexplicable miracles. This view was also held by Isaac Newton.

In contrast to this is the opposite view, which is also based on statements by Augustine, according to which God created time at the same moment as the world and thus the act of creation was completed, because God himself, as the Eternal One, stood outside of time and the beginning and end of the world were present for him at the same time. From the point of view of man, who is bound to temporality, the world would henceforth unfold according to the laws of nature imprinted on it in the beginning. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz used the famous parable of the "divine watchmaker" for this, according to which the world would function automatically like a perfect clockwork created by God - and he polemicised against Newton that he would have to consider God a bad watchmaker if the world needed God's constant intervention to function.

In the Christian churches, both views are about equally held.

See also

• Creation out of nothing