The appointment of a British Asian Hindu as our Prime Minister is a great opportunity for non-Hindus to get to know a bit more about the beliefs of the 1.2 billion people in the world, approximately 1 million of whom are in the United Kingdom, who identify as Hindus.
Hindus see the material world as being endlessly created, sustained and destroyed through the agency of the Trimurti, a trinity of deities: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer.
That world view may seem strange to some Christians, who often tend to think of creation as something that happened in the past: God is the creator who did his work in the past; today we are the beneficiaries of that creation.
That hasn’t always been the way that Christians have thought about creation and need not be the way we think about it now. Early Christian thinkers identified two distinct, but complementary, models of creation: the concept of original creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo), plus the idea of continuing creation (creatio continua). Creation, therefore, should not be spoken of only in the past tense, but rather as an ongoing life-giving phenomenon of which we are a component part. Moreover, our ongoing role in creation is not merely passive. Rather, as Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians, God has made us to be active participants in his ongoing work: ‘For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building’.
I believe that this is the right way to think about creation, and I don’t think it is far removed from the Hindu world view. Along with Rishi Sunak, as co-workers we cannot escape the burden of our personal responsibility for everything that creation involves.
Duncan McCall
