Eilert Herms reconstructs Weinberg's description of the process of the cosmos and shows: The enduring presence of this process for inner-cosmic persons, who explore it, is not only the condition of possibility for this exploration, but also the real condition of possibility and the real medium of the process itself.
The invitation extended by Steven Weinberg in his classic The First Three Minutes, with its presentation of the cosmological standard model of modern physics in non-technical language, inviting non-physicists to form their own judgment, is here taken up by a theologian. Through a reconstruction of Weinberg's description, Eilert Herms demonstrates the following: the enduring presence of the cosmic process (expansion) for possible inner-cosmic persons - namely human beings who investigate it by means of measuring experiments - is not only the condition of the possibility of this investigation, but at the same time the real condition of possibility and thus also the real medium of the very process of the cosmos that is investigated in this way. This enduring presence of the ordered process of the cosmos for its possible and for its actual inner-cosmic explorers is contingent, selectively realized out of other possibilities - that is, it is »initiated« and thereby granted in lasting continuity. As such, it itself bears witness to its »initiator«: the power of that initiative which begins and sustains, with orientation toward an ultimate end, this real enduring presence of the process of the cosmos for inner-cosmic agents who explore it through initiatives of practice, by selectively realizing it out of the totality of such possibilities-that is, in and from its omnipresence. The power of this initiative is not present for us and those like us within the enduring presence of the process of this our cosmos, but it is present through it. Theo-logy - knowledge of God - is therefore not excluded by modern knowledge of the cosmic process; rather, it is prepared by it, once the condition of possibility and the medium of such knowledge, as well as its object, are taken into consideration.
