In contrast to Eastern thinking, the Hebrew-Christian tradition affirms that God has created a true universe outside of himself. When I use this term “outside of himself,” I do not mean it in a spatial sense; I mean that the universe is not an extension of the essence of God. It is not just a dream of God. There is something there to think about, to deal with and to investigate which has objective reality. Christianity gives a certainty of objective reality and of cause and effect, a certainty that is strong enough to build on. Thus the object, and history, and cause and effect really exist.
