LONDON (RNS) Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has flatly dismissed famed scientist Stephen Hawking’s claim that gravity, not God, was responsible for creating the universe.

Hawking, a retired professor at England’s Cambridge University and best-selling author, insists in his latest book, “The Grand Design” that “because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

But in a magazine excerpt published in The Times newspaper in London, the archbishop wrote that “belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the universe.”

Rather, Williams continued, “it is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence.”

As archbishop of Canterbury, Williams is spiritual leader of the 77 million-member Anglican Communion.