 During the early period of modern cosmology, relativistic models with zero or negative curvature were sometimes associated with materialism and atheism because they implied a universe of infinite size. Conversely, Einstein’s closed and finite universe was welcomed by theists. According to Ernest W. Barnes, the mathematically trained bishop of Birmingham, infinite space was “a scandal to human thought,” (Barnes 1931, 598). His argument was epistemic as well as theological: only if God’s universe is finite can we hope to understand the full range of his activity. Lemaître thought likewise that the universe had to be finite in order to be comprehensible. In agreement with his later warning against the “nightmare of infinite space” (Kragh 2004, 139), both of his two innovative cosmological models, the expanding model of 1927 and the big-bang model of 1931, were spatially closed. The steady-state model of the 1950s was not only unpopular among Christians because of its lack of a cosmic creation, but also because it implied a homogeneous universe of infinite extent. According to Stanley Jaki, a Benedictine priest and historian of science, the infinite universe is a scientific cover-up for atheism. Mormons do not agree, though, for they need a universe which is infinite in both time and space.