ATTEMPT AT UPDATING THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY OF NATURE

EMERGENCE: THE WHOLE IS MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS: ANCIENT WISDOM RE-CONFIRMED.

There is this ancient story about the elephant and the group of blindfolded men. Each one of them investigated a different part of the elephant. The one that stumbled over its body described it as a wall, the one that got a tusk thought it was a spear, yet the one investigating the squirming trunk claimed the elephant was rather like a snake and so on. Only after the blindfold fell, the men experienced that what they had described were parts of an elephant, a whole more than the sum of its parts. 

The story originated in India, perhaps about 500 BC, and appeared in Buddhistic texts. The story illustrates that the different experiences of the blindfolded men are subjective yet can be parts of transcendent objective truth. The story teaches tolerance for believers in various religions. 

There is another message in the elephant story: the elephant's unity depends on its parts yet transcends the parts. Of course, the philosophers of old recognized this truth's ontological significance because nothing can exist except as united diversity. For example, Plotinus (205-270AD) writes: "It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings. This is equally true of things whose existence is primal and of all that are in any degree to be numbered among beings. What could exist at all except as one thing? Deprived of unity, a thing ceases to be what it is called: No army unless as a unity: a chorus, a flock, must be one thing. Even house and ship demand unity, one house, one ship; unity gone, neither remains thus even continuous magnitudes could not exist without an inherent unity; break them apart and their very being is altered in the measure of the breach of unity" (Sixth Enneade Section 1. https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/plotenn/enn704.htm).

If all that exists must be one, then-new reality can only come into existence from parts that are already ones. Teilhard de Chardin (1891-1955) saw this when he wrote about the universal process of general evolution. He wrote about the fact that integration of parts into unity brings forth novelty from "matter" to life, mind, and consciousness (in: "The Human Phenomenon" 1955). As far as I know, it is Teilhard who applied Plotinus' insight that "all that exists can only exist as a One" to universal evolution. 

Of course, alchemists and chemists new for a long time that synthesis brings forth novelty. Even today, some professors think of chemistry as the universal science. However, that synthesis generates novelty not only in chemistry but also in physics was discovered, for example, by astrophysicists (Burbidge, E. M.; Burbidge, G. R.; Fowler, W. A.; and Hoyle, F. (1957) "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars"). In biology, it is less clear how syntheses bring forth new forms of life. Rather, it is the Darwinian principle of variation and selection that is rightly credited with the appearance of new species. The details of how this works at the genetic/molecular level is a matter of current research. However, that existing genomes somehow break apart and then are reshuffled into genetic programs that allow new organisms to emerge is a well-founded way to think about the evolution of life. Common to all natural sciences is the phenomenon of spontaneous appearance of novelty. It is the phenomenon of emergence the fact that syntheses bring forth novelties. Plotinus was precisely right. The ontological structure of all existence is dependent upon being one! Modern science found that the dynamics of the general evolutionary process moves by sequential unification of that which is already One. Therefore, the process drives towards increasing complexity. Why? Because all that exists and will exist must be unities. Because they exist, they are already parts of integrated parts. The process continues by further uniting such already complex elements into even more united complexity. Therefore, the entire process generates more highly united hierarchically-organized diversity. Since this process is essentially historical (probabilistic), it cannot have a precise predetermined goal. Instead, the natural process is oriented towards undetermined teleocomplexity. This process's dynamic is made possible by the energy released in the original explosion of the big-bang.

So much for the scientific description of the evolutionary process. What about its integration into an updated theology of Nature? 

At this juncture, I think Plato had it right when he writes: "Let me tell you then why the Creator made this World of generation. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be" (Plato, Thimaeus https://toddtarantino.com/hum/timaeus.html). 

As I see it, this understanding is very close if not identical to the fundamental revelation of Christianity that God is Love. How so?

Creation is in time, yet God is eternal; therefore, how could Creation be like God "as it could be?" God eternal is Triune; God IS existence as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From Genesis, we know that Creation is through the Word of God: God speaks, and the World becomes. How? Through the creative Word that God speaks OUT. God gives His Word away; it departs from God into that which is no-thing. This Gift from God, namely His Word, IS God. Because it is given away to Creation, it becomes the creative center of Creation (theological language) of Nature (science language). The God-given Gift is given away and becomes the creative center of Nature. However, the Word of God that is God brings forth Nature, not God again. As I see it, this understanding is very close if not identical to the fundamental revelation of Christianity that God is Love. 

How so?

Modern science discovered that emergence is the central phenomenon in all of evolution (e.g., Philip Clayton & Paul Davis (eds.) (2006). The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion Oxford: Oxford University Press). Nature, of course, neither God nor is it "like" God. Instead, it is the total "Otherness" of God. However, there is an analogy: God is eternal existence as Unity in the Difference of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; all created existence has in common that it can only exist as unity. So: "how could Creation be like God "as it could be?" Emergence results from synthesis, from the unification of parts into unity. That is why Teilhard was and still is precisely correct. The process that builds Nature "bottom-up" works by sequential syntheses. It sequentially integrates already integrated elements into emergent new Ones.

Why this ontological architecture? Why can existence only be as an integrated one? Because all created existence carries the watermark of the Triune Word of God, it is the footprint of God's Triune eternal existence in all created beings.  

Expansion into the mystery of incarnation.

The foundation for the writing above is that "God can be God in that which is not God," which is illogical. For our logic, something cannot be that which it is not. However, God's "logic" of incarnation proves that God can be God in a human being, in that which is undoubtedly not God. God is God in a human being, Jesus Christ. 

The sacrament of the Eucharist is another example that God can be God in that which is not God. Bread is bread, and wine is wine, yet in the sacrament of the Eucharist, bread becomes the body- and wine the blood of Christ. 

What about the Christian revelation concerning Creation? Holy Scripture leaves no doubt; God speaks, and Creaton becomes through God's Word (Gn 1: 3-26). Furthermore, the prologue to John's gospel (and epistles of Saint Paul confirm) that Creation is through Christ, the Word of God. "In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him, nothing came to be" (Jn 1:1-3). 

There are three events, Christmas, the Eucharist, and Creation that all are occurrences of God's logic of incarnation, examples that God can be God in that which is not God. To see these three paradoxes through the eyes of faith, it is crucial to hold on to the absolute difference these three illogicalities link together: Christ is true God and true human (even though humans are essentially not God). Bread is bread, and wine is wine. However, either is not flesh or blood. The Word that creates Creation is God, yet Creation certainly is not God. Our logic cannot understand such paradoxes. Therefore, the temptation is to flatten the total difference into something that out logic can accept: Christ only appears to be human, but truly He is not; in the Eucharist, the bread and the wine are not real flesh and blood of Christ but just symbols, and Creation is not really through the Word of God that is God but is either God itself (pantheism) or God becoming complete (panentheism) or is independent of any creator's action (atheism). Instead, Christians believe in the Trinity of God eternal that created Creation through the Word of God that is God.

But how?

The fundamental revelation of Christianity is that God is love: "Deus Caritas Est: (Encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI, December 25, 2005).

Therefore, is it not reasonable to conclude that Creation is God's Gift? Since Christianity knows that Creation is through the Word of God, is it not also reasonable to find that the Gift is God's Word? If this would be the case, then the creative Word of God would belong to Creation/Nature. In other words, Nature could do with this received creative source whatever Nature would do with it- the natural way! Furthermore, thanks to the gift of God's creative Word, Christ, Creation/Nature would not only be free to become itself but would also be saved! 

The notion that Nature is free to become itself is also critical for the present situation. Earthquakes, floods, firestorms, global warming, and viruses are not Acts of God but acts of Nature. This insight is critical because it should prevent Christianity from falling back into the Old Testament. There, God occasionally prevented rains from falling, causing the World to flood or commanded fire to destruct cities of unfaithful people punishment. 

How to work out a reasonable understanding of the significant difference between the Old- and the New Testament is beyond the topic of this present writing.

Dr. Rudolf B. Brun, Professor Emeritus

www.evolutionandchristianity.com

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