The Cosmic
Process has a purpose, which has to be freely achieved.
(Lonergan, Insight, 1958) The purpose is the
self-creation of a communal
entity that could constitute an appropriate subject of God's love.
In the
Beginning God initiates Time, Energy and Information, with the
potential to freely develop. Information provides the basis of all laws -
Physical Laws, Laws of Life and the Moral Law. Every possible Emergent Stage
can be realised and developed through the processes of Emergent Probability.
Each Emergent Stage develops until it provides a platform for the Emergence
of a further Stage.
MATTER is
the first Emergent Stage. Energy and Information combine to
produce Matter. The Matter of the Cosmos freely self-organises in accordance
with the laws of Physics. Planet Earth eventually develops, providing a
suitable platform for the emergence of Life.
LIFE is the
second Emergent Stage. Matter and Information combine to produce
Life. Information provides the Genetic Code, the Laws of Life. Life freely
self-organises in accordance with the Laws of Life, producing Vegetative
Life, Instinctive Life and Conscious Animal Life. Conscious Animal Life
includes Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens provides a
platform suitable for the
development of the Human Moral-Cultural Stage.
Self-organisation
is the organisation of already existing elements.
Self-creation initiates a new element, such as culture. Homo sapiens begin
the process o self-creation.Man's development is a
matter of getting
beyond himself, of transcending himself, of ceasing to be an animal in a
habitat and of becoming a person in a community." (Lonergan
1974,144)
Humans
develop their capacity to access information from the environment.
Eventually they begin to become aware of moral imperatives, directly
accessing Moral Information. They begin the development of the HUMAN
MORAL-CULTURAL STAGE, the third Emergent Stage.
The Human
Moral-cultural stage provides a platform for the widespread
development of the FINAL EMERGENT STAGE. This would be a self-created,
loving and good stage, which could constitute an appropriate subject of God'
s love. This stage can only develop through human cultural and existential
self-creation. As a proleptic exemplar of the final Emergent stage, Jesus
provides the best illustration of how that stage may be realised.
The
so-called Big Bang was not the Creation. It was the beginning of Time,
and it was also the provision of all the Energy, and all the Information,
needed to produce all the Emergent stages, and to complete the process of
creation.
Creation is
a process involving a series of Emergent stages. Matter is the
first Emergent. Life emerges from matter. Each new Emergent stage is built
on the previous Emergent stage. It incorporates the previous stage, but
transcends it, operating within a new sphere of law. It is law that
distinguishes the stages. There are three main Emergent stages to date:
Matter, Life and Human Moral-cultural Life.
Time and
Energy are important to the process of creation, but Information is
even more important. It is Information that provides the law of each new
Emergent stage, and makes it different from the previous stage. Each new
Emergent stage develops by Emergent Probability.
EMERGENT PROBABILITY
Emergent
Probability is Bernard Lonergan's contribution to
understanding the
purpose of the Cosmic Process. He shows that it is a free process. It is not
a pre-determined process, it is not a matter of chance, and it is not a
product of some pull exerted by the future on the present, as Teilhard had
proposed.
The Cosmos
is a process with a purpose. God had a motive for Creation. We
will consider God's motive for Creation later. We are inside the process of
Creation, and we have a hand in the process. Because it is a free process it
can break down from time to time, and it can loose its way up blind alleys.
But the purpose of the process will eventually be achieved.
THE EMERGENT STAGES
Physical
Matter is the first Emergent stage. Life is the second Emergent
stage. The stage we are now in is the Human Moral-cultural stage.
Each
Emergent stage develops until it provides a platform for the next
Emergent stage. The Physical Earth provides the platform for the Emergence
of Life. Conscious Animal Life provides the platform for the Human
Moral-cultural stage.
New Emergent
stages do not come into being as a result of some pre-existing
law. Laws of Nature are simply statements of the regularities that are to be
found at each Emergent stage, based on the Information that informs each
stage.
Energy and
Information provide the raw material of Matter. The laws of
Physics and Chemistry express the Information that forms, or in-forms, this
first Emergent stage
Life is the
next Emergent Stage after the Emergence of Matter. Life develops
through a number of distinct sub-stages. There is Vegetative Life,
Instinctive Life and finally Conscious Animal Life. The Human Moral-cultural
stage emerges from the Conscious Animal stage.
The laws of
the Physical stage are deterministic, but the interactions of
these laws make for a diversity of outcomes. At some time, in some part of
the material Cosmos, at least one planet that is capable of supporting life
will develop through Emergent Probability. Earth is such a planet.
Life
exercises greater freedom than the Physical stage. Life is
opportunistic rather than deterministic. Life freely evolves new forms in
order to fill every available environmental niche. Life also makes use of
some of the Information that was made available in the beginning.
Genetic
coding is the Information that informs Life. Conscious Animal Life
develops from Instinctive life, but it enjoys more freedom in its range of
possible activities. Homo sapiens originally evolves
as one form of
Conscious Animal life, and begins to develop cultures .This development of
culture is the beginning of h human self-creation-creation.
DISTINGUISHING SELF-ORGANISATION FROM
SELF-CREATION
The early Emergent
stages, Matter, Life and Conscious Animal Life, all
develop through self-organization. Self-organisation is the organisation of
already existing elements. Self-creation goes further and initiates a new
element, such as culture, rather than simply re-organising existing
elements. Humans create their own human-ness, both culturally and
existentially, as they develop themselves and their cultures.
Every human
culture is a potential process of human self-creation. Humans
make cultures and cultures make the humans of the culture. Self-creation
begins with Homo s sapiens.It begins while Homo
sapiens is still within the
Conscious Animal stage. Homo sapiens begin the long process of
self-creation, from animal to human, by forming and developing cultures, as
other Hominids had also begun to do.
Conscious
Homo sapiens gradually develop their capacity to access
information from the environment. They gain knowledge and further develop
their intellectual abilities. They begin to become aware of moral
imperatives, and to apply this new moral information within their cultures.
This is the beginning of the Human Moral-cultural stage.
The
transition from pre-moral cultures to morally influenced cultures is
necessarily a slow and irregular process, depending on the intellectual
self-development of the people of each culture. Some human cultures are
still pre-moral.
HUMAN MORAL SELF-CREATION
When human intellects
develop sufficiently, the awareness of moral
imperatives begins. It is only in the last millennium before Christ that
significant intellectual and moral development becomes evident in any human
culture. Before the last millennium before Christ people generally lacked
both critical rationality and moral sensibility. They had no principled
morality, only mores, or cultural rules.
Greek
literature provides evidence of the development of a moral perspective
in Greece. Homer's stories are ancient and are pre-moral. In Homer, what is
declared good is not what is moral, but what is successful. Good was not yet
a moral term in Homer.
Some time
later Hesiod (c.750 BC) rationalises the genealogies
of the
Olympian gods, but he does not concern himself with their lack of morality.
Two Centuries later, Xenophanes (c.570 BC), one of
the pre-Socratics,
declares that the Olympian Deities cannot be Gods, because of their
immorality. Moral sensibility has finally emerged in Greece.
The Hebrew
developed their moral perspective before the Greeks. Amos and
Hosea, who were vitally concerned with moral action, were approximate
contemporaries of Hesiod, who had failed to exhibit
any principled moral
concerns.
Moral action
was the focus of the Jewish culture for a millennium before
Christ. Jesus was a product of this moral-cultural process, and of his own
existential self-creation. Similarities between Jesus' teaching and that of
the earlier Teacher of Righteousness are no mere coincidence. Both were
products of the same moral culture.
INFORMATION AND LAWS
Each
Emergent stage makes use of Information that was made available at the
beginning of the process of creation.The Information
that informs the
Physical stage constitutes the laws of Physics and Chemistry. The
Information that informs the stage of Life is located in the Genetic code.
In each case the Information is embedded in the structure of the stage.
At the human
Moral-cultural stage things are different. The Moral Law is not
embedded in Humans. As Nicolai
Hartmann points out: "The Moral law commands
but it cannot compel".
Moral
individuals access moral Information directly when they perceive the
moral aspect of a situation. However, because they necessarily perceive the
moral aspect through the prism of their existing culture and belief-system,
they do not necessarily perceive it clearly.
SO WHAT IS GOING ON?
We
have seen that the Cosmos is essentially a free process, that it is a
process with a purpose, and that the Information in each Emergent stage is
different. In the first Emergent stage Energy is informed to produce the
material Cosmos. In the next Emergent stage, Matter is informed to produce
Life. Life develops through Vegetative, Instinctive and Conscious Animal
stages. Homo sapiens evolve in this last stage and begin a process of
cultural self-creation.
We now turn
to the fundamental question. Why would God create by means of
such a freely operating and complex process, rather than completing Creation
in the Biblical six days? The Jesuit scholar John F. Haught,
in his "Mystery
and Promise: A Theology of Revelation" is puzzled by this problem. He
asks:
"If God is all powerful, why was not the Universe created in its final,
fixed state, once and for all?"
God must
have had a motive for Creation. What could God's motive be, in
creating the Universe by such a time consuming and complicated process?
GOD'S MOTIVE FOR CREATION
Because
God needs nothing, His only motive for acting has to
be love. The
question then is whether God could directly create an entity that is an
appropriate subject of His love? It appears He could not. God is
self-existent and all-powerful, but even an all-powerful God can only create
creatures. A creature is totally dependent, the complete opposite of the
self-existent God.
A mere
creature is no fit subject of God's love. However a self-created
entity could be an appropriate subject of God's love, if it was otherwise
similar to God. How could such a self-created entity become possible?
One way
would be for God to initiate a freely operating process, involving
some form of self-creation at some stage. This could be a process very
similar to the one I have been describing, the process we find ourselves in.
Such a process could provide the opportunity for free subjects to develop
themselves in goodness, creativity and love.
This
development could not be forced. It has to be a free process. This is
why the moral law commands but it does not compel.
Mankind has
to change from its original primitive nature, from a Conscious
Animal nature to a Human nature. Humans have to create their own new nature
by their free response to the moral law. This could enable mankind to
provide an appropriate platform for the final Emergent stage.
The final
Emergent stage has to create itself. As the product of this
complex and time consuming Cosmic Process, a self-created, loving and good
Emergent stage could constitute an appropriate subject of God's love.
We have
considered how the Cosmic Process develops by Emergent Probability,
through a series of Emergent stages. We now have to consider the connection
between Emergence and Christology.
CHRISTOLOGY
Christology
is the attempt to understand Jesus. It began after the
Resurrection. At that time Jesus could only be understood through the
distorting prism of the current, myth-based, world-view.
Christology
stood at the very centre of Teilhard de Chardin's concerns:
"from the time of the first unmistakably Teilhardian
essays, written during
the First World War, right up until the year of his death, he was
preoccupied with the possibilities of a Christology commensurate with the
possibilities of the evolutionary perspective." (Donald. P. Gray 1975,32)
As a
scientist, Teilhard de Chardin
foresaw the clash between Science and
Scripture. Teilhard recognised the difficulty of
fitting together the world
of Scripture and the world of Science. In 1922 he suggested that only a
faulty perspective could unite these two worlds: "In uniting them on the
same plane we are surely victims of an error of perspective". (Essay on
Original Sin, 1922).
Christianity
inherited the foundational myths of Judaism. Those myths had
the world created by God in its completed form, with mankind as a special
creation. It also had God constantly intervening in the world on behalf of a
particular tribe. Jesus was originally understood, or rather misunderstood,
from within this mythic perspective. This fundamentally mistaken perspective
prevailed until the Scientific Revolution.
Physical
science began to destroy this mythical world-view when Copernicus
showed that the world was not the centre of the Universe. As Science
developed Newton showed that the world operated without constant Divine
intervention.
Darwin's
theory of Biological evolution then challenged the idea of man as a
special creation. As Cosmology developed it showed that our Solar system was
a relatively insignificant feature of the total Universe. Science had
succeeded in shifting the world, and mankind, from the centre of the Cosmos
to its fringes. With popular Darwinism, people became a product of mere
chance, as well as being fringe dwellers.
By the end
of the 20th Century popular Darwinism saw humans as the product
of chance mutation and natural selection while popular Cosmology saw Planet
Earth as a chance result of the Big Bang. Christianity began to be regarded
as an un-scientific fantasy. However, with the development of a more
critical perspective among Theologians, we are now in a better position to
develop a new Christology, replacing mythology with reasoning based on
scientific knowledge, including knowledge of the Phenomenon of Emergence.
THE EMERGENCE OF JESUS
We know that the Hebrew
culture that produced Jesus had maintained a focus
on moral behaviour for a Thousand years before Jesus. Jesus is best
understood as a product of both the Hebrew moral culture and of his own
existential self-creation. Jesus was consistently moral. He appears to have
internalised the Moral Law. He can best be understood as a proleptic
exemplar of the Final Emergent stage. The Final Emergent stage may have
begun with Jesus, but it may also have begun independently, in other
cultures, with other individuals who appear to have internalised the moral
law.
Every new
Emergent stage begins and develops slowly.The
beginning and
development of each Emergent stage is irregular. There is no sudden
transition from one stage to the next.
THE PURPOSE OF THE PROCESS OF THE COSMOS
Because humans have direct
access to moral information, when they develop a
moral sensibility, they have a role to play in the process of Creation. They
can change themselves and their cultures, and they can change the world.
They can do this by applying moral criteria within their cultures. They can
work towards the full realisation of the Final Emergent stage.
We can now
understand why God would create by means of a freely operating
process, rather than in the Biblical six days. The Cosmos exists to enable
the free self-creation of a communal entity that is similar to God in its
mode of being, and in goodness, creativity and love. The present Human
Moral-cultural stage provides a platform for the widespread development of
the final Emergent stage. This stage can only develop through human cultural
and existential self-creation. As a proleptic exemplar of the final Emergent
stage, Jesus provides the best illustration of how that stage may be
realised.
AN EMERGENT CHRISTOLOGY - SUMMARY
Dr. A.B. Kelly 11th September 2004
The Platform
for all the Emergent Stages is the initial Creation of Time,
and of all the Energy & Information needed to complete the process of
Creation. Information is the source of all laws: Physical laws, Genetic laws
and the Moral law.
The design
of the World Process is Emergent Probability, the free
realisation of a series of events, including the Emergent Stages, which are
made possible by the initial provision of Energy and Information.
MATTER is
the first Emergent Stage. Matter emerges from a combination of
Energy & Information. Matter freely develops by self-organisation, through
Emergent Probability, and produces a platform suitable for Life - Planet
Earth.
LIFE is the
second Emergent Stage. Life emerges from a combination of Matter
and Information. Life freely develops by self-organisation, through Emergent
Probability, producing Vegetative, Instinctive and Conscious Animal Life.
Conscious Animal Life includes Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens provide the
platform for human self-creation.
SELF-ORGANISATION
is the organisation of existing elements in accordance
with the law of the Emergent Stage. SELF-CREATION freely initiates new
elements, such as cultures.
Humans, as
Homo sapiens, begin the process of self-creation by forming
cultures and developing their ability to access information from the
environment.
When this
ability is sufficiently developed Humans begin to become aware of
moral imperatives, directly accessing Moral Information. They develop moral
cultures through the process of cultural self-creation.
The HUMAN
MORAL-CULTURAL STAGE emerges in various cultures, dependent upon
the moral development of the people of the culture. Moral cultures can
provide a platform for the final Emergent stage.
The Jewish
moral culture provided the platform for the existential
self-creation of Jesus, the man who became a proleptic exemplar of the FINAL
EMERGENT STAGE.
Created Platform: Time, Energy & Information
First Emergent: Matter. Law: Physical
Second Emergent: Life. Law: Genetic
Third Emergent: Human Moral Cultures. Law: Moral
Final Emergent: includes Jesus Law: ?Love