THE SCIENTIFIC
PARADIGM AND THE SPIRITUAL ICE AGE
Copyright Dr. A.B.
Kelly 4th April 2001
A
new scientific paradigm has replaced the pre-scientific world-view, in which
Religion provided meaningful explanations for everything. However the Christian
Churches have failed to develop their message in a form that is meaningful to
Post-Copernican man. As a result, mankind has now entered a spiritual Ice Age,
in which the established Churches provide no shelter.
One
cause of this failure is that while paradigm changes can occur in Science, the
Christian Church, from the beginning, dug itself into an almost immovable
intellectual position. The Church firmly identified itself and it’s teaching
with Judaism, tying itself to the categories and concepts of the Old Testament.
As J.N.D. Kelly has pointed out, Christian theology took place in predominantly
Judaistic moulds until the middle of the second
century, utilising Jewish categories of thought. (1960,17)
Christianity also adopted the interpretation of God’s creative role that
Judaism had derived from Ancient Mesopotamia. This interpretation held that God
created all things, bringing them into existence out of nothing. It also held
that God governs the whole universe, exercising an all-pervading control and
sovereignty. (1960,83)
There
are two distinct concepts involved here.
Initiation of the cosmos out of nothing is one thing, continuing all
pervading control of it is another.
Initiation of the cosmos does not necessarily entail control of
everything that happens thereafter. It is not difficult to see the origin of
the concept of such detailed control in the ancient Mesopotamian tyrannies. The
effect Mesopotamian myths had on biblical cosmogonies has
been detailed by Clifford (1988).
This
concept of an all-pervading Divine control introduces problems concerning human
free will. It also gives rise to the
question as to why an omnipotent and perfect God would make an imperfect world.
As
well as adopting the concept of God’s all pervading control, Christianity also
adopted the perspective on revelation current in Judaism. This involved the human author of Scripture
being a mere instrument of the Holy Spirit. (Kelly 1960, 60-4) No account could be taken of the worldview of the author, nor of the categories and concepts that had
influenced that human author. While Irenaeus had recognised that there had been a progressive
development of mankind since the time of Moses (Kelly 1960,68), neither this
recognition, nor an awareness of the new intellectual categories initiated by
the Greeks, appear to have been sufficient to make anyone conscious of the
possibility of a development in the categories of thought.
Apart
from our present awareness of the importance of the categories of thought, in
the sense of those ultimate categories of reality in terms of which the mind
conceives and affirms that which is, we are now also aware that there is no
experience without interpretation. Our attention has also been directed to the
existence of intellectual paradigms that exercise control over the way we
interpret the world. No such
understanding existed at the time of the foundation of Christianity.
With
our present understanding of these factors we can possibly understand some
aspects of the world of early Christianity, and the early Christian
interpretation of those aspects, better than the early Christians could. We can
now certainly understand the problems the early Christians have caused us by
their firm adoption and retention of an ancient intellectual paradigm. In
recent times these problems have become considerable.
In
Baechler’s view, the most significant consequence of
this ancient intellectual paradigm is the present triumph of unbelief. He
argues that unbelief could not have triumphed unless people had been driven to
seek another basis for the order of the world.
This need arose from the apparent failure of the religious basis of the
order of the world to maintain its relevance. (1975,91)
Science
now appears to provide a more acceptable basis for the order of the world. The concept of the scientific order of nature
has been gradually endowed with greater precision, scope and depth, enabling
science to take the place of faith. Baechler argues that Christianity has always had to contend
with two structurally insurmountable ambiguities: the ontological status of
Christ and the problem of salvation. (1975,90-1) The
apparent rationality of science appeals to the mind of Western man, while the
seeming violation of rationality that is implied in some religious teaching,
tends to repel. This repulsion stems
directly from the retention of the ancient intellectual paradigm into which
Christianity has locked itself.
This
is not a new problem. In 1926, Alfred North Whitehead
pointed to the fact that religion had been on the defensive in Europe for over
two centuries. These centuries had been
marked by significant intellectual progress in every field except
Theology. Whenever a scientific
discovery caused people to reassess old ideas, it was hailed as a triumph for
science, but it often created a problem for theologians because of the
association of theology with an outdated imagery. Arthur Koestler
quoted Whitehead’s views a generation later, and
stated that the need for religion to abandon its pre-scientific worldview had
become even more urgent then. (1959,538-53) This need
has now become imperative.
In
the same year that Koestler quoted Whitehead’s words, Pope John 23rd announced his
intention to call an Ecumenical Council.
When the Council opened on 11th October 1962, the Pope stated
that the whole world expected a leap forward in doctrinal penetration, a new
presentation of the substance of ancient doctrine. He also pointed out that world-views change
from age to age and that the errors of the past often vanish “like fog before
the sun”. (Wiltgen 1967,14-15)
The
Pope’s expectation of a new leap forward does not appear to have been met,
although the Council noted in the “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World”, Introduction, Section 5, that “the
human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more
dynamic, evolutionary one”. It also
noted that this new concept of reality had given rise to a new series of
problems, “a series as important as can be”. The Council then called for “new efforts of
analysis and synthesis” to attack these problems.
Koestler had noted that the world in which
Christianity had been established was a closed world of comfortable dimensions,
in which a well ordered drama, with a simple outline, a clear beginning and an
end, was taking its pre-ordained course. Religion provided meaningful
explanations for everything that had happened.
This world-view was unchallenged before 1600 AD. The present scientific world-view, by contrast,
appeared to have mankind’s destiny determined from below, by sub-human agencies
such as glands, genes and atoms. These
new explanations appear to have made meaning a meaningless concept. As a result, Koestler
considered that mankind had entered a spiritual Ice Age, in which the
established Churches provided no shelter. (1959,548-51)
World-views
have changed dramatically in the past four centuries, but the religious picture
from the past has remained frozen in place.
There has been no leap forward in doctrinal penetration, no new
presentation of the substance of ancient doctrine, no new analysis or
synthesis. The doctrine delivered by the
churches is presented in terms that reflect an antiquated, out-dated and
totally unacceptable world-view.
I
will argue that the ancient pre-Copernican paradigm, built upon God’s
all-pervading control, will need to be abandoned in the light of a new natural
theology of process.
In
understanding the thought of any period it is necessary to understand the
reigning paradigm of the time. In the
previous four centuries before Christ the world of the intellect had been
turned upside down, or perhaps more correctly right
side up, by the classical philosophers.
The old Egyptian and Persian empires had been routed by Alexander,
setting in train a series of wars that had finally resolved into the Pax
Romana. The world had been shaken from
its old certainties by this turmoil, but had reassembled itself into a new era
of certainty.
As
Brehier notes, by the end of the 4th
Century BC the surge of idealism that had initiated philosophy had become
crystallised as dogma, and philosophy subsequently became doctrinaire and
pragmatic (1965,24).
He characterises the first two centuries AD as essentially stable. No need was felt to revise the settled
geocentric concept of a limited cosmos, with the world as a seat of change and
corruption, under an incorruptible heaven (1965,149). The universe had been shorn of mystery, with
the myths of the gods replaced by rationalism.
The Greek world was a world of stability, or of cyclical order. But
Christianity also introduced a view of man as a being who was responsible for
the destiny that he forges for himself.
This view contained the seeds of change.
It provided the idea of progress rather than stability. These seeds were
to flower during the Renaissance (1965,218-225).
The
seeds of change were also to give rise to modern science. The methodology of science was eventually to
spell the end of the paradigm of certainty that had reigned at the time of the
initiation of Christianity.
In
aligning itself with the reigning paradigm of the time of its foundation, and
aligning itself even more firmly with the more ancient paradigm of Judaism,
Christianity made a wholly understandable mistake, but a mistake
nevertheless. The closed world of early
Christianity, the world of comfortable dimensions in which a well ordered drama
with a simple outline and a clear beginning and an end was taking its pre-ordained
course, has now come to an end.
Religion
no longer provides meaningful explanations for everything that happens. A more critical mind-set finds fault with the
religious explanations that satisfied earlier generations. The closed world of a previous time has been
replaced by a world of evolution and of process.
There
is an inherent contradiction between the all-pervading control of the world by
God, and the determination of the future by human action. Nicolai Hartmann
argues that if the world is ordered teleologically by a divine will then the
human will has no determinative superiority over material processes (1953,129).
It would appear that the idea, of God’s all-pervading control of the world, is
in need of some reconsideration.
The
development of a linear, progressive, process theology,
had to wait until a similar philosophy had been developed. Such a philosophy
was initiated by Hegel. Some of its further development has been traced in “The
Search for Meaning in Philosophy and Theology” (Kelly, 2000) The linear
progressive perception of the entire cosmos, initiated by the Big Bang, has
only forced itself upon the popular consciousness in the latter half of the 20th
Century.
World-views
change. No one in today’s world would
want to adopt Irenaeus’ Second Century argument that
there had to be four canonical Gospels because there were four winds, there
were four corners of the world, and because the architect of the world was
enthroned on Cherubim who each had four faces, which were images of the
dispensation of the Son of God. (Adv. Haer. 3,xi,8)
Process
philosophies, which present a linear, progressive understanding of the world,
are a very recent phenomenon. The philosophers of classical Greece could be
excused for failing to apply the concept of a linear process to their philosophy,
as they were not aware of this category.
There was less excuse for Jewish Christian thinkers. Cahill’s central point (1998) is that the
Jews had introduced a radical new concept of reality. They had rejected the ancient belief in
reality’s static or cyclical nature, and they taught that the future is
determined by man’s present actions.
This, Cahill maintains, had made human progress possible.
Baltazar points out that Aristotelian philosophy is
based on common sense, just as are the Ptolemaic and Euclidian views of
physical reality. This explains their persistence and appeal. Our commonsense
time-frame of reference is so small that within that scale no changes are
perceived. But if we introduce time into the equation, we see that what appears
to be permanent, in the two-dimensional setting of common sense observation, is
really process in the three-dimensional frame of reference that results from
the addition of the effects of time. (1965,136-7) He
points out that for the Hebrew, time has always been the region of truth,
quoting “Time matured and ripened Israel, the spouse of Yahweh, so that she
gave birth to Christ, the Fullness of Time. (Gal. 4:4)” (1965,147)
This
process of maturation began when “the biblical minds who created the Ten
Commandments that have structured civilization provided the possibility of an
ethically conceived life, an awareness that we live in states of moral
consequence that, if not yet, must someday bring us to a union of understanding
with the Creator” (Doctorow 2000,116)
One
significant task of theology is to seek to understand revelation, to re-state
its content in contemporary terms, so that it will have contemporary
relevance. While theology seeks to
restate the truth of a revelation, there is always the danger that once again,
limitations in the philosophical frame of reference within which the revelation
is reconsidered may produce other distortions.
Classical
philosophy, and hence theology, was static and two-dimensional because it left
time out of the equation. Baltazar argues that there has to be an adequate philosophy
of process developed before theology can convert to the historical perspective.
(1965, 134-7) Modern sciences, such as
geology, biology and cosmology, take time into account. They take development over time into
account. These sciences reflect a
dynamic perspective, a process perspective.
Taking time into account can give us a three dimensional, or process,
perspective rather than a two dimensional, static perspective. (Baltazar 1965,137) This three dimensional,
process perspective, can give rise to a philosophy of Process and to a
natural theology of Process.
The
static, two-dimensional world of classical philosophy has been replaced by the
perception that the world is in process.
This dynamic viewpoint is to be found in recent Cosmology, and in the
work of Einstein and of Darwin. It is
seldom to be found in theology, except in the work of Teilhard
de Chardin and his followers, and in followers of Whitehead. I will not deal with Whitehead
as I do not accept the idea of a developing God.
Teilhard de Chardin
recognised the need to abandon the static Weltanschauung
in which Christianity had necessarily been expressed. He saw that
the universe was “no longer an Order but a Process”. (1964, 272-4) In this
process God acts as a final cause on matter, causing it to cross the emergent
thresholds of life and mind. Teilhard postulates a “within” of matter that responds to
the attraction of Omega. Ultimately, for
Teilhard, the whole process is determined by God.
While Teilhard adopts a process perspective,
recognising the importance of the time dimension, he retains the Divine control
that reflects the old static world-view.
Teilhard does not manage to shake off the position
that Christianity inherited from Judaism. This position joins the total control
of creation to God’s initial creative role.
This is despite the fact that evolution indicated the existence of a
process that provided freedom to evolve and change, or to remain static, or
even to die out, rather than a process involving a determined inevitability.
While God has to initiate any process of the cosmos, there appears to be little
logic in the initiation of a process that extends over billions of years simply
to reach a predetermined conclusion.
Our
understanding of the world we live in has changed radically during the
Twentieth Century. Cosmology only became
a science in this Century, and the Big Bang only became scientifically
supportable in the 1960’s. Cosmology has
shown that the Big Bang was accompanied by significant “fine tuning”, which
makes it appear as if the cosmos could have been designed for life, and for
intelligent life.
Another
significant development, which is yet to have a positive effect on theology, is
the pattern of thinking of contemporary Western man. David Jenkins calls this the thinking of
post-Copernican man. For post-Copernican
man, as new knowledge is gained, it changes people’s understanding. (1965,66) Post-Copernican man has a dynamic approach to knowledge. He is not bothered by the fact that
yesterday’s theory, whether in physics, biology, cosmology or any other
discipline, has just been overthrown and replaced by a better-developed theory. Had Christianity been initiated within such a
post-Copernican paradigm, discussion concerning essential matters, such as the
ontological status of Christ and the meaning of salvation, could have been
carried on in the same lively fashion that characterises present day cosmology.
As
it is, theology has been thrown onto the defensive by the approach to knowledge
of post-Copernican man. In Jenkins view,
we must now work our way towards a post-Copernican natural theology.
(1965,69-71) I take up this challenge in “A Natural Theology of Emergence”
(Kelly 2001) I argue that God initiated the process of the cosmos with the
purpose of enabling the possible free self-creation of an entity that is both
good and that, as self-created, has a mode of existence that is similar to that
of God. This is the only sufficient
reason that justifies the initiation by God of a process that would, at some
stages, bring imperfect, contingent things into being. Aristotle could not
resolve the antinomy between a perfect God and an imperfect, contingent world,
which had to be the responsibility of that perfect God. The recognition that
the process of the cosmos is as yet incomplete,
enables the natural theologian to dissolve the antinomy that frustrated his
Classical Greek predecessors. He is able
to accommodate Aristotle’s argument that God could not love man as man, and to
propose that the process of the cosmos can only be theosis
- the process of the possible free self-creation of an entity that is similar
to God. It is of interest that Teilhard touches on this matter of self-creation, but he
does not pursue the insight. He says: “’Nature’ is the equivalent of
‘becoming’, self-creation . . . .Those who look reality in the face cannot fail
to perceive this progressive genesis of the Universe, and with a clarity which
leaves no room for doubt” (1964, 13)
We
can now turn from this post-Copernican natural theology to the effect the now
outdated world-view had on earlier theology. Karl-Joseph Kuschel
argues that there was a philosophically inspired distortion in the reasoning of
the Council of Nicea.
The Council of Nicea occurred in the
philosophical context of Middle Platonism, the Zeitgeist of the contemporary
Roman Empire. Neo-Platonic philosophy assumed a created God, a “world soul”,
intermediate between the transcendent God and the world. Arius sought to
explain the ontology of Christ in these terms.
As a result, the Council had before it, in the words of Karl-Joseph Kuschel, “only one
alternative: either Jesus Christ belongs
at the level of the created, in which case God cannot really fully reveal
himself in Jesus and bring about full redemption, or he belongs wholly on the
side of the uncreated. In that case he
is ‘God from God’, ‘Light from Light’, ‘true
God from true God’. The choice of this (unbiblical) terminology
was therefore necessary in order to preserve the biblical idea of revelation
and redemption on the new philosophical presuppositions”. (1992, 500)
Nicea was presented with the bald alternative of
Christ as either a created entity, or as uncreated and eternal. This limited choice was a result of the
static, two-dimensional world of the philosophy of the time. When the static two-dimensional world of
Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus is replaced with the
dynamic perception that the world is in process, at least one further
alternative becomes possible. This
alternative is that Christ is neither directly created nor eternal, but is the
result of a process involving self-creation.
The
limited alternative available at Nicea was a result
of the failure of philosophers to develop the categories of process at that
time. John Courtney Murray SJ identifies the primary Nicene problem as the
relationship between the Logos and the Father. In pursuit of a resolution of
this problem the Fathers had to concern themselves with the nature of reality
and the power of the intelligence to reach it. They had to consider the
question of the ultimate categories of reality. (1964,33)
The
Fathers had four sets of categories to consider. These were “the categories of
space, time and matter as in Stoic materialism” or the “categories of ideas as
in the Platonic tradition” or the “intersubjective
categories of Hebrew thought” or finally “the categories of being and substance
as in the tradition of metaphysical realism that originated in Aristotle” (1964,33)
The
question we have to ask is whether this list of four sets of categories was
exhaustive. It appears not. What the Fathers did not have available for
consideration were the categories of process. If, as Baltazar
argues, process is the basic and objective structure of being (1965,148) then the Church Fathers at Nicea
did not have the tools to resolve the problem of the relationship between the
Logos and the Father. They falsely assumed that the Aristotelian categories of
substance and accident captured the reality of that relationship. What could a
process perspective bring to the problem of that relationship? In particular,
what can be said of the moral-cultural process of maturation that began in the
Hebrew culture with the proclamation of the Ten Commandments?
Human
culture has an important role in the process of human self-creation. Mary Midgley
demonstrates that man is formed in such a way that he needs a culture to
complete him. She points out that we
have an innate need of culture, and we cannot live without one, nor without creating one.
She argues that rather than standing in the way of the development of
the individual, culture provides the necessary matrix for that development.
(1978,286)
Human
culture is a human spiritual creation that can be developed so that it fosters
further human spiritual development. A
culture essentially tells its members who and what they are, and what the world
is all about. As Dix’s analysis of
culture has shown, the roots of a culture are to be found in the ideas that the
people of that culture take for granted as to the meaning and purpose of human
life. (1967,7) Nowhere is the process of human
self-creation more evident than in the process of a culture. There is a reciprocal interaction between any
human culture and its members. Humans
make cultures and cultures, to a significant extent, make humans.
One
of the most significant human moral cultures was that of the Hebrew. This
culture, from the time of Moses, was focussed on the requirements and the
importance of morality. This focus gave rise to the prophets and to other moral
leaders. Through this cultural process of self-creation did time mature and
ripen Israel, the spouse of Yahweh, so that she gave rise to Jesus? Is Jesus a
proleptic product of human self-creation, begotten through the moral-cultural
process of self-creation, which Moses initiated?
The
proleptic nature of the Christ-event has been noted by a number of theologians,
including Pannenberg, Lonergan
and Patrick Madigan. Madigan sees Christ
as the proleptic anticipation of the life form that should eventually
characterise the world as a whole, although he does not offer any explanation
as to how this might eventuate. (1988,112, note 6)
The
post-Copernican natural theology, outlined above, shows the Cosmos as a process
directed towards the possible self-creation of an entity similar to God. As the process of human moral-cultural
self-creation is essentially a free process, the process could either succeed
or fail. The Christ-event could indicate
that the process can succeed. A process perspective, applied to the process of
Hebrew moral-cultural self-creation, could perceive the Christ-event as a logical
outcome of that process, with Jesus achieving divinity rather than being an
incarnation of divinity.
This
perspective can resolve the first of the ambiguities of Christianity, the
ontology of Christ. It may also resolve
the second ambiguity, the meaning of salvation.
Salvation may be the completion of the process of human self-creation,
the divinisation of mankind. Revelation
may best be considered not as a series of immutable propositions, but as the
history of the process of salvation, a series of spiritual insights expressed
in the categories of their time. (Avery Dulles’ Fifth model of Revelation,
1983) A new process theology would reinterpret revelation in the light of the
apparent purpose of the process of the Cosmos, the divinisation of mankind.
That
man is to become divine is not a new idea.
It is as old as Christianity. The
problem with this concept has always been the question, again posed by Mascall, who asks “how can a creature be deified?” (1966,184-5) One possible
response is that no creature can be deified unless that creature is
self-created, the product of a process of cosmic and human self-creation, and
so having a mode of existence similar to that of the self-existent God.
The
perception that each culture is a separate process of human self-creation
enables an answer to be given to some questions recently posed by Max Charlesworth in his `Religious Inventions’ (1997). He asks what we are to think of the fact that
Christianity appeared as an historical phenomenon some 50,000 years after the
beginnings of Australian Aboriginal religion, and how we are to explain the
religious interregna between the beginnings of humankind, the choosing of the
Hebrews and the manifestation of Jesus Christ. (1997,30-31)
Quite
simply, the evolution of the circumstances that could lead to the emergence of
morality in Homo sapiens took time. It took more time for the moral evolution
and further self-creation of each culture. I have argued elsewhere that the
Hebrew was the first people to emerge with a moral-spiritual consciousness. (Kelly,
1999) A lengthy further process of human
self-creation was needed, within the Hebrew culture, before the advent of
Jesus.
This
understanding of the Christ-event, based upon a rational, post-Copernican,
natural theology, may thaw the spiritual Ice Age. It fits the pattern of
thinking of contemporary Western man, who is not bothered by the fact that
yesterday’s theory, whether in Science or Theology, has been overthrown and
replaced by a better-developed theory. It can restore relevance to Christianity.
At least, discussion of the thesis may generate enough heat to melt some ice.
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