The Divine Universe

When things go unexpectedly well we say, “Thank God!” And sometimes we really believe that God has intervened on our behalf, has diverted nature from the course it would naturally take. Such a belief is quite harmless and may even give a boost to an individual’s personal religion. On the other hand, when some catastrophe occurs or some unspeakable act of injustice or violence, we say, “Where was God? Why didn’t he prevent this?” Individual religious faith may then be threatened. So sometimes we believe that God has used some kind of magic on our behalf that we call a miracle, and sometimes we doubt if God even knows how to operate properly the nature he himself created.

Both these notions are wrong. There is no such thing as magic, whether we dignify it with the name miracle or not. Miracle means ‘something that causes wonder’; magic means actions or events that subvert or intervene in the workings of nature. No doubt things happen that we cannot explain, but that does not mean that the “laws” of nature have been broken; it means that nature is stranger then we think. If we imagine that science knows everything about nature, then we may think, quite wrongly, that the laws of nature have been broken. Nature, as conceived by God, is completely consistent, coherent and rational, and is more resourceful than we can imagine.

What is perplexing is the unpredictability. When we are dealing with simple mechanical systems, predictions can be made with the help of mathematical equations. But in spite of what many people believe, nature is not a simple mechanical system. At the most basic, atomic level there is inherent uncertainty. This was only discovered last century, giving rise to quantum theory. At the most basic level, scientists can only calculate ratios of probability. No outcome is certain; none is impossible. So, is God in charge or not? Does nature have absolute freedom to do what it likes – what scientists call randomness? That question deserves careful thought.

What is the relationship between physical nature and the Holy Trinity? We are taught that God created everything “ex nihilo” (out of nothing). Physical nature, then, is entirely of God, the source and essence of all being: conceived of God in the womb of God; born of God as dynamic, intensely active yet ordered energy in space and time. God possesses limitless energy, space and time. Within this infinite potential, God is incarnate, embodied. God is pure spirit, but not disembodied spirit. Saint Paul referred to a spiritual body when writing of life beyond death. The idea of a disembodied spirit was meaningless to him. The resurrection stories emphasise the bodily-ness of the risen Christ too. Embodiment is of the essence of God; that is why we have the Second Person of the Trinity.

The Second Person of the Trinity, begotten of God, is not only the man Jesus. St Paul and St John said that everything is in Christ and through Christ. In fact, if Christ is divine, then he is not a finite entity at all. God’s incarnation, his embodiment, is everything that is and can possibly be. As well as being absolutely transcendent to physical nature, God is also totally immanent in it, because God cannot be relatively or partially anything. God does not have degrees of being; he is not fragmented into parts. His incarnate self is everything, everywhere, and of equal status and “coeternal” with his transcendent self. Seen through the eyes of Paul, John and modern cosmology, this is what the Nicene Creed says. Physical nature is God’s embodiment. Physicist Brian Swimme has said that our universe is not a material object; it is a spiritual event. The Cartesian separation of body and spirit is a philosophical aberration peculiar to Western thinking.

So why doesn’t the “Father” discipline the “Son” more effectively? Why is nature, especially humankind, allowed to play up so? God has absolute freedom. If the “Son” is co-equal with the “Father” (Nicene Creed again), then God incarnate has absolute freedom too. Nature, including humankind, has a terrifying degree of freedom. And there, perhaps, we may have a theological explanation of quantum uncertainty!

But that is not much comfort to the survivors of the Holocaust or other victims of disasters. Are we then helpless victims of absolutely random chance? No. Cosmic optimists, Christians for example, believe that there is an underlying motive for existence – love. We believe, in fact, that God is love. Love is what constrains the universe in some kind of order, astronomically through gravity, socially through some sense that prevents us from being quite as dreadful as we could possibly be; call it conscience perhaps.

As an individual I have only a simplistic and hazy notion of what love is. Divine love is much more far-sighted and wise than I can comprehend. Jesus and many other holy people have been able to focus human love in miraculous ways, such as healing the sick. This focussing of love is called faith, and Jesus wished there was much more of it. But even when faith is lacking, love still operates, only in a more obscure and often delayed way. Good eventually comes out of evil, we say. From stars to humans and everything else, the new emerges to replace what dies – resurrection.

I cannot pretend to understand God’s technology of love. As St Paul said, God’s wisdom looks like foolishness to us. But I have seen enough evidence to convince me that there is a purpose, and to permit me to believe that the ultimate outcome is to be good. And my belief in God is not in some disembodied entity outside the universe or permeating the space between things. I believe that God is the source, the essence and the totality of all being, including physical nature.

The problem of evil and suffering remains. But I don’t see this as a technical problem for God to solve. I see it as inherent in the transcendent mystery of existence in the process of becoming what it truly is. Why is God taking this utterly baffling journey? Why did his special human incarnation, Jesus, have to endure the greatest cruelty his contemporaries could inflict? It seems that, in choosing not only to be but also to become, God has chosen to suffer till the end of time. God has no technical fix, only the immanent energy of love, the Holy Spirit.