MT06. 22 May 2004.
Copyright © 2004 by Kevin Sharpe. All rights reserved.
In process.
by
Kevin Sharpe
Graduate
College, Union Institute and University, Cincinnati, Ohio
Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, Oxford
Oxford Institute for Science and Spirit, Oxford
Founder, Science & Spirit Magazine
kevin.sharpe@tui.edu
www.ksharpe.com
OUTSTANDING POINTS.
ABSTRACT.
KEY WORDS.
CONTENTS.
The
Divine-Universe Relationship: The Problem
Sharpe’s Proposal: The
Subuniverse
Sharpe’s Proposal: The
Subuniverse Divine
The Russell and Sharpe
Positions Compared
Downward Divine Action in the
Universe
TENSION. How can God interact with the world as it is now understood as operating with consistent natural causation.
MEANING. God interacts with the world through bringing every event into existence in a bottom-up way and top-down without any reference to the Divine’s having a purpose.
NEW IDEAS. Combines the uaaw and subuniverse ideas; interaction with Russell’s ideas; no Bohm required.
NEW METHOD. The magazine piece on endings.
When I see and smell smoke coming from my toaster, I look at it for burning crumbs or bread. If I fail to see any, I look for a smoldering electrical component. What if smoke were issuing from the toaster but no crumbs sat in it, no pieces of bread stuck to its elements, and its plug were out of the wall socket? A candidate for the X-Files?
How does the Divine interact with the universe?[1] Perhaps the Divine intervenes in nature and the human mind in a miraculous way that conflicts with the explanations of science. Or perhaps the Divine operates in the universe in a mysterious and invisible manner for which science notices no irregularities.
This essay focuses on the Divine’s interaction with the universe, especially with its most fundamental components.[2] I want to understand how this might happen given that the ability of science to explain what happens in the universe.
Langdon Gilkey argues that a scientist cannot, in principle, notice divine actions as interruptions or exceptions to the natural world including the realm of the psyche. Because our cosmology is now scientific and not biblical, because the modern, scientifically-informed world immerses our minds and existence, we have no choice but to think this way.[3]
Gilkey assumes science arbitrates this matter. Others give theology this task, and find there reasons either to agree or disagree with his conclusion. Emil Brunner, for instance, asserts that divine lordship and freedom require the Divine have the ability to intervene and disrupt the laws of nature.[4] On the other hand, Paul Tillich labels as demonic any suggestion of a supernatural interference in the regular order of nature.[5] It would lead to a dualism in which, in Tillich’s terms, the ground of being destroys the structure of being.
Existential and liberal theologians approach the question differently again. Rudolf Bultmann, for instance, would say divine action happens ‘within’ a natural, historical, or psychological event in a mysterious, non-interventionist way. Science could not see them, only faith could. Our faith could require that we understand any event in the natural, historical, or psychological world as also a divine act.
Would events with this ‘inner’ component be different if the Divine had not acted in them? Not to differ suggests that divine inaction equals divine action. To differ suggests the visibility of the effects of divine action. Bultmann might agree with the latter and add that we would never notice the difference as a discontinuity in nature or psyche. But this restates Gilkey’s problem and leaves it unsolved. We still do not know the ontological difference between events in which the Divine acts and those in which the Divine does not act. Two separate and free causes-in this case, nature and the Divine-probably do not produce the same results.[6]
Other theologians would disagree with Gilkey’s approach. William Temple, for instance, believes the Divine’s wisdom determines whatever happens in the universe. The laws of nature represent a uniform response to a uniform situation. Yet the Divine responds personally to what happens. A response that breaks the uniformity represents a divinity with a constant purpose but a flexible approach to a special circumstance. Temple may therefore say to Gilkey that no ontological difference exists; the Divine produces all events as an equal expression of the Divine’s personal, purposeful, and flexible self.
Gilkey wants to tell the difference between divine acts and the usual, natural ones. Temple says the Divine produces them all and the difference lies in the way the Divine acts out divine purpose. The laws of nature as science sees them express only some of the Divine’s actions; the Divine’s perspective exceeds but includes science’s. I want to answer Gilkey’s question and I incline toward Temple’s solution-with several differences.
Temple’s assumptions require closer scrutiny. He believes the Divine possesses a personal nature, which means the Divine intends things through interactions with the universe. The ideas of the Divine’s wisdom and purpose resolve the problem Gilkey raises. Yet we need to understand how the Divine might interact with the universe before we ask whether the Divine might have wisdom and purposes. Otherwise we could, along with many in the Christian tradition, assume the reasonableness of the Divine’s purposes but balk before their complexity; in principle, humans cannot understand them. We should therefore, this position continues, not ask Gilkey’s question let alone try to answer it. To assume the purposefulness of the Divine before we resolve how the Divine acts in the universe means we might as well assume an answer to the divine action problem or dismiss it because it becomes secondary to purpose. Temple’s assumptions assume his answer.
To answer how the Divine interacts with the universe, I wish for an approach that avoids assuming this much about the Divine; the Divine need not have purposes. I wish to start afresh without importing anthropomorphic projections.
William Pollard provides a third way to understand how the Divine acts in the universe.[7] He bases his case on his belief in the statistical nature of scientific laws for all levels of reality, from the quantum realm through genetics and biology, through the social sciences, through to history. For any situation, he says, the course of events can move in a variety of ways. We can only state knowledge as probabilities, each possible outcome possessing a chance of happening. What actual way a situation does proceed depends on how the Divine guides it; the Divine picks a way from among the possibilities that nature or history or a person’s psyche presents.[8]
Opposing Temple, Pollard’s view says the Divine’s actions align with the laws of nature. Opposing Bultmann, Pollard’s view says the Divine’s actions make a difference to the course of the universe. Thus, Owen Thomas points out, Pollard suggests divine action steers between the above positions.[9]
But we need to think more carefully about the statistical nature of knowledge. Pollard may confuse two different senses of chance. In the classical sense, chance refers to such events as the throwing of dice or a meteor hitting someone’s car. Causal factors underlie these events but we either do not know or prefer to ignore them. Our equations for such phenomena represent, as Robert Russell phrases it, ‘a shorthand for treacherously detailed calculations.’[10] We choose a description of statistical chance for convenience sake.[11]
Causal factors fail to determine completely some other chance situations, however. ‘At some level,’ Russell continues, ‘things just happen.’[12] This ontological indeterminism or chance occurs, for instance, at the atomic and subatomic levels where we employ quantum physics. ‘A specific uranium atom may or may not decay in the next second. If it does, it does. We can calculate the likelihood of the event but we cannot entirely explain why it occurred when it did and not at some other time.’[13] The statistics here suggest a full set of underlying causes does not exist.
Pollard’s case rests on the statistical nature of all events which happens not because of the imperfection of our knowledge. He believes in the actual random nature of all processes, that ontological chance occurs at all levels. Thomas finds this a problem.[14] We may follow Niels Bohr and accept that this type of chance rules the quantum realm, but we may not want to attribute it also to higher levels.
Russell’s understanding of how the Divine acts in the universe resembles Pollard’s, except that Russell’s applies only to the quantum realm. Here, an event emerges from an array of possibilities, each of which might occur but none of which definitely will occur. Russell accepts Bohr’s interpretation of quantum physics. Then he adds divine causality to complete the set of causes that produce a quantum event. Nature provides the possible outcomes for a quantum event and the Divine’s action actualizes one of them. Nature provides the possibilities; the Divine provides the reality. ‘Quantum events occur in part because of the direct action of God, in part because of natural causality.’[15]
Russell’s understanding of how the Divine acts in the universe resembles Temple’s, except that Russell avoids suggesting the Divine breaks natural laws to act. And Russell avoids Thomas’s concern with Pollard’s position, because ontological chance rules the quantum world and there Russell’s divinity acts.
Three comments on Russell’s position come to my mind at this point:
1. Russell
separates natural causality (which brings the range of possible outcomes of the
quantum event, together with their probabilities) from divine causality (which
gives existence to one of the possibilities). This feels artificial. Each of
the possible outcomes that science studies as natural phenomena results from
quantum events to each of which the Divine provides existence. Nature does not
produce these possibilities independent of divine action. Any reality to the
causation of nature in a quantum context comes from divine activity. Perhaps Russell
can clarify ‘in part because of natural causality,’ for it may not
exist at the quantum level alongside divine causality.
2. From where they first operate in the quantum domain, do the actions of the Divine find their way into and affect other levels? Ian Barbour points out that the Divine cannot reach our experience through quantum uncertainty; no known connection exists between the uncertainty and, for instance, our free will decisions.[16] We do not know what a relationship between these two levels (or between most others) must entail for one to affect the other. Arthur Peacocke thinks that a maze of large numbers would wash out any quantum effect on a macroscopic level.[17] Thus, Barbour stresses that we must understand how the Divine can act at each level of nature.
Time has seen this conclusion eroded. As Russell notes,
Many quantum effects do have a direct bearing on the macroscopic properties of nature: the periodic table, and thus chemical valency and the colors of nature; the generation and perception of light; the electrical conductivity of metals, including bands, the technology of transistors, microchips, and computers....It is the combination of physics (quantum effects) and biology (genetics, organisms, and environment) that makes it possible to achieve [the evolution of a species].[18]
The argument from Barbour, Peacocke, and others therefore needs laying to rest, or propping up with fresh support. Advancements in knowledge may have superseded it.
3. Russell asks about the possibility of purpose. The challenge, as he sees it, not only asks us to lay out how divine action might occur. The real task requires us to understand how that action might achieve a purpose. ‘If chance is “blind,” that is, if the effects of each chance event are “washed out” by their random character, how can [the Divine] achieve a purpose held “in advance?”’[19] Russell thinks purpose can arise in two ways:
I discuss this to point out that Russell assumes the Divine has purposes which the Divine enacts in the universe. Most Christian traditions would expect a theological system to incorporate such ideas of the Divine. When he develops his theory further, Russell may like to consider the comments I raised with Temple’s: to assume the purposefulness of the Divine before we resolve how the Divine acts in the universe means we might as well assume an answer to the divine action problem or dismiss it because it becomes secondary to purpose.
Russell’s proposal points toward a more general understanding of how the Divine acts in the universe, and which avoids the above three questions.
Cosmologists usually trace the origin of the universe to the big bang, the gigantic explosion and fireball that began the universe between twelve and twenty billion years ago. But what caused the big bang?
In answering this I find my solution to how the Divine interacts with the universe and a more general understanding than the action of the Divine in the universe as Russell proposes.[21]
Edward Tryon suggests the big bang started from events at the quantum level of something called ‘the background vacuum’ that contains nothing, not even space or time.[22] We can say little about it except that it possesses infinite energy (something physics usually ignores) and that microscopic particles materialize in it and then instantly annihilate each other. One of these fleeting fluctuations flashed up the big bang.
Even if Tryon’s idea holds up and the vacuum produced the big bang, darkness still surrounds the origin of the vacuum and the laws by which the quantum universe operates. Big bang cosmology says nothing about their origin. Several physicists imagine, however, that something more basic than the big bang, its products, physical laws, or the vacuum does or did exist. The vacuum and the laws emerged from it and these in turn produced the big bang.[23]
Before throwing ourselves into the search for the ‘something,’ we need to confront our language. Discussion about the beginning of the universe stands on shaky ground. We want to talk about actions before the big bang and the provision of existence to the universe, but the meaning of such words as ‘origin,’ ‘beginning,’ ‘created,’ ‘acts,’ ‘happened,’ and ‘before’ arises from the way they apply the ideas of time and space, in particular the notion of time passing. ‘Before,’ for instance, means ‘stands in front of’ spatially or in time. Since time and space only started with the big bang, the phrase ‘before the big bang’ is senseless. Language breaks down when talking about a supposed something that happened outside of time and space. What does it mean, then, to say that it produced the big bang?
Perhaps the phrase ‘the origin of the big bang’ is meaningless. Should we give up in despair and cease all talk of objects or beings or events outside space and time? No. We should humbly assume we can understand this talk, that it makes sense, though we fumble in our language. We can tentatively apply words to a situation without space and time only after we study them and the way they fit. What do the words mean in the new setting? What meanings fail to carry over to the new situation? What dangers lurk in the new use? Perhaps proof that we do understand the words and use them correctly lies in how well our theories hold together. We could look also at the value and soundness of any conclusions that emerge. We could test the language, subject it to experience and reason. The spiritual ideas that I now unravel form such an experiment and probe.
Now I can ask: What is the something that produced the big bang?
However many times you ask the question of the origin of the universe, and however many layers you push it back through, you always end with something unexplained. Theories leave some matters unjustified; each starts with something. Willem Drees develops this point in his book, Beyond the Big Bang: Quantum Cosmologies and God.[24] The big bang theory assumes four things about the universe, he tells us: the laws of physics, the three dimensions of space and one of time, the conditions of the universe at its initial moment, plus the existence of the universe. The nothing from which the universe arose is, in Drees’s words, ‘not an absolute nothing.’[25]
Stephen Hawking employs the anthropic principle to explain the pre-big bang something.[26] At the base of a universe lies a set of laws, and different sets of laws produce different universes. The anthropic principle shows that the evolution of creatures able to probe natural laws requires a special environment in the universe, and, Hawking adds, only one theory of cosmic beginnings or one set of laws leads to a universe with those special settings. Since the inquisitive creatures (namely us) do exist, cosmologists must choose that theory. Thus this universe could only possess the laws it has. Hawking also concludes-adding a further difference between his theory and the others Drees looks at-that the universe could only start with the initial conditions it did.
Notice that Hawking’s argument assumes the pre-existence of a form of logic, what others call ‘consistency.’ Physicists may disagree with each other over what the big bang requires, what else it calls for beside a primitive form of logic. They may all agree with the conclusion I draw from Hawking: the pre-existence of a basic form of logic.
I call whatever it is that pre-exists the ‘subuniverse.’
Besides a pre-logic, something else pre-exists in the subuniverse. Back to Drees:
Even if theories are perfect and complete, they do not answer the question of why there is anything which behaves according to those theories. The mystery of existence is unassailable. It remains possible, therefore, to understand the Universe as a gift, as grace.[27]
Something bestows existence on the universe, raising it from a conjecture that may or may not happen, to a reality. Hawking similarly notes:
Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe.[28]
The mystery-the gift Drees writes of and the fire of Hawking-plus a pre-existing logic from which the laws of the universe develop, lie in the subuniverse. They provide the universe, John Wheeler writes, ‘with a way to come into being.’[29]
The subuniverse conferred existence to the universe, but then what happened to the subuniverse? We usually think the universe grants itself existence through time and imparts reality to its laws, that it, in other words, assumes the subuniverse’s function. Did the subuniverse shut down with the big bang? That time and space do not apply to the subuniverse because it exists outside them and creates them means that the subuniverse’s initial provision of existence is the same as supplying it throughout time. One act covers all time because the act continues on forever. The subuniverse produced the universe and its parts, it continues to give them existence moment by moment, and its continuing acts of empowerment we describe as the rule of natural laws. The subuniverse continues to pump as the heart of the universe.
Time has come to introduce the Divine into the picture I painted above.
Many spiritual traditions would say the universe reflects directly and intimately basic characteristics of the Divine because it derives from the Divine. We can apply this to the laws or reasoning of the universe and the Divine. As the features of the pot reflect the mind of the potter, the basic laws of the universe arise from the Divine and reflect the Divine’s own reasoning. Spiritual tradition associates creation with the rational mind of the Divine. Thomas Torrance emphasizes something else as well. The universe arises from not only the Divine’s reasoning, but also the Divine’s creative power.[30] The existence of the pot, not just its features, reflects the ability of the potter to construct from raw materials. The name of the creator in Hebrew is ‘YHWH’ (Yahweh, Jehovah) or, translated into English, the one who ‘brings into existence whatever exists.’ These two properties of the Divine, logic and fruitfulness, are those of the subuniverse. The subuniverse mirrors the essential properties of the Divine.
I define the Divine as the subuniverse, the subuniverse Divine.
Spiritual
believers of many stripes think the Divine initially created the universe from
nothing, through the big bang for instance. Spelling out this doctrine leads to
debate, even hostility as in the creationism fracas. What does ‘from
nothing’ mean? Did the Divine form it from primordial dust, the void of
Genesis
‘The Divine creates out of nothing at the beginning.’ ‘The Divine continuously accords existence to the created universe, moment by moment.’ In many belief systems, the creator role of the Divine divides in two: the creator and the sustainer. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines ‘sustain’ as, ‘to keep in existence.’
Nothing in nature arises out of nothing. Everything in it emanates from something else, the product of strings of generations, each of which unfolds from the underlying subuniverse. Russell suggests this idea resembles the spiritual belief that everything depends for its existence on the Divine’s sustaining power.[31] As anything in the universe of our experience exists because of the continuous unfolding of the underlying subuniverse, so, for believers, the existence of anything relies on the continuous and creative activity of the Divine as its sustainer. The Divine causes the universe to exist and to perpetuate. The Divine continually produces each item, relationship, feeling, and so on; the Divine carries out everything, produces everything (subjective, objective, or from any other category), gives it existence moment by moment, and is responsible for all changes or nonchanges in each object and system, moment by moment.
Two ideas offer themselves: the Divine as the doer of all, and the Divine as the giver of reality to everything moment by moment. These two ideas are the same in that ‘the doer of all’ gives reality to each ‘point’ of an event.
Thus the suggestion that the Divine is the subuniverse yields the traditional doctrines of original creation and of continuous creating and sustaining. It wraps flesh around the word ‘sustainer.’
In Russell’s picture, the Divine pervades everything that happens. Russell says the Divine brings a quantum state into existence by actualizing one of its potential forms, following the laws of quantum physics. And this happens for all quantum events. I suggest the subuniverse Divine brings into existence a potential state of the universe, a situation, a thing...anything. And the Divine does this following a certain logic. This occurs not only at the quantum level, but at all levels. Looking upward from the most fundamental level to those above it, my picture produces Russell’s because quantum events constitute all others. Existence at the quantum level leads to the coming into existence for all levels. And they will do this in a law-like manner.
Thus Russell’s and Pollard’s approaches produce particular forms of the Divine-universe relationship I enunciate. Even the quantum laws Russell’s divinity follows represent a form of the logic I talk about. Russell produces a particular form of my suggestion.
Russell allows a role for natural causation in addition to that of the Divine. You may think, as most others probably would, that the universe is separate from the Divine. Rather than events happening because of the work of the Divine, you may think they happen because of natural laws. The universe is a self-determining and self-empowering and self-existing and self-perpetuating entity; it grants itself existence through time and imparts reality to its laws. It carries out everything itself. You may concede that a subuniverse performs these functions, but still you may think of it as natural and not divine.
What causes the universe to exist and behave as it does: the universe itself, or the divinity as the subuniverse providing existence through every moment of time and point of space? Both. The universe as the giver of its existence and cause of its consistent behavior is the subuniverse which is the Divine. The force of natural laws lies in their representing the subuniverse Divine at work.[32]
The subuniverse Divine provides reality to the universe and all that happens and exists. Of all the alternatives that could materialize at any moment, the Divine dispenses reality to only one set. But does the universe conceived this way exist inside or outside the Divine? More generally, how do the universe and the Divine relate to each other? Do I propose a theism, a pantheism, or a panentheism? I like to think of it as a panentheism, but that depends on what distinguishes each of the three descriptors.
Most theological thought enshrines a separation, the philosophy of independent objects, and it believes the Divine holds things in existence while remaining apart from them. We incline toward the image of ourselves acting on objects outside of ourselves. My fingers touch the keys of my computer external to myself, for instance.
To ask such questions about how the Divine and the universe relate employs nonsense. Time and space do not restrict the subuniverse and spatial questions over the relationship between the universe and the Divine fail to apply. The ‘difference’ or ‘separation’ between them is a moot point. The subuniverse relates to the universe in a holistic way which we cannot adequately break down into a spatial, temporal, or any other sort of separation.[33] A model like this ups my typing skills from a few-finger pecker to my fingers operating on their own. They become an aspect of the keys. My thoughts transfer directly from my mind to the screen. In this image, the Divine acts in a law-like manner to unfold from the divine self the regularities in how things affect each other. Because I must use some language, I may say the universe exists within the Divine, but I cannot lean on this image for explanatory power: it is merely a convenience of language.
If the Divine relates to the universe in this holistic way, what can we say about the nature of the Divine? Think of all the properties of the universe and its parts, and imagine the Divine as the subuniverse enveloping but exceeding each of them, enveloping but exceeding because the properties are aspects of a whole which is inseparable from the Divine. When I refer to the aspects in this way, I call them ‘transcended.’ Each aspect, in its transcended form, refers to the nature of the Divine. ‘Transcended’ applies to all subjective and objective features of the universe and its parts, including all human qualities: our emotions, thoughts, and relationships. They all pertain to the Divine. Further, the subuniverse does not distinguish between the future, present, and past because it overrides the confines of time and space. Everything and every property, from all times, therefore refer to the Divine in their transcended forms.
The spiritually inclined often associate purpose with the Divine. Many accept purpose as characterizing humans. Through the remainder of this essay, I employ this trait as an example of how properties of the universe or its parts fare when we try to apply them to the Divine. We can say that, as parts of the universe possess purpose, so Purpose-the Divine’s transcended version of purpose-pertains to the Divine.
Looking at Purpose/purpose as an example, we can ask: How does the holistic Purpose of the Divine relate to the purpose of each person?
The Divine does not possess properties as we understand the term, but holistically transcends them. The laws of nature (divine made) express these divine properties and they come into existence as the attributes of the universe and its parts. We perceive, dancing on the walls of Plato’s cave, shadows of the real things, traces of the eternal forms that exist in full out of our realm. The Divine exhibits the eternal form of our example, purpose, as Purpose. It incarnates as its shadow, the purpose in our experiences. From the holistic or divine side of Purpose, we can easily derive the purpose side of us, the parts, as the realizations of the Divine’s nature.
Before the above vision of transcended properties carries us away, we should once again absorb this proviso: That the Divine subuniverse constitutes a whole means nothing divides it. All properties of the Divine fuse into each other. We can isolate none of them, either as transcended forms of those of the universe or otherwise. The Divine’s character possesses none yet all of the properties of the universe; none because each includes a sense of separateness foreign to the Divine-the Divine is featureless-yet all because each relates through wholeness to its originator, the Divine. The Divine is the Divine. We approximate this wholeness with the features we ascribe to the subuniverse, in turn the transcended versions of limited attributes.
The relationships between these three ideas beg explaining: the whole that is the Divine, transcended versions of properties of the universe and its parts, and the properties themselves. I call upon the word ‘representations’ to help with this. I look out the window at a tree with masses of large green leaves. I could represent this view by projecting it onto two dimensions, onto a screen for instance. This creates one representation. Or I could draw the outline of the leaves on a sheet of paper; this represents the view in a geometrical and frozen way. Or I could paint free-form the different shades of green, representing the tree as a color. Transcended properties similarly represent the indivisible nature of the subuniverse Divine, each along a different path.
Now we can return to our question. How does the diversity of features of the universe and its parts relate to the wholeness of the subuniverse? We have seen how the wholeness might produce the diversity. But the reverse?
For Plato, the eternal forms, the transcended features of the Divine, constitute the real things. For modern westerners, the universe and its features play this role. For the followers of Plato, the prisoners in the cave exist in illusion. For most of us, Plato and his followers do. The system of spiritual thought I aspire toward agrees with neither. Illusion believes that the experience of the here and now forms the only reality, and illusion believes that reality lies in an order beyond this experience. Rather, both the transcended features and those of the universe are real. Everything that happens and exists possesses reality because of the action of the subuniverse Divine according to the context there and then. What occurs in the universe represents the Divine in media we can recognize: the colors of the trees, or the chewiness of food, or the caring for children.
The Divine resembles me. To understand, I impulsively ask about the Divine’s character in terms of what I experience, supposing the Divine to display at least some characteristics of humans and other material things. For instance, we understand purpose to belong to a system such as the human brain, and that it emerges with the evolution of a neural complex whose parts connect intimately. Human purpose (or a property that produces it incidentally) is adaptive: it enhances the survival of the species against its natural enemies and rivals. Matter models mind through evolution. If I approach the nature of the Divine from this naturalistic point of view, I automatically seek to understand Purpose in terms of our adaptive purpose. Confusion ensues. I stumble around in tangled matters because, unlike the Divine, the evolutionary process involves time. Divine Purpose cannot evolve.
Familiar terms ill-suit Purpose, though we say it correlates in some way with the evolved faculty called purpose. We currently know little about the transcended version of a trait, even in terms of its buddy exhibited by the universe or its parts.
Suppose we can personalize the Divine. What is the Divine like ‘in the flesh?’ What nouns or verbs describe the Divine? What does a property look, smell, sound, or feel like in its transcended divine form?
Perhaps we can approximate the nature of the Divine from human and other traits within the universe. Perhaps with such estimations we can start to think of the Divine in terms of our world and experience. To extrapolate this way projects traits onto the Divine.
What would a trait projected onto the Divine look like in its transcended version? How would a characteristic of our world appear if applied to the subuniverse Divine? What is the nature of projections?
We frequently project the human person onto the Divine. This creates a holistic model because humans outstrip the biochemical and physical mechanisms that partly comprise them. The approach of projecting wholes thus suggests three stages. First, we develop models for the properties of parts of the universe. Second, we extend them holistically. And, third, we project onto the Divine the whole-part model, including the transcended properties that attract our interest. Appropriate whole-part models launch the projections, knowledge for which we pick up from our experience.
The Divine’s wholeness extends our personalness and other traits beyond what we as individuals, as human societies, even as the earth’s biosphere can experience. This justifies projecting whatever human or universe traits we wish to onto the Divine, for all achieve some accuracy. All ideas apply to the Divine.
In particular, the Divine possess, in a sense, Purpose.
Several questions bear on the way we apply these terms:
·
Should we project only human qualities onto the
Divine? Many people consider the personal qualities and experiences of humans
the highest possible for beings and organisms, or for anything for that matter.
They think we have reached the highest form of existence in the universe.
Therefore, they say, we should understand the Divine in our terms; human
properties, in or not in their transcended forms, produce the language for the
Divine. But current science neither supports nor counters the belief that the
human constitutes the ‘highest’ form of existence in the universe.
The Divine is not a person; we just assume the human likeness. The Divine may
more resemble a chipmunk or a quartz crystal than a human.
·
Human purpose and other characteristics link
inseparably to biochemicals and genes, to our biology and biological history.
Our subjective and personal as well as our objective features evolved. Human
qualities, therefore, fail to anchor an adequate understanding of the Divine
because the Divine did not evolve; the Divine’s character dramatically
exceeds that of any human. The transcended versions of our traits may look like
nothing we would recognize in ourselves.
·
To project human qualities onto the Divine does
not make the Divine much like us. The Divine resembles a person only within the
confines of our projections. The Divine is not so personal, so universally
personal, as to be a person.
· If the Divine has a Purpose for the universe as we have purposes for our activities, would we clearly notice it? We find it difficult enough to know the purposes intended in works from other cultures and times than our own. La Mouthe Cave in the Dordogne, France, contains prehistoric markings, some of animals, and some ‘enigmatic’ lines and symbols, as the French say. But try to read the artists’ purposes off them; that is impossible if we want more than guesses. What then of the Divine about whom we know little, not even-unlike the Cro-Magnon artists with whom we at least share a common specieshood-what we possess in common? The chances of our reading divine Purpose are negligibly slim. If we cannot recognize a Purpose, even in part, it makes little sense to say the Divine has a Purpose for the universe. The Divine creates the universe by giving it existence, but the Divine need not intend something with this process. A stone does not sense purpose; the Divine may be more stone-like than purpose-directed (that is, human-like in this way).
We may largely fail to recognize the nature of the Divine, despite its including transcended versions of our own qualities. We should cautiously decide what qualities to project onto the Divine.
· Does the Divine sleep and eat? Does the Divine make mistakes? Does the Divine meet moral ambiguity? No. Why not? No basis exists for choosing which personal properties not to apply to the Divine. We can in principle project any traits onto the Divine, and all apply to some extent. The question asks why we should apply some and avoid others. Theologians should carefully ponder the range of possible projections and decide why to apply this property rather than that one before they-and us following them-start projecting.
We should project a human-like character upon the Divine. But we meet limits with this. No quality automatically applies to the Divine: each needs justifying and its limits found. To know more of the Divine follows a reflective process of trial and error. It requires hard study and solid evidence, and it means trying out our imaginatively created hypotheses against reality. Do they have any truth? Does a suggested trait of the Divine match what we experience both in what we observe of the universe and in our personal experience? Is it transcended and does it fit with the Divine’s holism? Does it further our intentions for projecting? We should explore empirically. And projections create social implications; we need care when we project.[34]
As a way of talking about the subuniverse giving existence to the universe, the above is about ‘upward’ action: Russell’s from the quantum level influences higher levels. He would think in particular of the influence of quantum events on the genes of an organism and hence on its species through natural selection.
When I see and smell smoke coming from my toaster, I pull its plug from the wall socket, look inside for bread caught on the elements or guide bars, dislodge any delicately with a knife, open up the bottom of the machine and shake out the crumbs and toast pieces into the garbage bin. We assume and work in an upward way in an action like this and in many others in our lives. We frequently assume the cause of what happens lies at a level lower than the phenomena (smoking toasters, and so on) we perceive, the parts that make them up.
But when I see bread toasting in the toaster and I did not put it there, I assume someone else has placed it there to make breakfast or a snack for themselves. They feel hungry and intend to assuage this state with toast. This time, I explain what I observe in a downward way: I call upon the level of human intentions to account for an event at a lower level of physical events.
To understand how the Divine interacts or acts in or on or with the universe, we can choose either an upward explanation or a downward one, or both of them. The Divine acts on the universe by working on the bits and pieces that comprise it and they on higher levels until and perhaps past the level where we observe the effects. Or the Divine acts by working on the uppermost levels whose effects filter down and perhaps past our levels of observation.
In the west, we feel sure the parts of something determine how it behaves; lower levels rule what upper ones do. The scheme Russell proposes pictures upward divine action from the quantum level. Mine paints a similar picture. Now turn the upward scheme around. Do higher levels act downward on lower levels? Does a whole modify its parts? Is there a way to speak of the subuniverse giving existence to the universe in a downward way?
The cerebellum, the cerebral cortex, the hemispheres, the thalamus, the lobes, the neurons, the synapses, and so on, all constitute the brain that, as a whole entity, exceeds what its components can achieve. Roger Sperry, develops an image of the downward action from the mind to the body which he describes as the ‘brain-as-a-whole,’ the total state of the brain that surpasses all the components that comprise it. When I think to write ‘the cow jumped over the moon,’ a conscious process at the level of my brain-as-a-whole runs. It causes my lower-level neurons to fire with signals that travel to my arms, hands, and fingers to type the words. The brain-as-a-whole lies at a level that can control or influence what happens at the lower, neuron tier of the brain. Mental events-thoughts, feelings, decisions-are not events in a mind separate from the physical universe and that mysteriously interact with the brain, like a guardian angel. They apply to the brain-as-a-whole, says Sperry.[35] They describe total states of that physical organ.
Like the brain-as-a-whole affects its constituent neurons, the subuniverse’s downward interactions must create a difference to its parts. It must confer on each of them a wholeness of relationships with all other parts and that affects them. How does the subuniverse act downwardly? By what means could this happen? We need to know how or else ‘downward action’ is just a pretty word, maybe inspiring, without concrete content.
Maybe Sperry’s model of how the brain-as-a-whole or mind acts on the body can help us with the wholeness. Unfortunately, Sperry neglects to tell us how the whole (the brain-as-a-whole) acts on its parts (the neurons, for instance), a serious flaw according to Aviel Goodman.[36] Sperry’s seems a good approach, he says, because it draws together physical mechanisms and holistic activity, bridging the two worlds of science and the experiencing self. But it fails to deliver. We should look at other holistic phenomena for clues as to how the downward action of the subuniverse works.
Nonlocality may provide the answer. Take an elementary particle and split it into two identical but oppositely-spinning halves. If you change the spin of one of the half-particles and observe what happens to its sibling, you will see it alter its spin at exactly the same time. This can also happen if the particles are not siblings because quantum theory only requires that they cohabit at some point in their past. Every particle satisfies this because, early in its life, the universe squeezed all units of energy together. Thus nonlocality says that simultaneous quantum events separated in space can correlate with each other though no known connection exists between them. While it effects only quantum-level properties, nonlocality occurs at any scale from the subquantum to the supragalactic. And in theory, nonlocality happens everywhere, to events at opposite sides of the universe as well as to those in neighboring back yards.
That each component of the universe correlates nonlocally with all others I call ‘universal nonlocality.’ This phenomenon creates a wholeness of the universe because it enables each of its parts to work with every other part. It produces an indivisible universe. (I should write, ‘helps to create the wholeness,’ because universal nonlocality is possibly only one way to describe the wholeness of the universe. Nonlocality produces some of the wholeness.) The ‘universe-as-a-whole’ is the universe viewed as a whole thoroughly correlated through nonlocality. The universe-as-a-whole employs nonlocality to interact downwardly with its parts.[37]
The subuniverse is a whole (as space or time do not divide it up) which relates to the universe in a holistic way. In that nonlocality ties together everything in the universe, the universe interacts holistically with everything in it via nonlocality. In that the subuniverse relates holistically, nonseparably, with the universe, the subuniverse Divine interacts holistically with everything in the universe via nonlocality.
We want to know how the subuniverse acts downwardly. To speak of the Divine acting through nonlocality approximates talk of the Divine acting through bringing into existence. Thus we can say the Divine relates or interacts downwardly with every part of the universe through the nonlocality of the universe.
Gilkey asks for a way to distinguish between divine acts in the universe and those that would happen naturally. Does the Divine make a difference in a way science might notice? Temple says all events represent the Divine at work carrying out divine purposes. Sometimes the Divine chooses uniform means and other times the exceptional. Pollard agrees in part with Temple: all events derive from the action of the Divine. The Divine causes events in which uncertainty rules to go this way rather than that. Russell applies Pollard’s argument to the ontological uncertainty in quantum events. From that level, the Divine’s influence reaches into all events. I generalize this approach to suggest the Divine provides existence to all events and through this interacts with all events. This provides a way to understand the concurrent downward and upward interaction by the Divine in or on the universe. My suggestion achieves this with a minimum of assumptions; for instance, it does not assume a personal nature for the Divine, in particular that the Divine has purposes.
The picture I drew of the Divine’s interaction with the universe implies something about the nature of the Divine, and I looked at divine Purpose as an example. I have written of other implications elsewhere, and many others await exploration.[38]
In response to Gilkey, we can say divine actions make no difference that science would notice. The existence of science, however, depends on the assumption of the existence and essential lawfulness of the universe. This I have assumed as the foundation for my understanding of the universe. Science does not notice particular actions of the Divine because all that science notices are actions of the Divine.
Humans must understand. We want and need to explain something of the Divine. I suggest we look at the possibilities of developing holistic models for phenomena we experience, and project them onto the Divine-universe whole to examine as possible ways the Divine might relate to the universe and its parts. Stuart Guthrie considers the process of projecting anthropomorphic images onto the universe and labeling them the Divine. He says we have the clothes-the images-but no emperor.[39] I suggest we do have an emperor-a divinity-only the clothes are inappropriate. We need a better garb for the Divine.
[1]
Owen Thomas, Introduction to Theology
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Greeno, Hadden & Co.,
I use the word ‘interacts’ sometimes, as opposed to ‘acts.’ With the view I develop later in this essay, I do not intend to suggest something ontological.
[2] The
discussion here and later draws upon the idea that the universe exists in
levels. See Kevin Sharpe, Sleuthing the Divine: The Nexus of Science
and Spirit (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
[3]
Langdon Gilkey, ‘The Concept of Providence in Contemporary
Theology,’ Journal of Religion,
July
[4]
Emil Brunner, Dogmatics
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
[5]
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology: Three
Volumes in One, reprint,
[6]
Langdon Gilkey, ‘The Concept of Providence in Contemporary
Theology,’
[7]
William G. Pollard, Chance and
Providence: God’s Action in a World Governed by Scientific Law (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
[8]
For other discussions of this idea, Robert Russell suggests we refer to the
works of Karl Heim, Mary Hesse, Ian Barbour, John Polkinghorne, D. J.
Bartholomew, Arthur Peacocke, and Nancey Murphy and George Ellis (Robert John
Russell, ‘Theistic Evolution: Does God Really Act in Nature?’ CTNS Bulletin: The Center for Theology and
the Natural Sciences
[9]
Thomas, Introduction to Theology,
[10]
Russell, ‘Theistic Evolution,’
[11]
Chaotic systems, as Russell points out, fall under this type of chance though
we can never know their initial conditions exactly (Russell, ‘Theistic
Evolution,’
[12]
Russell, ‘Theistic Evolution,’
[13]
Russell, ‘Theistic Evolution,’
[14]
Thomas, Introduction to Theology,
[15]
Russell, ‘Theistic Evolution,’
[16]
Ian G. Barbour, Issues in Science and
Religion (London: SCM Press,
[17]
Arthur Robert Peacocke, Creation and the
World of Science: The Bampton Lectures,
[18]
Russell, ‘Theistic Evolution,’
[19]
Russell, ‘Theistic Evolution,’
[20]
Russell, ‘Theistic Evolution,’
[21] As I have made a case for in Sleuthing the Divine.
[22]
Edward P. Tryon, ‘Is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?’ Nature
[23]
Willem B. Drees, Beyond the Big Bang:
Quantum Cosmologies and God (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court,
[24] Drees, Beyond the Big Bang.
[25]
Drees, Beyond the Big Bang,
[26]
Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of
Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (New York: Bantam Books,
[27]
Drees, Beyond the Big Bang,
[28]
Hawking, A Brief History of Time,
[29] C.
M. Patton, and J. A. Wheeler, ‘Is Physics Legislated by Cosmogony?’
chap.
[30]
Thomas F. Torrance, Divine and Contingent
Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
[31]
Robert John Russell, ‘The Physics of David Bohm and Its Relevance to
Philosophy and Theology,’ Zygon:
Journal of Religion and Science
[32] I need to address several other matters. Physicists call the bringing into existence of only one of the states possible for a quantum situation, the collapse of the wave function. This leads to the measurement problem: Why does the wave function collapse into this and not that state? The usual or Copenhagen approach says the act of observing the system ‘causes’ the function to collapse. I want to distinguish between this observational aspect and the Divine’s causing one of the possible states to exist. Observation does not cause the state in the sense that it determines what state eventuates; the Divine does this.
I do not suggest the Divine chooses the outcome state, because that anthropomorphizes the Divine too much. The Divine may choose what state the quantum event becomes, but not in our sense of ‘choose’; that idea contains too much purpose. I would rather describe the collapse merely as the Divine’s action.
What happens between observations? According the usual approach to quantum physics, which Russell accepts, nothing exists without someone observing it. In between observations, the Divine does not act to produce an event through the process of collapsing the wave function. Is there, then, reality at those times? The wave function, however, exists-or is this another sense of ‘exists’? What role might the Divine play in it?
The Divine gives reality to all events. The Divine, therefore, follows causality (actually, natural causality describes the way the Divine works). We can also say that the Divine causes those events in which ontological uncertainty holds sway to go one way rather than another. Giving reality to ontologically uncertain events also describes the way the Divine works, only we have yet to describe these actions with causal (scientific) language. Perhaps our language cannot perform this task (that is if we follow the usual interpretation of quantum physics rather than the causal version of such people as David Bohm (see Sharpe, David Bohm’s World)).
[33]
Russell contributes a similar point: ‘God...sees the future in its own
present time...God’s eternity, where eternity is best understood within
trinitarian theology as supra-temporal (as opposed to both timelessness and
unending time)....[This suggests] how God can act in one moment to achieve a
purpose held in eternity and realized at a later moment by the processes of
evolution without violating the laws of nature’ (Russell, ‘Theistic
Evolution,’
[34]
Russell asks if his proposal entails ‘occasionalism, the doctrine that
[the Divine] uniquely determines every event in nature and history?’ He
believes it does not because he wants to distinguish clearly ‘between the
claim that [the Divine] acts in every quantum event and the claim that [the
Divine] acts in every macroscopic event.’ His proposal avoids the latter,
he writes, because of ‘the subtle relation between quantum and classical
descriptions of the world.’ How subtle this is, Russell does not make
clear, at least not clear enough that I can see how every event, quantum or
macroscopic (which comprises quantum level events), avoids the Divine’s
unique determination (another purpose-full idea). True, ‘this world, the
world of our senses, the world in which we live out our lives, is one which we
believe allows for and is pliable to our actions as free agents.’ The ordinary,
everyday, predictable, classical world that most quantum events produce does
create the stage for free will and novelty. If this is the result of divine
purpose, that is fine. But how does the belief about the existence of free will
or the emergence of novelty co-exist with divine determination (Russell,
‘Theistic Evolution,’
In
an earlier version of his paper, Russell suggests that predestination may
present a problem (Robert John Russell, ‘Religion and the Theories of
Science: A Response to Barbour,’ paper presented at the Annual Meeting of
the American Academy of Religion,
Russell’s proposal may exacerbate the problem because he includes ‘purpose’ in his understanding of the Divine. Not only does the Divine determine each event. But the word ‘determine’ associates with the word ‘purpose’ to produce the idea that everything that happens is the Divine bringing about something planned in the divine mind. Out goes free will. If we avoid the introduction of ‘purpose’ in the initial depiction of the Divine, the notion of free will attains a valid and a necessary place in my system of spiritual thought (Sharpe, Sleuthing the Divine).
Another
related issue rises. This proposal suggests the responsibility of the Divine
for suffering and evil. Russell feels this too; he thinks his argument needs
further detail to avoid suggesting that the Divine ‘has caused three
billion years of suffering and death in nature’ (Russell, ‘Theistic
Evolution,’
[35]
Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a
Scientific Age: Being and Becoming-Natural and Divine, Signposts in
Theology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
[36]
Aviel Goodman, ‘Organic Unity Theory: The Mind-Body Problem
Revisited,’ American Journal of
Psychiatry
[37]
Menas Kafatos, and Robert Nadeau, The
Conscious Universe: Part and Whole in Modern Physical Theory (New York:
Springer-Verlag,
[38] Sharpe, Sleuthing the Divine.
[39]
Stewart Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds: A
New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press,