How can sacraments be seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw how human evolution proceeds through the trial-and-error process seen in human attempts to ‘articulate the noosphere’, and how successful attempts are captured in the ‘cultural DNA’ through the ‘tissue of culture’ as found in religion, philosophy, and laws.  This week we will continue this exploration by seeing sacraments as examples of human activity in which the work of grace, now seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, now emerges as the energy of our personal and cultural evolution.

Sacraments as ‘Signs of Grace’

In the recent posts on Jesus we saw how Jesus can be seen as a ‘signpost to God’, and discussed how he emerges in evolution as ‘evolution becoming aware of itself’.

As Western religious tradition has seen it, Jesus recognized seven aspects of human life that are critical to our ‘salvation’.  Just as Jesus was a ‘signpost to God’, these aspects were ‘signposts to grace’ and took place in events in which this ‘grace’ was most focused.  They are therefore examples of aspects of human life in which this ‘evolutionary energy’ is most active.

The idea of seeing some human activity as more significant to human life is found in other religions as well.   In his book, ‘The Souls of China’, Ian Johnson addresses the trend in which many Chinese are beginning to identify themselves as Daoist, Buddhist, Christian or Muslim after decades of having religious expression outlawed.  He explains how traditional rituals help people overcome urban anomie and answer the “pragmatic but profound issue of how to behave at critical life junctures”, such as weddings, funerals, pilgrimages, social work, and meditation.

So, as we proceeded with other religious concepts in our employment of Teilhard’s ‘lens’, the key step in this search is the reinterpretation of those traditional teachings from the perspective of reinterpretation that we have developed.  The sacraments are no exception.

What Are ‘Sacraments?’

   Christianity identifies seven events in human life that are ‘occasions of grace’: events in which our lives are enriched.  Although the church places great emphasis on the action of the church hierarchy in ‘conferring’ the grace that flows in these events, our reinterpretation approach simply sees them as events in our lives to which we must ‘pay attention’ so that we can cooperate with this flow of grace in such a way that our personal evolution, our ‘spiritual growth’ is enhanced.  Paraphrasing Teilhard, when we participate in these events we are ‘trimming our sails to the winds of life’, aligning our lives to the flow of energy that arises in the axis of evolution.

Traditional church teaching identifies seven such rituals, all of which require church hierarchy for the ‘conferring’, and all of which recognize the action of grace which takes place.  These teachings place great emphasis on the both the need for the church to perform the ritual to effect the outcome of the giving of grace, and the need for our participation in them as a condition for church membership.

From Teilhard’s perspective, however, such ‘scaffolding’ can be replaced by focusing on and reinterpreting the concept of the sacraments in terms of grace as the energy of both our personal evolution and the resulting evolution of our species.  From such a perspective, the role of the church is less ‘conferring’ and more simply calling attention to the ‘signposts’.

Reinterpreting ‘The Seven Sacraments’

Baptism

Traditional church teaching sees baptism as the ‘conferring’ of the grace that will enable our eventual entry into heaven by taking away the stain of ‘original sin’.  Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens, this ‘first’ sacrament, baptism, is that which understands human birth to be a personal extension of the evolution of the universe.  Each life is another small limb on the branch of the tree of evolution, in which the energy of evolution manifests itself yet again as an element of consciousness to be valued, cared for, fostered, and understood for what it truly is.

Like all sacraments, the ritual of baptism involves the ‘cultural tissue of the DNA of evolution’ (the church and society) which is made up of the parents, the family and the community.  The ritual not only calls attention to the unique potential of human life but does it in a way that recognizes the essential nature of the community in bringing this life to maturity.  It is a steppingstone to Teilhard’s mapping of the energy of love as the play of ‘centration’ and ‘excentration’ by which we come to be what we can be.

Confirmation

In church tradition, the sacrament of confirmation ‘confers’ the grace of human spiritual growth.  Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, the sacrament of confirmation goes on to ‘confirm’ the actuation of potential which occurs as we mature, recognizing that our potential for growth is assured by our cooperation with grace, ‘the energy of human evolution’.  Just as this grace is ‘gratuitous’, unearned, so our potential for maturity is assured and can be trusted if we but recognize and cooperate with its presence in our lives.

Eucharist

In the traditions of the church, the sacrament of the Eucharist, known as ‘communion’, is the central sacrament of church unity.  From Teilhard’s perspective, it is perhaps the sacrament most germane to human evolution.  In it, we participate in a symbolic communal meal, in which we recognize that we are all part of a wider community.  As we saw earlier, seeing Jesus as ‘the Christ’ recognizes the human person as an eventual product of universal evolution, and as such each of us consists of a ‘branch’ of the axis along which this process of evolution proceeds.  From this perspective, all persons are not only ‘children of God’ (products of evolution) they are ultimately united by their share of the cosmic spark by which they come to be.  By participation in this ritual, we are reminded of this essential ground of unity, and of the necessity for cooperating with the energies of love by which we can be brought into a ‘greater possession of ourselves’ as we overcome our instinctual sense of separation from others.  In Teilhard’s words, the Eucharist is the most important of the sacraments because:

 “.. it is but the expression and manifestation of the divine unifying energy applying itself little by little to every spiritual atom of the universe.”

Matrimony

The church teaches that the sacrament of matrimony is necessary for the natural joining of human persons in the process of procreation and child rearing.  In Teilhard’s perspective, it reminds us that the road to the more complete possession of ourselves that we refer to as ‘maturity’ must be undertaken in the context of relationship.  In the joining of two persons, the play of ‘centration’ and ‘excentration’ is essential to our continued growth.  It is a reminder that we can only become who we can be by engaging in relationship: our growth is assured as much by our ability to give love as it is by our ability to receive it.  In Teilhard’s vision, love is much more a structural energy which unites us in such a way as to expand our ‘person-ness’ than an emotion which draws us to each other.

Penance

The church teaches that the sacrament of reconciliation (referred to as ‘confession’ or ‘penance’) is necessary to return our soul to a state of grace by erasing the stain placed on it by our sin and thus restoring our potential for salvation.  Teilhard’s perspective recognizes that the many impediments we can build to our relationships reflect a failure to cooperate with grace, thus impeding our personal growth.  As can be seen from a casual glance at ‘self-help’ publications, alienation is a never-ending threat, whether we find ourselves in search of internal reconnection, or in search of reconciliation to repair our relationships.  And, as in all the sacraments, Penance offers the church as a media for the internal reconciliation that is necessary to overcome these impediments.

Last Rites

The church teaches that the sacrament of the sick (also referred to as the “Last Rites’, or ‘Extreme Unction’) is sort of a ‘last chance’ for cleansing the soul before death, and therefore effecting our ‘salvation’.  However, it also recognizes material benefits, such as bearing up under pain, overcoming fear and even improving how we feel.  Teilhard’s perspective calls attention to the fact that grace is present even in death.  As one theologian expressed it, “The sacrament of the sick means we do not have to die alone.”

Again, the church provides the presence of the community and recalls our common connection.

Holy Orders

The sacrament of “Holy Orders” is often referred to as the ‘sacrament of service’.  It recognizes the church’s basic role in providing the ‘tissue of the DNA of human evolution’.

As we have seen elsewhere, this aspect of the milieu of grace can be articulated in many other ways as well.  A prime example can be seen in our political systems which attempt to codify the practices by which the fabric of our society can be knotted in such a way which insures stability without eroding the personal freedom and innovation necessary to insure the increases in human welfare such as those documented by Johan Norberg in his book, ‘Progress’.

The Next Post

This week we moved from recognizing that the milieu of grace in which we live, the energy of evolution, can be articulated to locate those sparks of energy that are most relevant to our human growth, to some specific articulations expressed in the concept of ‘sacraments’.

As we have seen elsewhere, this milieu of grace can be articulated in many other ways as well, such as in our political practices which highlight the necessity to trust the basic goodness of the human person as reflected in our belief in ‘inalienable rights’ and ‘the will of the people’.

Next week we will look into the idea of ‘secular sacraments’ in more detail.

If Spirituality occurs naturally in Human Life, how can it be seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw how the energy of evolution can be seen as active in the milieu in which we live our human lives, ‘grace’.  We also saw how the concept of ‘sacrament’, refocused by Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ is simply identification of some of the ways that this energy can be encountered.  In Teilhard’s vernacular, they point to instantiations of ‘articulations of the noosphere.’

This week we will look a little more closely at the way that Teilhard viewed the ‘noosphere’, and how such articulation is necessary to light the path to the advance of evolution through our lives.

The Noosphere

As Teilhard sees it, the evolution of our planet can be seen as the appearance of ‘spheres’, layers of evolutionary products which have appeared in succession on our planet.   He sees these spheres as:

• The ‘lithosphere’, the conglomeration of molecules which pack together under the influence of gravity, the same force by which our planetary disk precipitated out into distinct planets surrounding the Sun.
• The ‘atmosphere’ which forms as the gas molecules separate from the solids
• The ‘hydrosphere’ which forms as the atmosphere evolves into water and air
• The ‘biosphere’ which emerges as some molecules become complex enough to form cells

These ‘spheres’ are well recognized by science, and their appearance in evolutionary history is well established.

To these fundamental spheres, Teilhard adds the ‘noosphere’, literally the ‘sphere of thought’.  He sees that with the appearance of the human, our planet acquires a new layer.  As humans emerge and begin to cover the planet, he sees it as obvious that the planet is in the process of assuming a new form.  Today’s controversies over such subjects as ecology and global warning are evidence of the emerging awareness of just how significant the noosphere has become.

The Articulation of the Noosphere

As we have seen, Teilhard sees evolution proceeding through the human as a continuation of the increase of complexity that can be observed to have occurred over the preceding fourteen or so billion years.  He also notes that in each phase of evolution, from the ‘inorganic’ phase, through the ‘biological’ phase, this complexity ‘changes state’ as it increases.  In his view, the energy which drives complexification itself becomes more complex.  The Standard Model of Physics is still evolving, as the emerging theories of Quantum Physics and ‘dark’ matter illustrate, and thus offers new paradigms by which complexification in this phase can be articulated.  The theory of Natural Selection is also still evolving as it struggles to address the phenomenon of the increasing complexity of living things.  However, when it comes to understanding, much less measuring, the process of how the continuation of the rise of complexity can be seen in the human person and his culture, it is much less clear.  As many thinkers have mused, making sense of ourselves while we are evolving is like traversing a bridge while we are still building it.

Teilhard notes that all religions attempt to identify ‘how we should be if we would be what we can be’.  With the strong infusion of myths, superstitions, and dualities that are inevitable over such long periods of development (arising in the prescientific world of thousands of years ago), we are left today with inconsistent and even contradictory guidelines for our continued development.  Science does not offer much help in this area.  Those expressions of belief that claim scientific foundations are simply attempts to derive meaning from empirical data and offer little support for the faith needed to deal with the daily effort of human life.

But as Teilhard sees effective human life as learning to ‘set our sails to the winds of life’, the skills of reading the wind and tending the tiller are first necessary to be learned.   As he sees it:

“And, conventional and impermanent as they may seem on the surface, what are the intricacies of our social forms, if not an effort to isolate little by little what are one day to become the structural laws of the noosphere.”

“In their essence, and provided they keep their vital connection with the current that wells up from the depths of the past, are not the artificial, the moral and the juridical simply the hominized versions of the natural, the physical and the organic?”

   It seems obvious ‘keeping the vital connection with the current’ comes down to ‘trial and error’.  Seen thusly, this is simply ‘survival of the fittest’: those things that we learn which enhance our life are collected, refined through the development of our culture, and encoded into morals and laws.  Those which don’t atrophy over time as they become seen as less valuable.

As we have seen, Richard Dawkins offers yet another insight into the issue of human evolution.  Like Teilhard, he recognizes the difference between evolution in society and as understood as ‘Natural Selection’ by biology.  In his book, “The Selfish Gene’, he proposes that evolution continues through human society by way of ‘memes’, packets of cultural information that act as the cultural parallel to biological genes.  Such ‘memes’ are echoed in what Teilhard refers to as the ‘noosphere’, which is the body of human thoughts, ideas and inventions which accumulate in human lore, rituals, books, schools, and networks over time, and is thus ‘spiritual’ in nature.

The body of insights and skills that we accumulate in our culture are, as Teilhard sees it, ‘articulations of the noosphere’.  They can be understood, as Dawkins suggests, as the ‘genetic material’ of human evolution, weaving their way into the thread of universal evolution as they prompt the continued evolution of the human person.

By this criterion, sacraments can be understood as examples of behavior that are passed from generation to generation via the cultural ‘tissue’ of religion.  Effectively they are signs of the play of evolutive energy as it flows through human life: the ‘DNA of human evolution’.

Religion is not the only place where such noospheric articulations can be found.  As we saw in our focus of Teilhard’s ‘lens’ on spirituality, a secular example can be found in a fundamental axiom of our government.  It is at the basis of the idea of a ‘representative government’, and often described as the ‘will of the people’ so essential to democratic governments.  While not finding articulation per se in the new American constitution and bill of rights, Thomas Jefferson was very clear in his concept of the validity of this ‘consensus in government’ as an ‘articulation of the noosphere’:

“I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be other that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.  I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves.”

   This exercise of ‘trust of the people to govern themselves’ is a secular example of an ‘articulation of the noosphere’.  The ‘meme’ of human equality can be seen here as one which, as Jefferson asserted, rises in the teachings of Jesus, evolves through such things as societal norms, then ‘charters’, and finally blossoms unequivocally in the laws which flow from the Constitution of the Unites States.  When we engage in such activity as the process of voting, we are implicitly connecting with one of the threads of evolution as it runs through human evolution.  This activity is effectively a ‘secular sacrament’ which, if we choose to see it, points to an underlying agency of the energy which moves us forward: ‘grace’

Grace

As we have seen, the coming to be of the universe involves an underlying energy by which things unite in such a way that results in increased complexity of the product of the uniting.  Or, as Teilhard puts it

“Fuller being from closer union and closer union from fuller being”

   We have also seen how this energy is just as essential to matter as matter is essential to it.  This is the core of Teilhard’s insight into applying the term ‘spirit’ to this agency which is the essential manifestation of this energy.  We also saw how science is beginning to address this elusive agent in its approach to ‘information’.

Traditionally, religion has addressed this agency in metaphorical terms, seeing it as a ‘flow’ of supernatural life in human affairs.  With Teilhard’s insistence that this flow is the natural manifestation of evolutionary energy in human life, he moves its focus from the emotional connection between humans to the ontological connections which effect their personal evolution.

From this perspective, the metaphor of ‘flow’ becomes stronger.  Teilhard uses it when he says,

“Those who set their sails to the winds of life will always find themselves borne on a current to the open sea.”

   The term ‘grace’ is very common in Western religion, but it finds many diverse expressions in the many forms that Western religion takes.  From our perspective of interpretation, grace can now be seen as the current into which we can insert ourselves if we are to be borne to fuller being.  Grace is simply the current manifestation of that same energy which has, for fourteen billion years, ‘raised the complexity of the universe to its current level’ (paraphrasing Dawkins).

But, as we have noted, it is very elusive indeed, as science has yet been unable to quantify it, and religion seems to require supernatural sources for it.  Teilhard insists that recognition of it is necessary for our continued evolution.  To ‘set our sails to the winds of life’ we must first learn to recognize the wind.

That’s where the idea of ‘sacrament’ comes in.

The Next Post

This week looked a little deeper into Teilhard’s insights; the evolving understanding of ‘how we should be if we would be what we can be’, which he refers to as ‘articulation of the noosphere’ and saw how such insights contribute to the continuation of the thread of evolution as it rises through the human.

We saw that such articulations are essentially the ‘cultural DNA’ of our evolution, but that their recognition is essential if we are to cooperate with them.

Next week we will move onto reinterpreting sacraments through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’.

   If spirituality is everywhere, how can we employ Teilhard’s ‘lens’ to help us see it?

Today’s Post

In the last two weeks, we have looked at the Christian idea of ‘spirituality’ through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’.   We saw how, when seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, ‘spirit’ is neither supernatural nor ‘other-worldly’, but simply a word for the energy that propels evolution in the direction of increasing complexity.  Or, as Paul Davies reimagines it, it is the ‘software’ embedded in the ‘hardware’ of matter which enables matter to increase its level of complexity as it joins with other particles.

We saw how Teilhard sees ‘spirit’ as neither an ‘epi’ nor a ‘meta’ phenomenon, but instead the critical phenomenon in the evolution of the universe.  Although, as Richard Dawkins acknowledges, science has not yet addressed it per se, the religious term for the energy “which eventually raised the world as we know it into its present complex existence”, is ‘spirit’.

This week we will move on to some consequences of understanding that spirituality not only underlies the evolutionary process by which the universe becomes more complex, it saturates the milieu in which we live.

The History of Grace

Grace is one of the basic concepts of Christianity, which traditionally understands the ‘love of God’ as a tangible thing by which God interacts across the divide between supernatural divine life and natural human life.

As we will see, the Christian teachings on this interaction with God can be reinterpreted to have much in common with our reinterpreted understanding of spirituality.  Not that the traditional dualisms of supernaturalism and otherworldliness are absent in these teachings, but the idea that grace makes up the milieu in which we live is pervasive in both.

The teaching on grace, however, can also be seen to be tarnished by the gradual drift of Christianity towards a hierarchy which effects a social stability by requiring a system of beliefs necessary to secure successful promotion into heaven.  This can be seen in the Baltimore Catechism’s description of grace as a

“Supernatural gift of God bestowed on us through the merits of Jesus Christ for our salvation.”

   It goes on to say,

“The principal ways of obtaining grace are prayer and the sacraments.”

   In this teaching, grace is less a milieu in which we exist than a gift, not gratuitously given by God but ‘earned’ by Jesus and mediated by the church.

This structural connection between Jesus and Grace raises yet a new dualism: grace must have been absent in ancient history, lying dormant until Jesus arrived.  With the absence of grace, salvation must have been also absent, dooming all pre-Christians to damnation and supporting prejudice against Jews to this day.

Grace, to legacy Christianity, is a ‘gift’ necessary for our ‘salvation’ which must be ‘obtained’ by asking for it (prayer) and participation in church-provided rituals (sacraments).   To a large extent, it is seen as a commodity to be obtained from the church.

Sacraments, as defined in the Baltimore Catechism, are

“outward signs, instituted by Christ, to give grace”.

   They are only available if conferred (dispensed) by church officials.  In this teaching, the sacraments only ‘work’ (only dispense grace) if they are performed by the correct rank of church hierarchy (eg ‘Confirmation’ by bishop) and according to the established ritual (eg ‘Baptism’ by water).

The excesses of the medieval church which led to Luther’s reformation are well documented, but one of the more egregious practices that Luther attacked was the ‘selling’ of sacraments.  To the church of this era, grace had become a hierarchy-controlled commodity without which salvation could not be accomplished but from which the church could profit.

How Can Concepts Such As ‘Grace’ and ‘Sacraments’ Be Seen Through Teilhard’s ‘Lens”?

As we saw last week, spirituality is fundamental to the process of evolution, from the ‘big bang’ to (so far) the human.  Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, grace is simply the quantification of this energy as it is active in human evolution.  Paraphrasing Richard Dawkins, we can say,

“There must be an energy of evolution, and we might as well give it the name Spirit, but Spirit is not an appropriate name unless we very explicitly divest it of all the baggage that the word ‘Spirit’ carries in the minds of most religious believers. The energy that we seek must be that which was active in eventually raising the world as we know it into its present complex existence”.

   Just as we saw in our discussion of God, the sap of complexity rises through every branch which emanates from the ‘axis of evolution’.  The specific branch that rises though each human is fed by this sap of evolution, and it is manifest in its potential in our lives.

The long legacy of dualism that has risen in Christianity came to understand sacraments as a means by which the spiritual energy of God could be managed for delivery across the wide gulf between the supernatural and the natural, and that this aperture was opened by ‘the merits of Christ’ and therefore contributes to ‘our salvation’.

Setting aside the issue of ‘salvation’ for now, we can see how focusing Teilhard’s ‘lens’ on the concept

of the energy of evolution, and our understanding of God as ‘supremely’ natural (as opposed to ‘super’ natural) permits the idea of the sacrament to be seen in our context of ‘reinterpretation’.  While we may well be immersed in this milieu of grace, the very nature of its intangibility calls for reminders, ‘signposts’ of its activity in our lives.  Therefore, sacraments can be reinterpreted into religion’s attempt to erect these signposts.  They are, in Teilhard’s words, examples of “articulation of the noosphere’.

The Sacraments and Evolution

As we have frequently suggested, the continuation of evolution through the human species can be understood as the skill of using our unique human neocortex brains to modulate the instinctual stimuli of the ‘lower’ limbic and reptilian brains.  We have seen this skill requiring two actions.  The first action was to recognize the axis of evolution as it rises in us, and the second was to learn how to cooperate with it.  In religious terms, this is “finding and cooperating with God”.

We have addressed the concept of meditation as a process for finding God as understood by Teilhard, and how it has been carried through to the current day by psychology.  In doing so we saw how the idea of ‘finding God’ happens in the quest to find ourselves.

The second step is less obvious, and less treated by psychology.  To ‘cooperate’ with this manifestation of the ground of being in our lives, it is necessary to see how the energy of evolution is specifically manifest in our life so that we can learn how to cooperate with it and enhance its effects in us.  Effectively, to cooperate with the energy of evolution, we need to learn to recognize how the ‘articulations of the noosphere’ occur in our lives.

This is where the sacraments come in.

The Next Post

This week we saw grace as the manifestation of the ‘energy of evolution’ as it flows through our lives and addressed the idea of ‘sacrament’ as articulation of how the action of grace can be seen if we know how to look.  Next week we will look at the sacraments in more detail to better understand how the seven traditional sacraments can be seen as pointers to the action of grace in our personal evolution.

   How the ‘ground of being’ can be understood from from three perspectives once seen throughTeilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’

Tooay’s Post

Last week we summarized the history of the last facet of the complex God that emerged in just a few hundred years after the death of Jesus: the ‘Trinity’.  We also noted how this concept emerged at the same time that the new church began to become part of Roman society and how it began to evolve into a hierarchical institution which became increasingly dependent on adherence to dogma.  As its teachings became more articulated, truth became more ‘an object of faith’ required to assure salvation than a collection of insights for living.  It didn’t help that the new church was now becoming an essential part of the Roman structure which in turn required a new level of adherence to dogma to ensure a unified and therefore stable society.

Yet, as we saw from Karen Armstrong’s observation, the teaching of ‘Trinity’ was “simply baffling”, and from Richard Rohr that this teaching seems “furthest from human life”.

With all this, what sense can be of an assertion that God is “Three divine persons in one divine nature”?

The Secular Side of the Trinity

Once the Trinity is put into Teilhard’s evolutionary context it becomes possible to see it as not only much simpler but more importantly, more relevant to human life.  From Teilhard’s perspective we have seen how God can be reinterpreted from a supernatural being which is the ‘over and against of man’ who creates, rewards, and punishes; to the ‘ground of being’, the basis for the universe’s potential for evolution by way of its increase in complexity over time.  In applying this perspective to Jesus, we saw how he can be reinterpreted from a sacrifice necessary to satisfy such a distant judgmental God, to the personification of this increase in complexity as it rises through the human person: a ‘signpost to God’.  In the same way we can see a third manifestation of this ‘axis of evolution’, the ‘Spirit’, in the energy which unites products of evolution in such a way as to effect this increase in complexity.

More specifically, we can begin to see how this ‘triune God’ can be seen to be ‘personal’.   The synthesized collaboration of these three principles of evolution effects what we know as the product of evolution that we refer to as ‘the person’.

Christianity puts names to these three aspects of the ground of being:

‘Father’ as the underlying principle of the becoming of the universe in general, understood as the potential of the ’stuff of the universe’ to ‘make it make itself’

‘Son’ as the manifestation of the potential for the products of evolution to eventually become increasingly complex, and thus ‘conscious’, and therefore ‘personal’; a potential which is active in every step of evolution

‘Spirit’ as the ‘energy’ by which particles of matter unite in such a way as to result in increases in complexity

   As we have noted frequently, Teilhard describes this third ‘person’, this third manifestation of the ground of being as it exists in the human, as love:“Love is the only energy capable of uniting entities in such a way that they become more distinct.”

And, as he sees it, the essential function of the rise of complexity in the convergent spiral of cosmic evolution:“Fuller being results from closer union and closer union from fuller being”

In addressing this last agent of becoming, we can now see more clearly how John’s astounding statement begins to make secular sense:“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him.”

Thus, Teilhard locates the ’Spirit’ squarely in the axis of evolution, as the manifestation of the energy which powers evolution through its rising levels of increased complexity.  We have seen in physic’s ‘Standard Model’ how the energies which are manifest in forces such as the atomic strong and weak forces, electricity and magnetism, gravity and chemistry all collaborate in raising the universe from the level of pure energy at the ‘Big Bang’ to that of matter sufficiently complex to provide the building blocks of life.  With the addition of the concept of the ‘Spirit’ we can now see how this enterprise continues to raise reality into manifestations of complexity which are aware of their consciousness.

A purely empirical approach to ‘spirit’ can be seen in the new scientific subject of ‘information’.  To Paul Davies, information is simply the quantum in each particle of matter which guides its unification with other particles.  His analogy is that this ‘quantum’ can be seen as the ‘software’ contained in each grain of matter, the ’hardware’.

An example of this action can be seen in the potential of Hydrogen to unite with Oxygen to form the molecule of water.  The ‘information’ of the Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms is not simply passed on to the new offspring, water, it itself is enriched by becoming more complex in the process.  The evolved quantum of information contained in the molecule of water has a new and enriched potential of unifying with many other molecules, and the resultant molecules also have new characteristics and potentials not found in their less complex components.  Thus, the three ‘triune’ aspects of evolution are evident in this simple example:

A component of matter has the potential to unite with other components (quantified by its ‘information or ‘software’’)

The process required to perform the connection is mapped in the ‘information’

The resultant new component (with new characteristics and potentials absent in its predecessor components) emerges with its new and more complex quantum of ‘information’

   In this very simple but purely empirical example we can see a reflection of the Trinity:

The ‘Son’ is reflected in the ‘information’, effectively the ‘software’ of the component

The ‘Spirit’ is reflected in the ‘energy’ necessary to effect unification according to the ‘information’

And the ‘Father’ is reflected as the ‘potential’ of the components to unite

   In addition to how the Trinity can be seen in these examples, we can also return to Teilhard’s image of the ‘convergent spiral’ of cosmic evolution.   As we saw when we looked at Teilhard’s model of the structure of universal evolution, the three aspects of the Trinity can be understood as the human manifestations of the three basic steps by which the universe proceeds at all stages in its journey toward increased complexity.

We can also see how this energy continues to manifest itself in raising the complexity of living matter through the process of Natural Selection.  Natural Selection, first identified by Charles Darwin, offers a partial explanation of how species change as they move from one stage of evolution to another.  It does not address how the products of evolution at latter stages show evidence of increased complexity, but it does explain how the ramification of species offers many avenues of for ‘complexification’.

Human persons are clearly located on one of these avenues of evolution.  Understanding the ‘Spirit’ at the level of the human person is simply understanding how evolutionary products aware of their consciousness (these human persons) can consciously cooperate with this energy to be united in such a way as to advance their individual complexity (their maturity) and therefore continue to advance the complexity of their species.

We have noted many times that Richard Rohr decried how the increasing hierarchy and dogmatism of the Christian church increased the distance between man and God by decreasing the relevance of its essential message.  Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, we can now see how it is possible to understand the Trinity in terms relevant to personal life.

Rohr offers a reinterpretation of the traditional Christian trinitarian terms as an integrated understanding of the Trinity which is directly relevant to human life:

“I believe that faith might be precisely that ability to trust the Big River of God’s providential love, which is to trust the visible embodiment (the Son), the flow (the Spirit), and the source itself (the Father). This is a divine process that we don’t have to change, coerce, or improve. We just need to allow it and enjoy it.  Faith does not need to push the river precisely because it is able to trust that there is a river.”

The Next Post

This week we saw how adding the concept of ‘Spirit’ to those of the ‘Father’ and the ‘Son’ completes an understanding of the ‘the ground of being’, the basis of the universe’s ‘coming to be’ in general.  More importantly, we saw how we can begin to understand how this agent of evolution which has “raised the world to its current level of complexity” (Richard Dawkins) is active in our individual lives, as we begin to understand ourselves as personal offspring of the ‘axis of evolution’.

Over the past several weeks, we have addressed three of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity: God, Jesus, and The Trinity, by seeing them through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’.  The ‘reinterpretation’ that results from this perspective can refocus their relevance to human life.

Christianity, however, piles many layers of belief and practices on top of these three precepts.  In order to, as Richard Dawkins suggests, ‘divest them of the baggage’ that they carry, is it possible to use our principles of reinterpretation to achieve a similar refocus on them?

Next week we will begin to do this, first addressing the underlying concept of ‘spirituality’, and how it can be seen in the light of such ‘reinterpretation’.

   How can Teilhard’s ‘lens’ clarify the concept of ‘three persons in one God’?

 Today’s Post

Last week we took a final look at Jesus through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’, noting how quickly the highly integrated understanding of John became a victim of the endless human trend toward dualism.  From Teilhard’s perspective, we saw how John’s vision strengthened the immediacy (immanence) of God in human life and how Jesus can be seen as the ‘signpost’ for this spark of universal becoming.

From Teilhard’s insight, this spark, found in all the products of evolution, is only capable of being recognized as such by the human person.  In our final look last week, we saw how easily the labyrinthine statements emerging from the pronouncements of theologians can be ‘reinterpreted’ into statements about the human person, and by doing so increase their relevance to human life.

The evolution of the concept of Jesus and ‘the Christ’, did not end with the pronouncements of the Council of Nicaea, but set the stage for a following inquiry into the ‘nature’ of God.  This week we’ll take a look at this third stage of the theological evolution of the concept of God: the Trinity.

The History of the Trinity

As Bart Ehrman notes in his book, “How Jesus Became God”, unlike God, Jesus and ‘the Christ’, the Trinity isn’t addressed as such in any of the books of the Old or New Testament.  The idea of God as the supreme supernatural creator somehow intertwined in human life is a common thread of the Jewish scriptures (the ‘Old Testament’).   As we have seen, the understanding of Jesus and ‘the Christ’ evolves over time in the New Testament into the early days of the new Christian church, but the concept of a third ‘person’ wasn’t developed until late in the first three hundred years of its existence.

Richard Rohr relates the history of the idea of ‘the Trinity” as it began in the Eastern Church and later moved to the West:

“The Cappadocian Fathers of the fourth century first developed this theology, though they readily admitted the Trinity is a wonderful mystery that can never fully be understood with the rational mind, but can only be known through love, prayer, and suffering. This view of Trinity invites us to interactively experience God as transpersonal (“Father”), personal (“Christ”), and even impersonal (“Holy Spirit”)—all at once.”

The idea of something (or someone) involved in the formation of the universe, and in how this process is reflected in human life, shows up even in the Old Testament.  It is strongly suggested by Jesus, for example, in his statement to the apostles that a ‘Spirit’ (an ‘advocate’) would be sent after he was gone.

It wasn’t until the early days of the church’s theological development that this agent began to be considered ‘God’ in somehow the same way that the relationship between Jesus and ‘the Christ’ was being considered.

In a nutshell, the new church began to consider God as being ‘triune’, somehow composed of three separate but unified ‘persons’ whose agency was reflected in three separate facets.  The most commonly used terms ‘Father’, ‘Son’ and ‘Spirit’ are of little use in making sense of this complex concept.  Thus, in the same way that the church required belief without understanding (as we saw in the final determination of Nicaea that Jesus was both God and Man) as an ‘act of faith’ necessary for salvation, it was soon to follow with the statement that God was also ‘three divine persons in one divine nature’.

And, in the same way that the controversy over the nature of Jesus was debated up until the Nicaean council, that of the Trinity continued to be debated.  As the Arian controversy over the ‘nature’ of Jesus began to dissipate following the Nicaean council, the debate moved from the deity of Jesus to the ‘equality’ of the ‘Spirit’ with the ‘Father’ and ‘Son’.  A key facet of this controversy lay in the lack of scriptural clarification of the ‘Spirit’ as a person of God in the same way as was the ‘Son’.  On one hand, some believers declared that the Spirit was an inferior person to the Father and Son, emerging as a result of the ‘love between the Father and the Son’.  On the other hand, the Cappadocian Fathers argued that the Spirit was a third person fully equal to the Father and Son.

This controversy was brought to a head at the Council of Constantinople (381) which affirmed that the Spirit was of the same substance and nature of God, but like Jesus, a separate person. Gregory of Nazianzus, who presided over this council offered this erudite but ultimately vacuous explanation:

“No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Three than I am carried back into the One. When I think of any of the Three, I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me”.

    As Karen Armstrong concludes in her book, “A History of God”,

“For many Western Christians . . . the Trinity is simply baffling”.

   Richard Rohr agrees with Armstrong that of all the Christian statements of belief, that of the Trinity can seem furthest from human life and thus can tend to reduce the relevance of Christian teaching to human life.  The church didn’t make it easier with Nazianzus’ cryptic statement, or by declaring such statements to be ‘objects of faith’ which must be believed without understanding even though such belief was a prerequisite for salvation.  But as we saw last week, faith is much more than adherence to precepts, it is an essential aspect of human existence.

So, what secular sense can be made of this strange teaching?

The Next Post

This week we saw how the new Christian church expanded its concept of God from the Jewish ‘Father’ to a complex triune but difficult to grasp concept

Next week we will consider this concept of a ‘triune’ God from the perspective provided by Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’.

How can Teilhard’s ‘lens’ aid in reinterpreting the Theological Language of Jesus?

Today’s Post

Last week we took a sixth look at aspects of Christianity’s traditional treatment of Jesus and ‘the Christ’, noting how our principles of interpretation permit new insight into religious concepts such as the relation between the two.  We have also seen how such reinterpretation can not only increase the relevance of ancient beliefs to human life but also decrease their distance from the findings of science.

This week we will take a last look at Jesus, focusing on the theological concepts that evolved along with the concept of Jesus and ‘the Christ’ in the many years of Western theological development, and explore them through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’.

The ‘Incarnation’

In our look at Jesus from the perspective of the New Testament, we saw how the subject of Jesus evolved in a few short years from a holy man preaching about preparation for the immanent end times, to the human manifestation of an agency by which the universe can be seen to unfold.  In John’s vernacular, Jesus was ‘the word made flesh’, introducing a concept of this universal agency by which it finds human expression in the person of Jesus.

The traditional Christian approach to the appearance of Jesus in human history saw him as ‘the Son of God’, suggesting a unique manifestation of divinity among the human species.  But if we understand Jesus from Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ as the ‘fruit’ of universal evolutionary growth, the sap of which is the rising of complexity (‘the Christ’), then Jesus is simply one of such flowerings.  From this perspective, this ‘sap’ makes itself known in all humans who rise above their circumstances to see things in a more integrated, and hence more efficacious way.  Confucius is a good example, with his insights into human unity and the behavior which unites us in such a way that we mature.  Thomas Jefferson is another such example when he asserts the existence of a common wisdom in a human society which is capable of self-government.

Teilhard carries this insight one step further.  He painstakingly documents the rise of complexity in universal history in his book, “The Phenomenon of Man”, calling attention to its many ‘changing of states’ of complexity.  Such changes illustrate how, if complexity is to rise in the universe, it must always find new and more complex ways of doing so.  These changes of state can be seen in such phenomena as the arrival of matter from pure energy, the emergence of ‘matter which makes itself’ in the form of complex molecules such as DNA, the appearance of the cell, then neurons, then brains then consciousness.  The latest change of state can be seen in the new ability of conscious products of evolution to be aware of their consciousness.

Each change of state is indeed an ‘incarnation’, a flowering of capacity and capability resulting from the rise of complexity from their predecessor states.  As we have seen, Jesus is the manifestation of this rise which has most effected the continuation of evolution through the human species.

Jesus, as the manifestation of this agency of increasing complexity, ‘the Christ’, also shows us how matter and spirit (as understood by Teilhard as the two essential properties of ‘the stuff of the universe’ and by Paul Davies as the ‘hardware and software’ of matter) are more clearly understood as being combined in the human.  As Richard Rohr puts it

“Incarnation literally means enfleshment, yet most of Christian history has, in fact, been excarnational–in flight from matter, embodiment, physicality, and this world. This avoidance of enfleshment is much more Platonic than Christian. Incarnation means that the spiritual nature of reality (the immaterial, the formless, the invisible) and the material (the physical, the forms, that which we can see and touch) are, in fact, one and the same!”

Redemption and Salvation

A critical area for the reinterpretation of religion is the understanding of ‘redemption’ as essential to ‘salvation’.  In the development of Christianity through medieval history, the structure of heaven was seen as an ideal of human structure: hierarchal, static, orderly, and predictable.  God was recognized as the underlying creator and ultimate regent, all powerful and all knowing, humanlike and judgmental.  Even after the assertions of John, the association of the idea of ‘love’ with God was diminished with the increased understanding of ‘him’ as supernatural and remote.  The idea of salvation became based more on escaping from our natural milieu so that we could live in a supernatural one which was more suitable to our longings.

With this perspective, religion was seen, as Richard Rohr phrases it, as a “high premium fire insurance for the afterlife”.  In this mindset, most liturgical prayers were less “a lifting of the mind and heart to God”, as the Baltimore Catechism puts it, and more focused on how to get to heaven or how to get what we want in this life.

Again, from Rohr

“If it is true that lex orandi est lex credendi, (the way you pray is the way you believe), then it is no wonder Christians have such a poor record of caring for the suffering of the world and for the planet itself, and the Church has fully participated in so many wars and injustices. We have been allowed to pray in a rather self-centered way, and that fouled the Christian agenda, in my opinion.”

  Thus, as goes the traditional approach, if we are going to be ‘saved’ we must first be ‘redeemed’ from sin.  The traditional church teaching has been that, therefore, salvation is denied to those who die ‘in the state of sin’.  This belief can be seen in the flocking of congregations to church seeking the sacrament of ‘Confession’ when rumors of the ‘end of the world’ have been announced.  Going one step further, church teaching has included the belief that not only sinners, but all humanity, is at birth denied salvation due to the ‘sin of Adam’, better known as ‘original sin’.  As we saw three weeks ago, this view crept in during the controversy over the humanity/divinity arguments of Jesus which required the Council of Nicaea for resolution.  Although the final resolution decided that Jesus was both, the rationale for the resolution required Jesus to die to ‘atone’ for Adam’s sin and thus open the door to salvation closed by God due to the failure of his creation.

But if Jesus was to be the ‘door’ to salvation, the process itself was still open for debate.  Thus, the teaching that for humans to benefit from Jesus’s sacrifice, to be ‘saved’, the elaborate Church teachings which evolved required Baptism to open the door for babies, and Confession to reopen the door closed by sin.  This in turn led to many dualisms, such as the beliefs that there was no salvation outside the Church, and that dead unbaptized babies were not saved.

The recognition introduced by John that God is active in each one of us sheds new light on the idea of ‘sin’.  In it, sin can now be seen as a refusal to acknowledge and cooperate with this spark, and the whole of religion therefore seen as attempt to articulate how this spark can be seen and what human actions will enlarge this perception.  This is not a modern concept, as it can be seen clearly in the sayings of Jesus and the writings of Paul and John.

Reflecting Teilhard, Richard Rohr offers his insight:

“I am convinced that the reason Christians have misunderstood many of Jesus’ teachings is because we did not understand his pedagogy. Jesus’ way of education was intended to situate his followers to a larger life, which he called his “Father,” or what we might call today God, the Real, or Life. When we could not make clear dogma or moral codes out of Jesus’ teaching, many Christians simply abandoned it in any meaningful sense. For this reason, the Sermon on the Mount—the essence of Jesus’ teaching—seems to be the least quoted by Christians. We sought a prize of later salvation, instead of the freedom of present simplicity.

  Going to heaven is not the goal of religion. Salvation isn’t an evacuation plan or a reward for the next world. Whenever we live in conscious, loving union with God, which is eventually to love everything, we are saved.

   Salvation is not a magical transaction accomplished by moral behavior or joining the right group. The only salvation worthy of the name is a gradual realization of who we are already in this world—and always have been—and will be eternally.”

   Thus, the facets of incarnation, redemption and salvation can be seen as active in the human journey of human life from birth to death.  Life is ‘incarnated’ in human birth, gratuitously implanted in each human person as the potential for greater ‘possession of self’, then not only ‘redeemed’ from the failures that befall in this search for fullness, but moved forward, ‘saved’ in the success which occurs as such fullness is seen to unfold.  These three steps are recursive, as the wisdom that can emerge from the failures of experience fosters the confidence that new experience will lead to fuller being.

But they are not unique to human evolution.  As we saw when we looked at the structure of universal evolution, they are human manifestations of the three basic steps by which the universe proceeds in its journey toward increased complexity.  Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, the religious term, ‘incarnation’ references the evolutionary aspect by which matter comes into being with the potential to grow, ‘Redemption’ to the reaction to this potential by which increased complexity is accomplished, and ‘Salvation’ to the increased potential for growth which results from the increase in complexity.  Religion simply glimpses these underlying currents in human life, and ‘intuits’ how they are active long before science can begin to address them.

And this completes the picture of Jesus as the human manifestation of this energy of complexification.  As our principles of reinterpretation can be brought into play, as seen in the last several posts, the subject of Jesus indeed can be seen as a ‘signpost to the future’.

The Next Post

Next week we will move to yet another historically new perception of God, one that is to be found in the concept of ‘the Trinity’.  We have seen how the subject of Jesus can be reinterpreted into a signpost to a human future filled with the potential of ‘fuller being’.

Next week we will once again employ Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ to see how the concept of ‘the Trinity’ effects a synthesis of our reinterpreted Jesus with the other two Christian concepts of the three facets of ‘the ground of being.’