Springfield, IL June 15, 2012

Axial Period Second Axial

- autonomy relatedness- self-transcendence immanence- freedom ecological- individual person global community

800 – 200 BC 1900 – 2011 AD

FIRST AXIAL THEOLOGY

The very name of God is a cosmological notion (“I Am”); there is no cosmos without God and no God without cosmos.

A “theology without cosmology is a mere abstraction of a non-existing God, and a cosmology without theology is just a mirage.”

GOOD

FORMS

Sensible Reality(Matter)

Emanation

platonic concept of order whereby cosmos seen as:

- - - perfect - immutable - hierarchical

• - geocentric• - anthropocentric• • Order, Sin, Fall,

Redemption

New transcendent relation to nature

Lifting up from earth to heaven.

Lex orandi, Lex credendi Lex vivendi

Heliocentrism

Efficient Causality

Contigency

Experience

World of Ideas (Mental world)

World of Matter (physical world)

Law

Order

World as machine

God of Gaps

Church - rules, canons and doctrine

Believing that Newton told us the truth about how the world works, we modeled our institutions on atomistic principles. You are you and I am I. If each of us will do our parts, then the big machine should keep on humming. . . .Our “God view” came to resemble our worldview. In this century, even much of our practical theology has also become mechanical and atomistic. Walk into many churches and you will hear God described as a being who behaves almost as predictably as Newton's universe. Say you believe in God and you will be saved. Sin against God and you will be condemned. Say you are sorry and you will be forgiven. Obey the law and you will be blessed.

Barbara Taylor Brown

God is always God for a World, and if the conception of the World has changed so radically in our times, there is little wonder that the ancient notions of God do not appear convincing. To believe that one might retain a traditional idea of God while changing the underlying cosmology implies giving up the traditional notion of God and substituting an abstraction for it, a Deus otiosus (an idle God).

One cannot go on simple repeating “God creator of the world,” if the word “world” has changed its meaning since that phrase was first uttered—and the word “creator,” as well.

R. Panikkar, Rhythm of Being, p. 186.

“A mistake about creation is a mistake about God.”

T. Aquinas

EVOLUTION:COSMOLOGICAL AND

BIOLOGICAL

• The word evolution, to unfold or open out, derives from the Latin evolvere, which applied to the “unrolling of a book.”

• The idea that life unfolds from simple to complex structures or that nature is marked by a twofold movement of convergence and divergence now holds true not only on the level of biology but on just about every level of life in the universe.

Old

Large

Dynamic

Interconnected

“It does not matter what country youLook at. We are all Earth’s children,And we should treat her as our Mother.”

Aleksandr Aleksandrov

We are one of billions of galaxies

Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a mid-size galaxy consisting of 100 billion stars, and stretching about 100,000 light years in diameter.

The galaxies are often grouped into clusters—some having as many as 2,000 galaxies together.

G. Lemaitre (d. 1966) - Big Bang - dense, red hot universe – exploded

A. Penzias and R. Wilson (1965) – cosmic background radiation

E. Hubble telescope (1924) – saw that ours was not the only galaxy- many others with large empty spaces between them; red shift

Universe is dynamic and expanding

A trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of one percent faster, the cosmic material would have been flung too far apart for anything significant to happen

If gravity had been 1033 times weaker than electromagnetism, "stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster."

The embodied person that you are at this very moment—all the constituents that would eventually come together into the person that is you—was present in the Big Bang.

Radically amazing!

Einstein - 1905 -- No absolute space or

time

time does not flow at a fixed rate

Curvature of space-time by matter not only stretches or shrinks distances (depending on their direction with respect to the gravitational field) but also will appear to slow down or "dilate" the flow of time.

4 - dimensional space-time

space-time is not flat but curved or "warped" by distribution of mass and energy in it.

gravity acts to structure space

fields -- spatial structures in the fabric of space itself.

If you are not confused or shocked by Quantum Physics,

then you have not really understood it.

Niels Bohr

Elementary particles can behave both like particles and waves

Movement of these particles is inherently random

It is physically impossible to know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time.

The atomic world is nothing like the world we live in.

"The more precisely the POSITION is determinedthe less precisely the MOMENTUM is known“

(Uncertainty paper, 1927)

No deterministic universe. Cannot predict future events.

What cannot be measured cannot take place exactly. Only what can be observed can be known.

No distinction between process of observed and what is observed. No line between subject and object

The "path" comes into existence only when we observe it. T he act of observation produces physical reality.

We are actors rather than spectators

Anything that cannot be observed does not exist.

THE Universe

Is

INTERCONNECTED

System = group of interacting units or elements that have a common purpose.

Closed systems: self-contained, self- maintained, little exchange with environment; proceeds in direction of increasing disorder; little complexity

Open systems: far from equilibrium; open to environment; spontaneous new order;complexity of environment interactions

E. Lorenz (1961) discovered that small changes in initial conditions produced large changes in the long-term outcome.

chaos theory is about finding the underlying order in apparently random data.

complex and unpredictable results can and will occur in systems that are sensitive to their initial condition non-linear systems

Sensitivity to initial conditions - an arbitrarily small perturbation of the current trajectory may lead to significantly different future behaviour

“Butterfly Effect”

Strange attractors – basins of attraction within system that can lure the system into a new pattern of order over time.

Fractals – geometric shape that is similar to itself at different scales

Albert Einstein - Quantum Entanglement

Rupert Sheldrake – Morphogenetic Fields

David Bohm – Implicate Order

Ken Wilbur – Holons

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment

Take two particles whose spins cancel each other out to zero. Separate particles by distance. If measure particle A as “up” particle B is measured “down.”

The measurement on A does not merely reveal an already established state of B: It actually produces that state entangled.

The essence of nonlocality is unmediated action at a distance . . .a nonlocal interaction links up one location with another without crossing space, without decay, and without delay.

Ex. Archie and Betty are deeply in love. However, a deep transpersonal connection is connected between Archie and Petra when they pray or meditate. When Archie and Petra enter a meditative state, the thought or image Petra has been concentrating on vanishes from her mind and reappears in the mind of Betty.

a morphogenetic field carries information and is available throughout time and space without any loss of intensity after it has been created.

a newly forming system "tunes into" a previous system by having within it a "seed" that resonates with a similar seed in the earlier form.

Information form matter

Rupert Sheldrake postulates a field of habitual patterns that links all people, which influences and is influenced by the habits of all people.

The more people have a habit pattern -- whether of knowledge, perception or behavior -- the stronger it is in the field, and the more easily it replicates in a new person (or entity).

Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement

Rather than starting with the parts and explaining the whole in terms of the parts, Bohm starts with a notion of undivided wholeness and derives the parts as abstractions from the whole.

Implicate order is a way of looking at reality not merely in terms of external interactions between things, but in terms of the internal (enfolded) relationships among things.

being is intrinsically relational and exists as unbroken wholeness in a system.

systems are in movement or what Bohm calls “holomovement.”

because reality is marked by relationality and movement, it has endless depth.

As human beings and societies we seem separate, but in our roots we are part of an indivisible whole and share in the same cosmic process.

Matter is not composed of basic building blocks but complicated webs of relations

no objective reality outside observer.

observer constitutes final link in chain of observational processes and properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of objects interaction with observer.

Everything in universe is ''genetically'' related. The universe is bound together in communion, each thing w/all the rest.

We live in interwoven layers of bondedness.

Interconnectedness lies at core of all that

exists.

THE UNIVERSE

IS IN

EVOLUTION

Evolution is a general condition, which all theories, all hypotheses and all systems must submit to and satisfy from now on in order to be conceivable and true.

Evolution is not background to the human story; it is the human story.

Each volume has 450 pages.Each volume = 1 million years

Vol. 1 = Big BangVol. 21 = EarthVol. 22 = LifeVol. 29 = Cambrian periodVol. 30 = Dinosaurs go extinct on p. 385Vol. 30 = Mammals appear on p. 390Vol. 30 = p. 450 last line, human beings

The modern theory of evolution (= the “neo-Darwinian Synthesis”) says that the great diversity of life can be naturally explained by the combination of chance, law, and deep time:

1. Chance: accidental, chance events or contingencies: a genetic mutation that lead to new characteristics in an

organism a natural disaster that changes the environment that an

organism must adapt to

2. Law: the deterministic laws of natural selection (nature “selects” as survivors organism who best adapt to the environment; all others perish), chemistry, and physics

3. Deep Time: enormous depths of time

Evolution is a dynamic process, a movement toward more complexified life forms which, at critical points in the evolutionary process, qualitative differences emerge.

Law of convergence - complexity

At some point, evolution reaches a reflexive state which generates the idea of evolution.

"Most anthropologist believe that between about 400,000 & 300,000 years ago, Homo erectus evolved into a new species called Homo sapiens."

The modern human physique first appeared in Africa about 150,000 years ago, and then spread into the rest of the Old World, replacing existing populations of archaic human forms."

Evolution is the rise OfConsciousness.

• Teilhard de Chardin said that consciousness is active at all levels of reality.

• Matter and consciousness -- not two substances or modes of existence. . .but two aspects of the same cosmic stuff.

• The within is the mental aspect and the without is the physical aspect of the same stuff.

• Evolution is toward greater withinness and withoutness

Lothar Schaefer writes: “The universe looks more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accident intruder into the realm of matter; …. Mind may be the creator and governor of the realm of matter. . . .The quantum phenomena make it possible to propose that the background of the universe is mindlike.”

With the human person occurs the passage of conscious evolution toward self-reflection.

The human mind can reach out to grasp the cosmic process from which it has emerged.

The human person holds a special, frontier position in evolution.

closed system open systemtop-down order bottom-up ordermaintaining order greater

complexityhierarchy expansioncontrol participatoryGoals possibilitiesindividual interconnectedparts thinking holistic

CHRIST IN EVOLUTION

What is the meaning of Jesus Christ in a universe that is still coming to be?

“Our Christology is still expressed in exactly the same terms as those which three centuries ago could satisfy those whose outlook on the cosmos it is now physically impossible for us to accept. . . .What we now have to do without delay is to modify the position occupied by the central core of Christianity–and this precisely in order that it may not lose its illuminative value.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Mythic Consciousness Mystic Consciousness

Garden of Eden

Sin

Fall

Need for Redemption

God is Love

Christ is first in God’s intention to Love

Christ symbolizes unity in Love

“In the beginning was the Word; the Word was with God and the Word was God. . . Through him all things came to be.” John 1:1-3

• Cosmic order is a vast symbol in which God speaks God’s own mystery into that which is not God.

• Creation and incarnation are two dimensions of the same act of God’s self-emptying love.

 • The world receives the self-gift of God—Word-- into its

inner depth and brings it to completion.

Attraction

Union

Direction

Evolution is Christ-in-the making

Or

Cosmic Personalization

“Not something but Someone who is in evolution”

Incarnation = act of cosmic completion.

Christ is not ordered to us but we to Christ.

The whole creation is made for Christ

Christ does not save us from the world.

Christ is the reason for the world.

Christ is related organically not simply juridically to the whole cosmos

Christ in his third nature is the prime mover of the evolving universe

JESUS

Material Evolution

Spiritual Evolution

Big

Bang

OMEGA

Consciousness ---------------------

God “speaks” the depths of his heart in the rich diversity of creation in and thru the Word.

Each being is a “little word” of God.

The world is like a crystal

lamp illumined by the light of divine love from within.

The process of evolution is a “Christogenesis,” a ‘coming to be’ of Christ.

• John Cobb – with Jesus emerges a new structure of existence; a new consciousness.

• In Jesus we find the Hebraic ethically responsible individual and the intense experience of God’s immediacy.

• Faith in God liberates individual to accept the full implications of one’s freedom and responsibility.

Jesus enters the evolutionary trajectory bringing all newness in himself, bringing the needed transformation.

the event of Christ brings a new directionality into evolution, at its culmination in the human person.

A power of newness comes into the human person, into the heart and mind: a new creativity that is divine and human at once.

Restores to health Forgives Merciful Compassionate Reconciles

Salvation: to heal and make wholeA HEALTHY LIFE FOR A HEALTHY COSMOS

Catholicity = the “principle of wholemaking”

Jesus establishes the pattern of evolutionary life but this pattern is to generate new life; out of the old is born the new. New wine must be put into new wineskins.

Life in an emergent evolutionary universe is always moving forward toward greater union and complexity.

Death of Jesus Spirit new creation: “Unless I go, the Spirit cannot come” (Jn 16:7)

Release into wholeness.

Death is not end but fullness of life.

New Theandric energy

“When the vessel of his body was shattered in death, Christ was poured out over the cosmos: he became actually, in his very humanity, what he had always been in his dignity, the innermost center of creation.”

Karl Rahner

Quantum physics and evolution help us understand the Resurrection as reconstituting a new field of activity and energy.

This new theandric energy field is the risen Body of Christ. The death of Jesus forms a new matrix of divine-created energy in the cosmos.

• Breakthrough to a new level of individuated consciousness. . .a new basis from which to understand human destiny.

• Emergence of a new sense of selfhood.

• New sense of what it means to belong to cosmos. A new sense of freedom.

Christianity is a religion of evolution,

a religion of the future.

The principle of life in an evolving universe is the future, that is, the openness of life to life and the infinite possibilities of life for life.

A world opened to the future makes the present rich in possibilities to create something new.

Jesus is an evolutionary step forward in the development of humankind but evolution does not stop w/Jesus.

It is an ongoing process, symbolized by the Christ event:

“Amen, I say to you, the one who believes in me will also do the works I do and, fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12).

The Holy One is:

utterly compassionateInclusiveHealing

ForgivingVulnerable

Justmerciful

Jesus establishes the pattern of evolutionary life but this pattern of life is to generate new life; out of the old is born the new: “Let the dead bury the dead” (Lk 9:60).

Life in an emergent evolutionary universe is always moving forward toward greater union and complexity.

Biological evolution has not ended with us.

We are part of an ongoing cosmic process that demands our commitment to it.

We are the arrow of evolution

Christogenesis : The Cosmic Person who is coming to be.

Baptism and Eucharist are sacraments of evolution which empower the New Creation by forging new patterns of divine-human relatedness in the evolving cosmos.

Through baptism we are immersed into cosmic evolution. We are called to be Christogenic evolvers.

The Christian is to be a participant in new possibilities which carries with it creativity and imagination.

To live with a consciousness of love.

We are called to be wholemakers – unifiers in love toward more being and consciousness.

The Eucharist marks the beginning of a new future. Those who participate in the Eucharist are asked to re-member the death and resurrection of Jesus, not as a past event but as the power of the future.

A Eucharistic community should be a new energy field, a new pattern of relatedness.

The Christian is one who is connected through the heart to the whole of life, attuned to the deeper intelligence of nature, and called forth irresistibly by the Spirit to creatively express his or her gifts in the evolution of self and

the world.

“To live in an evolutionary spirit means to engage with full ambition and without any reserve in the structure of the present, and yet to let go and flow into a new structure when the right time has come.”

Eric Jantsch

Ultrahumanism is the next level of evolution and expansion of community through greater unity.

This new phase of evolution marked by ultrahumanity and global mind (and emergence of spirit) spoke to Teilhard de Chardin of the evolution of religion.

Teilhard spoke of Christianity as a religion of evolution.

Christianity (like all world religions) is in evolution.

Teilhard said Christ cannot be limited to any one religion.

He described the noogenic Christ as “a general convergence of religions upon a universal personal center of unity who fundamentally satisfies all religions.”

Technology plays a key role in evolutionary convergence, enabling the emergence of global mind and collective consciousness.

Teilhard realized the stasis of religion is the stifling of evolution.

“No longer is it simply a religion of individual and of heaven, but a religion of mankind and of the earth--that is what we are looking for at this moment, as the oxygen without which we cannot breathe.”

When the level of our awareness changes we

start attracting a new reality.

Be open to change. Change is inherent to dynamic systems

Realize everything is connected to everything.

Seek to form new patterns of relationships. Be open to new ideas and insights.

Strive for greater integral wholes.

We live in an unfinished universe

Life is not behind but ahead of us

What is the “new” breaking into our midst?

What are the visions and dreams inspiring us?

Are we making greater wholes through our relationships?

- Abandon messianic expectations

- Accept incompleteness

- Recover the capacity of wonder and awe

- Live in the primacy of love

- Create structures to fit the moment. When the needs change, so too do the structures.

We have to "de-engineer" our thinking, which means we have to examine how mechanistically we are oriented — even in our treatment of one another.

Those who are afraid to live outside the box are condemned to live within it.

Not a flight from the world, but a leap into the future

To converge and complexify in a personal unity of love.

Creating new horizons

Unifying the whole in a personal center

Giving birthTo God.

Christogenesis is gatheringLife unto life