| As
the 21st century rapidly approaches, there is a vital theme
largely absent from the thinking of most North American
theologians, namely, the whole world as God's good creation.
There are a few notable exceptions, but surveying our work as
a whole would quickly make this absence clear.
This mainstream
neglect of "the cosmos" by recent decades of
mainstream Catholic theology has two deleterious results. It
enfeebles theology in its basic task of interpreting the whole
of reality in the light of faith, thus compromising the
intellectual integrity of theology. And it blocks what should
be theology's powerful contribution to the religious practice
of justice and mercy for the threatened Earth, thereby
endangering the moral integrity of theology.
Theology is
potentially the most comprehensive of fields. If there is only
one God, and if this God is the Creator of all that exists,
then everything is encompassed in the scope of theology's
interest. Traditionally this is expressed in the idea that
theology deals with three major areas: God, humanity, and
world. Nor can these elements be separated, for, as the
history of theology makes evident, every understanding of God
corresponds to a particular understanding of the natural and
the human.
Early Christian
and medieval theologians took this view for granted,
interpreting the natural world as God's good creation, a
revealing pathway to the knowledge of God, and a partner in
salvation. It was common for them to say that God has put two
books at our disposal, the book of sacred scripture and the
book of nature: If we learn how to read the book of nature
right, we will hear God's word and be led to knowledge about
God's wisdom, power, and love.
Medieval
theology brought God, humanity, and the world into an ordered
harmony. The resulting synthesis not only shaped art,
architecture, liturgy, and poetry; it also remained for
centuries a guiding influence in Catholic theology even when
its underlying world picture was discredited by scientific
advance.
And scientific
advance there was, as the names of Copernicus, Galileo,
Newton, and later Darwin, Einstein, Heisenberg, and many
others imply. Strange as it may seem in the light of a fifteen
hundred year old heritage, after the Reformation neither
Catholic nor Protestant theology kept pace the new scientific
worldviews. Instead, they focused on God and the self, leaving
the world to the side..
Today one could
go through a whole course of study in college, seminary, or
university and never encounter the subject (of cosmology). And
yet nature is one of the three main pillars of theology, along
with God and humanity. What is needed now, I am convinced, is
a fully inclusive turn to the heavens and the earth, a return
to cosmology, in order to restore fullness of vision and get
theology back on the track from which it diverged a few
hundred years ago.
Since theology
is the study of God and all things in the light of God,
shrinking attention to humanity apart from the rest of
creation simply does not do justice to theology's intrinsic
mission. Even more, ignoring the cosmos has a deleterious
effect insofar as it paves the way for theology to retreat to
other-worldliness, disparage matter, body, and the Earth, and
offer interpretations of reality far removed from the way
things actually work. We must engage the world.
When theology
today opens its door to the natural world, it is met with a
wondrous array of insights. Medieval cosmology, which saw the
world as geocentric, static and unchanging, hierarchically
ordered and centered on humanity, is gone. But gone too is the
Enlightenment prejudice that held a mechanistic and
deterministic view of nature inimitable in many ways to
religious values. Instead, contemporary science is discovering
a natural world that is surprisingly dynamic, organic,
self-organizing, indeterminate, chancy, boundless, and open to
the mystery of reality. Enormous discoveries are being made in
our day.
- The world is almost
unimaginably old. About 15 billion years ago a single
numinous speck exploded in an outpouring of matter and
energy, shaping a universe that is still expanding. Five
billion years ago an aging, first generation star
exploded, spewing out elements that coalesced to form our
sun and its planets, including Earth. The human is only
recently arrived.
- The world is almost
incomprehensibly large. Over one hundred billion galaxies,
each comprised of one hundred billion stars, and no one
knows how many moons and planets, all of this visible and
audible matter being only a fraction of the matter in the
universe. We humans inhabit a small planet orbiting a
medium-sized star toward the edge of one spiral galaxy.
- The world is almost
mind-numbingly dynamic. Out of the Big Bang, the stars;
out of the stardust, the Earth; out of the Earth,
single-celled living creatures; out of evolutionary life
and death of these creatures, human beings with a
consciousness and freedom that concentrates the
self-transcendence of matter itself. Human beings are the
universe become conscious of itself. We are the cantors of
the universe.
- The world is almost
unfathomably organic. Everything is connected with
everything else; nothing conceivable is isolated. We are
also biologically interconnected. Human genetic structure
closely parallels the DNA of other creatures - bacteria,
grasses, bluebirds, horses, the great gray whales. We have
all evolved from common ancestors and are kin in the
shared history of life.
These and other
discoveries of contemporary science coalesce into a picture of
the world calling for new interpretations, especially as
classical dualisms can no longer be maintained.
Besides an
intellectual reason for theology's turn to the heavens and the
earth, there is a compelling moral reason as well. In our day
the human race is inflicting devastation on the life-systems
and other living species of our home planet, havoc which has
reached crisis proportions and even, in some places ecological
collapse. Due to the increasing demands of consumerist
economies on the one hand and burgeoning population on the
other, we are exploiting Earth's resources without regard for
long-term sustainability. In light of the devastation, the
turn to the heavens and the earth bears the mark of genuine
conversion of mind and heart, with repentance for the lack of
love and the violence visited on the living planet. As we
turn, we will be looking for thought patterns that will
transform our species- centeredness and enable us to grant not
just instrumental worth but intrinsic value to the natural
world.
Moral reflection
about the natural world under threat becomes complex when we
take into consideration the organic links that exist between
exploitation of the Earth and injustice among human beings
themselves. The voices of the poor and of women bring to light
the fact that structures of social domination are chief among
the ways that abuse of the Earth is accomplished.
I am not
suggesting that we just think through a new theology of
creation, but that cosmology be a framework within which all
theological topics be rethought. There is hard work ahead. We
need to appreciate all over again that the whole universe is a
sacrament, vivified by the presence of the Creator Spirit. We
need to realize that its destruction is tantamount to
sacrilege. And we need to fathom that human beings are part of
the mystery and magnificence of this universe, not lords of
the manor but partners with God in helping creation to grow
and prosper.
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