Posted on 07/19/2004 11:35:57 AM PDT by betty boop
By Jean F. Drew
As Wolfhart Pannenberg observes in his Toward a Theology of Nature: Essays on Science and Faith (1993), the present-day intellectual mind-set assumes that there is no relation or connection between the God of the Christian faith and the understanding of the world in the natural sciences.
Ironically this separation of God from the world is commonly credited to Sir Isaac Newton, the father of classical mechanics, whose ground-breaking work on the laws of motion and thermodynamics seemed to posit a purely mechanistic, deterministic, “clockwork universe” that was not dependent on God either for its creation or its maintenance.
The irony consists in the fact that this was not Newton’s view at all. In fact, the very reverse is the truth of the matter: Newton was a deeply religious man who regarded his scientific efforts as exploits in the discovery of the laws that God uses in the natural world. Moreover, Newton believed that his laws of motion implied the generation of conditions of increasing disorder in the world, such that God would have to intervene periodically to rectify it in order to save it and keep it going:
In his Opticks, Newton emphasized … that the order of nature becomes needful, in the course of time, of a renewal by God because as a result of the inertia of matter its irregularities increase.” [ibid., p. 63]
“Newton confronted with deep distrust the mechanical worldview of Descartes, which derived all change in the world alone from the mechanical mutual effects of the bodies. The Cartesian model of the world, in which the mutual play of mechanical powers was to explain the development from chaos to the ordered cosmos, seemed to him all too self-contained and self-sufficient so that it would not need any divine assistance or would even admit such.” [ibid., p. 60]
Newton rightly recognized that this tendency of the mechanical explanation of nature would inevitably lead to “a world independent from God.” For Newton, such a view would be an utter falsification of natural and divine reality both.
In his own time, Newton’s view that God continuously acts in the world was controversial. Certain leading philosophers, including Kant and Leibnitz, were offended by this view on the grounds that it implied God bungled the original creation. They argued that a perfect Creator cannot have failed to create a perfect creation. And if it’s “perfect,” then there’s no need for God to intervene. (The corollary being: For him to do so would be an acknowledgement or confession of his own imperfection.)
This despite the fact that God in Genesis speaks, not of having made a “perfect” creation, but only a “good” one. The worldview of Leibnitz reflects an early strain of Deism; that of Kant, the Calvinist theological view of God as utterly transcendent majesty.
But Newton didn’t see it either way. For Newton, God was both transcendent and immanent in the world. God created a universe in which he would be “God with his creatures” and Lord of Life forever. The supernatural and the natural had an on-going synergistic relation, and this is what maintained the natural world as a going concern, sustaining it in its evolution toward God’s eschatological goal for man and nature.
In other words, Newton believed God is constantly active in the history of salvation (of souls and world), and evolutionary process is one of his prime tools for accomplishing the divine purpose implicit in the creation event itself.
Yet by what means could God be “present with his creatures?” Newton gave his answer in the Scholium Generale, an addendum to the second edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, his chief work on the mathematical principles of the philosophy of nature. The addendum endeavors to clarify the relationship of his doctrines of physics and his religious and philosophical views. Here Newton states that “God constitutes space and time through his eternity and omnipresence: ‘existendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium constituit.’”
For Newton, God as immensitas constitutes absolute space – infinite and “empty” – and this absolute space is the sensorium Dei The great philosopher and mathematician Leibnitz strenuously objected to this conception, arguing that Newton’s divine sensorium effectively turned God into a “world soul,” and thus led to pantheism. Yet Newton had “explicitly emphasized … that God does not rule the universe as a world soul, but as the Lord of all things.” [ibid.]
What are we to make of this term, sensorium Dei – God’s sensorium? We probably should avoid the conclusion drawn by Leibnitz, who interpreted the term as indicating an organ of perception.
Newton might reply: God being eternally omniscient, he has absolutely no need of an organ of sense perception.
So what, then, did Newton mean by this term? Pannenberg writes that, for Newton, sensorium Dei refers “to the medium of the creation of things: just as the sensorium in our perception creates the pictures of things, God through space creates the things themselves.”
Thus Newton acknowledges a doctrine of creation understood as an on-going process, not just as a single start-up event – let alone a periodically recurring cycle of universal “booms” and “busts” as implied by the “eternal universe” model.
Newton] designates space as the effect of the presence of God with his creatures…. The expression sensorium … even when it is understood as the place of the production of its contents and not as the organ of their reception, cannot itself be a product of the perceiving individual,” whereas with God, space is at once a property and effect of the divine immensitas.
For Newton, the conception of infinite space is implicit in the idea of the omnipresence of God. But, as Pannenberg notes, “it is implicit in it in the way that it has no divisions: infinite space is indeed divisible but not divided, and the conception of division always presupposes space.”
At this point, it might occur to a scientifically-inclined Christian that sensorium Dei could well refer to an infinite, universal creative field, “originally empty” of all content, designed to be the matrix and carrier of all possibilities for our universe, and thus the locus where the “supernatural” [i.e., transcendent] and the “natural” [i.e., immanent] constantly meet.
One thinks of a primary universal vacuum field, whose characteristic associated particle is the photon – light -- which, having zero mass, is the “finest particle” yet known to man (noting that, on the Judeo-Christian view, God preeminently works with Light).
It has been speculated that, if an observer could stand outside of “normal” four-dimensional space-time and take a view from a fifth, “time-like” dimension, the singularity of the “big bang” would appear as a “shock wave” propagating in 4D space-time. If this were true, the shock wave would require a medium of propagation. Perhaps this medium is the universal vacuum field itself, the “ZPF” or zero-point field that extends throughout all of space, giving rise to all possibilities for our universe in every space direction and time dimension – which yet finds its source outside the space-time continuum that human beings commonly experience.
That is to say, the source is “extra-cosmic,” or transcendent. Its creative effect works within the empirical cosmos via the ZPF, which is hypothetically the sensorium Dei of the Immensitas….
Perhaps one day it will be shown that the intimate communication of divine and natural reality is facilitated by the primary universal vacuum field -- the intersection of time and the timeless, the creative source of our universe, the means of its sustenance and renewal over time, the source of the power of the human soul and mind to participate in divine reality, the paradigm of human genius, as well as the source of the continued physical existence of our planet and the universe.
It has been said that Life is the result of “successful communication.” Perhaps the ZPF, as suggested above, is the carrier of information (Logos, the singularity propagating in time); living creatures carry information also – DNA -- information that specifies what they are and how all their “parts” work together in synergy so as to give rise to and sustain their existence. It appears all living creatures have the capability of doing at least some kind of rudimentary information processing. That is, it seems they can “decode” and “read” instructions – perhaps via energy exchanges with the ZPF. When the creature is no longer able to access and process information, successful communication cannot take place, and so the creature dies.
By the way, I do not mean to suggest that information/energy exchanges with the primary universal vacuum field are necessarily consciously experienced events. Probably the reverse is the typical case. Yet we know that the human brain does most of its important work at unconscious levels: the governance of autonomic bodily functions, for instance, is a subconscious process.
Interestingly enough, it was Faraday who first articulated the field concept, and he apparently did so to refute Newton’s sensorium Dei. Apparently he wanted to get rid of the Immensitas altogether, and put Newton’s insight on a purely physical basis.
Yet in the end, it appears Faraday did not so much refute Newton, as lend credence to his basic insight.
Lurking 101.
I’ll try, cornelis. But first, some unfinished business from your earlier post. I apologize to any Calvinist or Deist who took umbrage from the statement, “the worldview of Leibnitz reflects an early strain of Deism; that of Kant, the Calvinist theological view of God as utterly transcendent majesty.”
I was drawing conclusions from certain statements that Pannenberg – Professor of Theology, University of Munich – offered in the work that inspired this essay. Presumably – I don’t really know -- Pannenberg is of Lutheran confession. Frankly I don’t know whether Kant was of Calvinist persuasion or not. Maybe I read too much into what Pannenberg said. However, the point is that Kant did very much reject Newton’s concept of absolute space; Kant’s concept of space appears to boil down to subjective perception.
Earlier, RightWhale offered the observation that Kant was influenced by Newton’s thought; and I think this is clearly true. Yet Kant would not follow Newton here. The speculation as to his reason for this (as offered by Pannenberg): the putatively “Calvinist” idea that a perfect creator cannot have failed to create a perfect creation – which by virtue of its perfection would obviate the need for any further intercession by God into his works.
In any case, I do not at all wish to involve myself in doctrinal disputes among the Christian confessions. Nor to give offense to any adherent of any confession. Forgive me, if insult was felt by anybody, owing to my remarks.
To return to the present main issue, you wrote:
The best I can contribute to the idea of sensorium Dei is in line with a revelatory agency or energeia.
I think that both Newton’s theory of absolute space and the En Sof concept refer to something which is much more than the concept of energeia – if by this term we mean the ability of the human mind and spirit to resonate with “incoming data of God-given revelatory nature.” I think Newton’s term – and the En Sof -- in their main effect refer to the creation and on-going sustenance of the life process at all the levels of being, throughout all of time.
In short, absolute space/En Sof conceptualize both the (unimaginable by human beings) solitary, yet infinite and eternal, Life of God prior to the Creation, and God’s continuing activity to sustain the Creation after the fact of its creation. “God with his creatures,” the Lord of Life, cannot refer to a once-done and completed cosmic creation; for it is God’s will to be present with his creatures through all of space and time, forever. By this we are to understand that by virtue of his presence “with his creatures,” he alone sustains the life process itself, in all its forms and functions.
So it seems your “revelatory agency” is a part of the idea; but such can only be useful to conscious thinking beings. Yet it is more than human beings that “God with his creatures” actively sustains on an on-going basis.
In other words, God actively works, not only in the field of consciousness, but also in all the domains of living and even non-living nature. On Newton’s view, he is the creative foundation and eternally present sustainer, renewer of the Life Principle of the universe, in all its departments.
The En Sof seems to place a greater emphasis on the completely unknowable (by humans) life of God prior to the creation of the universe than Newton’s concept of absolute space does. Actually, the whole idea of “prior” is here suspect; for it makes no sense to speak of “priority” before time has commenced. But that’s the kind of problem one has in trying to imagine anything about the Life of God, who is Lord of Life, and try to convey it in words. But as it turns out, I think both Newton’s concept, and that of Kaballah, are about the “nature” of absolute space as an expression of the Life of God.
Let’s start by isolating the key statements about En Sof as given in Alamo-Girl’s cite:
1. It is “...the Deity prior to His self-manifestation in the production of the world…,” who is “alone.”
2. It is not something that can be “comprehended [by man] how He was before the creation…Hence it is forbidden to lend Him any form or similitude, or even to call Him by His sacred name,” or to imbue Him with “attributes” of any kind. “God so transcends human understanding as to be practically non-existent,” and this means that he cannot be described in principle, nor even named. For a name “implies a limitation on its bearer; and this is impossible in connection with the ‘En Sof’.” For En Sof is unlimited, infinite, eternal, undivided, and at-this-point, i.e., pre-creation, “nothing.”
Yet we are reminded: God creates out of nothing – “ex nihilo!”
3. But that “after He created the form of the Heavenly Man, [the universe I think is indicated here, and also the sons of God], He used him as a chariot wherein to descend….” [i.e., into the creation, so as to be “God with his creatures” and Lord of Life].
The analogy to Newton consists in Newton’s concept of absolute space – defined as unlimited, infinite, undivided, “empty” – nothing. Just as is the case with the En Sof, it’s “size” is determined by God’s infinity and eternity; and the size of its “first offspring,” the sensorium (or ZPF), is determined by God’s omniscience and omnipresence “with His creatures”. In both cases “size,” from the human point of view, is absolutely incalculable in principle.
But just as in the concept of En Sof, Newton’s absolute space is a very peculiar kind of “nothing,” because it is also the field of all potentiality that can possibly be expressed in and by the Creation itself. God is not identical with Newton’s sensorium Dei, just as En Sof does not refer to an identity of God; only God is identical with Himself – the significance of the statement, “I Am That I Am.” But God produces a universe out of that “self-identity,” and sustains it by means of Newton’s sensorium, understood not as an organ of perception, but as the field in which the living beings are constantly created, and constantly renewed and sustained by God – the God who is at once eternally “with His creatures” and Lord of Life – but who still maintains His “nature” as En Sof in that He ever surpasses all categories of human understanding.
We humans can know things “about” God. These are the things he has seen fit to tell us – in the Holy Scriptures and in the “book of nature.” But we do not see God “face-to-face”; meaning: We do not and cannot know God as He is in Himself – at least, not from this side of the grave (so to speak).
But at the moment of creation – with God’s speaking the Word specifying all the created things -- the divine “absolute space,” insofar as it acquired “immanence” as a process in created nature, produced the sensorium as property and effect of God’s will and purpose for Creation, and became the means whereby God acts in the world of his creatures.
In the case both of Newton’s absolute space and the En Sof, the closest concept that one can find to describe this relation of the creator with His creatures is that of an ultimate universal vacuum field. This is an insight from quantum field theory, some of whose theorists believe that the primary universal vacuum field is the “mother” or ultimate matrix producing all other fields in nature. Perhaps its first production, from the very earliest beginning of the cosmos, is the Zero Point Field (“ZPF”), whose characteristic particle is the photon, light. (Don’t forget God’s first creation was Light.) It has been hypothesized that electron-photon exchanges constantly taking place in the electromagnetic field coupled with the ZPF, may be the mechanism for the propagation and dissemination of information necessary to the emergence and sustenance of living beings and also the non-organic world. Thus the divine creative process does not consist of one single act of Creation “in the beginning,” but is constantly, actively going on through all of space and time as we humans understand those concepts.
Well, so much for my little speculation. I don’t know if any of the foregoing helps clarify the issue, cornelis, which is quite complex, as you can see – for we aren’t speaking of “just” theology or philosophy or cosmology, but also of such things as quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics, information science, etc.
And the jury’s still out: relativity theory, for instance, denies both absolute space and absolute time. Just as an aside, however, absolute time seems to be but another name for all eternity. Pannenberg has an interesting way of putting this point:
I asset that eternity itself is described by statements of time. With a musical parable one might speak of eternity as the sounding together of all time in a sole present. Elsewhere I have developed this concept of eternity from the human experience of time, from the relativity of the distinction of past, present, and future corresponding to the relativity of the directions in space. In view of the relativity of the modes of time to the aspect of the human being experiencing time, this resulted in the assumption that all time, if it could be, so to speak, surveyed from a ‘place’ outside the course of time, would have to appear as contemporaneous…. Understood in the sense of the suggestions above, the concept of eternity comprehends all time and everything temporal in itself – a conception of the relation of time and eternity that goes back to Augustine and is connected to the Israelite understanding of eternity as unlimited duration throughout time.
Pannenberg’s Toward a Theology of Nature is a most provocative and substantial read, IMHO. I think you might enjoy it, cornelis – if you have the time and interest. Thanks so much for writing!
I have nothing substantive to add to your comments. The only thing I can offer is perhaps some clarification for those who may be concerned about a conflict between these musings and theology.
As I understand it, energeia is actualization rather than potential. Dynamis, on the other hand, is the potential rather than the actualization of it. I believe this is yet another Plato v Aristotle cut – with Plato asserting the dynamis; Aristotle, the energeia. But I digress…
In meditating on God, some theologians have concluded that God must be Actus Purus simply because they have reasoned that potentiality cannot apply to Whom is perfectly actualized.
The only objection I have in such reasoning is that mortal beings are on “thin ice” making any presumptions about what God cannot do beyond what He has said in Scriptures that He cannot do (e.g. lie).
For instance, in the case at hand, actus purus taken to its extreme conclusion might suggest strong determinism, predestination (Calvinism), etc. Such a conclusion could be countered by Scripture as follows: although God knows the future as if it were already past (Psalms 90:4, Daniel, Revelation, etc.) --- yet He provides the choices for mankind (commandments, etc.) --– and has changed (or will change) His mind according to those choices (Genesis 6:6, 2 Ch 7:14, etc.) IOW, has He then retained the "potential" to change His mind?
BTW, this is just an illustration of the theological import of the discussion. I do not wish to derail this terrific thread into the neverending argument of predestination v free will.
You are doing tremendous battle with the unnamed Center.
B4L8r
Ah, but are you really able to control yourself?
Microscopic predestination may still lead to macroscopic chaos.
The mind can think all things, infinite potentiality as Aristotle had it. It becomes a pastime to show it off at conferences.
The En Sof is an extrinsic logical, conceptual denotation for transcendence, not the effect of divine agency in the cosmos. The emanation from a Plotinian One is evil.
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From here:
More food for thought…
I agree with your first statement, cornelis. It seems to me that En Sof refers to the eternal life of God "before" He revealed Himself in the creation or to His creatures; and it also seems to stand for the idea of "that part" of God (so to speak) [i.e., that "part" about Himself which God has not yet "told to us" or fully revealed to us] -- which is utterly irreducible to the categories of human experience, thought, or understanding. For He "surpasseth all understanding." Thomas Aquinas makes such a "distinction," if I might call it that, between the utterly transcendent, unknown God (i.e., the tetragrammatical God, the Father) and the God of the Presence (the Logos, God the Son). One God either way; the distinction seems to turn on what the human mind can experience and know of divine nature, as aided by the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. (Still One God.)
Also we have the Shema: "Hear O Israel! The Lord thy God is One." So I don't think either Pannenberg or Newton would agree that we are here speaking of a "Plotinian One" whose "emanation" is evil. For the One God reveals Himself to us as the three Persons of the Holy Trinity.
What Pannenberg is attempting to do in this work is just as its title indicates: He is working towards the development of a theology of nature, or a theology of the creation. And he clearly sees that such a theology would be trinitarian in concept. He feels a dialogue with natural scientists is indispensable to the development of this theology. He writes:
"Perhaps a renewed doctrine of the Trinity would combine the Logos doctrine of the ancient church with contemporary information theory and recognize the activity of the divine spirit in the self-transcendence of life and its evolution [or to borrow a term from science, its "emergence"]. Only a Trinitarian theology is able to meet effectively the emancipation of the concept of the world that Newton had in mind -- that is, the mechanical description of nature that is not only a theoretical construction but takes place in the actual processes of the world itself. A Christian theology of creation will be able to develop a description that does justice to this emancipation of the world process and at the same time removes its disassociation from its divine origin only by way of the theology of the Trinity, in a perspective of the history of salvation. In this way it will also cope with the critique of Leibnitz insofar as as Newton's idea of God was not commensurate with this task. However, a theology of nature must not go back behind Newton's thought on the presence of God with his creatures through space and time, if theology is to avoid the spell of a powerless dualism of spirit and matter."
Ted Peters, Pannenberg's editor, writes of him:
"Perhaps the most startling and dramatic contribution of Wolfhart Pannenberg to recent theological discussion has been the initiative he takes in posing theological questions to natural scientists. Whereas most of the religious community timidly seeks ways to incorporate the worldview of twentieth-century physics and biology by adjusting the religious vision accordingly, Pannenberg has reversed the process. Rather than simply respond to scientific theories as if they come to us prepackaged and complete, the Munich theologican criticizes the scientifc vision of nature as incomplete.... Unless God is properly considered, he argues, a scientific theory cannot fully comprehend the reality of the world it seeks to explain. The natural world is a creature of a creating God, and unless this is understood, the natural world itself cannot be understood."
Man, them's fighting words! :^)
Peters also notes this: "Pannenberg places the eternal logos not in the category of uniform laws of nature but rather in that of contingent events. The logos is not the abstract but the concrete order of the created world. The logos is not a timeless structure; rather, it is the actual historically derived principle by which the created world will attain its unity and fulfillment."
In short, truly it has been said: "The Word was made Flesh...." It seems to me this happened at the Creation (metaphorically speaking), just as it happened at the Incarnation, both events part of the historical world process. Or so it seems to me, FWIW.
Thanks so much for writing, cornelis.
Yes Diamond. That seems to be the point that needs to be made these days. I am hopeful on that score.
cordially,
bb
The quantum vacuum seems to be something. At least, if one is to assess it by its putative "effects" -- some of which, at least, have been rigorously demonstrated under immaculate laboratory conditions. And if the collection of all such experiments to date were considered dispositive to prove the case, I would agree with you -- this would mean that the QV is real and so has a Cause.
En Sof, however, does not seem to fall within the scope of any known human concept of "nothing" -- or of any demonstrated human ability to fully, consciously, finally understand a concept such as "Nothing." Plato called it Chora, "Space (Necessity)". The Arabs of the Middle Ages invented "Zero" to account for its persistent recurrence -- if only as inferred by its persistent "absence" in the formulations of the mathematics of their day -- and also in actual, lived human experience.
But understanding this ancient question seems no longer relevant in a world in which imaginary numbers are often useful and needed (depending on the problem); and rightly so -- so long as we do not forget the logical basis on which imaginary numbers rest.
Diamond, thank you so much for writing.
Plotinian--Kabbalist version appears in the 13th c.--emanation is something they struggled against. Gregory is one author who combined trinitarian theology with cosmology and for whom the incarnation is analogous to creation.
We have two extremes, (a) Stoicism--Kant and co. loved the likes of Sextus Empiricus, I hear--with a world-immanent divine force, and (b) Neoplatonist mysticism, with a transcendence that leaves creation limping into the abyss. Both were unacceptable for Christianity which forged right between the two.
Thing is--who created God? It's really very simple. God created the Universe, then He created Himself. What would Aristotle know, he was a botanist.
"All, I say, with any insight, however moderate, into the nature of things, know that the world's Creator laid time and space as a background to receive what was to be; on this he builds the universe. It is not possible that anything which has come or is now coming into being by way of creation can be independent of space or time. But the existence which is all-sufficient, everlasting, world-enveloping is not in space, nor in time: it is before these, above these in an ineffable way; self-contained,
Zero came out of India, by the way. There is no such thing as a total vacuum, not even between the galaxies. There is something there, even if it is simply crisscrossing lightwaves. Every cubic inch of space and vacuum is filled with particles, fields, and processes even inside a steel perfect sphere superconducting goldplated vacuum chamber pumped absolutely dry and chilled to absolute zero if you could do that.
The whole push in the Platonist tradition was for the human person to remain in existence. Unlike the danger present in the Stoic identity with cyclical nature, a danger that admitted the justice of death, not only for the individual, but for the universe (ekpurosis), Platonic philosophy worked away from its identity with the material cosmos to save itself from obliteration. It's a worthy effort and without it, there is not that remains for us to say that "things are not the way they are supposed to be."
Anyhow, this identity with the fundamental nature of the universe, was not only pushed toward the immaterial, but also the intellectual. And when later the intellectual proved too dry, neoplatonism resorted to going even beyond that, to wait for the sudden poof into the transcendent beyond about which really nothing can said. The way up through intellect was the flip-side of dislike of living in a body and the taxing diversity of a sensible/intelligible world.
But short of that escape, there was still a lot of emphasis on nous or intellect as the locus (having forgotten all that Socrates said about the character of "human wisdom")for an identity with the universal structure. Origen still thinks nous is the higgs-boson where we touch base with what matters.
For Gregory, the identity is best not found in intellect and this is why. There is a likeness in intellect, but intellect is rather the faculty that directs over the cosmos, not toward the divine. The nous is the sophia is the logos (small l, if you like). The real connection for him is simply the desire to be toward the divine that transcends. The creation of man admits a dance of desire.
All that that means is, the early bird gets the worm.
Yet IMHO, nothing is so d*mned transcendent that it does not have application to the most humble immanent conditions pertaining to life here on earth. IMHO. Either view in isolation was unacceptable for Christian philosophy, which forged the way between the two in order to reconcile them....
In other words, cornelis -- assuming either/or/both these visions were to prove legitimate, then no wonder we humans today are in search of God -- whose Truth alone could reconcile them.
I think the point might be that human beings ought every once in a while to get their nose out of doctrine, and try on God-given reality for size. Doctrine is enormously helpful. But unless a person eventually can verify it spiritually -- that is, by means of the light and grace of the Holy Spirit -- then it cannot, and will not, change a human soul.
And reformation, renovation, of the life of the soul seems to be the main "function" or purpose of the Holy Spirit....
If you mean to suggest (personally I find this doubtful) that you have elucidated a way that can heal the breach between stoicism and Neoplatonist mysticism -- as you define the terms of this debate -- without recourse to Spirit, then I'm truly looking forward to your elaboration of this problem.
Especially as, personally, I'm not exactly a Stoic -- the idea of a world-immanent divine force is risible to me on its face. Nor am I a Neoplatonist: I try to take my "classical Greeks," "straight." (Hold the vermouth, hold the onion/olive.)
But I will say that, at some deeply profound level, I believe the Creation and the Incarnation are truly "analogous" events.
We are really wandering far from the common field this evening, my friend. My thanks for your insights.
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