Peculiar Assumptions of Matter and Mind

Every culture develops a set of basic assumptions about the way things are and the way things ought to be. They are the invisible water we swim in: Things so "obviously true" that no one bothers to question them. Yet when we look back through history, many of these foundational certainties look rather peculiar and even utterly unfounded to later societies (which, to be fair, are busily constructing their own collection of peculiar and unfounded assumptions to be deconstructed by future generations).

Consider the sheer variety of what humans have taken as "common sense." In hunter-gatherer and ancient societies, it was simply taken for granted that places and spaces were indwelt by spiritual forces and that the world was literally "full of gods". Move forward into the empires and monarchies of history, and people were utterly convinced of the "Divine Right of Kings". It was assumed that God (or the gods) specifically handpicked one inbred aristocratic family to rule over everyone else, and that questioning the king’s tax policy was tantamount to cosmic treason. Even the bright minds of the Enlightenment and Victorian eras had their invisible crutches: For centuries, physicists were certain that space had to be filled with an invisible, weightless jelly called "luminiferous ether" just so light would have something to ripple through.

Then there are the widespread everyday assumptions that can be downright hilarious in hindsight. For over a millennium, the height of Western medical science assumed that human health was governed by four bodily fluids— or "humors"— meaning that whether you had a fever, a bad mood, or a head cold, the obvious solution was to drain a pint of your blood or cover you in leeches. For centuries, Europeans assumed that bathing in water would open your pores to pestilence, that bad smells literally were disease, and, when the locomotive was first invented, that traveling at the breakneck speed of thirty miles per hour would cause a woman’s uterus to fly right out of her body.

It is easy to chuckle at leeches and the Divine Right of Kings from our perch in the twenty-first century, assuming we have finally traded myth for pure, objective fact. Yet we too have developed a rather peculiar habit of thinking in our own culture: 

Theosis in God but Not as God: A Trinitarian Map of Panentheistic Participation

To dive into the deep pool of how we participate in God through Christ requires wading out of the shallow, legalistic courtrooms of modern Western nominalism. When we do this, we enter into an intoxicating, transfiguring universe of sacramental participation. For centuries, the modern religious imagination has been flattened by an ontology of fragmentation: A worldview that presumes human beings are completely autonomous individuals marooned in a mechanical material order, waiting for a distant, monarchical deity to issue legal declarations (or drop occasional pieces of propositional information) across the cosmic divide. In this framework, salvation is reduced to a transactional shift in status: The celestial ledger is balanced, a sentence is commuted, and the creature remains structurally unchanged.

The ancient consensus of the historic Church offers a beautifully inverted vision. Salvation is not a legal transaction. Instead it is theosis: The progressive, ontological deification of the human person. As the Apostle Peter boldly declared, we are created to become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). We are made to be thoroughly enmeshed in the Divine life, caught up in the eternal perichoresis of the Trinity: The dynamic, self-giving dance of Love shared between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Yet, this breathtaking claim immediately confronts us with a profound metaphysical conundrum: If the human person is genuinely drawn into the inner life of the Godhead, how do we preserve the absolute boundary between the Creator and the creature? How can we truly participate in God through Christ without collapsing into a form of raw pantheism in which we are God, or without assuming that we become distinct, autonomous "Christs" who are co-equal to the Father, Son, and Spirit?

To chart a path through this mystery, we can construct a tentative conceptual map of genuine participation. The goal of this essay is to demonstrate that theosis is a reality wherein the human person is fully divinized in God without ever becoming God as God. By synthesizing the Eastern Orthodox distinction between the divine essence and energies with the phenomenological insights of C.S. Lewis and the dual-aspect personal idealism of Anglican philosopher Keith Ward, I think we can articulate a robust, inclusive Christian panentheism. I am writing this as a kind of theological hypothesis, not a certainty. My hope that this map can to safeguard both the absolute, unapproachable transcendence of the Divine Source and the total, transfiguring immanence of the Divine Spirit working within and among us.

From Revelation to Reason to Research: How Theology births Philosophy to birth Science

An adapted version of the original cartoon found on the facepage.

For ages theology was seen as the "Queen" of the sciences, holding monarchical power over all "lesser" disciplines, from the humanities to law to "natural philosophy" (which in time evolved into the natural sciences, and then grew to include the social sciences). For some exclusivist religions, science is even viewed as an intruder into the realm of theology, to be vigorously disputed and defeated by theological truth. In response, a common secular myth arose that science is both triumphant over, and antithetical to, religion and theology. This comforting story replaces the earlier secular myth which put philosophy in the victor's position over theology. 

Indeed, in our contemporary discourse there are even scientific voices saying that science has replaced not only theology, but also the philosophy that birthed it. Scientists from Stephen Hawking to Neil deGrasse Tyson to Lawrence Krauss to Sam Harris have all said that philosophy is dying (or dead), and we only need science to pursue our evolution as a species. As comforting as these mythologies of secular triumph may be, we may also wonder if they are not throwing the metaphysical baby out with the cultural bathwater. Is it possible that each of these disciplines— theology, philosophy, and science— all have interdependent origins which implicate each in the other, and as a result they need each other to help us live our fullest lives? Perhaps there are healthier alternatives to the winner-takes-all myths of a collapsing modernity. 

Panentheism: Why matter Matters

In our modern age, we are often haunted by a "disenchanted" world: A cosmos where matter is viewed as mere mechanical "stuff" and God is reimagined as a distant watchmaker who has long since retreated from his creation. This theological poverty, which often drifts into a "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism," leaves many feeling spiritually homeless in a universe that seems indifferent to our existence. However, the ancient Christian worldview offers a far more vibrant and "thick" description of reality. By returning to the conviction that the Infinite Creator is not just "out there" but "in here," upholding every atom by the power of the Spirit, we find ourselves standing on holy ground. As the Apostle Paul reminded the philosophers of Athens, God is the one in whom "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

The thoughts presented here are an invitation to move beyond the shallow waters of modern nominalism and dive into the deep pool of Panentheism, Theosis, and Sacraments. We will explore how the ancient Church understood salvation not as a legal transaction in a heavenly courtroom, but as a transfiguring union with God: A process where we become, as the Apostle Peter wrote, "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). We will see how the physical world, far from being a distraction from the spiritual life, is actually the primary laboratory of God's presence, where humble elements like bread, wine, and water become the conduits of Divine energy. Drawing on the insights of thinkers like St. Athanasius, who famously argued that "God became human so that humans might become divine", we find that matter is not a prison for the soul but a "theophany", a visible showing of God’s invisible glory.

As we navigate the crucial distinction between a God who is separate from creation and a God who is distinct within it, we begin to see that the physical universe is the perfect vessel for Divine self-expression. Matter matters because it is the medium through which the infinite Creator relates to the finite creature, a truth that reaches its breathtaking climax in the person of Jesus Christ. For the curious mind seeking a faith that is both intellectually rigorous and deeply embodied, it becomes evident that panentheism is a logical corollary which naturally flows from the Trinity and Incarnation.

On the Importance of being Oysters

An Exploration of Humanism via Oysterhood

I am reading through Daniel Klein's wonderful little book "Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live." Starting on page 81 he has a wonderful meditation on the David Hume quote “The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.” Klein makes a lot of great points there which lead back to meaningfulness and fulfillment in life, despite our existential smallness. I don't want to recount his points here (because he does a better job with his ideas than I would, and you should read the book). But I want to supplement his insights with my own wonderings as I read Hume's nihilist assessment of the importance of both man and oyster.

Wittgenstein and Hope beyond hope

Recently a friend of mine posted a neat quote by Wittgenstein:

One can imagine an animal angry, fearful, sad, joyful, startled. But hopeful? And why not? A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe that his master will come the day after tomorrow? —And what can he not do here? —How do I do it? — What answer am I supposed to give to this?Can only those hope who can talk? Only those who have mastered the use of language? That is to say, the manifestations of hope are modifications of this complicated form of life. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Philosophy of Psychology — a Fragment,” i.)

The Panentheism of Creation in Christ

Recently a friend online asked me a great question: "Can you tell me why you think (if you do) the creature / Creator distinction is essential to affirm?"

As in many things, the fact of the Incarnation and the paradoxical spirituality that flows from Christ makes it difficult to affirm or deny there is an absolute distinction between Creator and creation. Christianity is full of paradoxes in which two sides must be held in tension for Truth to be encountered: Christ is human AND divine; God is one AND many; Divine Providence AND Free Will; Grace AND Works; etc. One of these paradoxes is that Creation is in God, AND also distinct from God. Here’s the two poles I try to steer between:

Wisdom after Bulgakov: A Trinitarian Sophiology

I recently had an extended discussion with a couple of friends about the nature of Divine Wisdom, which is called Sophia (in Greek) and Hokhmah (in Hebrew). We find this Divine Wisdom as a feminine co-creator with God in Proverbs 8, and as the Creative Spirit sent by God to create and sustain the world in Wisdom 7. Indeed, Wisdom is strongly correlated as the character trait that is associated with God's Spirit and those indwelt by God's Spirit (cf. Deut. 34.9; Is. 11.2; Dan. 5.11, 14; Wis. 1.6; 7.7, 22; 9.17; Sir. 39.6; Acts 6.3, 10; 1 Cor. 2.4, 13; 12.8; Eph. 1.17). Anytime any person or chain of events is guided by God's will toward God's ends, this is the gift of Wisdom at work gently but persistently influencing things in a Godward direction. Thus, it is God's Spirit who is ultimately active to shape and mold and guide creation to fulfillment in its Creator, as the Spirit strives and suffers with us to bring about the new birth of Creation (cf. Romans 8).

All is Center: CS Lewis’ vision of the Great Dance

Frequently I have discussions with people who want to de-center humanity from the most important place in the universe, in order to help us realize that we are part of a greater whole as people who live interdependently with the rest of creation. This attempt is noble, because many have misused Scriptures such as Genesis 1 where it tells the first humans they are “made in God’s image” to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and rule it” along with the creatures who dwell on Earth. A dominionist reading of this can lead to a theological form of “manifest destiny” which makes humans entitled to pillage and pollute creation in order to gratify selfish desires for consumption and domination. 

The Metaphysics of Materialism

Materialist determinism is a perpetually popular view in the modern world. It is the metaphysical viewpoint which denies metaphysics by positing that: 1. Reality is made of matter and only matter. The only reality is matter and the physical forces which operate within material interaction. This raises the thorny question of what exactly matter is. But let’s bracket this and assume there is something called “matter”, and it is the only constituent of reality (as opposed to “spirit” or “mind” or “consciousness”). 2. The events in reality are causally determined by material laws and forces, such that even the workings of mind and consciousness are determined by the physical states which preceded them. There is no free will or choice. All are illusory experiences formed in brains after events have happened. All phenomena can be fully explained in a mechanistic way through the matter and forces at work in an event, without any reference to choices or intentions or motives or thoughts.

However, as elegant as materialist determinism seems to be, it has some rather impractical and non-elegant implications. 

De Chardin on the necessity of evil in a finite creation

For three decades I have actively pondered and written on the problem of evil and sin. We could sum it up this way: If God is so good, how come life is often so bad? This problem has no one single answer, and is addressed in several overlapping perspectives. But today I was again reading some of the writings of the scientist-theologian Teilhard De Chardin, and he helped me describe yet another perspective that has been bubbling up inside my prayer and meditation for a decade or more. Over 100 years ago, he wrote this:

“We often represent God to ourselves as being able to draw from non-being a world without sorrows, faults, dangers--a world in which there is no damage, no breakage. This is a conceptual fantasy, and makes it impossible to solve the problem of evil. No, we have to accept that in spite of his power God cannot obtain a creature united to himself without necessarily engaging in a struggle with some evil.” (Teilhard De Chardin, Christianity and Evolution: Reflections on Science and Religion, location 360)

In this, and the rest of the essay after this, I hear him saying the following:

Theological Topology: Placing the Trinity in Reality

At first glance, topology and theology have nothing to do with each other. Theology, on one hand, is "the rational discussion of God" (from the Greek words "theos" meaning God, and "logia" meaning study of, or reasoned discourse about). Topology, on the other hand, is the study of geometric properties and spatial relations between various kinds of objects in space, and the way in which constituent parts are interrelated or arranged. So, theology seems to deal with an Ultimate Reality beyond our world, while topology deals with spatial relations within our world. Nothing could be more different. It is like comparing apples to oranges, or Infinite Being to mere beings.

When Words Fail

How both Theistic and Nontheistic language fails to describe Ultimate Reality

In the constant back and forth between Theists and Nontheists, one of the frequent criticisms hurled from both sides regards the problem of language. Both sides claim that that other side slides into nonsensical or tautological language that fails to say anything about Reality. At some point, each side gets to ideas that are so foundational, so axiological, to their interpretive framework, that all they can say is "it is what it is".

What is interesting to me is that this point of linguistic "no return" is precisely at the same point and regarding the same issues. This break in meaningful, non-tautological language happens precisely at the ultimate origin, the ultimate value, and the ultimate destiny of all things. At these three points both the Theist and the Nontheist are effectively reduced to silence. This is when our words fail: When we lack the ability and even the concepts necessary to describe the ultimate nature of the Reality we find ourselves in.

Mundane Mysticism

Why do we look for a Divine Realm 
Of depth and richness 
Beyond the elaborately embroidered world 
We live and move and exist within? 
Why do we long for a heaven 
Outside of earth? 

The Persistence of the Fact/Value Distinction

I have encountered several attempts to derive moral values from empirical observation, from "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" by angry atheist Sam Harris, to the Lobster hierarchies of neoconservative hero Jordan Peterson. Most of these attempts revolve around the mundane rhetorical strategy of "we observed these behaviors consistently in nature, which means they must be ethically normative for humans". Which of course is the very definition of the naturalistic fallacy in logic. Furthermore, most of the attempts to collapse the fact/value distinction depend on a metaphysics of eliminative materialism, while sneaking in a transcendent value for “life” or “actualization” without acknowledging it. 

For instance, the argument is often made that “ought” is simply a function of “could”, and “could” is simply a function of “is”. The way things are implies certain possibilities about how they could be, when extended through a causal chain of events. “Ought” simply takes one or more of these potential states and designates it as preferable to other potential states. Generally, the preferable states are those that maximize life and health and creative capacity. Why are these states preferable? Because in evolutionary biology we see that creatures seek to maximize survival through adaptation, therefore the universal drive to maximize life is something like an empirical fact. Thus the “ought” of maximizing life is dissolved into the “is” of evolutionary observation. 

But notice the transcendent value that has been assumed and snuck in: That life ought to be preserved and maximized. Why? 

Five Persistent Illusions: Ownership, Separation, Time, Death, and Self

Four seductive myths beguile us, and five persistent illusions blind us to the Reality of Love that we live and move and exist within: Ownership, Separation, Time, Death, and Self. 

On Chins and Spandrels, God and Gaps

The other day I had a conversation with a student and a biology teacher about whether human chins have a purpose. Yes, chins. As in the outcropping of bone beneath your lower lip. That kind of chin. 

Apparently, humans are the only animals to have a chin, according to this article which was sent to me by the teacher. In this article, it compares the evolution of chins to Spandrels in classical architecture. And since I totally tend to geek out on stuff that interests me, this sent me down a couple-hour-long rabbit hole reading where the idea of Spandrels came from and how they are applied to evolutionary biology, as well as some of the pushback against Spandrels as an analogy to evolution. 

Models of Metaphysical Cosmology

In my philosophy class my students are trying to wrap their minds around what is different about how Plato and Aristotle viewed Reality, and how this relates to other thinkers and models of Reality. Basically, Plato is seen as the prototypical rationalist, viewing Reality from the "top down", while Aristotle is seen as a proto-empiricist, viewing Reality from the "bottom up". If this is already confusing, Crash Course has a nice summary HERE.

Anyway, there are many terms that could be used for comparing different views of how to understand the essence of Reality. In one way, we are discussing Metaphysics, because it is a discussion of how the realm of physical reality might relate to "higher" or more fundamental levels of reality (if there are such levels). In another way, we are discussing Ontology, because we are trying to understand what the natures of things are, and what are the essential aspects that make a thing what it is. In a final sense, we are discussing Cosmology, because we are seeking to understand the nature of the Universe (the Cosmos) in relation to various ways of understanding Ultimate Reality. 

So, I have chosen to call it "Models of Metaphysical Cosmology". I know people may disagree, but it's what I will go with right now. My summary chart for teaching can be seen by clicking the JPEG at the top of this post, or by clicking on THIS PDF.

And, if you are up for more charts, you can see my whole collection of charts for teaching Religion, Scripture, Theology, and Philosophy HERE. 

Credo: The Story that Reads Us [A Mini-Systemic Theology]

This was originally written in 2006 in partial fulfillment of requirements for Systematic Theology at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. It is fairly representative of my current thought, although in several ways I have built on, or superseded, what is written here. This is especially true in matters dealing with Science, World Religions, and Socio-Economic Justice.

This is the FULL 18,000 word original version that was trimmed to around 10,000 words to be turned in. Note that all endnotes have been removed from this version, due to the limitations of the blog format. However, all sources cited and consulted are found at the end of the essay.

A Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, send forth your Spirit that I may say what needs to be said, in space allowed, and bear witness fully to your Father's Glory and His Story which writes us all. Amen+

A Theology of Jesus and Aliens

I recently got into a discussion with someone about the growing evidence that our planet has been visited by Extraterrestrial Beings for some time now. My friend speculated that perhaps God and Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha could have been aliens. He ended his statement with "one thing is certain, Earth isn't special enough to be the only planet that has life. Not even close."

I have written bits and pieces about this in other places, speculating about how aliens could be tied into Christian Theology and World Religions (if aliens exist at all). I have speculated about how alien life could tie into an overall framework to understand why God made the world, as well as how alien life might be part of the evidence for God's existence. But I have never written a full description of why I think aliens probably exist, and how we might understand their possible visitation to our planet. That is what I would like to do here.