Today’s Post

Last week we returned to the question of God, and how God could be understood in a ‘secular’ sense, that is, from a non-religious perspective in keeping with the title of this blog, “The Secular Side of God”.  Understanding God as ‘the ground of being’, the agency by which the universe marches toward increased complexity, offers a starting point for understanding how this complexity can be seen as it appears in ever higher states until it reaches (so far) the human person.

Thus far, while this might establish God as a ‘principle’ by which the universe evolves towards greater complexity, it raises the question of God’s ‘personness’.  How does such a secular approach square with the Western religious concept that ‘He’ is somehow ‘personal’? Without this characteristic, isn’t God the same disinterested creator understood by the Deists?

Is God a Person?

One of the most common characteristics attributed to God by Western religion is that of ‘personness’.  In this perception, God is ‘someone’ with which each person can have a specific and tangible relationship, one through which the person is enriched.

The Jewish tradition understood that while God might be supernatural, there was connection possible between ‘Himself’ and ‘His’ creation. While the Jews were one of the first people to worship a single god, their tradition does not seem to be concerned with how God creates, much less how God is in ‘himself’, apart from ‘His’ relationship with creation.  Their perception of God is always perceived ‘in relationship’.   Whatever, whoever and however ‘He’ is apart from this relationship is of less interest to the writers of scripture than how ‘He’ manifests ‘himself’ to human persons.

Jonathan Sacks contrasts the translation of God’s statement of “His” being in the Old Testament from the Jewish “I will be where and how I will be” to the Western translation in Greek, “I am who am”.  This translation from Hebrew to Greek imposes a subtle but important change to how God is understood differently between the two religions. While the Christian understanding of God is static, immutable and constant, it omits the Jewish perspective of a ‘future tense’ in the Greek translation.  Effectively, the Jewish understanding of God admits to our greater understanding as we evolve, as well as a more immediate connection to ‘Him”.

This ‘future tense’ noted by Sacks is the key to understanding the essential connection between ‘person’ and ‘God’.  Looking at the concept of God as Teilhard does, in the context of ‘evolution’, this ‘principle of becoming’ (without which evolution would not occur) itself can be seen in the ever new ‘states’ which appear as evolution proceeds.   It goes from the nuclear forces by which atoms are forged, through the chemical forces which shape molecules, and on up the evolutionary chain, following the axis of increasing complexity, until (so far) it manifests itself in the energy by which human persons unite in such a way in which they are enriched.

Thus, while the hermeneutic of the value of ‘personness’ can be found in both Judaism and Christianity, it is an emergent characteristic of evolution.

The characteristics of this agent of evolution in the emergence of matter from the ‘primordial soup’ of the Big Bang, while not in themselves personal, are nonetheless the basis for the eventual emergence of ‘personness’.  Just as God is the agency of gravity, electromagnetic forces, chemical reactions and so on, ‘He’ is therefore the ‘agent’ of the ontological energy by which evolution continues in the human person.

The Personal Universe

Teilhard takes this insight a little further.  He recognizes that a universal characteristic of reality can be seen in the passage from energy to matter to thought on our infinitesimal speck of the immense universe.  The characteristic of increasing complexity as seen on our planet is evidence of the same ‘axis of increased complexity’ that functions everywhere in the cosmos.

In keeping with the ‘Standard Model’ of Physics, Teilhard notes that every product of universal evolution is composed of basic elements, such as quarks, which evolve into more complex entities, such as atoms and molecules.  Where conditions permit, these components will find ways to assemble themselves into centered, mobile and therefore increasingly complex entities such as cells.  In their continued ‘complexification’ these entities will continue their evolution, as they did on Earth, towards more complexity.  At each step, as happened here, entities can, conditions permitting, evolve more complex ways to unite, produce more complex and differentiated entities, and so on to a level which eventually becomes aware of its awareness.  Our common term for such a level is ‘personness’.

How will such entities elsewhere be different from human persons?  It’s impossible to tell, but other molecules might be capable of the complexification of our carbon and its fruitful alliance with oxygen.   Certainly at the biological level on our planet, without the K-T extinction (which stopped evolution of the dinosaurs), the foremost thinking entity on our planet might have evolved to be reptilian rather than mammalian.  The basic principle of evolution seems to be ‘end state agnostic’, and open to the emergence of any one (or all) creatures which possess ‘reflective’ powers similar to ours.

As Stephen Jay Gould famously said:

“If the evolutionary tape were played again, human life would not be expected.  In fact, even if it were replayed a million times or more, man would not be expected.”

  (Of course, Gould’s statement, meant to diminish what he saw as  ”human arrogance supporting the belief in God” did not take into account the probability that each of these ‘replays’, conditions permitting, would eventually lead to some sort of reflective consciousness.)

In Teilhard’s insight, all matter is capable of such evolution, and, where conditions exist to allow it, eventually consciousness aware of its existence will emerge.   Since such ‘consciousness aware of itself’ is a fruit of such increase of complexity, seemingly inevitable in all evolving systems (conditions permitting), Teilhard uses the term ‘Personal’ to describe the universe.

The Next Post

Last week we returned to the question of God, in keeping with the title of this blog: “The Secular Side of God”.   We took a relook at how God can be understood as the basic agent of evolution which over time adds a quantum of complexity to each new product.

This week we expanded this rehash to see how God can be considered as personal, engaged by evolution’s products as they become aware of not only their evolution but of the unique consciousness by which they become persons.  This unique level of consciousness, and the awareness that by possessing it we are not only all part of the same ‘tree of evolution’, but that increased awareness of it, and more importantly, cooperation with it is the only way that we can insure the continued evolution of both ourselves and our species.

Next week we will take a look at how such an awakening to this ‘spark of becoming’, effectively the ‘Divine Spark’ that we all possess, is a cornerstone to our continued march towards the future.