Trinity
Sunday
26 May 2013
Back in my
student days in Hartford, CT, I heard rumblings among some of the students that
science was in search of a Unified Field Theory (UFT) - a kind of single
explanation, or beautiful mathematical equation, that would "explain"
everything within a field. Einstein coined the term while trying to reconcile
relativity and electromagnetism. No UFT has yet been derived. Following
Einstein, as quantum mechanics began to unfold revealing even deeper and more
complex and even paradoxical aspects of the known universe, scientists set off
on a quest for a GUT - a Grand Unified
Theory of everything. The very fact that we humans can even conceive of such a
thing should force us to ponder that the most complex physical structure we
have ever encountered is just six inches this side of the eyepiece of the world’s
most powerful telescope - the human brain.
Christians
have entertained, since about the 4th century, a sort of GUT - The Trinity. The
Sunday after Pentecost is always celebrated as Trinity Sunday complete with
reflections on the historic creeds and singing of Saint Patrick's Breastplate,
perhaps the most elegant proclamation of just what we mean by The Trinity.
The Doctrine
of the Trinity is Christianity's attempt to describe our understanding of
reality and our experience of the Divine. As a doctrine, it must be imperfect
since whatever we attempt to say about God is necessarily limited compared to
the reality of the Divine. Every year for the past five or six year I have read
and re-read Science and The Trinity: TheChristian Encounter with Reality by The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, KBE,
FRS, past President of Queens College, Cambridge, Canon Theologian of
Liverpool, and yes, a theoretical physicist! I am just beginning to grasp his
argument - which is in all humility, and he is remarkably humble, to explore
the possibility that The Doctrine of the Trinity very well may be the GUT
science is looking for!
As
astonishing as his claim sounds, it shouldn't be. After all, thanks to the
Quran, the summary of 23 years of divine revelations to Muhammad, Muslim
culture was able to establish the first international House of Knowledge,
develop the precursor to germ theory leading to the establishment of hospitals
with wards for people with similar symptoms, remove cataracts with a hollow
needle, create municipal water purification systems, public water supplies and
even indoor plumbing, all while Christian Europe was muddling its way through
the dark ages more concerned with knocking one another off and putting serious
scientists like Galileo on trial for heresy. By which I mean, the symbiotic
relationship linking science and religion is not the problem 20th century
western civilization has made it out to be;
I cannot
adequately recount Polkinghnorne's thoughts on the subject, but to say, the man
is onto something - and anyone with a passing interest would do well to get his
book and spend a few years reading it and letting it percolate into your brain
cells and let the single most complex physical structure we have ever
encountered do the rest of the work!
For
instance, science has long held the view that the human ability to understand
the universe far exceeds "anything that could reasonably be considered
simply an evolutionary necessity, or as a
happy spin-off from that necessity. The universe has proved to be
astonishingly rationally transparent" p 63 And further, it is believed
that mathematically "beautiful"
equations prove most fruitful, while those that are ugly offer no hope for new
discovery. We are capable of understanding and describing the mysteries of the
universe. Polkinghorne finds that in Trinitarian terms our scientific ability
to "explore the rational beauty of the universe is seen to be a part of
the Father's gift of the imago Dei (the image of God) to humankind, and the beautiful rational order
of the universe is the imprint of the divine Logos [Word/Wisdom = the Son]
without whom was not anything made that was made (John 1:3). Whether
acknowledged or not, it is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth (John 15: 26)
who is at work in the truth-seeking community of scientists. That community's
repeated experiences of wonder at the disclosed order of the universe are, in
fact, tacit acts of the worship of its Creator." p65
Another
fundamental of Polkinghorne's analysis accepts that the Universe is more of a
Jazz Improvisation than a carefully written and orchestrated score - that is
both the universe and humankind are given freewill to unfold, or create
themselves, which is the essence of evolution. That is, the universe and
everything therein is not a static whole, but rather a dynamic becoming - a
result of God's own kenotic act of self-limitation, such that God allows
creatures to be themselves and make themselves. "A creation allowed to
make itself can be held to be a great good, but it has a necessary cost not
only in the blind alleys and extinctions that are the inescapable dark side of
the evolutionary process, but also in the very character of the processes of a
world in which evolution can take place." p 72 Translation: bad things can
and do happen as a result of a universe that is unreliable, also known
theologically as Theodicy. "That there is cancer in creation is not
something that a more competent or compassionate Creator could easily have
eliminated, but is the necessary cost of a creation allowed to make
itself." Polkinghorne then argues that the depth of the problem posed by
theodicy is only adequately met in Christian thinking by a Trinitarian
understanding of the Cross of Christ, seen as the event in which the incarnate
God truly shares to the uttermost in the travail of creation - Jesus is the
'fellow sufferer who understands,' or the One who is creation's partner in its
pain.
A final
thought about the Holy Spirit: the universe, it turns out, like humankind, is
by nature relational. Quantum theory implies that once two quantum entities
have interacted with each other, they remain mutually entangled however far
apart they may eventually separate. Things, like people, are interconnected
whether they want to be or not. That is, the subatomic world cannot be treated
atomistically! By analogy this challenges the individualistic atomism that is
so characteristic of contemporary thinking about human nature - particularly in
western civilization. This turns out to be true of the universe as a whole
which exists as a result of two opposing yet interconnected forces: the
explosive force of the Big Bang that propels the universe ever outward, and the
countervailing forces of gravity pulling matter together by the effects of what
has come to be called Dark Energy - perhaps substantiating what my dear friend
and colleague Dick Chiroff maintained all along - Dark Energy, the force and
source of the interconnectedness of all things, is, after all, the Holy Spirit.
It should of
course be stated forthrightly that none of this "proves" The Trinity
- but rather, the Trinity in these few instances, and numerous others that
Polkinghorne musters, does provide plausible ways of understanding the
universe, all that is seen and unseen (since it is a creation that is still and
forever becoming!). Perhaps a Trinitarian world view is a reasonable candidate
for a GUT after all.
A final
thought on this Trinity Sunday: eventually all this, even in the hands of
professionals like Polkinghorne, reaches limits to the completeness of our
understanding that can be achieved through the enterprises of theology - and
science. Yet, urges Polkinghorne, this should never deter us from attempting
the task before us, nor should it encourage us to settle prematurely for some
relatively undemanding form of understanding. Accounts that are truly
convincing can be expected to have a richness and complexity that demands our
best thinking. "It is scarcely surprising that only [demanding and complex
accounts will prove] even partially adequate to the exploration of the
inexhaustible riches of the Trinitarian God, the Ground of our existence and
the Source of our everlasting Hope." p117
In the name
of God
Earth maker
Pain bearer
Life
Sustainer
Amen.
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