The Divine Universe

In 1945 an Arab peasant discovered some big earthenware jars hidden in a cave. They contained thirteen ancient Coptic codices (the first books). Scholars soon identified them as the writings of Christians called ‘Gnostics’, from gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge. The Gnostics’ knowledge was not facts and figures but a form of knowing through mystical experience and intuition.

In the first and second centuries, Irenaeus, Tertulius, Origen and other leaders of the northern Mediterranean Church fiercely opposed these ‘divergent’ Christians, mostly from Egypt and, before about 1970, it was only through their vitriolic writings that scholars knew about Gnosticism. Studying these codices, however, scholars have come to revise their understanding of Gnosticism and indeed of early Christianity.

The theology of our Catholic and Protestant Christianity was basically fixed at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, largely through the initiative of the newly converted Emperor Constantine. The Nicene chuirch leaders decided by a substantial majority, that Jesus was God. Gnostic Christians did not take so extreme a position. So, by Constantine’s edict, it became a criminal offence to possess any Gnostic literature, and everything they could find was destroyed (but they  missed the manuscripts hidden at Nag Hammadi). So Christendom became divided between those who were part of the Imperial establishment and those who were persecuted by it.

Gnostic writings contain some extravagantly fanciful cosmological and mythical notions, but there is more to them than that. They seem more ‘Eastern’ than Western; more like Hinduism and Buddhism. For example, they emphasise the femininity as well as the masculinity of God, and also the presence of God in physical nature, especially within us. They have much in common with Celtic Christianity, which was also suppressed after Augustine went to England in 597 CE, to establish Roman Christianity there.

Whether we like to admit it or not, both Catholic and Protestant churches originate in and are basically modelled on the religion, polity and structure of imperial Rome: authoritarian, dogmatic, supernaturalist and with an elaborate, mostly male dominated hierarchy. However, what we might call ‘Constantinian Christianity’ has the advantage of being relatively free of extravagant myth and fantasy, and it is, for the most part, rational and coherent.

Western Christianity has adapted to Western culture as a whole, but many people are beginning to realise that we become aridly and even fatally materialistic and, on the other hand, our religion has become too supernaturalistic: focussed on a God who is wholly other, out there in a distant heaven, doing magical things in the sacraments and, for his favourites, by supernatural intervention. However, there has recently been a growing interest in the more nature-centred Celtic Christianity, and also in Eastern religion and philosophy. This has provided a more sympathetic environment for studying the Gnostic writings. Ordinary Christians, including clergy, now read with interest such writings as The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Philip and The Gospel of Truth.

There are significant changes in the secular world too. Very important has been the scientific discoveries of the last hundred years, particularly in physics, cosmology and mathematics. Our understanding of matter has been revolutionised through quantum theory. What we once thought to be a collection of little round things whizzing about now turns out to be a complex dance of energy without anything recognisably substantial at all. It blurs the distinction between the material and non-material or spiritual. Our understanding of space and time has also been radically changed. Instead of a rigid sort of three-dimensional box, grid-like concept of space, and a linear time with a universal ‘now’ flowing from past to future, Einstein has given us a four-dimensional space-time continuum in which space-time is plastic, moulded by matter and energy, and there is no universal ‘now’.

Changed thinking among some theologians and virtually all scientists has coincided with a new rapport between the two. Professor Robert Russell, who occupies chairs in both physics and theology at U.C.L.A, is researching the notion of the bodily resurrection of Jesus as an evolutionary breakthrough, manifesting new laws of nature in the same way that the emergence of living organisms manifested new laws of nature four billion years ago, and the emergence of mind in material brains about 600 million years ago.

It can be argued that life is an essential property of the whole universe from the beginning and that it became materially embodied when the universe reached a certain level of physical complexity. Russell’s theory suggests that life became embodied in a new, immortal form 2000 years ago, beginning with Jesus, and that this is a landmark in cosmic evolution. For 2000 years (a mere tick of the clock in cosmic terms) the universe has been significantly different and more complex. Jesus’ resurrection blurs the absolute distinction between life and death.

In theology, old and forgotten insights are being rediscovered. As early as 1926, Earnest Holmes declared that God is all there is in the universe and that ‘God is not … a person (a discrete entity), but a Universal Presence. Ecological theologian, Sallie McFague, in her 1996 book Body of God, argues, like Paul (Col.1:15-17) and John (1:1-14), that God is incarnate in the whole universe.

Contemporary with Holmes, philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, said that mind is also an essential property of the whole universe from the beginning, even in the smallest particles of matter. Australian physicist, Charles Birch, explains this theory in easier language than Whitehead’s in a new book, Science and Soul, published last year.

To some, all this will seem as fantastic as parts of the Gnostic writings did to their more rationalistic contemporaries. But these are not really new ideas (see my references to Paul and John above). We’ve become so settled with the idea that the incarnation was simply God coming down from heaven in human form for a brief period that the idea of the Cosmic Christ in the New Testament has been ignored. We’ve also become so brainwashed into believing that God is exclusively male that the idea of God’s femininity seems weird to us.

I said above that Gnosticism rested upon mystical experience rather than rational argument or historical evidence. Mystics have never been popular with the Church authorities and they have frequently been accused of heresy. They are introspective and individualistic and are difficult to discipline. There are mystics in every generation; ours is no exception, and some of them are Christian, contributing to what we might call a ‘new age’ Christianity. The mystically inclined authors of the Nag Hammadi codices are contributing significantly to changes in Western Christian thinking.