The Divine Universe

From the atom to the galaxy, with everything in between, there is evidence of design (scientists call it order). From Newton onwards - the era of modern science - scientists have seen the universe as a complex machine. Since Einstein and Max Planck, however, relativity and quantum theory have led scientists to revise their perception of nature and the universe quite radically. We now have what might be called ‘post-modern’ science. Early last century Julian Huxley said, “Nature is not only weird, it is weirder than we can possibly imagine.”

Newton thought the universe was a static entity with internal movements as regular as clockwork. In 1927, Edwin Hubble observed the universe to be expanding. By reversing the process we have the Big Bang theory: that the universe has evolved from the infinitely small and unordered ’singularity’ to the incomprehensible complexity of our universe, including humankind.

This process of complexification is a process through random changes and a fundamental uncertainty about outcomes. The probability of the Universe developing as it has is incalculably small. It depends on extremely finely tuned ratios between the strength of energy fields and certain other physical factors. The process also includes the emergence of what seem at first to be fortuitous ‘vortices’ of increased order.

Thermodynamics theory holds that all closed systems decay towards uniform equilibrium – formless chaos. The universe is a closed system, so if this law of thermodynamics alone governed the universe, it would still expand and cool from the Big Bang, but it would be an almost uniform cloud of gas in almost perfect equilibrium. The evolution from chaos to order seems to contradict accepted theory. Scientists working in a new branch of physics, called ‘chaos’ or ‘complexity’ theory, are discovering how this anti-entropy or ‘negentropy’ is happening. Vortices of increased order referred to above have been observed and experimentally reproduced. It is a new field of study, but suffice it to say that no external agency is involved. It is a matter of delicately balanced conditions and tiny, random disturbances.

After fourteen billion years of such phenomena, where order emerges out of chaos, the human brain has evolved. But what is intelligence? It is more than just the brain. Psychologists measure intelligence quantitatively as the ability to make deductions from given data, but it is more complicated than that. It includes memory and intuition that transcends logic .

Most people associate mind and intelligence mainly with humans and only marginally with other highly evolved animals. We tend to regard humankind as separate from the rest of nature, a different order of being. In pre-modern times this was not so. People of the ancient Celtic tradition, medieval mystics like Saint Francis and Saint Ignatius Loyola and others, saw the whole of nature as an interrelated community. We see the same message in the Hebrew psalms. Today most scientists recognise that humankind is an integral, interrelated part of the universe. We are of the earth, a product of cosmic process, not outside observers or alien invaders.

Insofar as scientists recognise the existence of mind today, they do not confine it to humankind. True, it is manifested quite intensely in humans, but it doesn’t stop there. It appears less clearly in the higher animals and insects, and less still in the lower ones. Even plants seem clever. But although there is no detectable trace of intelligence in a rock, there is no definable cut-off point. Earth may be the cosmic centre of gravity for mind, or it may not be. There may be other concentrations in other places in the universe. Even though mind is not a material substance, it is still not unreasonable to suppose it is distributed through the universe, albeit very unequally, like matter. Some scientists have coined the term ‘psi field’, an energy which we have at present no means of measuring quantitatively.

To sum up: mind is a cosmic phenomenon that we cannot locate precisely. It is everywhere. It functions physically in the organs we call brains, but we cannot locate it there. Some have suggested that the cosmic mind directs the process of cosmic evolution, however limited it is by uncertainty and randomness. But that is metaphysics, not science.

Let us now turn to the religious idea of an intelligent universe. The Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity states that, while God is essentially spirit, ‘He’ has begotten, as the Nicene Creed says, a Son, a material ‘incarnation’ (embodiment) who shares fully the divine nature. The perfect human manifestation of this was Jesus, but Paul and others quickly realised that the incarnation was not merely a brief human event; it is a continuing cosmic event, spanning the whole of time. (Col. 1:15 - 17; John 1:1-3). Physicist Brian Swimme says that the universe is not a material object but a spiritual event. The whole universe, the “Cosmic Christ”, is God’s progressive physical self-manifestation in energy, matter, space and time.

When we speak of intelligence, it is only as we recognise it in ourselves, but in fact we refer to a transcendent quality of the whole universe. Ours is an intelligent universe. There are other abstract qualities we see in ourselves; ones we value and others we would rather not have. We need not baulk at seeing imperfection, unfinishedness, in God’s cosmic incarnation.

The Council of Chalcedon (415) declared that Jesus had two natures, human and divine, in what they called the ‘hypostatic union’. This somewhat technical abstraction has its roots in human experience. According to Paul, “Christ learned obedience through the things he suffered.” Perfection, even in Christ, is a process as well as an eternal state. Jesus is both perfect man and becoming-perfect man. This dual nature can also be attributed to the cosmic Christ, the universe. We can see the universe as both divine and physical. In it’s physical nature it is still in a process of becoming what it truly is.

So, to return to our riginal theme, I think we can see an intelligent universe, though not yet a perfectly wise one. Nevertheless it is still, to those who can see, full of miracles (signs) of the Father’s wisdom and the Spirit’s energy.

These are religious statements, yet they are not inconsistent with the new science of an organic, interrelated, evolving universe of fundamental simplicity and yet unimaginable and increasing complexity. For science, the universe is the ultimate mystery; it invites communication and intimacy but denies final comprehension. For believers, that is true of God too, transcendently so.

Almost the earliest indicators of the presence of Homo sapiens are religious artefacts; cave paintings, clay or stone images, standing stones or burial sites. What makes us human, even more certainly than toolmaking, is a sense of the numinous, a sense that has impelled us to objectify and represent the invisible entities or energies that evoke it. We speak of supernatural powers, but I am suspicious of the word ‘supernatural’. I believe that all things, including the numinous, the invisible and objects of our imagination, are part of nature; but not all are accessible to the technologies of science.

Sources of numinous experience have been objectified down the ages through material objects, a tree, an animal, a mountain, a particular location, or a work of art. Heaven exists only in our imaginations but, though it is not materially realised here and now, we instinctively dream of a perfect state of being, and there are material signs that indicate its nature and its approach.

In both ancient and contemporary religion there are objects and rites that we believe invoke the power of God. Christians call them sacraments, and we call the power of God ‘grace’. Sacraments have a long history and admittedly include, especially in earlier times, a certain amount of superstition. We believe our modern world is free of superstition, and theologians have refined our ideas about the sacraments accordingly.

There are those who believe that the sacraments still pose a risk of superstition and idolatry. In the Protestant wing of Christendom the idea of any non-material or spiritual content in the sacraments is discounted. They are simply formalities by which we affirm our religious identity and commitment. This also suggests that heaven has to be conceived of as a material entity in outer space. Not everyone can appreciate the carefully refined definitions and subtle abstractions and debates of Catholic theology. The high status of the exact sciences in our culture has also brought a new scepticism. I do not think, however, that there is a conflict between science and religion in the matter of sacraments. In fact I believe contemporary science opens the door to an enhanced understanding of them.

First, we must understand that the Christian sacraments are events, not material objects. There are material objects involved in sacramental rites: water, bread, wine, oil, for example. There are also special buildings, furniture, vessels and garments. But the Eucharist is not material objects, bread and wine; it is a social event and, for many, an affirmation of the sacredness of all matter. Baptism is not about water; it is about focussing faith and sharing our optimistic belief in divine benevolence. We believe that grace, the power of God, is invoked, but the effect is too subtle and uncertain to detect in any outward way. We can only define it in metaphorical or abstract language – member of Christ’s body, child of God and heir of the kingdom of heaven.

The seven official sacraments are not the sum of what we mean by sacrament. We are taught that a sacrament is “an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace”. There are many signs of grace in the world around us that are not religious rites – Medicine, Sans Frontier, the wisdom and courage of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, the compassion and diligence of dedicated welfare workers, the fortitude and cheerfulness of those who suffer great pain or hardship, the laughter of children who are in daily danger of death. In the Scriptures we read of the supreme sacramental event of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. In all this we can see the wisdom and love, the generosity, the steadfastness and the limitless patience of God.

But are we only to recognise the admirable and attractive things? There is conflict and violence at every level of nature, from galaxies colliding and stars exploding, to predatory violence between animals, including humans, and viruses struggling to prosper, causing disease and death. Are these signs of heaven or a benign God?

In the perfect or idealised sense of heaven and God, they are not direct signs. But how perfect is our understanding of perfection? Everywhere are signs of a process, a process from chaos to order in which death and rebirth are essential elements. They indicate change, evolution that points in the direction of perfect order and harmony, that we cannot even imagine. The ultimate sacrament is the universe. The universe is a miracle, a sign. The universe is not just a finite material object; it is an outward and visible sign of divine creativity, but also of a divine discontent, the divine will that nature should perfectly express God’s perfect being. It is an event, a process, a work in progress, like a growing child in tutelage.

More than any human parent, God lets the child learn by experience. At every stage the universe gains information and order from its past and becomes more mature and aware of itself. As Teilhard de Chardin put it, “God makes things make themselves”. Such wisdom, such generosity, such patience is greater than that of any human parents. Stress and anxiety compel us at times to intervene by force majeure.

Many people think that God does that, especially when something extraordinary happens. Although it is on the fringe of Christian orthodoxy, I personally think that is an illusion. It is quite reasonable to thank God when something good happens, and prayer certainly works, but it doesn’t work in a magical way. Jesus emphasised this many times: “Your faith has made you whole.” It is a case of things making themselves. Prayer is a focus of the will, a focus of desire and intention that is particularly powerful when it is shared by a group of people. It invokes an energy that has only recently been a subject of scientific inquiry. The data so far is interesting but inconclusive. But science is a work in progress and, anyway, we don’t need scientific approval for everything we believe!

Seen as a sacrament, the universe is rich in wisdom and beauty. If we are willing to see, it offers an amazingly deep and intimate glimpse of what God is and does. It evokes a sense of the numinous. It inspires worship. In toto it is the realm of heaven.

I am not suggesting that we abandon our homely sacraments. Each expresses and nurtures something precious in our lives and in our relationship with God. But I do suggest that we widen our notion of what we mean by sacrament.

You may not believe in fairies, but you may be interested to know that angels are an important element in Christian tradition. They are also part of our day-to-day speech. The most famous of all the angels is probably Gabriel, the angel of the Christmas story, or rather the prologue to it. Set in the context of serious historical research, Luke’s Gabriel marks a watershed point in our understanding of angels. And Luke makes it clear in his introduction to Theophilus that he is writing about real events. Jesus was a real person, not a hero from Greek mythology. But what was Gabriel?

Let me remind you of the situation in which Gabriel’s role was so central. It was a bit involved. It seems that it was generally known that Jesus was conceived out of wedlock. Joseph was not his real father. This presented a serious problem for those trying to convince people that he was the Messiah or Christ, God’s anointed representative and vicegerent.

The only person to provide a complete answer to this difficulty was the Macedonian gentile Luke; one of Paul’s early converts. The angel Gabriel is a central figure in his explanation. To a modern reader this may suggest that this episode is intended as an allegory, such as might be written by C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien - edifying fiction. It is not that, But for us modern Europeans to understand Gabriel and angels in general, we need to understand Luke.

Luke and Paul were kindred souls, intelligent and cultivated. They were interested in each other’s cultural backgrounds, especially since they now had a deep common bond in Christ. Luke, hardly less than Paul, wanted to share his newly discovered faith. His natural inclination was to reach out to people like himself, classically educated, critical thinking seekers after truth. Theophilus, god-lover, may have been an individual but, more likely, Luke used the name to attract any literate gentile, interested in religion and spirituality but sceptical about the popular Hellenistic gods.

So Luke gathered all the information he could about Jesus and wrote an account of his life, death and resurrection that is unique because it is the only account written by a gentile. The accounts Luke discovered were all by Jewish writers or oral traditions of Jewish origin. Christianity was a Jewish religion. To an educated gentile it might be interesting but it was essentially foreign.

Luke aimed to bridge that gap, and that is important for us because our modern European culture owes more to Classical than to Jewish ways of thinking. Luke’s treatise draws on both Jewish and Greco-Roman tradition, seamlessly combining both. It presents a heroic characterisation of Jesus after the Classical pattern, but the content is as Jewish as it is historical.

Miraculous births and angelic visitors are part of Jewish tradition. Samson’s birth to Manoah’s barren wife, Sarai’s conception of Isaac at the age of ninety-nine, Hagar’s angelic visitor to tell her the name of her firstborn, Ishmael, and promising her abundant fertility, Samuel’s birth to barren Hannah as the result of prayer; these were part of Jewish Scripture. Conception through a conjugal relationship between a god and a human is a common feature of Greek myth, but alien to Jewish thinking, as is the notion of a god-man, yet Luke’s account of Jesus’ conception implies just that.

In so analysing Luke’s story, I am not saying that it is purely fictitious. As he tells Theophilus at the beginning of his treatise, Luke intended to write an exact account of events, albeit relying entirely on the witness of others. It is possible that Mary herself confided this story to Luke; it cannot have come from anyone else. Perhaps Mary told Luke of a tremendous mystical experience that she could not precisely describe, and Luke, a skilled writer, translated it into language that combined elements from both Jewish and Greek religious tradition, and that his intended readers would understand. The God who is Mary’s partner in this unique conjugal union is not one of the gods of Olympus; he is the one true and living God, the source of all things. God did not only sire a baby boy; according to Genesis he sired the whole universe.

For an educated person all this is implicit in Luke’s account. However mythical its style, Theophilus would be challenged. Myth, even for Theophilus, was not for entertainment; it was a vehicle of profound and sublime truths. In this case it was the truth of Mary’s essential innocence and purity, regardless of anything that may have befallen her. Of this Luke was undoubtedly fully convinced, as are all Christians.

Do angels, then, have a real place in our understanding of human affairs and history? Luke, like most Christians, was quite at home with them. Tradition holds that he was a physician, but that does not mean that he was a narrow-minded scientist, admitting the reality only of matter. He was deeply aware of the spiritual dimension of reality, including the idea of spiritual messengers. Spiritual truths are not simply products of our own creative imagination; they are mediated to us by some ‘other’. The Greeks spoke of the muses; Jewish legend spoke of angels. Luke did not see myths as we see Superman or Luke Skywalker, for entertainment only. He knew nothing of anything called a fairy story. Angels represented an element of non-material reality for which we use abstract, psychological terms. Christian theology is not all abstractions; it contains a rich mythology too.

In common discourse we also find angels useful symbols. Guardian angels reflect our capacity for self-preservation, both instinctive and learned, and most often unconscious. Reference to “angelic choirs” reflects our belief that music possesses a non-material power, beyond and quite different from its physical impact as sound. “You are an angel” means that someone has brought you a drink when you were exhausted after your work – a messenger of divine compassion! “Entertaining angels unawares” refers to some morally challenging encounter. In these examples, the context is ordinary daily life, not fairy stories. What they refer to is real, though not tangible. None of these examples are used with religious solemnity, but they are not less meaningful for that.

It is time to explain the title of this collection of articles. Why do I, a Christian, think of the universe as divine? Isn’t that pantheism? Christianity is not alone in believing that matter has a spiritual origin. The Jews believe it has its origin in God (Eloim). Many ancient traditions of indigenous peoples have a spiritual relationship with their land. But it is probably Christianity which affirms the most intimate relationship between matter and God. Archbishop Michael Ramsey described Christianity as the most materialistic of all religions.

To explain this we will have to take a quick jog round the Christian theological estate, noting briefly its beautifully designed and tended gardens, it’s weird fauna (we call them theologians), and areas were new work is in progress. Theology as a systematic academic discipline is a Christian invention, originating at the very beginning of the Christian era, and establishing its basic framework at an historical meeting of the leading Christian thinkers of the time in Nicea in the year 325 CE.

Sponsored by the newly converted Roman Emperor, Constantine, the focus of this conference was the hotly debated issue of the relationship between Jesus and God. The outcome was radical and uncompromising. It was declared that Jesus was “God of God, true God of true God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father”.

At the Council of Chalcedon in 451 it was also established that Jesus had two natures, human and divine. This was not an entirely new concept. Though the idea of a God-man is foreign to Jewish thinking, it was familiar to gentiles of the Greco-Roman tradition. Roman emperors were treated as divine, and most of the Olympian gods had some earthly or human connection. Zeus, for example, was said to have been hidden by his mother, Rhea, in a cave in Crete when he was an infant.

But the Nicene fathers of Christian theology not only defined Jesus’ status, they presented a complete theoretical analysis of God. God was declared to be not just personal, but tri-personal, a Trinity of Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. While the format of this analysis was arrived at through classical philosophical debate, its roots are in Jewish tradition as well. Although the God of Israel, YHWH, was active and powerful in human affairs, and often spoken of in anthropomorphic terms, he was worshipped as spirit, not as a physical being. Although most of the Trinity is defined in anthropomorphic terms, Father and Son, these are understood to be metaphorical. God is declared in the Catholic catechism to be “pure spirit, without parts or passions”. Christians do not really believe the Father is literally an old man somewhere in outer space, nor, as I shall now explain, do they regard the Son simply as a young man.

God incarnate, humanly manifest in Jesus of Nazareth, is the focus of Christian faith and the ideal of the faithful. But God is not fully incarnate simply in one human individual. The earliest of all Christian writings, the letters of Paul, provide a startling but fundamental basis for what is to be meant by the word Christ. Paul saw Christ, not just as an individual man, but also as the embodiment and medium of all physical existence. In a letter to the Colossians he wrote, “In him all things in heaven and on earth were created. . . He himself is before all things and in him all things hold together.” Later, in the prologue to his gospel, John called Christ the “logos” (translated “Word”) of God – God’s utterance. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being.”

Modern theologians now speak of the Cosmic Christ, God incarnate, embodied in the whole universe. Where John and Paul speak of “all things”, we would say the universe, or universes if there are many. By universe I mean the totality of physical existence - the cosmic Christ - “God of God”, conceived in the womb of God before time began and born as pure light (John, Genesis and Big Bang theory). In other words, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. But this in no way compromises the good news of God’s human self-manifestation in Jesus.

The Second Person of the Holy Trinity includes every thing, every energy field, every wave-particle, every molecule, every living creature, every star, every galaxy. But Christians affirm that God is not only that. There are three Persons. We can say, with Meister Eckhart, that “God is everything, but everything is not God.” - a clear rejection of pantheism.

Jesus said that no one has seen the Father at any time. All we can see is God the Son, yet we perceive, somehow, that there is a more ultimate Source and a deeper wisdom than the intelligence of design evident in nature as revealed by science. And there is a guiding and creative energy that is not directly detectable by scientific means. You can’t see it; you can’t measure it; you just feel it’s there. Somehow you know that what you can see or even know about is not all there is.

If you are not too mentally out of breath after all this, possibly unaccustomed, exercise, it may be clear to you why I believe I can, as a Christian, speak of the divine universe (or multiverse). In saying that, I am not saying that the universe is all I mean by the word God. And I’m not saying that the universe is an object inside God, as though God were a bigger space. It’s a moot point with scientists, but I don’t think the universe is finite anyway, though our knowledge of it will always be. The word God has to mean infinitely more than I can possibly know; and, in fact, so does the word universe.

To sum up, I see the universe as what Christians call a sacrament – the ultimate sacrament. It is an outward and visible sign of the divine reality. It also embodies that reality – as did Jesus, as do lesser sacramental objects such as the bread and wine of the Eucharist. I believe in the real presence of God in the universe, a presence more totally manifest than in any finite part of it. The universe revealed by science evokes more than curiosity and wonder; it evokes worship.

The Jewish patriarch, Jacob, had a dream in which he saw a ladder from earth to heaven. Jesus enigmatically identified the ladder as “the son of man”. Those are strange stories, but they seem to be related to what follows.

I don’t think of heaven as up there, nor do I see it as a destination only for those who have died. I see it as a state of existence in the cosmic environment that is harmonious, serene, beautiful and joyful. But it seems that reaching this state entails a slow and arduous upward climb.

I do not think humankind has the wisdom or the will to reach heaven in a hurry, but I think much of the wisdom is deposited with us in the example of holy and heroic men and women and the teachings of the sages.

I say they were heroic because, almost without exception, the prophets and saints have shown great fortitude in the face of hostility and persecution. Most of them lived in danger and many of them died for their convictions.

Their enemies were often not consciously wicked people. Some were people in power who were exercising a prudent concern to maintain the stability and the accepted values of their society. Sometimes they were protecting a religious tradition against a prophetic demand for reform that seemed to them like heresy. They feared change.

The saints and sages are people ahead of their time, living in a world that is, to quote an Anglican theologian, “even now, but not yet”. Jesus of Nazareth is a prime example. He was executed for subversion on the orders of the Roman consul, and he was also convicted of blasphemy by the Jewish religious authorities. The world was not ready for him. It still isn’t.

Jesus referred often to the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, and in his parables heaven is here, not up there. He focuses on familiar happenings and people, but they are idealised or given a twist that offers a glimpse of the kingdom. The parables do not point away from this world; they point to our world transformed. Relationships are harmonious, just, kind, generous, forgiving and open. There is no violence, no deceit, no exploitation or domination of one by another. It is not the world we know, but it is not anywhere else either. It is this world as most of us wish it was.

Many people hope that they will enter such a world after they die. We have stories told by people who believe they have glimpsed such a perfect world in a mystical revelation or a near-death experience. Saint Paul is the best-known example. I don’t wish to discount such experiences, but I am not sure that most of us would settle in easily to such a perfect environment. We are habituated to our perverted and dysfunctional way of relating and doing things. We might feel painfully out of place and embarrassed. I think we need training to appreciate heaven and fit in.

Ours is an individualistic, competitive, cynical and often cruel world. The formal education of our children consists largely of equipping them to compete successfully so they will win and others lose. Educationists also claim to “build character”, especially through sport. This often means making our children insensitive enough and smart enough to handle the stresses and hurts of life as we live it.

The sages do not require that we be winners; they do not suggest that happiness lies along that path. All our lives are marked by tragedies and failures, but sages see these as steps upward rather than downward on the stairway to heaven. The saints’ resilience and fortitude does not come from cultivated insensitivity, but from a very profound optimism about the meaning and purpose of life. They climb the stairway, not as a means to some kind of superiority, but because they see a radiant light and hear beautiful music from there. They see the personal traumas, tragedies and failures they endure as steps in a struggle towards that ‘strange attractor’, to borrow a mathematical term.

Everyone, I think, has experience of love in some way; everyone feels affection and is kind from time to time. But when the individual is the first priority – my self-realization, my enjoyment, my comfort and security, my pleasure - kindness becomes a rare commodity. Changing that is a daunting task.

No one, as far as I know, has detected any natural physical feature of our bodies and brains that might drive such an endeavour. Yet there is, deep within, a longing to be a nobler, happier and more serene person. There is also a fundamental love instinct that is more than just a biological mechanism to promote genetic proliferation.

Richard Dawkins wrote famously about “The Selfish Gene”. Successful evolution requires random mutations of our genetic code. But adaptation, which is the key to successful evolution, depends to a great extent on relational harmony and co-operation. If genetics really is the key, I suggest that we must also have an “unselfish gene”, or at least a “wisdom gene” that enables us to see the positive value of kindness and co-operation, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything that could be called a society of any kind.

Evolution involves physiological changes, but behavioural change is also significant. Human evolution at least involves the deliberate, conscious cultivation of behaviour that enhances social adaptation. But, like all evolutionary phenomena, it is not a purely individual thing; it is part of the total environment. It is not just something that heroic and holy human individuals do; it is something the universe is doing; it is a cosmic phenomenon. It is something to do with the divine nature of the universe that we are part of. It is as though there were a kind of ‘divine discontent’ that urges the cosmos, including all of us, toward ultimate perfection.

The stairway to heaven is a metaphor, but it represents a reality that exists in dimensions we have not yet found measurements for, so it is outside the realm of science. But some who have not been concerned to put numbers to its height and breadth have discovered and climbed it.

People have been making images of God ever since mystics in prehistoric times took clay or rocks in their hands or used sticks and their fingers to paint on the walls of caves. Gods are associated with power and control so, a few thousand years ago, when people had formed communities and nations with kings to rule them, it was natural that they should imagine their gods as super-kings.

Some three thousand years ago, a group of Semitic tribes recognised a God whose name was never to be spoken and was of obscure meaning anyway. They represented the name by four consonants, YHWH, that together are not pronounceable. In speech they simply called their God Adoni (Lord) and he was seen as the ultimate ruler of the tribes of Israel even after they had secular kings. Adoni had a dwelling place beyond the sight of humankind, yet he was actively involved in human affairs.

After many generations of secular kings, most of whom were very unsatisfactory, Isaiah and other prophets began to imagine a perfect ruler, a man of supreme wisdom and power, anointed by the Lord himself. He would be born of the royal line of David, the Lord’s favourite king. He was referred to as Messiah or, in Greek, Christ - the Anointed One.

A little over two thousand years ago, groaning under the oppressive yoke of Imperial Rome, this vision stirred the hearts of the Jewish people into flame. They eagerly expected the Messiah to arrive at any moment. A number of men emerged who believed they were indeed he, and they gathered enthusiastic disciples around them, sometimes thousands strong. One of these charismatic leaders was Jesus of Nazareth. He didn’t gather a huge following in his lifetime but, of all the contemporary Messiah candidates, he is the only one, two thousand years later, who still has a following and a cult, a religion associated with his name. And it is not just a handful of Jews but many millions, even billions of people in every part of the world. Called “Christians”, they believe still that Jesus was the true “Son of God”, as the Messiah or Christ was sometimes called. During the centuries since, Christians have created a complex and sophisticated theology of YHWH and Jesus.

Jesus is referred in Christian liturgy and hymnary as “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” but, reading the narrative portraits of Jesus that were written during the seven or eight decades after his death, we find someone quite unlike any kind of king or ruler ever known or even imagined in historical tradition.

He was conceived out of wedlock for a start, and his enemies taunted him with this to the end of his life. He was often diffident in his relationship with other people, as though seeking their leadership and guidance, needing their help. He demonstrated impressive power as a healer and exorcist, but claimed it was the faith of others that accomplished these messianic signs. He was a brilliant and forceful prophetic teacher, but this made him dangerous enemies in the corridors of power. He never took aggressive action against his persecutors however, ending his life as the victim of a scandalously unjust and illegal trial and horrifically cruel execution at the hands of the Roman military.

After such an inauspicious beginning and tragic end, it is remarkable that Jesus had any followers left at all. In fact, at his execution, only his mother and three disciples remained faithful. But, a few days after his death, one of those disciples, Mary Magdalene, saw Jesus alive again in a tangible body. But not quite a normal human one: he ate and drank with his disciples, but he appeared and disappeared mysteriously, entering through locked doors. Other disciples began to have similar experiences. Such strange occurrences continued for about six weeks, until a substantial number of people became quite convinced that Jesus was still alive in a weird but very real way.

That number is now billions worldwide. They do not see Jesus simply as a heroic martyr for a noble cause; and it is impossible to regard him as a conquering and dominating king in the normal sense, but Christians see him as embodying what true sovereignty, true leadership, informed by the wisdom of God, really means. They see him as the king in God’s realm, the King of Heaven, then in Judea, now in our own time and everywhere forever.

One has to admit, however, if one is honest, that Jesus is not the kind of ruler most of us would really want. Such unconditional love, such limitless forgiveness, tolerance, generosity, absolute non-violence! Common sense suggests that his kingdom could be chaotic, exposed to wanton exploitation and terrifying lawlessness, not to mention invasion from foreign military powers and unwanted refugees. It is surprising, perhaps, that so many people claim that the rule of Jesus Christ is what they really want. But no democratically elected government, nominally Christian or whatever, shows much political will to realise it. They wouldn’t see a year out if they did. So are Christians mad or merely deluded, subversive or merely eccentric, hypocritical or merely confused? Or is this something sensible people can take seriously?

Saint Francis is one of the most popular saints in the Western world, and possibly one of the least understood. In Australia, he comes second only to Santa Claus (Saint Nicholas). But popular devotion is shallow. Francis’ unofficial adoption as the patron saint of the domestic pet industry and birdbath manufacturers gives only a faint intimation of his status as one of history’s great nature mystics. He possessed a deep spiritual relationship with the natural world. In physical nature he encountered God.

This shaped Francis’ way of life. He lived with passion a life of radical poverty and simplicity. It seems that his espousal to God in nature entailed for him a complete stripping of all that could impair this physical intimacy. It was out of doors, under the sky, with the wind in his face, the sun in his eyes and the turf under his bare feet that Francis knew God’s companionship most intimately. He spoke ardently of his Lady Poverty, emphasising the romantic, not to say erotic drive behind his choice of lifestyle. It was a love affair.

Poverty also gave Francis a sense of great wealth. He was in possession of untold God-given riches that no one could take from him. He even had caretakers and managers in the persons of the local property owners, so he was never burdened with the practical responsibility of all this wealth. His radical renunciation of all possessions and power gave him a sense of freedom far greater than anything known by the wealthy who influenced the affairs of business and government.

Francis wrote, “God gave me brothers,” and this too enriched him greatly. The warmth of his affection for his brothers blazes forth in the few authentic scraps of autograph writing we have and in the later legends about him.

But riches, even heavenly riches, bring their burdens. As the brotherhood grew to thousands, many, if not most, found Francis’ example of passionate and religious devotion and heroic poverty too hard to follow. Ordinary men needed some degree of comfort and security. Buildings were erected and wise heads, both within and outside the order, counselled moderation.

Popes and bishops urged Francis to write a practical rule after the pattern of the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict and those of other established orders, but he was never able to do that. Francis was not an organiser; he was an artist, a poet. He wrote exhortations to follow literally the gospel precepts of poverty - “Take nothing for your journey . . . . “ - but they contained no practical plan of life for a huge and diverse community.

Inevitably confusion resulted. Brothers tended to interpret Francis’ vision in their own way. There were tensions, disputes and, eventually, fragmentation. Francis saw all this beginning to happen in his own short lifetime and it grieved him terribly. His health failed, largely due to the severity of his early penances. It was too late by the time he recognised his mistaken zeal and began to counsel his brothers to care for “Brother Ass” (the body). Some contemporary medical experts suggest Francis may have contracted leprosy through his early care of lepers. He died at the age of forty- two, lying on the bare earth, in the company of a few of his most devoted disciples.

But, though Francis undoubtedly suffered hours of dreadful spiritual darkness, he died serene and full of joy. Joyfulness is one of the most conspicuous qualities evident in the written sources. I think that this, more perhaps than the love-of-animals thing, is really the key to his popularity. Everyone wants to be happy, even more than to be rich. Wealth is seen as a means to happiness, but most often it is a disappointment. Many, especially among the well to do, recognise this. Francis often has a strong appeal for those who struggle frantically to get rich. Many contestants in our competitive society have moments of longing for the happiness and freedom that Francis seems to have found.

There is a tendency among Christians to idealise or sentimentalise Jesus’ family life. There is a story in Luke’s Gospel that lets us know that Jesus, like all young boys, could be troublesome at times and that Joseph and Mary reacted as any mum and dad would.

According to Luke, this is what happened. Jesus was about twelve. The extended family and friends from Nazareth went to Jerusalem for Passover, and after the festival they all set off home again. In that kind of community of friends and relations, people didn’t worry too much about their children. They all looked out for each other. So it was not till they had gone a day’s journey that Mary and Joseph discovered that Jesus was not with the party. Imagine the panic!

The frantic parents set out to return, scanning the countryside for any sign of their boy. Nothing. Eventually they arrived back in Jerusalem, exhausted and desperate. They must have visited everyone they knew there because it was two more days before they decided to contact the police or someone official in the temple. When they got there they noticed a little knot of men who looked kind of important and, approaching, they saw Jesus in the middle, in deep conversation with them.

Mary probably broke down and wept with relief, Joseph also maybe, but they were angry too: “Jesus! Why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you for three days; we were beside ourselves with worry.” Jesus didn’t sound particularly repentant; he seems to have felt misunderstood, like so many children and adolescents. It can’t have been easy being the parents of the Messiah, especially if you didn’t know.

There’s a lot of talk today about “family values”, much of it shallow and at times hypocritical. And I’m concerned about our intense focus on the nuclear family, living in a locked and barred house in suburbia. I’m not sure it’s healthy. I know that suburban life is fraught with hazards. We hear a lot about “stranger danger”, but the home, it seems, is as dangerous as anywhere. It is inevitable in the light of sensational media reports that we should be somewhat obsessed about sexual abuse, but I am concerned about what this is doing to children, becoming aware of their own sexuality. It must be very frightening and confusing. And if there is a dramatic increase in this appalling problem (if) then we have to begin looking for the deeper, underlying causes.

There is no hint of this kind of problem anywhere in the Bible, though it was common in Roman society. One imagines that Nazareth children were safe without constant supervision. Relationships between parents and their children were probably less intense and stressful than they often are in our introverted, security-conscious nuclear families. This especially affects adolescents, longing to break free. Also, Jesus and his friends were not under such enormous pressure to achieve in school and sport as our children are.

Reading the gospels, it seems that Jesus’ family were probably the subject of scandal. It was not enough that Jesus should be born in a dirty and smelly stable; there were doubts about the boy’s paternity as well. The neighbours would probably have regarded him as a bastard.

But Luke’s story and other episodes in the gospels reassure us that the family were in no way isolated socially. Actually, Nazareth was a somewhat disreputable little town, on a main commercial highway and with a very mixed population. And that may have been better for the family than a place like Jerusalem, crawling with rich, snobbish and super-religious types, all of them terribly kosher, of course. It was in Jerusalem, according to John, that Jesus was mocked about being “born of fornication”. Prurient gossip travels fast and spreads like weeds in the garden.

Even when Jesus began to become famous, it didn’t make life for the family any easier. He seems strangely indifferent to them at times. They came looking for him on one occasion because of reports that he was acting crazy and he seemed almost to disown them. And there was that difficult bit of hyperbole where he says that, to be worthy of him we must hate our fathers and mothers. He seems to contradict the fifth commandment about honouring your parents. God’s wisdom is not always sweet and reasonable; it can be confronting.

The Torah has several precepts regarding family life, but the Law and the prophets are not basically about family values; they are about community values in the widest sense, even including foreigners. Paul picked this up and took the good news of Messianic fulfilment to the gentiles. I believe that, when we think about family values, we must ask questions about much more than what goes on in private houses. We need to ask about the values of society as a whole.

Since the industrial revolution and the creation of capitalism and suburbia, society at the grassroots level has become more fragmented. Personal interest is the driving force. At home we have to be vigilant all the time about our security. People in need sometimes have to fulfil almost impossible obligations to get support from a miserly Government, voted in by an intensely tax-sensitive electorate. Affluence has generated a narrow individualism that is relatively new, and quite tragic. The poor are often much more generous and socially cohesive. Jesus identified poverty of spirit as a prime feature of his vision of heaven - the Messianic age.

Mind you, industrialisation and capitalism have given us lots of of benefits. We enjoy the products of industry and the luxurious lifestyle they provide, and we value the opportunities for getting rich and climbing socially that capitalism offers. And all is not gloom and doom. Many voluntary organisations do a great deal to mitigate the effect of ruthless competition on the disadvantaged and the vulnerable. School or work can also be as much a focus of community as home, though they too can be the focus of pretty ferocious rivalry.

Special interest clubs, another invention of the industrial age, also provide, to some extent, what the extended family used to. Church congregations are among these. They were once formed from existing village communities; now healthy congregations create communities from among John Howard’s warring “battlers”.

So when we Christians look for an ideal of family life, don’t only think of Joseph, Mary and Jesus, think of the extended family in Nazareth. And dream! Dream of the Jewish ideal and Messianic hope of a universal family where everyone loves God and their neighbour as themselves – the Kingdom of Heaven. Dream because hopes as well as fears have a way of being self-fulfilling.

How many people treasure the image of a location in outer space where good people enjoy eternal bliss? It doesn’t fit with the images of heaven in Jesus’ parables, but it is interesting to explore outer space anyway. It’s a fascinating subject and opens up wonderful possibilities to the fertile imagination. We now know much more about outer space than we did even a few decades ago.

It is unimaginably enormous. Astronomers tell of galaxy formations that span millions of trillions of kilometres. They measure distances in light years or parsecs (about 3.26 light years). A light year is 9,460,000,000,000 or nearly 10 trillion kilometres. Galaxy clusters have been identified which span more than 300 million light years. With the Hubble telescope it is possible to see galaxies nearly 10 billion light years away.

Although the universe is mostly empty, it contains a mind-boggling number of things. There are billions of galaxies, each with about 100 billion stars. These include some astonishing items. There are dark, cold neutron stars that weigh 100 billion tons per cubic centimetre and spin 38,000 times a second, and intensely hot white dwarfs that are 100,000°C at the surface. (The Sun is 8,000°C). The scariest objects are massive black holes at the centre of galaxies. These are, in effect, balls of concentrated gravitational energy. Nothing, not even light can escape once it is captured. One that has been photographed (black holes have a luminous halo round them) is about 1.2 billion times as massive as the entire Solar System but about the same size. In the last ten years, planets have been observed orbiting other stars, more than 200 of them so far, just in our own galactic neighbourhood. There must be trillions of planets in the universe. Would it be absurd to imagine that the kind of self-consciousness and intelligence possessed by humans is not unique to Earth but is distributed, however sparsely, across the galaxies?

But only about 20% of all matter is detectable to us. 80% is called “dark matter”. It is only known to exist because its mass and gravity are needed to stop the universe from flying apart. It has never been directly observed and no one knows what it is. But in spite of the dark matter, the universe is expanding, and the expansion is accelerating. As it expands it cools. Eventually it will be so cold that there is not enough kinetic energy to form the fundamental particles of matter. This is called the ‘heat death’ of the universe. Then there will be nothing except frothy but formless and chaotic potential energy – the quantum vacuum. But this is where it all began, and no one knows how or why.

The universe is even weirder than the things it contains. In 1905 and 1915, Einstein produced his theories of relativity. He proved that space and time have to be regarded as a single structure – four-dimensional space-time. The universe is not a three-dimensional sphere that grows and evolves along a linear chronological timeline; it is a four-dimensional hypersphere with a three-dimensional surface in which space can be bent, squeezed and stretched.

The starting point of Einstein’s theories was the discovery that light travels at the same speed, no matter what the motion of the observer is. Light approaches and leaves everything at the same speed. If I stand on a station platform, the light from signals down the track will meet me at the same speed that it meets an express train rushing towards or away from them. This gives rise to Einstein’s complicated cosmic geometry. The universe has no spatial centre. The singularity, from which the universe theoretically began with the Big Bang, did not happen at some point in space or moment in time; it contained all of space and time. It is everywhere. It is the physical universe. We are part of its expanding, evolving form.

With Einstein’s insights, astronomers do strange history too. They don’t pore over ancient documents; they look through telescopes. When they look into the sky they are looking into the past. The light from each star has taken time to reach us. We see the Sun as it was eight and a half minutes ago. We see Sirius as it was about nine years ago. With the most powerful telescopes the universe can be seen as it was billions of years ago, approaching the Big Bang. There is no ‘before’ the Big Bang. In the singularity time is infinitely shrunk. And the heat death of the universe is not the end of time; time is infinitely expanded.

The universe is not just an inert collection of innumerable material objects; it is mutating, evolving from something absolutely simple into something more and more complex and ordered. The universe is also metabolising. It makes use of its raw materials to make new things, stars, human beings and so on, to replace those that decay and die. These are criteria by which biologists define life. The universe is alive. The only thing we don’t know is if the universe can reproduce. Stephen Hawking and others think it can.

The universe is also intelligent. Intelligent life is not an added, separate extra; it is a faculty of the living universe. Humans and other animals are the eyes and other senses of the universe; our lives, emotions, hopes, thoughts and knowledge are cosmic experiences. Intelligent life is not only a local terrestrial phenomenon; it is of the universe, even if it only exists on planet Earth.

Brian Swimme, an American physicist and cosmologist, holds that the universe is not just a physical entity; it is a spiritual event. If humans have a spiritual life then, Swimme argues, the universe does, even if only in us. Stars, rocks and plants don’t have a spiritual life, but nor does a human brain if you separate it from the rest of the body. I am alive, conscious and sensate, thoughtful, imaginative, hopeful, not as an objective observer, but as an integral part of the universe. The universe is a community of interconnected, interdependent things, from subatomic particles to human beings to galaxy superclusters. According to Christian belief, even God is communal.

The heaven I began talking about is a religious idea, so let’s leave cosmology and turn to theology. What do I mean by heaven? I don’t really know except that I know it is not a place; it is a state of being. Theologians call it the beatific state. The nearest I can get to saying what it is is the final perfection towards which the cosmic process is developing, the fulfilment of the divine purpose, the full and perfect manifestation, the cosmic and eternal incarnation of divine love. I cannot possibly imagine what that might be, but Jesus’ parables give me some down to earth and helpful hints.

It is very difficult to explain my profound sense of the reality of God. Belief in the God of love could be wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is not a dependable source of truth. But there are benefits in wishful thinking. It is stimulating, creative, and it brings joy, serenity and hope. However, it can fog our perception of reality if we don’t recognise it for what it is. I am a wishful thinker, an optimistic dreamer, but I need to recognise the hazards and limitations of that.

I have no proof of the existence of God. There are respectable philosophical arguments but none are compelling. In the light of contemporary physics, I accept the randomness of the evolutionary process, yet one gets a strong impression of direction and purpose in what we know of cosmic history. Randomness at one level does not eliminate the possibility of order and purpose at a deeper level, a level so far not reached by physics. I also believe in free will, and that implies some kind of randomness: that I am not totally controlled by simple laws of cause and effect.

If I think of God as loving and almighty then I face problems because the world, and especially human society, looks pretty stuffed up. That is how I see it, but I am not an objective observer; there is no such thing. We each create our own world and our own God. In saying that I do not mean that there is no real world and no real God. The universe and God have both proved extremely durable concepts in the experience of humankind over many thousands of years. The sum of human experience has generated a common perception of a world that, one feels, must have some basis that is real.

The real world must be much larger and more complex than my personal world or even the shared human world. Science is revealing a universe that is beyond our comprehension. The world of science is a world of wonder, of mystery, of compelling fascination. It is the aggregate of the personal world-views of many brilliant minds, but I don’t think that it is merely the figment of fertile imaginations and powerful intellects. I believe there is a real universe even more amazing and mysterious than science presents to us.

My world is a picture of reality, painted with my senses, my brain and nervous system. My world is in my mind, and I have a big say in what it is like. Satan said in Milton’s Paradise Lost: “The mind is its own place and, in itself, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” It is impossible to exaggerate the effect of the way we think and see things on our quality of life.

Long ago most people thought the earth was flat, but we believe that those people had a less developed picture of the real world than our generation. Not so long ago people thought that there was a common cosmic past, present and future: a universal ‘now’, and that space was fixed and rectilinear. Einstein proved that this was an illusion. Even more recently people thought of atoms and even subatomic particles as tiny balls. The discovery that matter consists of intricate oscillations of energy without any distinct shape or size is too much for most of us to grasp. Through patient and diligent study and with the aid of intellect and imagination the human picture of the real world is becoming confusingly complex.

The god’s of humankind have been of great diversity, and changed continually over time. Through the ages, our images of God have become more sophisticated, abstract, and mostly kinder and less terrifying. I make no claim that my God: the most beautiful, just and loving God that I can imagine, is objectively the Real Thing. But, as with the universe, I believe it dimly reflects a reality that is greater than the sum of all human notions.

Everyone has an inner longing for happiness and serenity. The inner experience of this longing is connected with an intricate network of chemical and electrical phenomena in the brain and nervous system, and may even go deeper to our genetic coding, but I don’t accept the proposition that that is the ultimate origin. Our genetic coding is itself the product of a causal chain that has no known beginning other than the mysterious Big Bang.

Philosopher John Hick has called religious faith ‘cosmic optimism’. Whether one is an optimist or a pessimist may depend largely on upbringing, environment, life experience and even genes perhaps, but I believe the final choice is with the individual. We choose to take an optimistic or pessimistic view of existence. We have plenty of evidence for either, and we make our own selection. My belief in God is also, ultimately, my free choice. No argument, evidence or contingent factor in my personal makeup makes this choice either inevitable or impossible.

Closely linked to faith, but not identical with it, is religion. Religion is a social phenomenon: the human response to the inner longing for happiness and security. The world is a threatening place. Fear and anxiety are our common companions. Propitiatory offerings to supernatural powers began thousands of years ago. Religion has, since then, absorbed centuries of sophisticated philosophy and mystical experience.

Religion in all its diversity has extended the range of human experience and behaviour both for good and ill. As a social phenomenon, it has motivated the noblest and the most despicable episodes in human history. Religion can make our world a heaven or a hell. So, if one accepts religion, and the transcendent reality that is its inspiration, one must choose with care. But to reject religion altogether, I feel, must make life a colder and greyer experience, even if there is a stoic nobility in the ascetic philosophy of one who refuses to look beyond the material.

Why do I believe? It is my choice. Religious faith does not make my life simpler or more comfortable, but it enriches it at every level. It is intellectually and emotionally stimulating. It expands my imagination and the scope of my speculation and intuition. It gives luminosity to my world. I believe because it is good for me to believe, but it is not entirely self-centered. My faith also constantly challenges me to love and serve the other, and it opens me to feel unbounded wonder and admiration for the universe revealed by science, and for the Source of All Being who, in my religion, is called “Father”.