Pages

Thursday, January 04, 2024

Constant Change

The universe has been changing from its very moment of beginning (even Genesis demonstrates that); why should Christian belief be any different?

I am happy to believe the Theory of Evolution. It fits the evidence that I see around me and, having studied dynamical systems during my mathematical studies, I recognise behaviours in cosmology and the natural world that are predicted by these mathematical models. The empirical evidence is compelling but it is not absolutely certain. As Ross Geller says, there may be a teeny tiny possibility that it's wrong. The philosophical possibility that the Universe was created five minutes ago together with memories of aeons is not easily debunked. The opening chapters of Genesis could still be literally true as well as being theologically true.

As I say, I don't require Genesis to be literally true for my faith in God to hold. I believe in the Word of God and the Bible is secondary to that Word, unlike the Q'ran in Islamic thought in which the Word of God is the Q'ran. Genesis is theologically true which means it faithfully describes truth about God, Man and the relationship between them without requiring that truth to be expressed within the confines of scientific enquiry.

The question above was posed on the Thinking Anglicans blog. It's an interesting question in that it seeks to put Christian belief in the same category as scientific development. In the Natural Sciences, the geocentric model of the solar system is replaced with the heliocentric model which is, in turn refined by the Keplerian model before we reach today's understanding of chaotic orbits of planets orbiting a star that is itself dancing around the Milky Way. Everything is in a state of flux.

But is Christian belief something that evolves? Certainly, the Bible charts our understanding of God relationship with Man, how the eternal relates with the ephemeral. That poses a problem: if God created all things, then He created Space and Time. There is no room for His evolution. The begetting of the Son and the procession of the Holy Ghost demonstrate that the Father is the single source of all being but, in that the begetting and procession occur outside Time, this dependency of being on the Father does not diminish the Divinity of Son and Holy Ghost.

What does this mean for poor, temporal humanity? Well, if the Christian Faith is true, then it is Eternally true. The Holy Trinity is the Holy Trinity as much as at the Creation as it is at the Council of Ephesus in AD431 and as it is now and as it is when the Universe grows cold and dark in the ensuing billions of years to come.

The Christian belief is changeless but a Christian's belief grows as he discovers the same truth as Enos, Abram, Solomon, and the saints of God grow in the Faith. Since human beings all share the same nature, the nature of the relationship between Man and God is also eternal even though each one of us has to grow in that relationship. This means that what constitutes sin is eternal because sin is a breach in that relationship. Murder is as sinful now as it was when Cain killed his innocent brother. Adultery has not changed, nor has coveting. This is why they are carried by Christ from the Old Testament into the New.

If Christian belief were to change then what would be the cause of this change? What would have the authority and power to change the belief of St Ignatius to the belief of John Shelby Spong? If they are both right in their time, then what changed? Human understanding of the universe? But our understanding of the universe is always incomplete as Prof Edward Feser ably shows in The Last Superstition. Thus we can never be sure that whether the change in our belief is correct. A true change in belief must come from God, but this would render God subject to time.

While the laws of physics require refinement and correction, the underlying mathematics does not. 1+1=2 eternally. HyperKähler manifolds only admit a tri-simplectic reduction by a Lie group if they are not compact eternally. But then, it's not the laws of physics that change but our understanding of them. That Mars goes into retrograde motion across the sky is a brute fact but has different explanations depending on whether you are Ptolemy or Copernicus. The Holy Trinity is a brute fact whether you are Samuel, St Peter or St Gregory Nazianzen.

Could, then, our Faith evolve so that Christians are required to believe in a Holy Quaternity? God could, conceivably, be experienced in more persons than three. This, however, defies what has been revealed. If God reveals that He is the Trinity to Eric but a Quaternity to George this raises difficult questions. Are Eric and George believing in the same God? Why does George warrant knowing the extra Divine person and not Eric? How can Christ build a Church on a rock that shifts like sand, contradicting His own parable. How can Christ commission His disciples to baptise in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost if there is also a Person X as well but does not share the Name?

The fact is that the Trinity has always been part of the Divine self-revelation from Genesis i to Revelation xxii, from Tertullian to St John Damascene. The truth has always been there to see. The Bible is inerrant in its theological truth but requires the Church Fathers to compile and gather that truth according to the tradition that they learned from their teachers all the way back to the apostles. This truth is eternal and this is why Christian belief stands outside the category of things that evolve. It is why sin is sin no matter what time period you are from and why the Church possesses an essential unity across the human epoch of this planet.

I have often found that people ask the question in order to justify their practices which run contrary to the teaching of the Church. "Times change and so must the Church. We cannot hold the same terrible beliefs of the first Christians!" As I say, the onus on these folk is to show why the Church has always got it wrong or what has the power, authority and motive to make that change happen. I often find that their answer to this question is, at best, unconvincing.

No comments:

Post a Comment