“We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”

Today is the feast of Candlemas, aka Groundhog Day.

Candlemas is a Christian holiday commemorating the presentation of Jesus at the Temple. In accordance with Leviticus 12, it falls on February 2nd, which is also final day of the Christmas–Epiphany season. In some countries, Christians don’t remove their Christmas decorations until the day after Candlemas.

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ——

These words are attributed to Viktor Frankel, holocaust survivor, philosopher, and author.

Continuing with the Book of Job theme, Job is arguably the most important work in the entire Old Testament, possibly the second most important book in the whole Bible – behind the Gospel of John. Some Jewish commentators claim that it is the 5th book of Moses and rightfully belongs as part of the Torah. It is frequently quoted in the works of the Church Fathers (100 – 500 AD), perhaps more than any other single book of the Bible, and it has inspired a number of modern adaptations (e.g., Archibald MacLeish’s J.B.).

In one respect at least, The Book of Genesis and the Book of Job are mirror images of one another. In Genesis, mankind (Adam) finds itself in Paradise with all its needs met; yet ‘Adam’ chooses to sin. In Job, a man (Job) finds himself in the most dire straights possible; yet he continues to practice virtue and he defends both God and Goodness against the relentless taunting of his wife and 3 (or 4) so-called “comforters”.

While Adam put his ‘significant other’ (Eve), the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (apple), and even the serpent (Satan) ahead of God, Job never waivers in his monotheism: “For I know that my redeemer lives and that he will stand on the earth on the last day, and though after my skin (is gone) worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I will see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine own eyes shall behold, and not another’s.” (Job 19: 25 & ff)

Last week (1/10/21) we talked about the idea that God is better understood as a ‘process’ than as a ‘person, place or thing’. Readers have asked me to clarify, and perhaps expand, on that thought.

While most religions and spiritual practices share ideas, there are a few ideas that are unique to Christianity, e.g., the Trinitarian model of God. According to this model, God is one entity (or ‘substance’) expressed in three ‘persons’: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Each of these ‘persons’ is wholly and fully God; and yet God is not God without these three distinct expressions of Godhead. In the Christian view, the nature of Divinity is to be understood as the relationship among three independent persons.

To add yet another layer of complexity, in the Trinitarian model The Holy Spirit is the relationship between the Father and the Son, but that relationship is in no way subordinate to the Father and Son. Rather, the Holy Spirit is a person in his own right, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Son.

In 325 A.D., the Council of Nicaea published the basic tenets of the Christian faith in a document now known as the Nicene Creed. This Creed reads, in part, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son, he is worshiped and glorified.”

So, God is indeed ‘process’ (i.e., relationship, dialogue, love). So, while God transcends all parts of speech, God functions more like a verb than a noun. From 1 John 4: 8 to the latest hippie bumper sticker the message is the same: “God is Love.”

Most religions and spiritualities emphasize the importance of Love. Those that include the concept of God often crave God’s love. Their bumper sticker might read, “God loves!” paraphrasing the ever popular, “Jesus saves”.

But a God who loves is not the same as a God who is Love!

But when we think of process, we think of something that unfolds in time. God, however, is eternal (non-temporal); he exists outside of space and time. So how can God both be pure process and non-temporal? How is that possible?

For the most of the Church’s history, this was a mystery that had to be accepted on Faith alone. But those of us privileged to live in the 20th and 21st centuries can see that non-temporal process is not an attribute of God alone. In fact, non-temporal processes underly the entire phenomenal world. The temporal processes that we work with every day are just the tip of a much larger, non-temporal iceberg.

Specifically, I’m talking about ‘non-locality’ (Bell) and ‘the collapse of the wave function’ (Schrödinger). John Bell showed that once subatomic particles have interacted with one another they can remain entangled no matter how far apart (in space or time) they may come to be. In that case, for them there is no space or time. And it is believed that most subatomic particles in the cosmos today are ‘entangled’. Therefore, the web of non-local, non-temporal entanglement is much more fundamental and universal than the web of space-time.

Likewise, Schrödinger (famous for his ‘cat’) showed that what we call ‘things’ and ‘events’ depend upon the ‘collapse’ (or resolution) of a probability function known as the ‘wave function’. Before collapse, the wave function does not exist in spacetime but rather in a dimension we know as ‘probability’. Only after the wave function has collapsed (possibly as the result of a broken ‘entanglement’, above) does it enter into spacetime (as an object or event).

So, we ‘moderns’ do not have to accept the idea of God as non-temporal process based on faith alone. Rather, we have empirical examples of non-temporal processes right in our material world.

A dear friend of mine recently responded to an email I had sent. I loved this response and wanted to share the relevant parts with you:

According to the Trinitarian model, God is relatedness, dialogue, love. Therefore, God is process, the process that animates the spatiotemporal world and the process that constitutes His own Being. But when we think of process, we think of something that unfolds across time. God, however, is eternal; He exists outside of space and time. So how can God be both pure process and atemporal? How is that possible?

In my last post, I reflected on the idea that all the world’s ontologies (philosophical, theological or scientific) fall into one of two camps: (A) Some sort of Determinism, where the ‘actual’ is ultimately embedded in what is falsely called the ‘potential’ or (B) some sort of Indeterminism where potentiality is selectively converted to actuality through an agency that somehow, in some way transcends pure potentiality itself.

From Aristotle to Whitehead, from Sartre to the 20th century ‘quantum mechanics’, there is a broadly held view that Being at its core is Pure Potential. Potentiality is selectively converted to actuality through the agency of something other than pure potentiality itself.

That agency is called ‘Creativity’ by Whitehead, ‘Le Neant’ by Sartre, or ‘Collapse of the Wave Function’ by Schrödinger. In none of these cases, however, does pure potentiality alone determine its own actuality (that would be Determinism and would negate the concept of ‘potentiality’ entirely). Something other than pure potentiality itself must convert what could be to what is.

The Apostle John expressed the same idea: “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 were made through him and without him nothing was made.” (Jn 1: 1 – 5)

According to John, “the Word of God’ (Christ) is what converts potentiality to actuality. Everything that is comes to be through that ‘Word’ and without that ‘Word’ nothing comes to be.

In final analysis, I think that all the world’s ontologies (philosophical, theological, or scientific) fall into one of these two camps: (A) Some sort of Determinism (where the ‘actual’ is ultimately embedded in what is falsely called the ‘potential’) or (B) some sort of Indeterminism (where potentiality is selectively converted to actuality through an agency that transcends pure potentiality per se).

Group A would argue that there must be nothing before there can be something; Group B would reverse it: there must be something before there can be nothing.

A much beloved friend and family member sent this to me T-day morning. Much appreciated! But I could not help but notice the care taken to avoid any reference to “God, the father almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth”. I am not suggesting that everyone must believe in God. Far from it. But I am suggesting that substituting various ‘pagan’ alternatives does not work: “god (as if God could be anything else but a proper noun), universe, life, earth”. Imagining that any of these could be sui generis capable or creating all that is ex nihilo is absurd. If you don’t buy into the “God Hypothosis”, ok, well and good, but suggest a viable alternative.

Happy Thanksgiving! Really? With COVID, economic insecurity, terrorism, etc. what do we have to be thankful for?

Only everything! Literally…every thing. Being is a function of being good. (Don’t tell that to my 10 year old self.) We ‘are’ only in so far as we are ‘good’. We don’t realize it, but we have a blind spot. Sadly, we are not “all that we could be”.

But what is this thing called ‘Good’ that we celebrate this week? It’s God. It’s what makes Being be. It is the yardstick by which we measure everything in our world. But because it is a yardstick, it can’t be among the things that it measures. It must transcend our everyday world. And what transcends our everyday world is what we call “God”.