SCIENCE, ART, AND CHRISTIANITY
Sketching a Theology of Nature for Our Time
Publisher Description
Modern science discovered that Nature is capable of becoming itself; Christianity knows that God is Love; therefore, Creation must be God's gift. The gift is His Word which IS God. However, God’s word also brings forth Creation that which is essentially not God. That God can be God in that which is not God is a central paradox of Christianity; human logic cannot resolve it. Yet. In the light of the Christmas event where God becomes a human being, the eyes of faith can see that indeed, God can be God in that which is not God. Therefore, the relationship between God and Creation is a bond between absolute otherness. It comes into existence through the creative source of the Word of God given away to the total otherness of Creation, the Universe, Nature. Nature brings forth itself through a historical process of sequential syntheses, by unifying that it already previously unified into emergent novelties (T. de Chardin, 1955).
Unifying diversity into emergent novelty is not only the creative process of nature it is also the creative process in Art. “Art is the continuation of the creativity of Nature” (Marc Chagall). In music and dance composition, the connections between its elements bring forth unities that emerge over time, in the pictorial arts compositions bring forth unities through the relationships of its pictorial elements.Science, Art, and Christianity have one common creative root; it is the establishment of new connections, that bring forth emergent novelty. From the quantum level throughout science to art and Christianity, connections bring forth new relationships, new emergent realities. The unification of diversity into unity is creative. From a Christian perspective, this might be seen as an analogy between the eternal Trinitarian “existence” of God and the ontological architecture of Nature.