Emergence Theory on Lake Erie?

On a recent trip to my hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, my family and I paid a visit to the Tom Ridge Environmental Center at the entrance of Presque Isle State Park on Lake Erie. The photo to the right is of a placard at the top of the Center’s observation tower, which overlooks the lake.

I found this quote from Antoine de Saint Expury’s The Little Prince inspirational, as well as reminiscent of the concept of emergence in biology, which I’ve written about in previous essays. Essentially, the tree is greater than the sum of its parts; it is an “enduring force straining to win the sky.”

Ethically speaking, the quote suggests that the tree has intrinsic value, and that we, in turn, have moral responsibililties to it. Environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston would say the tree possesses intrinsic value by virtue of innate properties that it defends in the interest of its own survival. (For more, see my essay “Did You Remember to Turn Off the Plants?“)

Whatever you may take from it, it’s a beautiful quote I thought I’d share with you.

Seeing the Sacred

So many people encounter the sacred in the world. I’ve read statements by the staunchest of rationalists about how the universe fills them with a sense of awe and wonder.

Often, however, it’s these same people who either deny the “reality” of these experiences or simply brush them aside as unimportant in light of the “brute” facts of life (what “brute fact” means is a topic for future discussion).

I thought of this one night after, of all things, a trip to the grocery store. As I walked to my car, wind gusts blew bits of litter across the pavement and shook the branches of trees. A storm was brewing.

While driving home, the heaviness of the rain clouds was both beautiful and a bit frightening. They seemed especially ominous because they were juxtaposed with clear sky in the distance.

It occurred to me that, even though I knew there was a scientific explanation for this phenomenon, that there was no exasperated storm god planning to bring a flood down on humanity, the spiritual experience of it was irreducible. The presence of divinity transcended and made sacred the simple observation.

This dimension of life is as much part of reality as seeing the storm in a very basic sense. It informs the way I see. I can see “just” a storm, or I can see the beauty, grace, and divinity that conveys itself during the encounter.1

Notes
1. I consider this an I-Thou experience wherein God’s eternity is glimpsed in the between of the encounter. See my earlier essay on I-Thou relating for more.

Painting: “Rainstorm off the Coast at Brighton,” John Constable. Courtesy Mark Harden’s Artchive, www.artchive.com.

Panentheism: God as Energies and Wisdom, Part II

In my last essay on panentheism, I began presenting the views of those theologians who describe God’s relationship with the world through concepts such as energies and wisdom. Next up, the panentheistic theology of Orthodox Christian Kallistos Ware.

God as Energies and Wisdom, Part II
Kallistos Ware speaks of God’s immanence through the theology of Saint Gregory Palamas. Palamas describes God’s transcendence in terms of essence (ousia) and energies (energeiai). God’s essence is nameless and “beyond being” (162). It is inaccessible to humans, except through Christ, and shared only among the three persons of the Trinity.

Here, Palamas’ theology differs from some contemporary panentheistic views that the world can in some sense affect God. However, God’s energies, although separate from God’s essence, are “God himself in action,” affecting all creatures and making each a “sacrament of his dynamic presence” (160).

Furthermore, God’s creation is an expression of love—of God’s “own true self” (168). And God’s energies are “nothing else than love in action” (168). As Ware explains, it is love that represents the true point where immanence and transcendence meet (168).

He adds, however, that, although God’s energies are in all created things, the world is fallen and thus cannot be filled with the divine presence. But God’s gift of immanence will gradually reveal itself until the final glory of the consummation.

Works cited
Ware, Kallistos. “God Immanent yet Transcendent: The Divine Energies according to Saint Gregory Palamas,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke, eds. (157-68).

Painting: “Wind from the Sea,” by Andrew Wyeth, courtesy Mark Harden’s Artchive, www.artchive.com