When St. Thomas used Aristotelean ideas to better understand the faith, the impact of his thought continues to this day. The early Fathers used Platonism to better express and categorize Christian mysteries, including the Trinity. The 20th century saw the development of new ways of looking at reality based firmly in experimental science. For example, Einstein discovered that space and time are interconnected and that the “stuff” of space-time can be warped by large objects, causing the effect we call gravity. As scientists probed into the building blocks of reality, they found atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, and all sorts of “flavors” of quarks. Behavior of reality at the quantum level suggests a world that is more complex and weird than science expected. Some physicists, including Brian Greene, believe reality is composed of very tiny vibrating strings.
What does this mean for Catholicism? I have thought of all of this since grad school, when I explored the connection between Chaos Theory and Romanticism, but in the last year I have had some wonderful discussions with a friend and priest, Fr. Joshua Wagner, about these very things. He put some of his ideas down on the excellent, though now inactive, Quantum Contemplation. I recently bought the book the Physics of Christianity, by Frank Tipler, a physicist at Tulane, who, according to information on the web, is now an orthodox Cath0lic. The reviews at Amazon for the book are often negative, because Tipler assumes a Christian worldview, and tries to explain Christian beliefs using modern physics, which most materialist scientists cannot accept as a valid approach. However, as a Catholic, coming from a position of faith, I am excited to better understand how Quantum reality can help us understand our faith better.
Let me provide an example. At the Quantum level there are particles that are literally three (and other numbers) and one at the same time. You cannot weigh only one, observe only one, or “remove” one from the three, or else the whole particle disappears. In other words, the particle cannot be spoken of as simply one, or simply three. Thus, at a very micro level of reality we see a way of explaining the Trinity. For years, those religious groups (like the Jehovah’s Witnesses) that were founded when enlightenment-style science ruled the day have harped about how the Trinity is pure intellectual nonsense. Quantum physics, at the least, tells us that the world is more complex and mysterious than scientists had previously thought, so we now can speak of something being fundamentally three and one at the same time.
I am aware that most scientists, who are likely materialists, will not agree with Tipler or others such as myself that are trying to use physics to better understand our faith, which we admit, is based on a belief in revelation. However, we make no claim to base our beliefs entirely on that which can be empirically verified in a materialist fashion. Instead, in good Catholic fashion, I think physics offers us a framework to explore some of the mysteries of our faith (just as Aristotle and Plato offered frameworks).
Thanks for one of our regular readers, Keith, whose mention of the book pressed me to finally move it from my wish list to shopping cart!
Image by me
Mr. Bennett,
First, thank you for the kind acknowledgement. Just in the past two days I stumbled upon the blog site of Rev. Nicholas Knisely, who is the Dean of the Cathedral in the Episcopal Diocese of Phoenix. His profession, prior to being called to the Episcopal priesthood, was Astronomy and Physics. It turns out his next read will be Prof. Tipler’s Physics of Christianity and he has indicated a definite intent to post comments on his analysis of Tipler’s assertions and ideas on his own blog: http://www.entangledstates.org/
I pass this along to you as I think you may share some interest in the topic.
Yours in Christ,
Keith Töpfer
You are perfectly correct to pursue understanding of our Holy Tradition by use of physics. This is indicated by the astronomical basis of the cosmology of Abraham’s people. They held a view of God as triune also, as evident from the name for God “Baal Shalisha” – God in three Persons, or the God of 3. They arrived at this through observation of the cosmos through which God has made his divine nature and eternal power evident, as St. Paul reminds us in Romans.
On this subject, you may be interested in the writings of John Polkinghorne. He was a theoretical physicist at Cambridge, where he was sometime president of Queen’s College and is a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is also an ordained minister in the Church of England. He has written many times on the relation of theology and science and delivered the 1996 Terry Lectures at Yale published in the UK as ‘Belief in God in the Age of Science’.
As a biblical anthropologist I’ve been digging into the beliefs and practices of the ancient Afro-Asiatics (whose worldview is represented in the Bible) and I’ve come to the conclusion that we moderns have actually lost knowledge. To cite an example, none of my college students are aware of what Plato called “Earth’s Great Year”, yet we began it about 5 years ago and that’s when average global temperatures began to fall. Just as Al Gore was starting to amass millions peddling panic of global warming! (God DOES have a great sense of humor!)
I forwarded this post to an uncle of mine who is a nuclear engineer and devout Christian. He shared with me that he had a similar insight to the Trinity from his study of quantum physics.
Fascinating!
I believe science is one of the biggest barriers to the faith for many. While I believe science only proves the existence of God, faith is still the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Unless one hopes God exists, there will be no faith with or without evidence.
That’s interesting. I find that biblical literalism among those who fail to consider the African context of Genesis is the biggest barrier to the reconciliation of Genesis and Science.
Americans are so disinterested in tradition that we tend to think that anything before the 20th century isn’t valuable. The Genesis genealogies of chapters 4, 5 and 11 tell us about Abraham’s ancestors from the Upper Nile. It can be argued that science began there.