At Home in the Cosmos

By David S. Toolan Orbis Books 2001, $47.95

Toolan builds on the work begun by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the eco-theologian Thomas Berry, to review the findings of hard science over the past generation, and apply them to Western theology.

In this exhaustively researched thesis Toolan surveys the cognitive transition forced upon Western culture by the findings of post-Newtonlan physics--that the 19th Century dream of scientific determinism is a delusion.

Darwinian evolution only explains our hard wiring, he writes, not how it is that we are aware or 'minded'.

We require at least two languages to make sense of ourselves--the language of biochemistry to explain neurophysiological phenomena, and the language of self-hood or moral agency to account for the causal efficacy of our free choices.

The transition from a cosmology based on an absolute notion of space and time, to one based on a relational notion, brings home the awesome conclusion that the universe is radically interconnected--everything is internally related to everything else. The sci-fi intuition that a butterfly flapping her wings in Bali can precipitate a hurricane in New York, is not as far-fetched as it once seemed.

Matter-energy is profoundly social. Toolan writes. Communion, not isolation. is the rule. Nature--like the medieval sacramental universe-carries messages, consequently, the gap between nature and human culture has narrowed considerably.

Newtonian physics shattered the kind of communion with the cosmos that Francis of Assisi took for granted. Post-Einsteinian cosmology begins to restore that communion.

Toolan's thesis is that science now invites the Church to review its theological relationship with the created order:

   We must re-center, reorient ourselves,
   to serve the earth and all
   sentient beings. The argument for
   ecocentrism and the intrinsic value
   of the biophysical world makes
   eminent sense if it widens the horizons
   of our moral concern and is
   taken as a sharp rebuke to utilitarian
   short-sightedness and egocentrism.

This complex and mysterious universe which spent 23 billion years bringing humankind to birth--with its "strange attractors," thermal din and random energy-seems infinitely more marvelous to the modern psyche than the mythologies of Sunday School, and more consonant with the mystery of divine wisdom.

As for humankind, coming at the end of a vast chain of conversions of chancy energy, we are simply the last transformers and interpreters, the ultimate black box of nature.

This new cosmology has to make a difference to our conception of God, our prayer life, our work and action.

Humankind is given the chance to make comedy or tragedy of it all, to make sense or make a mess of it, by how we live, by what we do with our science and technology and culture. In short, it is our responsibility to keep planet earth running in good condition. "The quarks, the mitochondria in our cells are speechless. It is our responsibility, if I am not mistaken, to say what the purpose of earth shall be."

But this is dangerous terrain, holy ground. A religious tradition, with creed, ethical code, and communal ritual is essential to map the territory, provide guides and critics, to set our neural pathways to the frequency of the Creator's music--slowly. This is the work of the Church.

So where does Jesus come into it?. In cosmic terms Jesus is a prototype of our species--the archetype of what the quarks and molecules, from the beginning, were predestined to become-one resurrected body.

Within this vision, salvation or redemption encompasses far more than humanity--it takes in the destiny of the whole natural order.

It follows that in such a dynamic, chancy universe, the Holy One cannot be the cuddly Super-Therapist proposed by New Agers. Spirituality acquires a new context. Spiritual practices are not undertaken out of curiosity or for private benefit, but for the sake of registering in our bones the primordial rainbow covenant--all is blessed; nothing is to be lost.

Like it or not, planet earth is largely under our management. We (in the affluent world) will decide what the climate will be in this century, whether there will be any wilderness left, what the state of the soil, the air, the water will be, the health and variety of wildlife, the very conditions of life and survival on the planet.

Toolan's urgent message is that the Church can no longer distance itself from world affairs as if the taboo of the last few hundred years against identifying psyche with nature was still in place.

His warning is that too much is simply driven by a science that has become indifferent to whether it creates or destroys; that our experts may have forgotten the lessons of the humanities; the danger that they have become chilled, dehumanized, brutalized, effectively cut off from the anxiety and anguish that gave rise to the whole enterprise of understanding to begin with.

Theological reinterpretation of Creation for the twenty-first century will render interdenominational differences trivial, and vying amongst the great faiths of the world an anachronism. For the future of the planet is in our hands; we have become the authors of ongoing creation; a great deal depends upon humankind. As God created this universe, said the rabbis, He exclaimed, "Let's hope it works!"