The Living Universe - Duane Elgin [26]
will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
—PSALMS139:7-105
Overall, Judaism views the universe as a divine creation and humans as having a direct relationship with its creative unfolding. Christianity has drawn from these roots and, with roughly one-third of humanity as adherents at the turn of the twenty-first century, it is the world’s largest religion. To explore the connection between Christianity and the cosmos, it is important to begin by acknowledging the theological complexity of Christianity, with its many voices, institutions, and shifting emphases over time.
As theologians reexamine Christian history, one of the themes being explored is the idea that God not only creates and sustains the universe, but that the universe actually participates in the being of God. Here are quotes from the Bible that suggest a view of “God” as a divine spiritual presence that creates the universe and continues to be present within it.
In him we live, and move, and have our being . . . . We are his offspring.
—Acts 17:28
Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him.
—JOHN1:3
Christianity sees the universe as a divine creation permeated by a spiritual presence that celebrates the glory of its creator. In the New Testament book of Hebrews 11:3 we read, “. . . the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”6 What we see around us is not made of anything visible. Recalling the preceding chapter, this is congruent with modern cosmology describing the birth of the universe from nothing as a “vacuum fluctuation.”
The idea of a living universe is found explicitly and powerfully in the Eastern Orthodox Churches that comprise the world’s third-largest Christian community after Catholicism and Protestantism. Eastern Orthodox Christianity holds the view that God’s energies are vital for anything to exist at all and, for things to continue to exist, God’s active involvement is essential. God’s active presence is required to sustain the universe at every scale, from the most minute to the most grand. Because everything is upheld equally and without favor, this means that the entirety of creation is equally valued and sacred. God’s energies sustain even those beings who reject the idea of God. God will not abandon creation, as nothing is viewed as existing separately from God. Beings may not be conscious of their communion with God, but God is ever conscious of us.
The idea that God is not separate from this world but is present within it is found in other Christian sources. Perhaps the most exciting was the discovery in 1945 of a collection of fifty-two religious and philosophical texts, not far from the village of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. Experts estimate that they had been hidden in an earthenware jar for roughly 1,600 years. This was an enormously important discovery as it includes texts that were thought to have been destroyed during the early Christian struggles to define orthodox Christianity. The Nag Hammadi texts did not fit the accepted views of the times, so they were apparently sealed in a jar and hidden in a cave until they could be safely brought back to the public.
The most famous of these texts, The Gospel of Thomas, opens with these stunning words: “These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke,” and continues, “Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.” What does Jesus have to say in this gospel that shifts our view of death from an ending to a transformation? In the Gospel of Thomas, when Jesus was asked, “When will the new world come?” He replied, “What you look forward to has already come but you do not recognize it.” Elsewhere Jesus says, “. . . the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.” Jesus is clearly saying that what we are looking for—the divine presence—is around us and within us. Jesus says, “The kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you know yourselves, then you will become known, and