Further reflections on criteria 2 and 3

FRITJOF:

Before we go on to the next criterion, I would like to make a co^mment about criteria 2 and

3.

The second criterion in theology is the shift from revelation as timeless truth to revelation as historical manifestation.

DAVID:

Yes, from a "package of truth" we shift to revelation as an intrinsically dynamic process. Revelation is the process of coming to know the divine reality through all reality.

FRITJOF:

So you focus on the process of knowledge, the process of coming to know the divine reality. Now, in science my third criterion refers to the process of knowledge, whereas my second criterion does not. It refers to processes I observe in nature. So in theology criteria 2 and

3

really seem to flow together.

DAVID:

Maybe I can clarify criterion 2 once more, so as to set it off from criterion

3.

In the old thinking in theology, all the emphasis was on statements about God, on the teachings, on dogma. Those clearly formulated truths were all that mattered. In the new thinking the emphasis is on the gradual process in which revelation took place. For Christian theology the Bible records the ways human beings gradually came to understand the divine. Revelation history is the process on which theology reflects. Revealed truth corresponds to the structure that is a manifestation of the underlying process, the process of interac­

tion between God and us.

FRI"tIOF:

So the structure would be the doctrine, and the underlying pro­

cess is the process of the interaction between the human and the divine, how this doctrine came into being. But when you

talk

about the doctrine, you talk about knowledge.

DAVID:

Yes, revelation is a process by which we come to know God;

and theology is, too, in its own way. Can you say once more how criteria 2 and

3

differ when we speak about the shift in science?

FRITJOF:

Criterion 2 is when I look, for ^example, at a tree. In the old par­

adigm I would say the tree consists of certain fundamental structures-the

trunk, the branches, the leaves, the roots-and I would describe those as well as I could. Then I would say that they also interact, imd then I would describe those processes of interactions, but the structures come first. In the new paradigm I would say the tree is a phenomenon that connects the sky and the earth. It does so with the process of photosynthesis, which takes place

in

the leaves. For

maxim

um efficiency, the leaves are distributed on the branch in a certain way so they

all

tum toward the sun. They need to be nourished, and this is why you need a trunk and this is why you need the roots. You have the nourishment from the earth and the nourish­

ment from the sun, and the two mix in the tree. Lots of processes are involved, and those processes create certain structures, and this is what we see when we look at the tree. This is not talking about the process of how I gain knowledge about the tree. It is talking about what the tree is.

Criterion

3

is about the process of knowledge. That's a different level. There when I talk about the tree, I do so only because I observe it;

and what is that process of observation? So there are two different pro-,

cesses. The process of gaining knowledge belongs to number

3;

the process I observe in nature belongs to number 2. It seems to me that in theology the two flow together.

DAVID:

I understand now what you mean. We can clearly distinguish two criteria in theology as well. But here they're closer to one another than they are in science. Thomas, would you please illustrate this dis­

tinction with an example from theology? The Trinity, let's say.

THOMAS: I'll

try my best. Again,

I'll

have to use some technicaljargon, so please bear with me!

Scientists speak of the relation between "structure" and "process" in reality; theologians speak of the relation between the "immanent" and the "economic" Trinity, or, to use the terms of our criterion 2, between the Trinity as a "timeless truth" and as a "historical manifestation?' Let me explain. The Bible and other sources for this doctrine speak about the three divine Persons, Father, Word (or Son), and Spirit, in relation to human salvation, or, in other words, about God as God is toward us.

Now, "God toward us" is God revealed through the divine "economy"

or plan for humans and the whole cosmos. So the Trinity is "economic"

in so far as it impinges upon our lives in the world and in history. But the article of Christian faith states that this "economic" Trinity

is

the

"immanent" Trinity, that the God who saves us from our alienation and

draws us into a communion oflove

is

Father, Word, and Spirit. The pro­

cess whereby we come to know something of the inner life of God is . that same process whereby we are spiritually transformed, liberated, enlightened.

You could push the analogy between the scientific and the theolog­

ical criterion a litde farther and say that the "structure" corresponds to the "immanent Trinity" and the "process" to the "economic Trinity:' By being drawn into a dynamic web of relationships with God-the divine

"economy" -we come to a paradoxical turn. In science, structure is seen as the manifestation of an underlying process; but theology penetrates beneath the process and discovers the "structure" of God, which is itself a dynamic web of relationships.

DAVID:

In other words, we are no longer talking about three Some­

things that are sitting out there; we are talking about it in dynamic terms, of how we are imbedded in this reality.

THOMAS:

That's precisely it. You know, sometimes Christians forget how the Church came to know about the Trinity of Persons in the one God. They imagine that this doctrine came, as it were, shrink-wrapped direct from heaven. If that were so, then why did the Church need to hold a long series of ecumenical councils in order to hammer out the words to express the inexpressible mystery of God? There are no shrink-wrapped dogmas! The hammering-out of a shared understand­

ing of the mystery is itself a moment in the process of salvation and liberation and enlightenment. The "economic" Trinity, the Trinity that

"really matters:' because it has to do with our being transcendentally human, simply

is

the Trinity of God, the divine Being's own self­

experience. The Trinitarian dogma "really matters" because our groping (as a Church body and as individual believers) toward a clearer under­

standing of the mystery is in some way the mystery itself. Our strug­

gling to know the Trinity as the Trinity is in God (the "immanent"

Trinity) is an integral part of the knowing itself and makes the process of knowing identical with the process of being saved, liberated, enlightened.

DAVID:

I wish more people could have the Trinity presented to them in this way! They would realize how our own life partakes of this process of revelation.

FRITJOF:

So revelation is a process. Could you say, then, that revelation is a process of gaining knowledge, and theology is gaining knowledge about revelation? So there are two processes of gaining knowledge, two levels.

DAVID:

That is the point. In criterion 3 we are dealing with something quite different from criterion 2. In 2 we say that theology is shifting its attention from the product to the process of revelation. Here now, in criterion 3, we note that doing theology is a process that implies our mystic awareness and must explicidy reflect on that epistemic fact.

FRITJOF:

So revelation is a process of knowing the divine reality (2), and theology is a process of knowing about revelation (3). In 3 we say our methods of observation and our techniques have to come into the theory; that's why we call it epistemic. The difficulty I had was that revelation itself is a process of knowledge, whereas the photosynthesis in the trees, for example, is not a process of knowledge.

DAVID:

And that is why the two criteria are more closely related in the­

ology; but they can still be distinguished.

4 Shift from Building to Network as Metaphor of Knowledge

FRITJOF:

Architectural metaphors are frequendy used in science to talk about knowledge. We talk about "basic building blocks of matter;' "fun­

damental equations;' "fundamental principles;' and so on. Knowledge must be built on firm foundations. Then the paradigm shifts occur, shaking the foundations, and everybody gets very nervous. Now we are moving to the metaphor of knowledge as a network rather than a build­

ing, a web where everything is interconnected. There is no up and down; there are no hierarchies; nothing is more fundamental than any­

thing else. This shift in metaphors from knowledge as a building to knowledge

as a

network

is my

fourth criterion.

DAVID:

In theology it's exacdy the same. The same architectural meta­

phors were used all the time in the old paradigm-our basic beliefs, our basic belief structure, and so on.

THOMAS:

Even more important than the metaphor was the generally static view of knowledge that it implied. In old-paradigm theology

"revealed truth" was a static entity, sent down

en bloc

from heaven. Theo­

logical statements were "objective;' conveyors of a meaning independent of the believers and their culture. Today the "network" metaphor is starting to prevail in theology. There is a great deal of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary networking, even more than in the physical sciences.

Perhaps this is another instance in which theology has advanced more rapidly than science.

FRITJOF:

In science this shift is one of the most difficult things to accept, because scientists are so conditioned by the old metaphor. It has become so ingrained in the language of science that it's very difficult now to shift to this "network thinking:' For example, most biologists would think that the genetic level of the DNA, the genetic code, and so on is really the basic level that determines everything else. In the new thinking you would say this is one level, one aspect of living systems, but it's not the one on which everything else builds.

In document Fritjof Capra - Belonging to the Universe Explorations on the Frontiers of Science and Spirituality (Page 141-145)