Human consciousness,God and creation

The phenomenon of consciousness

Given the knot of questions in current debates around topics such as ‘intelligent design’, creation, evolution, and the convergence or divergence of scientific, philosophical and theological perspectives on such questions, ¹ it is important not to paint ourselves into a corner or, better, not to saw off the branch that intelligence is sitting on. Fierce debates on intelligent design can overlook more fundamental questions relating more to what we might call, ‘the design of intelligence’, the dynamic structure of understanding as it emerges in conscious experience. This is a confusing area because imaginative propensities and prejudices can lead critical intelligence astray. For instance, if we imagine creation as a noun used to designate and objective state of affairs produced by the Creator, we naturally tend to envisage the totality of creation as something to which we, and our own creativity, are oddly extrinsic. We can have the impression that our thinking and feeling, praying, desiring, exploring and creating are merely a faint mode of being, ghosting the objective reality of the universe, but not really part of it. Creation, and the physical universe, are thus imagined as objectively given – which human beings must come to recognize, and proceed to explore, with or without any theological or metaphysical implications. ²

There is something missing, namely, the phenomenon of consciousness itself. We must account for human consciousness as an intrinsic feature of human being – and as an inward dimension of creation itself – that in which creation becomes known and appreciated. Consciousness is not, therefore, an ethereal idea or some kind of imaginary ‘ghosting’ of reality, but a primal experience, given, and indeed accessible, in every act and moment of our lives. ³ Consciousness can be described as self-presence involved in our acts of sensing, imagining, questioning, understanding, judging, deciding, acting, loving and contemplating. In that sense, it is the inward dimension by which reality reveals itself. We are not detached spectators looking at what is somehow already ‘out there’. Rather, our consciousness is the site in which what is to be known is given to sense, imagination and intelligence, provoking questions as to what is, or what might be the case. Objectivity, even the highest scientific objective knowledge, can never be attained by pretending that there is not someone who does the knowing. Grammatically speaking, all ‘third person’ statements, even in science, depend on a ‘first person’, expressed in such statements as ‘I have found this to be so’, ‘I cannot deny that this is the case without lying’.

For those who might fear that such a suggestion is dangerously subjective, we readily admit that subjectivity is indeed dangerous, should we pretend that what is real and true is merely a projection of our own feelings, imaginations or bright ideas. That would result in subjectivism. On the other hand, the only way to what is genuinely objective is not by being an unconscious automaton, but by being a conscious agent activating all our capacities to sense, to imagine, and to understand and weigh the evidence. We can never be so objective, so ‘third person’ in our extraversion as to leave out the subjective, the ‘first person’, dimension in our knowing. Nor, at the other extreme, can we be so subjective as to refuse to acknowledge the demand to go beyond ourselves into the awesome otherness of all that is – the ‘third person’ account, you might say, typically expressed in scientific writing as the ‘third person passive’. ⁴ At every point, in the act of knowing, there is an identification of intelligence knowing reality, and reality communicating itself to intelligence – in accordance with the traditional Aristotelian–Thomist axiom concerning the identity of the thing known and the mind knowing.

Consciousness, soul, and cosmos

Given the whole panoply of creation, human consciousness is marked with an awareness combining material and spiritual dimensions of reality. This is a favourite theme of, say, Maximus Confessor, and looks back to Plato’s Timaeus for its origins. ⁵ Today, we can take this idea further. As embodied in the material and physical cosmos, the human being is immersed in the whole dynamic interaction of matter and energy. The body is not simply contained by its skin. In the one web of evolutionary life, human beings are related to all other living beings on this planet. Moreover, there is the much greater cosmic connection. In terms of physical and chemical genesis, it has often been remarked that we are made of stardust. The physical and chemical constitution of our bodies and brains owe their origins to vast cosmic occurrences billions of years ago that formed the hydrogen and carbon that are the basis of all biological life.

The spiritual dimension of human existence is conventionally expressed as having a ‘soul’. In Aquinas’ oft-repeated phrase, this soul is in some measure all things, anima est quodammodo omnia. ⁶ The overture of the soul or spirit to the ‘all things’ of the universe arises out of the distinctive experience of human consciousness, as it transcends the range of material and purely physical reality. Human consciousness, for example, experiences itself as being able to reflect on itself knowing anything, and to reflect on its own reflecting. Nothing is in principle beyond the ambit of its explorations, be it spiritual, material or the divine mystery itself. Consequently, the phenomenon of our consciousness in knowing anything is of cosmic and universal significance. However inchoately, in the human mind and heart, the cosmos awakens to itself as an expanse of wonder and as an uncanny gift. This double sense of receptivity and transcendence caused Goethe to observe, ‘Man is the first conversation that nature holds with God.’ ⁷ Long before him, Maximus Confessor considered that:

The human person is the laboratory in which everything is concentrated and itself naturally mediates between the extremities of each division, having been drawn into everything in a good and fitting way through becoming …. ⁸

But consciousness is the condition for the conduct of the brain research of today, and this is not conducted unconsciously. Apart from reductionist ideologies, an intriguing modern question remains of how material forces or structures condition the genesis of the human consciousness. What is commonly called the ‘soul’ pertains to what is deepest in the universe of God’s creation, namely, personal consciousness. However mysteriously and however intimately connected with evolutionary dynamics, the traditional wisdom considers that only God can create the spiritual. ⁹ It is argued that the soul must be immediately created by God for the human to be drawn into a dialogical relationship with the Creator. The uniqueness of the human consists in being ‘faced’ with God, at every stage of existence (whether in the present space–time structure of biological life, or after death). In this regard, the soul is considered as a necessary principle of continuity in the identity and history of the human being: whatever the human state – living, dying, dead or in some state beyond (such as purgatory, hell, heaven or full bodily resurrection). At each stage, it is the one and the same person created by and for God. In this respect, the goal of salvation is to bring to fulfilment in God, the dialogical existence that is the basic feature of our being. Though the human co-exists with innumerable others, and ‘in-exists’ within material creation, it is more. We ‘ex-ist’, that is we ‘stand out’ from material creation in the immediacy of our relationship to God, the distinguishing feature of the human in regard to all else in in the material universe.

Consciousness of this transcendent relationship discloses the spiritual depth and Other-ward orientation of our being. It inspires the language of self-transcendence, for the human self is always ‘more’. Human consciousness is ever unfolding, ever on the move, in wonder, love, exploration and moral responsibility. Such consciousness is refined through art and extended in contemplation. This interior dimension is hidden in the daily round of the lives of innumerable good and decent people. It animates the great religious traditions and spiritualities that have formed human history. The movement of this spiritual consciousness is felt as a deep undertow in our embodied existence. ¹⁰

Given the dominance of an evolutionary anthropology, any suggestion of the immediate creation of the soul by God can seem regressive, both scientifically and even theologically. Theology must continue, therefore, to explore the possibilities of emergence in relation to spirit, soul and consciousness within a universe of divine creation, even though we cannot address such questions in this present article. There are, however, some crucial theological perspectives that must be steadily held in place. The first is an appreciation of the depth dimension of creation. Embodied in the physical and biological world, the human being is summoned into existence by God’s action. In this way, creation is opened to its original and final mystery. In the words of Aquinas, ‘the love of God is [ever] infusing and creating the goodness of reality’ (amor Dei infundens et creans bonitatem in rebus). ¹¹ A ‘Theory of Everything’ (TOE) as an explanation of the immense interactive field of the emergent cosmos remains elusive. But in the universal domain of God’s creation, only the original love of God is the ultimate explanation. It is a love desirous of communicating itself to a creation made capable of receiving it. Through the dialogical openness inscribed into human existence, the human being emerges as the creature capable of receiving God’s ultimate communication. ¹² To be conscious is to be faced not only with the uncanny fact of existence but also with the promise of the ultimate gift, the self-gift of God.

Secondly, spirit and its correlative human consciousness are of a different order of reality compared to the purely material. This other dimension is experienced, perhaps in a disconcerting fashion, in the imperative registered in the mind and the heart of even the most materialist minded scientist. The demands of honesty, truthfulness, thoroughness and responsibility in the conduct of research are unavoidable. In other words, the drive to understand, the demands of truth and the workings of conscience generally, are not irrelevant data: they form the mind of the scientist at work. This kind of data also demands an explanation; and no amount of computerized calculation and sense-based empirical method offers it.

Clearly, there can be no argument against the creative Spirit of God working through the mediation of innumerable, finite physical and genetic influences to summon the embodied human person into existence. In that perspective, the critically established findings of the cosmological and evolutionary sciences are entirely acceptable. ¹³ Unfortunately, Darwinian evolution has been made a feature of a mechanistic narrative rather than contributing to a more refined and subtle understanding of creation and providence. Only the creative Source of both matter and spirit can summon the embodied spiritual person into existence. ¹⁴

We have delayed on this point because any position on the God-created reality of the spirit and soul has important consequences. For instance, the notion of the soul/spirit as the capacity to be summoned and faced by God is of great relevance to interreligious dialogue. Dialogue with the other becomes a moment in the shared experience of being created by and for the infinite mystery that can never be fully named or known. All human beings co-exist, not only in the wonder of the physical cosmos, but in the transcendent reality of a divine creation.

This is to say that the multidimensional universe of God’s creation is not limited to a scientifically observable material universe. There is the dimension of spirit. This other dimension, however, is not accessible through data of the senses, but relies on another kind of data, that of consciousness. Consciousness intensifies and expands as we wonder about why there is anything at all, and in the movement of an unrestricted drive to explore and understand, and experience the sway of truth. There is a further dimension as when consciousness becomes conscience and feels the burdens of moral responsibility, thence to find a special peace in prayer, conversion, thanksgiving and adoration.

Consciousness and possessing a human brain must be distinguished, especially as the rapidly developing brain-science of our day reveals many wonders.

Though the human brain is a neuro-physical organ of incredible complexity, though it is necessary for our embodiment in the life of this planet, it is not a personal subject. Physically speaking, the brain is an observable organ of a certain size and weight located in the human head. Scientifically speaking, it is a theoretical construct, approachable through different models of experimentation and research. Paradoxically, the brain as such is never directly experienced in consciousness, even when the astonishing reality of its neural networks is being increasingly explored. What is immediately evident to consciousness is the variety of intentional acts (observing, recording, interpreting, imaginative modelling, weighing the evidence, and so on) employed in exploring the reality of the brain. In short, the mystery of the consciousness is more than the brain. Since it would take us too far afield to refer further to mind–brain–body interconnections, we can simply record our agreement with the remark of Sir John Eccles, Nobel Laureate:

Let us be quite clear that for each of us the primary reality is our consciousness – everything else is derivative and has a second order reality. We have tremendous intellectual tasks in our efforts to understand baffling problems that lie right at the center of our being. ¹⁵

It would be an odd situation, then, to screen out of the picture of creation what is most obvious, namely the consciousness in which the picture appears in the first place. The phenomenon of consciousness cannot be relegated to the possibility of some future discovery of the interaction between the brain’s neurones. Brain science is not conducted by unconscious scientists, for consciousness is taken for granted in scientific investigation as the most obvious datum; and without it, no investigation could proceed or attract attention. Indeed, from a materialist perspective, the denial of the existence of God has a strange parallel in the denial of the existence of the self, and the tendency to ignore or bypass the phenomenon and range of consciousness! ¹⁶ After all, the affirmation of the reality of the objective order is the outcome of human consciousness in all its modes. It is true that the scientific knowledge of the universe is more than the experience of consciousness emergent in the creativity of human minds. But without such consciousness and such conscious acts the universe would not be known or further explored.

Self-transcending consciousness and objectivity

Objectivity can appear as a mythic ideal if one imagines a pure, abstract, objective viewpoint unadulterated by the human subject and abstracted from human consciousness. Critical objectivity is something quite different. On the one hand, any human consciousness that is closed against the demands of objectivity would necessarily collapse into solipsism. The world, however, insistently draws us out of ourselves; and it is only by allowing consciousness to be taken beyond the narrow confines of a habitat that the self can expand to its proper proportions. Aristotle and Aquinas agree that the human soul is in some measure open to everything (anima est quodammodo omnia). In fact, Aquinas, following Aristotle on this point, finds the objective consideration of nature is a healthy corrective to a diseased or distorted subjectivity. In the ‘book of creation’, he notes that there are so many creatures ‘that deliver the truth without falsehood. Wherefore Aristotle, when asked whence it was that he had his admirable learning, replied, “From things which do not know how to lie”.’ ¹⁷

As regards the integrity of thought, today’s challenge is to re-appraise the seemingly simple requirement of being objective. Critical objectivity will require an integration of our cognitive capacities into the self-transcending dynamics of consciousness. It is not enough to downplay the subjective to arrive at a sense of pure objectivity. True, in the conviction of Aristotle referred to above, the human subject provides abundant evidence that lying is possible, through deceit, bias or foolishness. Both despairing over subjectivistic failures and inflating objectivity to some mythic ideal are precluded to the degree one accepts that any objective judgment is, in fact, the complex outcome of a self-transcending act of intelligence. Intelligence must transcend first impressions, attractive images, bright ideas, habitual judgments and systems of thought if it is to be true itself – as consciousness and conscience demand. The mind needs to focus on what is given – the data – in order to question what such data suggest in terms of possible meanings, before it can proceed to weigh the evidence for this or that possibility; only then can the inquiring mind arrive at a responsible judgment, however qualified it might be. Lonergan’s axiom applies: ‘genuine objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity’. ¹⁸ Subjectivity is authentic when the subject concerned is present to itself precisely as responding to all the demands of self-transcendence. Affirming the truth in any instance presupposes attention to all pertinent data, and, in the process, refining one’s sensibilities and vitalizing one’s imagination. Then questions arise regarding the possible answers in specific areas of meaning. A reflective intelligence must ponder the emerging evidence if it is to ground a genuinely disinterested judgment. Only by respecting such a process and allowing for each of its components, can one take one’s place as a trustworthy agent in the vast collaborative exercise of illuminating the manifold mystery of existence – and of forming a more human world.

In this vast collaborative process, the typically overlooked area of data is not that of the senses – concerning what is heard, seen, handled, tasted, smelt, weighed and so on – but the data of consciousness itself. And that includes the consciousness of scientists themselves. They do not go about their work as automata, nor are they unconscious of their acts of understanding. Aquinas considered that the human mind knows itself in action: ‘the human soul understands itself by its understanding, which is its proper act, perfectly demonstrating its power and nature’. ¹⁹ Eight centuries later, a scientist makes a similar observation:

We must try once again to experience the human soul as soul, and not just a buzz of bioelectricity; the human will as will, and not just a surge of hormones; the human heart not as a fibrous sticky pump, but as the metaphoric organ of understanding. ²⁰

We can experience God, therefore, in a far more intimate fashion than in the classical form of ‘demonstrating’ or ‘proving’ the divine existence. In this regard, the basic argument in such proofs pivot on the intelligent conviction that no existent reality, nor all such realities taken together, could be the explanation of why anything or everything actually exists. The objective inexplicability of the actual reality of the world is taken as the starting point for proving the existence of the Creator – the first cause, final end, supreme perfection and so forth. But there is a limitation in this approach. It does not pose the question of the Creator God intimately enough for it gives the impression that consciousness is basically that of a spectator or neutral observer watching what is going on, from outside the whole emergent process.

In contrast to addressing the universe as a brute objective fact inspected by a neutral spectator, there is our conscious experiences of observing, imagining, understanding and valuing as dimensions of the actual universe – which includes our conscious selves. The activities of sensing, imagining, understanding and judging are the aspects of creation with which we are most familiar, and which make the question of creation freshly and piercingly intimate. Consequently, what creation is and what the character of the Creator is, ²² are questions posed from within our lived existence. The very activity of knowing, and the very fact that everything is, in principle, intelligible, raise the question of whether this suggests a boundlessly creative intelligence in which our knowing participates, in pursuit of the ultimate explanation of all our explanations. What is more, the character of the universe is felt in the unqualified attractiveness of the values of truth, goodness, beauty, justice and compassion. By including in our explorations of the universe the experience of wondering, knowing and responsible selves that we are, we arrive at a sense of being beholden to an Other, the source, enablement and fulfilment of the deepest orientation of our being. We find ourselves, not at the controlling centre of the universe, but as participating in its limitless mystery.

Today the immeasurably great and the immeasurably small dimensions of physical matter stretch into hitherto unimaginable expanses of time to include the evolutionary dynamics that have produced the living world. Human consciousness, trembling before the uncanny extent of the more than 14-billion-year history of this universe, possesses itself in the awareness of the thousands of millions of years that are, quite literally, the human past. All its seemingly chancy gropings have led to this moment of consciousness in which the uncanny wonder of the universe comes home to us. Our bodies, minds and hearts contribute to an awakening cosmic mystery. Paul in his Letter to the Romans had a sense of the whole of creation as groaning in one great act of giving birth (Rom 8:22). He also saw human beings as groaning too, for the fulfilment that is not yet. More mysteriously, he understood the experience of prayer as the creative Spirit of God groaning within us, so as to inspire hopes worthy of the mystery at work (Rom 8:18–28).

If the consciousness of the human subject is bypassed, suppressed, and, in effect, banished from the known universe, the wonder of knowing the world and participating in its unfolding is blocked. As a result, to speak of God in terms of an all-luminous conscious Act of self-possession, and to refer to human minds as sharing in that consciousness, must appear irrelevant. The assumption takes hold that an unconscious universe is unconsciously produced and peopled with irrelevantly conscious subjects. To allow oneself to be numbered among this unconscious population is to feel oneself a stranger in the world – haunting rather than inhabiting it as a universe luminous to itself in the human mind, heart and imagination.

The topic of creation is, then, an area where deep methodological questions arise concerning the collaborative character of human knowledge, the whole range of human meaning, and manifold witness to human experience. There is no point in talking about creation and the Creator of all (including the human mind and heart), if some of the data are declared inadmissable, above all, when the datum, the ‘given’, of our own conscious selves is ignored. After all, we are each alive, conscious, pushed, pulled and immersed in a world of daily meaning, communication and responsibility. In that world, love brings forth what is best in our lives, just as beauty in art or nature continually refreshes our perceptions of the uncanny gift of existence.

While no one denies the value of scientific research, there is no need to accept that reality in all its forms and dimensions is knowable only through exclusively scientific methods. Scientific exploration must be located in a larger field of human experience and exploration. Indeed, a theology of creation provides a spacious background in which all diverse human creativities can improvise their variations on the theme of the gift of existence, and so contribute to the great symphony of reality. In this regard, the scientist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi points to the manifold and dynamic structure of human knowledge. He suggests possibilities of generous collaboration between science, philosophy and theology – even if that remains a remote ideal:

Admittedly, religious conversion commits our whole person and changes our whole being in a way that an expansion of our natural knowledge does not do. But once the dynamics of knowing are recognised as the dominant principle of knowledge, the difference appears only as one of degree …. It establishes a continuous ascent from our less personal knowing of inanimate matter to our convivial knowing of living beings and beyond this to knowing our responsible fellow men. Such I believe is the true transition from the sciences to the humanities, and also from our knowing the laws of nature to our knowing the person of God. ²³

God creating

A fundamental approach to such a question is, first of all, the understanding of creation as a verb. Creation is not immediately understood as the product, but as the action, of the Creator. For theological or philosophical reasons, it is clear that creation is an original and continuing divine activity. It can be imagined, however, as a rather superior kind of doing something. The essential jolt to this imaginative fallacy is traditionally supplied by the addition of a mysterious little phrase: God creates ‘out of nothing’, ex nihilo sui et subjecti. The divine creative act presupposes nothing already in existence – no raw material; no chain of events; no previous dispositions. ²⁵ That is to say, God is not conditioned by anything outside God. There is nothing already there, already in existence, existing before or beyond God’s creative act. The imagination tends to represent God as the biggest actor in a world of doers and movers. It tends to place God, perhaps like a big angel or at least as a particular agent, within a cosmos of causes, principles and particular energies.

In contrast, God’s creating is not as one category of causing or doing or deciding, but is a transcendent, unimaginable mode of causing everything to be and to act. Consequently, the Creator acts in the acting of everything, and causes in the causality of every agent. ²⁶ Such a notion of creation strains the imagination. We need to recognize that we are dealing with radical mystery, unlike anything in the world of doing and causing. God is, indeed, the ungraspable ground and energy of all being and acting. To appreciate that requires a deeper reflection on the notion of God.

It is tempting to try to discuss creation without using the time-(dis?)honoured word, ‘God’. Indeed, the biblical and philosophical traditions that have formed Christian understanding of creation know other terms. For example, there is an extensive lexicon including such topics as the Word, Light, Spirit, Source, Life, Love, Be-ing (note, a verb, as in the Thomistic, Ipsum Esse – literally, ‘Sheer To-Be’), limitless Act (that is, the Actus Purus of western philosophic tradition), ultimate reality, the fount of being, the final good, the first cause, and many others. Often discussion is blocked by the emotional fixations, imaginative distortions and conceptual straightjackets with which a variety of cultural conflicts have imbued this one word, ‘God’. Nonetheless, we must persevere with it. After all, it does not let us escape from the unredeemed elements in our history. Nonetheless, other terms are available. In dealing with the mystery that transcends human language, we need, as far as possible, to keep in play the whole vocabulary, while maintaining the reverent restraint so characteristic of the Jewish tradition in which the personal name of God, YHWH, was seldom pronounced.

The real problem, however, is not with words, be they marks on a page or vibrations of sound. It resides, rather, in how these terms are used, and in what they are supposed to mean. For the believer, the first and fundamental notion of God is found in an orientation to that limitless, living fullness of being and goodness that, in the deepest sense of the traditional term, alone can ‘save our souls’. In more contemporary language, this intimation of God is as the ultimate Other who is the point of homecoming for the human journey. The meaning of God is, as it were, progressively anticipated in human consciousness as it is attracted toward the ultimate and absolute meaning of truth, beauty, goodness, love and mercy. Consciousness reaches beyond itself, outward and upward, to what the world cannot give. The experience of faith is concentrated at that point when the aspiration of human consciousness is met with a divine self-disclosure. God is not indifferent to our seeking, but is, in fact, its source, moving and attracting – through the words of the prophets, the wisdom of the saints, the inspired writings of the scriptures, in the coming of Christ and the gift of the Spirit, and in the witness of our fellow believers.

The meaning of the word, ‘God’, is forged within the furnace of history as idolatrous projections are undermined, and the demons that possess individuals and infest societies are exorcized. ²⁷ But more than anything else, the meaning of God comes as a gift, indeed as a self-giving on the part of the Creator. It is marked with a particular excess when the divine Word became flesh and dwelt among us in such a way as to enter into our suffering humanity. Though God may ‘mean the world’ to the believer, words necessarily fail in the effort to express such an event, for all human words are subject to an unending process of translation. Faith might use sensory language to name, in some analogical manner, how it sees or hears or touches or tastes the reality of God. In self-surrender and adoration, however, faith must seek to cultivate a vivid sense of the unknown and ever attractive mystery. In the consciousness of faith, God is the silence in which all words fall away, the darkness where our brightest ideas fade in the radiance of the Light, and the all-welcoming Love in which our hearts come home. If words can be spoken, before the third-person objectifications of the divine in terms of ‘It’ or ‘He’ come into play, God is first of all the intimately invocable, and all present ‘You’.

Not to recognize the anticipatory, ongoing character of the meaning of ‘God’ makes dialogue with the reverently agnostic all but impossible, be they scientists or meditative searchers. The result is all too often a collision of congealed concepts and a struggle between disciplines defending their respective borders. In such a rivalistic situation, the scientifically enunciated version of reality is deemed to be sophisticated, while the religious account is considered naive. This, I believe, is the problem which continually crops up in the confrontation between the materialist creed of reductive scientism, and religious creeds of unthinking faith. At very least, believers must bear in mind the healthy biblical agnosticism that admits that God is not yet seen face to face, and that God ‘no one has ever seen’ (John 1:18). Even though God is the object of love and faith and hope, the divine mystery is disclosed only in a progressive darkness. ²⁸

There is another pertinent point. Believers speak of creation because, however obscurely, they have come to have some notion of the One who alone who can create. Admittedly, in the religious case, there is a certain undifferentiated affirmation of Creator and creation before philosophical, historical or scientific questions are asked. As contexts develop, the creation-question is framed to meet the demands of different mentalities evident in all the varieties of philosophy and psychology, scientific method or aesthetic sensibilities, evolutionary biology and quantum physics. If faith is to seek further understanding, it has to move through many contexts and encounter many different mentalities if, in the end, it is to grow to its full intellectual, ethical and spiritual potential.

Those whose consciousness is characterized by a highly theoretical or scientific mentality approach the question of creation in a form quite different from those who have, say, a specifically spiritual or religious standpoint. These latter tend to pose the question in terms of a prior faith in order to seek further understanding of how God is, acts and is revealed in the manifold of a created universe. Scientists, as scientists, however, pursue their explorations by way of experiment, extrapolation and hypothesis, by concentrating on a particular and tightly controlled band of data in, say, physics or biology. Science focuses on the most probable explanation of the data under consideration, in the expectation of arriving at a more comprehensive explanation. The experience of searching is so vivid to the scientific mentality that scientists might find themselves suggesting that religious believers must wait on their scientific determinations before any belief in creation or the Creator can be judged legitimate. By implication, only then, when all the evidence is in, can the God of some philosophical, theological or aesthetic tradition be reasonably affirmed.

The features of an inevitable clash of views are clear. Those who freely adore the ultimate mystery disclosed to their faith as the source and goal of all, are dismissed as ‘simple believers’, conventionally religious because they know no better. On the other hand, believers who might legitimately rejoice in an intimacy with the divine Ground of creation can often lag behind, especially in scientific matters. Through lack of leisure, training or commitment, to say nothing of the effects of suspicion, fear or laziness, they can be unfamiliar with the explorative value of thought, be it in science or theology. To them, a religious sense of creation is in danger of being replaced by some purely human method, from whose esoteric procedures they are barred. They might feel that the ultimate reach of faith is being made to yield a sophisticated elite presiding over the secrets of the universe. Believers can feel pressured, therefore, to become less believing in God, and to give more credence to the current assertions of science.

A dialogical, collaborative attitude on the part of all is clearly necessary. After all, over a century ago, the 1913 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia serenely observed: ‘The gist of the theory of evolution as a scientific hypothesis … is in perfect agreement with the Christian conception of the universe; for Scripture does not tell us in what form the present species of plants and of animals were originally created by God.’ We can be grateful for the philosophical component in Catholic tradition when faith is called to address metaphysical and epistemological questions. Furthermore, we must wonder at the extent to which the neglect of the Wisdom literature of Israel has left Christian thought somewhat impoverished and awkward when it comes to face the great evolutionary and cosmic questions of own day. In the following passage, we catch the biblical sage reflecting on different kinds of wisdom. For some – the ‘scientists’ of the day:

were unable from the good things that are seen to know the one who exists, nor did they recognise the artisan while paying heed to his works; but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water or the luminaries of heaven were gods that rule the world. If through delight in the beauty of these things people assumed them to be gods, let them know how much better than these things is their Lord, for the author of beauty created them. And if people were amazed at their power and working, let them perceive from them how much more powerful is the one who formed them. For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their creator. Yet these people are little to be blamed, for perhaps they go astray while seeking God and desiring to find him. For while they live among his works, they keep searching, and they trust in what they see, because the things that are seen are beautiful. Yet again, not even they are to be excused; for if they had the power to know so much that they could investigate the world, how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of these things? (Wis 13:1–9).

Whatever the case, we find ourselves in an exuberant Babel of languages. Different mindsets and different methods seek to name the ultimate. Those concerned for a more holistic or integrated approach try to overcome the crude disjunction of scientific and religious perspectives. Still, the biblical sage graciously admits that those who confuse the wonders of creation with the wonder of the Creator are ‘little to be blamed’. Genuine exploration keeps moving on. The wonder of the world as it is inspires confidence in the beauty, complexity and sheer uncanniness of it all. Such reactions are experienced as an invitation to keep searching into the ultimate explanation of all explanations.

And yet there remains the possibility of stopping short: ‘how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of all things?’ Further questioning can be silenced with all the versions, both ancient and modern, of the late Carl Sagan’s creedal proclamation: ‘The cosmos – as known by science – is all there is, all there was, and all there will be.’ ²⁹ Likewise, the bleaker confession of the geneticist, Jacques Monod: ‘The ancient covenant is in pieces: man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe out of which he emerged only by chance.’ ³⁰ Yet, for others, the promise of further searching is evident. The eminent physicist, Werner Heisenberg, wrote, ‘Although I am convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking …. Thus, in the course of my life, I have been repeatedly compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought.’ ³¹

The very fact that so much of the cosmos is found to be profoundly intelligible and so elegantly beautiful, luminous with that splendor entis, that ‘radiance of being’ of which Aquinas speaks, invites the mind into its ultimate adventure: an exploration of the original mystery of it all. But there is a gently insistent question: ‘if they had the power to know so much … how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of all things?’.

Consciousness of creation

Judith Wright, from her experience of world of nature, points forward:

My search is further.

There’s still to name and know

beyond the flowers I gather,

the one that does not wither –

the truth from which they grow. ³²

Christian consciousness can share in Aquinas’ serene delight in the specific value of each element of creation as loved into being. Each being serves to manifest the divine goodness in a particular way. To that degree, such a vision mitigates the cosmic sadness pervading an uncritical evolutionary myth, which reads like an obituary for the casualties of evolution. The fittest survived; the weakest did not; and even what survives is subjected to the blind, harsh law that values only the future. In contrast, the medieval vision, insofar as we can discern the consciousness from which it emerges, leaves unknown the mysterious ways of Providence, but must wonder as it finds an existential value in things simply because they exist – or once existed in a certain way at a certain time. It is a reminder to those who would hurry to frame the laws of evolution to take two considerations into account. First, each individual entity is a world of mystery in the sheer fact of its existence. Before it can be considered a link in the chain of evolution, or as an aspect of the larger emerging complexity, it is, or was, there! The evolutionary potential – or lack of it – of the Marella splendens, or of any of 80,000 extraordinarily complex creatures unearthed in the Burgess Shale in Western Canada, does not evacuate the fundamental wonder of its existence in the play and contingency of what once happened. ³⁶ The unique existence of the individual entity is so often ‘the missing link’ in evolutionary thinking. Secondly, the seemingly purposeless variety of what once existed or is existing in its unique manner must arm the consciousness of creation against any premature foreclosure on the whole story of what is going on. The human mind is not a detached spectator, but is part of the emerging process. Our reconstructions and extrapolations, whatever the progress of science, access only fragments of the meaning of the whole process. Aquinas’ emphasis on the necessary plurality of creation and on the value of each existent thing not only contests the impatience of evolutionary myths, but also serves to keep evolutionary theory attentive to a truly inclusive wholeness. The full story awaits, in patience and tentative exploration, the full understanding of creation that resides only in the Creator. God is the all-engendering mystery inherent of all that is and the Light in which the human mind participates in order to make the universe luminous to itself.

Conclusion

Attention to the phenomenon of consciousness suggests an alternative to a modern imagination inevitably structured along mechanistic lines, as though everything were, in one way or another, a part of a big machine. ³⁷ The words of Sir Arthur Eddington in his The Nature of the Physical World suggest a different outlook:

We all know that there are regions of the human spirit untrammelled by the world of physics. In the mystic sense of the creation around us, in the expression of art, in yearning toward God, the soul grows upward and finds the fulfilment of something implanted in its nature. The sanction for this development is within us, a striving born with consciousness of an Inner Light proceeding from a greater power than ours. Science can scarcely question this sanction, for the pursuit of science springs from a striving which the mind is impelled to follow, a questioning that will not be suppressed. ³⁸

Humility, it would seem, is not unrelated to the consciousness of being plunged into a universe of wonder – unfolding into further mysteries and limitless questioning.