THE COSMOLOGY OF RELIGIONS
Dr. Thomas Berry Eco-theologian, anthropologist, philosopher, Catholic monk and scholar of Teilhard de Chardin. Father Thomas Berry's books and vision challenge the religions and our culture as well to consider a new story of the universe and of our place in it.
The universe is the primary sacred community; all human religions are participants in the religious aspect of the universe itself. With this recognition, we are moving from the theology and anthropology of religions to the cosmology of religions. In the past 50 years in America there has been intense interest in the sociology and psychology of religions, and even more interest in the history of religions, yet these all fall within the general designation of the anthropology of religions.
Because none of these have been able to deal effectively with the evolutionary story of the universe or with the ecological crisis, we are led on to the cosmological dimension of the religious issue both from our efforts at understanding and from our concerns for survival.
What is new about this sense of the universe's religious mode of being is that the universe itself is now experienced as an irreversible time-developmental process, not simply as an abiding season-renewing universe. Not so much cosmos as cosmogenesis.
Our recent knowledge of the universe comes primarily through the empirical, observational sciences rather than from intuitive processes. We are listening to the earth tell its story through the signals that it sends to us from outer space, through the light that comes to us from the stars, through the geological formations of the earth and through a vast number of other evidences of itself that the universe manifests to us.
In its every aspect the human is a participatory reality. We are members of the great universe community. We participate in its life. We are nourished, instructed, and healed by this community. In and through this community we enter into communion with that numinous mystery on which all things depend for their existence and activity. If this is true for the universe entire, it is also true in our relations with the earth.
From its own evidences we now know the story of the universe as an emergent process in its fourfold sequential story: the galactic, the earth, the life, and the human story. These constitute for us the primordial sacred story of the universe.
The original flaring forth of the universe carried the present within its fantastic energies as the present expresses those original energies in their articulated form. This includes all those spiritual developments that have occurred in the course of the centuries. In its sequence of transformations, the universe carries within itself the comprehensive meaning of the phenomenal world. In recent secular times this meaning was perceived only in its physical expression. Now we perceive that the universe is a spiritual as well as a physical reality from the beginning.
This sacred dimension is especially evident in those stupendous moments of transformation through which the universe has passed in these 15 billion years of its existence. These transformations include moments of great spiritual as well as physical significance -- the privileged moments in the Great Story. The numinous mystery of the universe now reveals itself in a developmental mode of expression, a mode never before available to human consciousness through observational processes.
Yet all this means little to our modern western theologians who have shown little concern for the natural world as the primary bearer of religious consciousness. This is one of the basic reasons why both the physical and spiritual survival of the planet have become imperilled.
Presently we in the West think of ourselves as passing into another historical period or undergoing another cultural modification. If we think that the changes taking place in our times are simply another in the series of historical changes we are missing the real order of magnitude of the events taking place. We are at the end of an entire biological era in Earth history. We are now in a religious-civilizational period. In virtue of our new knowledge we are changing our most basic relations to the world about us. These changes are of a unique order of magnitude.
Our new acquaintance with the universe as irreversible developmental process is the most significant religious, spiritual, and scientific event since the beginning of the more complex civilizations some five thousand years ago. But we are bringing about the greatest devastation the earth has ever experienced in the four and a half billion years of its formation. Norman Myers, a specialist in the biosystems of the planet, estimates that we are causing an extinction spasm that is liable to result in the greatest setback to the abundance and variety of life on earth since the first flickerings of life some four billion years ago.
We are changing the chemistry of the planet, disturbing the biosystems, altering the geological structure and functioning of the planet -- all of which took billions of years of development. In this process of closing down the life systems of the planet we are devastating a sacred world, making the earth a wasteland, not realizing that as we lose the more gorgeous species, we thereby lose modes of divine presence, the very basis of our religious experience.
Because we are unable to enter effectively into the new mystique of the emergent universe available to us through our new modes of understanding we are unable to prevent the disintegration of the life systems of the planet taking place through the misuse of that same scientific vision. Western religion and theology have not yet addressed these issues or established their identity in this context. Nor have other religious traditions done so. The main religious traditions have simply restated their beliefs and their spiritual disciplines. This new experience of the religious being of the universe and of the planet earth is not yet perceived on any widespread scale within academic, theological, or religious circles.
We cannot resolve the difficulties we face in this new situation by setting aside the scientific venture. Nor can we assume an attitude of indifference toward this new context of earthly existence because it is too powerful in its effects. We must find a new way of interpreting the process itself, because, properly interpreted, the scientific venture might even become one of the most significant spiritual disciplines of these times. This task is particularly urgent just now because this new mode of understanding has such powerful consequences on the very structure of the planet Earth. We must learn to respond to its deepest spiritual content or we will be forced to submit to the devastation that lies before us.
The assertions of our traditions cannot by themselves bring these forces under control. We are involved in the future of the planet in its geological and biological survival and functioning as well as in the future of our human and spiritual well-being. We will bring about the physical and spiritual well-being of the entire planet or there will be neither physical nor spiritual well-being for any of our earthly forms of being.
The traditional religions have not dealt effectively with these issues or with our modern cosmological experience because they were not designed for such a universe. Traditional religions have been shaped within a predominantly spatial mode of consciousness. The biblical religions, although they have a historical developmental perspective in dealing with the human spiritual process, perceive the universe itself from a spatial mode of consciousness. Biblical religions only marginally provide for the progress of the divine kingdom within an established universe that participates in the historical process. They seem to have as much difficulty as any other tradition in dealing with the developmental character of the universe.
Although the antagonism toward the idea of an evolutionary universe has significantly diminished, our limitations as theologians in speaking the language of this new cosmology is everywhere evident. Much has been done in process theology in terms of our conceptions of the divine and the relations of the divine to the phenomenal world, but little has been done in the empirical study of the cosmos itself as religious expression.
To envisage the universe in its religious dimension requires that we speak of the religious aspect of the original flaming forth of the universe, the religious role of the elements, the religious functioning of the earth and all its components. Since our religious capacities emerge from this cosmological process, the universe itself may be considered the primary bearer of religious experience.
Thinking about the emergent universe in this way provides a context for the future development of religious traditions. Indeed all the various peoples of the world, insofar as they are being educated in a modern context, are coming to identify themselves in time and space in terms of the universe as described by our modern sciences, even though none of us have learned the more profound spiritual and religious meaning indicated by this new sense of the universe.
This story of the universe is at once scientific, mythic, and mystical. Most elaborate in its scientific statement, it is nevertheless among the simplest of creation stories and, significantly, the story that the universe tells about itself. We are finally overcoming our isolation from the universe and beginning to listen to it in some depth. In this we have an additional context for the religious understanding of every tradition. Through listening to the universe we also gain additional depth of spiritual understanding that was not available through our traditional insights. Just as we can no longer live simply within the physical universe of Newton so we can no longer live spiritually within the limits of our earlier traditions.
The first great contribution this new perspective on the universe makes to religious consciousness is the sense of participating in the creation process itself. We bear within us the impress of every transformation through which the universe and the planet earth have passed. The elements out of which we are composed were shaped in the supernova implosions. We passed through the period of stardust dispersion resulting from this implosion-explosion of the first generation of stars. We were integral with the attractive forces that brought those particles together in the original shaping of the earth. Especially in the rounded form of the planet we felt the gathering of the components of the earthly community and we experienced the self-organizing spontaneities within the megamolecules out of which came the earliest manifestations of the life process and the transition to cellular and organic living forms. These same forces that brought forth the genetic codings of all the various species were guiding the movement of life on toward its latest expression in human consciousness.
This sacred journey of the universe is also the personal journey of each individual. We cannot but marvel at this amazing sequence of transformations. Our reflexive consciousness, which allows us to appreciate and to celebrate this story, is the supreme achievement of our present period of history. The universe is the larger self of each person since the entire sequence of events that has transpired since the beginning of the universe has been required to establish each of us in the precise structure of our own being and in the larger community context in which we function.
Earlier periods and traditions have also experienced their intimacy with the universe, especially in those moments of cosmic renewal that took place periodically, particularly in the springtime of each year. Through these grand rituals powerful energies flowed into the world. Yet it was the renewal of the world or the sustaining of an abiding universe, not the irreversible and non-repeatable "original" emergence of the world that was taking place. Only such an irreversible self-organizing world such as that in which we live could provide this special mode of participation in the emergent creation itself. This irreversible sequence of transformations is taking shape through our own activities as well as through the activities of the multitude of component members of the universe community.
It is not a straight line sequence, however; the component elements of the universe move in pulsations, in successions of integration-disintegration, in spiral or circular patterns, especially on earth in its seasonal expressions. On earth, in particular, the basic tendencies of the universe seem to explode in an overwhelming display of geological, biological, and human modes of expression, from the tiniest particles of matter and their movement to the vast movements of the seas and continents, with the clash and rifting of tectonic plates, the immense hydrological cycles, the spinning of the earth on its own axis, its circling of the sun, and the bursting forth of the millionfold variety of living forms.
Throughout this confused, disorderly, even chaotic process, we witness an enormous creativity. The quintessence of this great journey of the universe is the balance between equilibrium and disequilibrium. Although so much of the disequilibrium falls in its reaching toward a new and greater integration, the only way to consistent creativity is through the breakdown of existing unities. That disturbed periods of history are the creative periods can be seen in the Dark Ages of Europe as well as in the period of breakdown in imperial order in China at the end of the Han Dynasty around the year 200 C.
So too religiously, the grand creativity is found in the stressful moments. It was in a period of spiritual confusion that Buddha appeared to establish a new spiritual discipline. The prophets appeared in the disastrous moments of Israel. Christianity established itself in the social and religious restlessness of the late Roman Empire. Now we find ourselves in the greatest period of disturbance that the earth has ever known, a period when the continued existence of both the human and the natural worlds are severely threatened. The identity of our human fate with the destiny of the planet itself was never more clear.
In terms of liturgy, a new sequence of celebrations is needed based on those stupendous moments when the great cosmological transformations took place. These moments of cosmic transformation must be considered as sacred moments even more than the great moments of seasonal renewal. Only by a proper celebration of these moments can our own human spiritual development take place in an integral manner. Indeed these were the decisive moments in the shaping of human consciousness as well as in the shaping of our physical being.
First among these cosmic celebrations might be that of the emergent moment of the universe itself as a spiritual as well as a physical event. This was the beginning of religion just as it was the beginning of the world. The human mind and all its spiritual capacities began with this first shaping of what was to become the universe as we know it. A supremely sacred moment, it carries within it the high destinies of the universe in its intellectual and spiritual capacities as well as in its physical shaping and living expression.
Also of special import is the rate of emergence of the universe and the curvature of space, whereby all things hold together. The rate of emergence in those first instants had to be precise to the hundred billionth of a fraction. Otherwise the universe would have exploded or collapsed. The rate of emergence was such that the consequent curvature of the universe was sufficiently closed to hold the universe together within its gravitational bondings and yet open enough so that the creative process could continue through these billions of years, providing the guidance and the energies we need as we move through the dangers of the present into a more creative and perhaps more secure future.
This bonding of the universe whereby every reality attracts and is attracted to every other being in the universe was the condition for the rise of human affection. It was the beginning and most comprehensive expression of the divine bonding that pervades the universe and enables its creative processes to continue.
It might be appropriate then if this beginning moment of the universe were the context for religious celebration, perhaps even for a special liturgy; it should be available, in a diversity of expressions, to all the peoples of the planet as we begin to sense our identity in terms of the evolutionary story of the universe rather than in purely physical terms or in mythic modes of expression. Although it seems difficult, at first, to appreciate that these are supreme spiritual moments, these and other transformative moments did help establish both the spiritual and the physical contours of the further development of the entire world.
Among these supreme moments we might list the supernova explosions that took place as the first generation of stars collapsed into themselves in some trillions of degrees of heat; this process generated the heavier elements out of the original hydrogen and helium atoms, and then exploded into the stardust with which our own solar system and planet shaped themselves. New levels of subjectivity came into being, new modalities of bonding, new possibilities for those inner spontaneities whereby the universe carries out its self-organization. Along with all this came a magnificent array of differentiated elements and intricate associations. The earth, in all its spiritual as well as its physical aspects, became a possibility.
To ritualize this moment would provide a depth of appreciation for ourselves and for the entire creative process. Such depth is needed because the entire earthly process has become trivialized, leaving us with no established way of entering into the spiritual dimension of the story that the universe is telling us about itself.
The human is precisely that being in whom this total process reflects on and celebrates itself and its numinous origins in a special mode of conscious self-awareness. At our highest moments we fulfill this role through the association of our liturgies with the supreme "liturgy" of the universe itself. Since the earliest times of which we have information, the human community has been aware that the universe itself is the primary liturgy. Human personality and community have always sought to insert themselves into space and time through this integration with the great movement of the heavens and the cycles of the seasons, which were seen as celebratory events with profound numinous significance. What is needed now is integration with a new sequence of liturgies related to the irreversible transformation sequence whereby the world as we know it has come into being.
We could continue through the entire range of events whereby the universe took shape, inquiring about the religious meaning and celebrating a great many of the mysteries of the earth. The invention of photosynthesis is especially important in this context. Then the coming of the trees, later the coming of the flowers, one hundred million years ago; and finally the birth of the human species.
Only such a selective sequence of religious celebrations could enable the cosmology of religions to come into being. If the sacred history of the biblical world is recounted with such reverence, how much more the recounting of the sacred history of the universe and of the entire planet Earth.
We find this difficult because we are not accustomed to think of ourselves as integral with, or subject to, the universe, to the planet Earth, or to the community of living beings; especially not in our religious or spiritual lives which identify the sacred precisely as that which is atemporal and unchanging even though it is experienced within the temporal and the changing. We think of ourselves as the primary referent and the universe as participatory in our own achievements. Only the present threats to the viability of the human as a species and to the life systems of the Earth are finally causing us to reconsider our situation.
This leads us to a final question in our consideration of the various religious traditions, the question of the religious role of the human as species. History is being made now in every aspect of the human endeavor, not within or between nations, or ethnic groups, or cultures, but between humans as a species and the larger Earth community. We have been too concerned with ourselves as nations, ethnic groups, cultures, religions. We are presently in need of a species and interspecies orientation in law, economics, politics, education, medicine, religion, and whatever else concerns the human.
If until recently we could be unconcerned with the species level of human activities, this is no longer the situation. We now need a species economy that will relate the human as species to the community of species on the planet, and that will ultimately be an integral Earth economy. Already the awareness is beginning to dawn that the human is overwhelming the entire productivity of the Earth with its excessive demands, using up some 40 percent of the entire productivity of the Earth. This leaves an inadequate resource base for the larger community of life. The cycle of renewal is overburdened, to such an extent that even the renewable life systems are being extinguished.
We could say the same thing for medicine; the issue of species health has come into view and beyond that the health of the planet. Since human health on a toxic planet is a con- tradiction, the primary objective of the medical profession must be to foster the integral health of the earth itself. Only then can human health be adequately attended to.
We can in a corresponding manner outline the need for a species, interspecies, and even planetary legal system as the only viable system that can be functionally effective in the present situation. As in economics and medicine, the planet itself constitutes the normative reference. There already exists a comprehensive participatory governance of the planet. Every member of the Earth community rules and is ruled by the other members of the community in such a remarkable manner that the community as a whole and its individual members have prospered over the centuries and millennia. The proper role for the human is to articulate its own governance within this planetary governance.
What remains is the concept of a religion of the human as species in the larger Earth and universe communities. This concept implies a prior sense of the religious dimension of the natural world within the cosmos. Just as we can see the Earth in economic, biological, and legal modes of being, so might we think of the earth as having a religious mode of being. Although this concept is yet to be articulated effectively in the context of our present understanding of the great story of the universe, the ideas seem to be explicit in many of the scriptures of the world.
In general, however, we have thought of the Earth as joining in the religious expression of the human rather than the human joining in the religious expression of the Earth. This has caused difficulties in most spheres of human activity. We have consistently thought of the human as primary and the earth as derivative; in the future, and in a cosmology of religions, we must understand that the Earth is primary and the human is derivative. Only when the cosmos is acknowledged as the matrix of all value will we be able to solve the ecological crisis and arrive at a more comprehensive view of who we are in the community of the Earth.
-- Previously published in *Pluralism and Oppression: Theology in a World Perspective,* ed. Paul Knitter, Annual Volume #34, published by College Theology Society, pp. 99-113
