Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1979
The Dynamics of Creation JOHN RUSKINCLARK ABSTRACT:
A basic question in any great religion is, "What is the source of creation, how did order emerge from disorder, or how did we get here?" Among the myths proposed is the Genesis account of an original creation from a condition "without form and void" by a supernatural creator. Now the sciences reveal a more cogent explanation, a new m y t h of the process of self-creation in an evolutionary continuity of being. Instead of an external power of creation, m y thesis is t h a t a generalized concept of love as a generic power of attraction is the dynamics of creation.
"What is the source of creation?" is one of the basic questions to which religions of the world have mythical responses. The question is, how did we get here, how did order emerge from disorder, or why is there not nothing? In the Judeo-Christian tradition of our Western culture, the first two chapters of Genesis propose an original creation from a condition "without form and void" by a supernatural God. This creation m y t h has contributed two important attitudes to our culture. First, at the end of the sixth day of creation, "God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good." This affirmation has imbued our culture with confidence in the environment, with a feeling that it is a safe place to be and to explore. Without fear of dominant evil forces in creation, the curiosity of h u m a n beings was encouraged to investigate and understand the environment. The second attitude the Genesis m y t h contributed to our culture was awareness that we h u m a n beings did not create the world; we come into a world already made. To perceive that I am not the source of creation, that I am not God, is the beginning of religion, of recognizing that the conditions for m y existence are given. However, without denying these ancient values, the sciences have discovered a better understanding of the nature of creation. Now we know that creation was not "original" but that it is a continuous process of self-creation, of evolution from previous entities, which issues in a continuity and unity of all being. Through intelligence h u m a n beings have emerged as creative constituents of the process, except when we ignore our origins in the transcendent creative process. All creation is sacred, and all information is knowledge of God. Theology has always been based upon the most reliable information and models of the time and place. The theology of Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century was based upon the science of Aristotle. Contemporary science John Ruskin Clark, D.D., isMinister Emeritus, First Unitarian Church of San Diego, and author of The Great Living System: ReligionEmerging from the Sciences,upon which this articleis based. 0022-4197/79/0400-0139500.95
139
9 1979 Institutesof Religionand Health
140
Journal of Religion and Health
is providing us with credible information and models for understanding creation today, a new theology. If not an external power of creation, what was the dynamics that created order from disorder, organic beings from inorganic matter? Mere chance cannot account for the formation of combinations by random atomic collisions; some other agency is necessary to make chance meetings into lasting friendships. My thesis is that a generalized concept of love as a power of attraction is the dynamics of creation. Love is an integrative principle that creates durable relationships in a novel form or order. In the sense that Teilhard de Chardin uses the word, love is a power inherent in the s t u f f o f t h e universe, in matter as well as in h u m a n beings. H u m a n beings have long intuited that love is a significant motivation; now we can better understand that generalized love is a universal and basic creative dynamics essential to all being as well as to mammalian life. Love as "agape," an accepting relationship to others for their own sake and not a passion for another for one's own sake, is the central concept of J e s u s and of New Testament Christianity. You recall that when Jesus was asked, "Which commandment is the first of all?" he responded by quoting two Old Testament passages: "You shall love the Lord your G o d . . . " and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Mark 12:29:31) Paul concluded his great definition of love in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians with, "So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." And John in his First Letter says, "God is love . . . . " (4:16) When as a young man I realized that "love" was a key word in Christianity, I asked a minister what it meant. His response was so vague that I concluded Christianity had nothing to offer but pious sentimentality. I have since learned that love has a more profound significance than is generally understood. Love is a universal imperative for the emergence of life, as well as for its enrichment and preservation. From my study of psychology I learned that love is a very important emotion and act for the fulfillment of a h u m a n being. I learned from Karl Menninger that love is essential to personal fulfillment as well as a social cohesive. Love is, he says, " a yearning for mutual identification and personality fusion. ''1 Love creates supportive friendships as well as accepting families. As sexual passion, love is the nexus that helps bond the intimate relationship of marriage. From Eric Fromm I learned that "to love somebody is not just a strong feeling--it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. ''2 Thus love is also an act of will or choice by which a person enters into a mutually accepting and beneficial relationship. H u m a n love is the dynamics by which people voluntarily form creative associations, whether in a family or in a social or political organization. Love coalesces people into various interactive groups within which creative interchange takes place, and thus is a creative dynamics. Furthermore, I have learned from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that the creative dynamics of love is a universal integrative power operating at all levels of being to form complex organizations within which mutually beneficial cooperation takes place. H u m a n love is a "natural dynamism" of evolutionary signifi-
The Dynamics of Creation
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cance, which, in a generalized form, is a universal dynamics of creation. He writes, "If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level--indeed in the molecule itself--it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up, with us, in Chominised' form." He explains: Considered in its full biological reality, love--that is to say the affinity of being with being--is not peculiar to man. It is a general property of all life and as such it embraces, in its varieties and degrees, all the forms successively adopted by organized matter . . . . Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being. 3 Some other forms of order are attempts at imposed collectivization t h a t t u r n out to be authoritarian in structure, says Teilhard, because the business of unification is compulsory. On the other hand, love is able to accomplish the "magic f e a t " o f "totalising" because: Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. . . . Mankind, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of individuals and peoples, the paradoxical conciliation of the element with the whole, and of unity with multitude.., are biologically necessary.4 If we interpret love in this sense as a generalized concept of an attracting, integrating power, we can understand t h a t it provides "the formidable energy of creation," bringing into being forms of order from molecules to solar systems and h u m a n beings to social organizations. For instance, when the place in space now occupied by planet earth was "without form and void," a chaos of cosmic dust and gas, how did order begin to emerge from disorder? Eric J. Chaisson, assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard University, suggests an answer; it is gravitation acting at a distance to draw elements together. 5 Elementary particles of electrons and protons are united by this attraction to form the simplest and most a b u n d a n t element, hydrogen. Then the hydrogen atoms are attracted to each other by gravitation until there is a sufficient mass to be stable in its internal relationships, forming ever larger masses. As the cosmic clouds of hydrogen collapsed into stars, such as our sun, the intense heat created by the condensation of gravitational attraction started a fusion process t h a t now provides the uniform radiation of stellar energy in the form of light and heat. In the process, some of the dust and gas of the cosmic cloud broke into eddies t h a t contracted into planets such as our earth, where conditions were favorable for the emergence of life. We can understand t h a t it is the dynamics of gravitation, a mode of generic love, which began to create order from chaos and to transform m a t t e r into energy. When carbon dioxide atoms are bred in the intense interior heat of the early development of the earth and spewed to the surface by volcanic eruptions, another manifestation of love among the elements emerges--the unique capac-
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ity of carbon atoms to form combinations. The process of forming organic compounds begins as a consequence, says Russian biologist A. I. Oparin, of "the exceptional capacity of this element to form long atomic chains and unite with other elements, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. ''6 Carbon atoms have this u n u s u a l ability to u n i t e w i t h o t h e r e l e m e n t s because of t h e i r ~covalence"--the number of pairs of electrons that an atom can share with its neighboring atoms and thus bond together. Thus carbon atoms also have an innate capacity for generic love. Carbon atoms integrate with other atoms into molecules such as proteins, which are essential constituents of all organic matter. Protein molecules also have a special proclivity for combining into more complex compounds. Harvard biologist George Wald comments that protein molecules bring us ~to the borders of biological structure, for such giant molecules as the phospholipids have enormous tendencies to spin higher orders of structure, highly organized aggregates that at times are hardly to be told apart from the structure of living cells. ''7 Thus, by the creative dynamics of generic love we are brought to the verge of life in biological cells. Once protein aggregates integrate themselves in more complex, synergistic living systems such as biological cells, another integrative dynamics takes over. Generic love is expressed in the mode of what Teilhard calls "spiritual attraction." As autonomous individuals with intentions or attitudes, cells voluntarily coalesce for their mutual benefit into more complex organisms with electrochemical communication systems; they enter into cooperative relations in which the activities of each supply the needs of others. Biological evolution is on its way to forming more complex organisms that are more efficient in the transformation of energy, including ecological systems. Creation is the product of myriads of such interacting combinations, eventuating in a great living system. All cohesive powers, all community-forming impulses, from molecular affinity to cosmic gravity, from sexuality to the human capacity for diffused love, are essential to creativity; they bond the relationships within which interaction takes place and energy is transformed. Human love functions as a social unifier. In the struggle for survival, without love human beings would be hostile toward each other; with love we enter into cooperative and creative relations. Love is a nexus or bonding agent that integrates social as well as physical and organic systems. Far from being a mere sentiment or act of charity, love is a necessity to the organization of order from disorder. Without love there would be nothing but chaos. Love is the universal dynamics of creation.
References 1. 2. 3. 4.
Menninger, K., Love Against Hate. New York, Harcourt Brace and Co., 1942, p. 72. Fromm, E., The Art of Loving. New York, Harper and Bros., 1956, p. 57. Teilhard de Chardin, P., The Phenomenon of Man. New York, Harper & Row, 1961, p. 264. Ibid., p. 265.
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5. Chaisson, E. J., ~The Scenario of Cosmic Evolution," Harvard Magazine, November-December, 1977, pp. 21-33. 6. Oparin, A. I., The Origin of Life. New York, Dover Publications, 1953, p. 136. 7. Wald, G., "Determinacy, Individuality, and the Problem of Free Will." In Platt, J. R., ed., New Views of the Nature of Man. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1965, p. 22.
The Dynamics of Creation JOHN RUSKINCLARK ABSTRACT:
A basic question in any great religion is, "What is the source of creation, how did order emerge from disorder, or how did we get here?" Among the myths proposed is the Genesis account of an original creation from a condition "without form and void" by a supernatural creator. Now the sciences reveal a more cogent explanation, a new m y t h of the process of self-creation in an evolutionary continuity of being. Instead of an external power of creation, m y thesis is t h a t a generalized concept of love as a generic power of attraction is the dynamics of creation.
"What is the source of creation?" is one of the basic questions to which religions of the world have mythical responses. The question is, how did we get here, how did order emerge from disorder, or why is there not nothing? In the Judeo-Christian tradition of our Western culture, the first two chapters of Genesis propose an original creation from a condition "without form and void" by a supernatural God. This creation m y t h has contributed two important attitudes to our culture. First, at the end of the sixth day of creation, "God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good." This affirmation has imbued our culture with confidence in the environment, with a feeling that it is a safe place to be and to explore. Without fear of dominant evil forces in creation, the curiosity of h u m a n beings was encouraged to investigate and understand the environment. The second attitude the Genesis m y t h contributed to our culture was awareness that we h u m a n beings did not create the world; we come into a world already made. To perceive that I am not the source of creation, that I am not God, is the beginning of religion, of recognizing that the conditions for m y existence are given. However, without denying these ancient values, the sciences have discovered a better understanding of the nature of creation. Now we know that creation was not "original" but that it is a continuous process of self-creation, of evolution from previous entities, which issues in a continuity and unity of all being. Through intelligence h u m a n beings have emerged as creative constituents of the process, except when we ignore our origins in the transcendent creative process. All creation is sacred, and all information is knowledge of God. Theology has always been based upon the most reliable information and models of the time and place. The theology of Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century was based upon the science of Aristotle. Contemporary science John Ruskin Clark, D.D., isMinister Emeritus, First Unitarian Church of San Diego, and author of The Great Living System: ReligionEmerging from the Sciences,upon which this articleis based. 0022-4197/79/0400-0139500.95
139
9 1979 Institutesof Religionand Health
140
Journal of Religion and Health
is providing us with credible information and models for understanding creation today, a new theology. If not an external power of creation, what was the dynamics that created order from disorder, organic beings from inorganic matter? Mere chance cannot account for the formation of combinations by random atomic collisions; some other agency is necessary to make chance meetings into lasting friendships. My thesis is that a generalized concept of love as a power of attraction is the dynamics of creation. Love is an integrative principle that creates durable relationships in a novel form or order. In the sense that Teilhard de Chardin uses the word, love is a power inherent in the s t u f f o f t h e universe, in matter as well as in h u m a n beings. H u m a n beings have long intuited that love is a significant motivation; now we can better understand that generalized love is a universal and basic creative dynamics essential to all being as well as to mammalian life. Love as "agape," an accepting relationship to others for their own sake and not a passion for another for one's own sake, is the central concept of J e s u s and of New Testament Christianity. You recall that when Jesus was asked, "Which commandment is the first of all?" he responded by quoting two Old Testament passages: "You shall love the Lord your G o d . . . " and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Mark 12:29:31) Paul concluded his great definition of love in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians with, "So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." And John in his First Letter says, "God is love . . . . " (4:16) When as a young man I realized that "love" was a key word in Christianity, I asked a minister what it meant. His response was so vague that I concluded Christianity had nothing to offer but pious sentimentality. I have since learned that love has a more profound significance than is generally understood. Love is a universal imperative for the emergence of life, as well as for its enrichment and preservation. From my study of psychology I learned that love is a very important emotion and act for the fulfillment of a h u m a n being. I learned from Karl Menninger that love is essential to personal fulfillment as well as a social cohesive. Love is, he says, " a yearning for mutual identification and personality fusion. ''1 Love creates supportive friendships as well as accepting families. As sexual passion, love is the nexus that helps bond the intimate relationship of marriage. From Eric Fromm I learned that "to love somebody is not just a strong feeling--it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. ''2 Thus love is also an act of will or choice by which a person enters into a mutually accepting and beneficial relationship. H u m a n love is the dynamics by which people voluntarily form creative associations, whether in a family or in a social or political organization. Love coalesces people into various interactive groups within which creative interchange takes place, and thus is a creative dynamics. Furthermore, I have learned from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that the creative dynamics of love is a universal integrative power operating at all levels of being to form complex organizations within which mutually beneficial cooperation takes place. H u m a n love is a "natural dynamism" of evolutionary signifi-
The Dynamics of Creation
141
cance, which, in a generalized form, is a universal dynamics of creation. He writes, "If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level--indeed in the molecule itself--it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up, with us, in Chominised' form." He explains: Considered in its full biological reality, love--that is to say the affinity of being with being--is not peculiar to man. It is a general property of all life and as such it embraces, in its varieties and degrees, all the forms successively adopted by organized matter . . . . Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being. 3 Some other forms of order are attempts at imposed collectivization t h a t t u r n out to be authoritarian in structure, says Teilhard, because the business of unification is compulsory. On the other hand, love is able to accomplish the "magic f e a t " o f "totalising" because: Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. . . . Mankind, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of individuals and peoples, the paradoxical conciliation of the element with the whole, and of unity with multitude.., are biologically necessary.4 If we interpret love in this sense as a generalized concept of an attracting, integrating power, we can understand t h a t it provides "the formidable energy of creation," bringing into being forms of order from molecules to solar systems and h u m a n beings to social organizations. For instance, when the place in space now occupied by planet earth was "without form and void," a chaos of cosmic dust and gas, how did order begin to emerge from disorder? Eric J. Chaisson, assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard University, suggests an answer; it is gravitation acting at a distance to draw elements together. 5 Elementary particles of electrons and protons are united by this attraction to form the simplest and most a b u n d a n t element, hydrogen. Then the hydrogen atoms are attracted to each other by gravitation until there is a sufficient mass to be stable in its internal relationships, forming ever larger masses. As the cosmic clouds of hydrogen collapsed into stars, such as our sun, the intense heat created by the condensation of gravitational attraction started a fusion process t h a t now provides the uniform radiation of stellar energy in the form of light and heat. In the process, some of the dust and gas of the cosmic cloud broke into eddies t h a t contracted into planets such as our earth, where conditions were favorable for the emergence of life. We can understand t h a t it is the dynamics of gravitation, a mode of generic love, which began to create order from chaos and to transform m a t t e r into energy. When carbon dioxide atoms are bred in the intense interior heat of the early development of the earth and spewed to the surface by volcanic eruptions, another manifestation of love among the elements emerges--the unique capac-
142
Journal of Religion and Health
ity of carbon atoms to form combinations. The process of forming organic compounds begins as a consequence, says Russian biologist A. I. Oparin, of "the exceptional capacity of this element to form long atomic chains and unite with other elements, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. ''6 Carbon atoms have this u n u s u a l ability to u n i t e w i t h o t h e r e l e m e n t s because of t h e i r ~covalence"--the number of pairs of electrons that an atom can share with its neighboring atoms and thus bond together. Thus carbon atoms also have an innate capacity for generic love. Carbon atoms integrate with other atoms into molecules such as proteins, which are essential constituents of all organic matter. Protein molecules also have a special proclivity for combining into more complex compounds. Harvard biologist George Wald comments that protein molecules bring us ~to the borders of biological structure, for such giant molecules as the phospholipids have enormous tendencies to spin higher orders of structure, highly organized aggregates that at times are hardly to be told apart from the structure of living cells. ''7 Thus, by the creative dynamics of generic love we are brought to the verge of life in biological cells. Once protein aggregates integrate themselves in more complex, synergistic living systems such as biological cells, another integrative dynamics takes over. Generic love is expressed in the mode of what Teilhard calls "spiritual attraction." As autonomous individuals with intentions or attitudes, cells voluntarily coalesce for their mutual benefit into more complex organisms with electrochemical communication systems; they enter into cooperative relations in which the activities of each supply the needs of others. Biological evolution is on its way to forming more complex organisms that are more efficient in the transformation of energy, including ecological systems. Creation is the product of myriads of such interacting combinations, eventuating in a great living system. All cohesive powers, all community-forming impulses, from molecular affinity to cosmic gravity, from sexuality to the human capacity for diffused love, are essential to creativity; they bond the relationships within which interaction takes place and energy is transformed. Human love functions as a social unifier. In the struggle for survival, without love human beings would be hostile toward each other; with love we enter into cooperative and creative relations. Love is a nexus or bonding agent that integrates social as well as physical and organic systems. Far from being a mere sentiment or act of charity, love is a necessity to the organization of order from disorder. Without love there would be nothing but chaos. Love is the universal dynamics of creation.
References 1. 2. 3. 4.
Menninger, K., Love Against Hate. New York, Harcourt Brace and Co., 1942, p. 72. Fromm, E., The Art of Loving. New York, Harper and Bros., 1956, p. 57. Teilhard de Chardin, P., The Phenomenon of Man. New York, Harper & Row, 1961, p. 264. Ibid., p. 265.
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5. Chaisson, E. J., ~The Scenario of Cosmic Evolution," Harvard Magazine, November-December, 1977, pp. 21-33. 6. Oparin, A. I., The Origin of Life. New York, Dover Publications, 1953, p. 136. 7. Wald, G., "Determinacy, Individuality, and the Problem of Free Will." In Platt, J. R., ed., New Views of the Nature of Man. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1965, p. 22.
