Renewing the Process of Creation

Bradley Shavit Artson

Description

Chaos becoming cosmos-we are participants and recipients in its meaning and marvels. ''Human beings and our ancestors have been meaning seekers and meaning makers even before our most ancient beginnings. And at the start of that search are these questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is the world comprehensible at all? Where did we come from? Do we belong?''-from the Introduction. In this daring blend of Jewish theology, science and Process Thought, theologian Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson fleshes out an appreciation of creation in the light of science that allows us to articulate a deeper sense of space and time and the wonders of being alive. He explores the ethical and moral implications of humanity's role as steward and partner in creation, as well as how the recognition of land as holy-the Earth in general and Israel in particular-enables a religious discipline of blessing and gratitude that makes it possible for life to blossom. Exciting and accessible for Jews and non-Jews seeking to reconcile their spirituality and modern science, as well as anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the meaning of creation made possible by Judaism and Process Thought.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Jewish philosophy
• Judaism
• Religion
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 14 décembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781580238489
• Langue: English

Extrait

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For my parents, Barbara Friedman Artson and David Theodore Artson and my grandparents, Dorothy Berlin Friedman and Sydney Alexander Friedman and Minna Aptheker Artson and Matthew David Artson with gratitude and love
Contents
Introduction: Creation in Process
Part I. The Sciences of Creation
1. Science and Creation: What Are We Seeking?
2. Cosmology and Physics: A Dynamic, Emerging Universe
3. Biology and Evolution: Everyone’s Family!
4. Emergence, Fine-Tuning, and the Anthropic Principle: An Unlikely World That Fits Us Perfectly!
5. A Copernican Proposal: Natural Events and Their Emergent Patterns
Part II. Creation Theology in the Light of Science
6. Dynamic Universe: Self-Determining at Every Level
7. Freedom and Agency—Creatures’ and Creator’s: Everything Participates in Choosing the Future
8. To Life! A Cosmic Dayenu
Part III. Creation in Space and Time
9. Vibrating over the Face of the Deep: Continuous Creation and Jewish Faithfulness
10. Marking Time: The Jewish Calendar as a Prism on Creation
Part IV. Creation Ethics
11. Life as Good, Earth as Home
12. The Path of Stewardship: Humanity’s Relationship toward the Earth
13. Beyond Stewardship: A Partnership Celebrating Biodiversity
14. Creation and Death: Joining the Cycle of Life
Part V. Locating Ourselves: Israel and the World
15. Territory Without Map: The Sanctity of Soil
16. The Earth Is the Holy One’s: Blessings for Food
17. Responsibility for Our “Place”: The Earth Is in Our Hands
Conclusion: Clay in the Potter’s Hands— Telling the Creation Story from the Inside
Acknowledgments
Notes
Suggestions for Further Reading
About the Author
Copyright
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Introduction
Creation in Process
In Your goodness, day after day, You renew creation.
U-ve-tuvo me-chadeish be-khol yom tamid ma’aseih vereishit.
— Bereishit 1
Everything is creation in process.
We humans like to think of ourselves as in some way outside of creation, above nature, both for good and for ill. We flatter ourselves as the capstone of creation, the pinnacle of nature, and use our claimed rank as license for despoliation, entertainment, and distance, or we declare ourselves and our handiwork to be unnatural and artificial, binding ourselves with a “natural/unnatural” dichotomy that goads us toward either greater environmental awareness or disinterest. That misperception taints even our best efforts, and we cling to it so desperately—we need to be special, distinct, and superior. One wonders what insecurities drive such a desperate distortion. But we humans are not beyond nature. Rather, we are one of nature’s blossoms; indeed, we are an instance of nature emerging as self-reflective consciousness. We are not above creation; we are one of its myriad manifestations. We did not appear, fully formed, divorced from the processes by which the cosmos emerged and generated every other form of becoming.
Indeed, the goal of this book will be to direct our awareness back to two rooted belongings: that humans and what we do are an integral part of the creation from which we emerge, which we embody, and which we impact. To develop this crucial insight requires a familiarity with the real world, that is to say, with contemporary scientific explanations of how the world actually works: what it’s composed of, how those parts interact, how life emerges, how consciousness emerges out of life. So the book will begin by providing a common scientific literacy so that the thoughtful reader can proceed to deduce levels of meaning from what actually is, rather than from flights of imaginative fancy. Fleshing out a theology of creation in the light of science will allow us to articulate a deeper sense of space and time and our movement through both. Informed by science, this comprehensive narrative of the meaning of life and humanity will position the reader to express the ethical and moral implications of a creation theology, one that embraces earth as home, accepts humanity’s role as steward and partner, and locates the constructive role of mortality and eternity within creation’s embrace. Finally, the book will turn to the particular: how ancient Israel came to love all of earth by fostering a passion for a special place on the earth, how that recognition of land as holy enables a religious discipline of blessing and gratitude that makes it possible for life to blossom. In the end, the book will celebrate what it means to be mindful clay in a loving potter’s grasp.
Creation is best understood not as a single event at a particular moment long, long ago, but as a continuous process that we express and in which we participate. Relating to creation as our context and home, participating in the process of continual creation, and recognizing divinity in the countless materializations of the cosmos and planet of which we are a part is the loam for everything else that emerges. The dynamics of all living is ongoing creation. All human development and, indeed, all human achievement occur within and as a manifestation of creation: revelation occurs within the context of creation; redemption and salvation are a consummation of creation.
Meaning Is Found within Relationships
What we know about creation is from our vantage point within creation, as the aspect of creation that is self-aware and articulate. We do not exist as disembodied minds or souls, seeking some point of contact with an external carnal reality. Culture does not erupt from some distillate of objective logic and bloodless thought. Instead, we recognize ourselves as biological creatures, embedded in biochemical interactions that are, themselves, constrained by the laws of physics. Our minds are emergent patterns of the very phenomenon we now seek to understand and articulate. Culture is the accumulated and remembered harvest of our embodied mental and emotional activities, shared across communities and distilled across generations. Knowing and reflecting upon creation, for our purposes, can best be addressed in stages of interrelating units: we need to assess what the sciences tell us about what the cosmos is and how it came to be, with special attention to our space-time bubble, our beloved third planet from the sun, life’s biochemistry, and our human neuropsychology. While this factual knowledge cannot generate philosophical coherence by itself and presumes certain philosophical postulates to be visible at all, we require the discipline and clarity to organize what we know to then be able to address ourselves to what it means: How can we then integrate this knowing into enacting lives of meaning and participating in inclusive communities of justice, compassion, and love? How can we better love our people, all peoples, and ourselves? How can we extend that love to the other denizens of our aquamarine globe, to the earth itself, and to the cosmos as a whole?
From the first moments of human consciousness, people have sought to explain who we are, what we are to be doing, where we come from, and where we are headed. This urge to explain rests on a desire for coherence, predictability, and stability; to seek out reliable regularities—we abstract them into “laws” or “rules”—through which to comprehend the world and its ways and through which to fashion human societies and lives worth living. Expressive as we are of the broader creation, these very traits may provide evolutionary benefit and have been favored by natural selection. Whatever their proximate causes, human beings and our ancestors have been meaning seekers and meaning makers even before our most ancient beginnings. And at the start of that search are these questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is the world comprehensible at all? Where did we come from? Do we belong?
Process Theology
That profoundly human quest has resulted in extraordinary endeavors through religion, art, and science to develop encompassing stories of the creation of the cosmos and our place in it and to force those disciplines to continue to converse and respond to each other. I categorize these modes of knowing beyond experience as the five M’s: math, meditation, metaphor, music, myth.
For most of human history, myth, philosophy, and art were the dominant modes for locating ourselves in the cosmos and for setting our agenda, while science served a corroborating role to scripture. With the advent of modernity, that relationship shifted, as more and more of nature became susceptible to empirical testing and verifiable knowledge. Religion found itself retreating, staking its turf in the spots that science could not yet explain and then retreating again when new explanations became plausible. Still, religion, art, and science remain the tools humanity uses to explain itself in the world, to live with coherence and clarity, to concretize meaning and value. In our own time, we still crave a dynamic integration, harmony, and balance to make sense of our lives and to offer hope, with the caveat that science provides our generation with vastly more data than were available in previous times. Blinders and deliberate ignorance will not do; for any religion to claim plausibility, it must work within the information that sciences collect. No religious faith that flies in the face of scientific data can stand for long, nor should it.
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