In Honor of Laudato Si!!! John Haught and "God After Einstein"

This morning I was sent a video used at a prayer service in honor of Laudato Si. It was beautiful but unfortunately, I can't post it here. Still, the link is as follows: John Rutter. 

As I watched it, I was led to think of one of the most interesting books I am reading currently reading: viz., John Haught's God After Einstein: What's really Going on in the Universe? The basic idea is something Haught has raised before in several books, namely, that our universe is unfinished (no surprise there but, man (!), the theology that needs rethinking in light of this is huge!!); that universe is also coming to awareness in us as part of the evolutionary process. In this drama, the meaning of everything is only gradually revealed (just as in any drama). Haught accounts for the order in the universe, but also immense amounts of time, and chance --- elements of all good dramas --- and he counters scientists who reiterate affirmations of the meaninglessness of the universe or of human life. This book, like others he has written is rooted in hope as we look with anticipation towards an absolute future we know as God. 

Haught's most sustained effort at recasting theology in light of what science has established as an unfinished universe is his book Resting on the Future: Catholic Theology for an Unfinished Universe. Here Haught treats God as absolute future (cf. Ted Peters, God the World's Future). In all of these works Haught understands God creating by summoning reality out of nonbeing and chaos into existence and then into greater and greater coherence and fullness of being. It is not the case, Haught understands, that creation was perfect and that human beings messed that up somehow, but rather, that stories like those of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden in Genesis tell us about a reality which is up ahead of us, not in our past. This is consonant with the theology of others who are rethinking approaches to original sin which honor both the complexity of an evolving universe and the way in which human beings ratify estrangement from a God who can only be received as gift in our lives. (In other words, we each and every one of us** mess things up, but the story is more complex than Genesis may, even in its mythic narrative power and depth, have allowed or been capable of allowing for.)

Haught really praises Laudato Si and the sophistication Pope Francis' theology holds in regard to nature so it seemed to me that during this week, where some are celebrating Laudato Si  with videos like the one linked above, it was a good time to remind folks about the kind of work theologians are doing with regard to nature, and especially re: the new cosmology. Haught writes in God Beyond Einstein, [[The Laudato Si encyclical of Pope Francis is one among many encouraging signs that Christians are beginning to experience a new relationship with the natural world. Our caring for nature is not simply a matter of saving ourselves and other living beings, or of ensuring fertility of life, or of practicing faithful stewardship in obedience to God. All of these are good reasons to care, of course, and Christian theologians are right to keep looking into the Scriptures in search of a doctrinal foundation for supporting the ecological movement. But is that enough?

. . .After Einstein, however, we have a whole new way of looking at our ecological predicament --- an unprecedented cosmological point of view. . . . This new perspective gives us, I believe, a fresh set of incentives with which to approach the present crisis. What is at stake is not just the well-being of life on our planet but, in a way, the future of the universe. If the universe is a drama of awakening, as I have proposed, then the existence and flourishing of life and other emergent outcomes on planet Earth are not just a sideshow. The future of life is a cosmic, not just a terrestrial, concern.]]

I'll just say if you are intrigued, please get the book!!! Haught writes in direct opposition to the scientists who say matter is all there is and a meaningless universe is all we have (scientific materialism) --- much as he argues against this and scientism in Is Nature Enough? Moreover, for "Christians" who believe the world is dispensable because, "we are going to heaven, so what does it matter," Haught's work is far more in line with St Paul, the Gospel proclamation of a New Creation in Christ, and the book of Revelation's new heaven and new earth in which God will be all in all.

** I am not including Jesus in this, nor Mary, so please don't write me objecting about that!!!