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The Pleromatics Project

Western Spirituality

I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Rev. 2:8

The great spiritual divide between east and west has been the divide between pantheism and theism. Within the west itself, however, especially in this century, the divide has been between theism and atheism. Positivism generally and Marxian materialism (especially in Europe) both have challenged theism's claim as the ascendent worldview, and many confidently affirm a "belief in atheism", despite the difficulty in proving the non-existence of something.

Now, however, the demonstration in physics of the nonlocal reality changes the question confronting the atheist. No longer is it "You do not believe in God?", but "What kind of God do you not believe in?" Interestingly, the question to the theist must be very much the same.

Western theology (Judaic, Christian, Muslim) has been characterized by dualities: body versus soul; creator versus creation; and God versus Adham, meaning mankind in its primal undifferentiated state. In the traditional Christian interpretation, God was separate from mankind, except insofar as He chose to make Himself present on Earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago.

That Presence was taken back to heaven, but was soon made present again and permanently in the person of the (also masculine) Holy Spirit. A cosmogram of such discrete Persons of the Trinity would best be represented as a triangle, and so it seems to be presented in most Christian teaching, and prominently in our iconography.

A unification of physics and psyche, however, would have profound theological implications, for it presents us with quite a different worldview: Reality is seamless; duality is illusion; creation is manifest in the whole; cosmos is itself possessed of spirit and matter, and is evolutionary, unitive, organic, purposeful. Where then is God?

In the theologies of Alexander and Whitehead [Part III: Religion of the Whole], and of Teilhard (as the cosmos moves toward its Omega Point), we must relate God to cosmos itself, in a way which is both immanent and transcendent. The cosmogram of such a religion of the Whole would represent God as the Whole, the totality of reality. The Godhead is the concept which encompasses all concepts and actions of the Whole. This cosmogram does not represent a triangle of Persons, but the point at which all of the Persons merge as One. God is creator of the material aspect of cosmos, but is also "container" of all that is, material (created) and spiritual (uncreated). Holy Spirit thus becomes "Holy Psyche", and the Christ-Logos, "by whom all things were [are] made", as expressed in the Nicene Creed, is central meaning and ordering principle.

Though Judaism and Islam do not personify those actions separately as persons of deity, we can readily find them recognized in those traditions as constituting aspects of reality. The Wisdom tradition in Judaism and the feminine soul aspect of Islam (most prominently in Sufism) symbolize that reality of Holy Psyche which is presented in Christianity (with a change of gender) as Holy Spirit. Of course there are doctrinal, gender, cultural and semiotic differences which reductionists will instantly (and perhaps gleefully!) seize upon, but the integral approach of a religion of the Whole smooths over such differences.

The Wisdom tradition of Judaism is represented in the canonical Hebrew Scriptures by the book of Proverbs, but continues in the Apocryphal books of the intertestamental period, particularly in Ecclesiasticus (The Book of Sirach) and the Wisdom of Solomon. In Ecclesiasticus we read:

The Lord himself created wisdom
he saw her and apportioned her
he poured her out upon all his works

She dwells with all flesh according to his gift
and he supplied her to those who love him. (1:9)

In the Wisdom of Solomon, "Wisdom is a kindly spirit" (1:6) and "Wisdom will not enter a deceitful soul". (1:4) Further, Wisdom does have certain qualities of deity:

For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her pureness, she pervades and penetrates all things. (7:24)

Wisdom protected the first-formed father of the world when he alone had been created. (10:1)

For thy immortal spirit is in all things. (12:1)

In Sufism, the principle or soul of Wisdom is carried in the symbols of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet. This is well illustrated in a passage from Laleh Bakhtiar's Sufism: Expressions of the Mystic Quest, a short volume which summarizes for western readers the essentials of Sufism. Bakhtiar speaks of three important Divine Names, all embodying certain feminine principles of divine activity in creation: Khalq, Bari and Musawwir:

Khalq is that aspect of creation which conceives of the possibilities of things, and is also known as the eternal wisdom or Sophia. This is the role the Virgin Mary symbolizes for the Sufi, as she was the receptive form which conceived the Spirit. Bari is that aspect of the Creator which brings forth; the Virgin Mary further symbolizes this aspect of the Divine, in that she gave birth to the Word. The third name, Musawwir, is that aspect of the Creator which embellishes forms; it most often relates to craftsmen, astisans and architects who emulate the creative act of the Virgin Mary by conceiving and bringing forth the Spirit and nurturing it within sensible forms.

This "trinitarian reality" expresses symbolically the blend of qualities in divine creation, without compromising the concept of the Oneness of God, so fundamental to both Judaism and Islam, and without postulating God's begetting of a son. The Qu'ran rejects the Christian doctrine of a biological begetting of the son of God, for it is demeaning of God's omnipotence to hold that God would do physically that which may be done merely by decree, if He wills it:

Allah forbid that He Himself should beget a son! When He decrees a thing He need only say: `Be', and it is. (19)

The "trinitarian reality" of Judaism is expressed in its concept of Word. The world comes into being through the Word Spoken in Creation ("Let there Be"), and God's spirit is present in creation as Word of Wisdom. Yet Word is present also as ordering principle, for the Word of Law given to the people on Sinai and carried in the Ark of the Covenant embodies in human affairs the Word of Law present in the natural order.

That Word of Law was brought forth by Moses, whose parallel in Christianity is Christ: "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (Jn 1:17), and Christ came, not to abolish the law and the prophets, "but to fulfill them" (Mt. 5:17). It was thus especially fitting that Moses was seen at the Transfiguration of Christ (Mt. 17:3).

Word (in Greek, the Logos) represents the ordering principle as Universal Prototype. According to Bakhtiar:

The Universal Prototype or Logos symbolizes four aspects of Divine manifestation. The Logos is the `uncreated', pre-existent aspect within things: in the move towards creation it is the firstborn of God, the first to contain `thingness'. The Logos is also Light ... The Logos is also the active agent in the work of creation, the creative directing principle of the universe. Finally, the Logos is the prototypical human form. It is God's own image, the centre of the universe and the Spirit of the Absolute. It is the Word made manifest.

Thus, for Islam, Logos is represented by Muhammad. In Sufi Tradition, the Prophet says "I was the Logos when Adam was between water and clay." That same creative reality, for Christians, is the Christ, the "Adam" in whom "shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22). That ordering principle, "by Whom all things are made" and which "bring[s] forth the Spirit and nurtur[es] it within sensible forms", thus has parallels in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The abstract nonlocal reality, which must be represented in physics mathematically, is richly represented in the three monotheisms by many interlocking meanings and symbols, giving them a philosophical and mystical unity quite at odds with their historical antagonisms.

One of the most interesting and frustrating conversations I have had on the subject was with a young Muslim met thirty years ago in a city park in Zamboanga in the Philippines. It was he who had brought up the subject of religion, but by no argument could I convince him that I too, as a Christian, believed in only one God, the only God there is to believe in, sometimes called Allah, in other languages known by other names. Perhaps I could have done better had I then been aware of the intricacies of the interlocking meanings and manifestations of creative action in our respective religions.

Still, for me, all of these interpretations of cosmic creative action blend most effectively in the image of the universal Christ. Though represented in traditional Christianity in the person of the historical man Jesus of Nazareth, these cosmic meanings blend feminine and masculine traits but also transcend them, just as they transcend history, our sectarian credalism, and the gender-limitations of our modern language. If, as Teilhard taught, cosmos draws us toward a religion of the Whole fulfilled in unity with its creator, the human religious task is to let consciousness respond, and let learning expand. If Teilhard is right, we must inevitably respond knowingly to that nuonic "gravity" which attracts us to the cosmic center.

Traditional Christian interpretation of the significance of the Christ has most often emphasized the historical aspect of the sacrificial suffering of the savior, for that accords best with traditional Hebrew ideas of redemption through sacrifice. However, there is also ample basis in our scripture to affirm the eternal dimension as the prime focus of Christianity. The new knowledge of the cosmos calls us to do exactly that, for now we can recognize more clearly than ever the significance of Christianity's cosmic claim:

                 For he has made known to us
                      in all wisdom and insight
                      the mystery of his will,
                 according to his purpose
                 which he set forth in Christ
                 as a plan for the fullness of time
                      to unite all things in him,
                      things in heaven
                      and things in earth.  (Eph. 1:9-10) 

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Notes: Western Spirituality

Wisdom tradition in Judaism -- Regarding Holy Spirit as Sophia, see C. G. Jung. PJ 398-399, 550 ff. and CW 12, and CW 11:609-614.

"Khalq is that aspect" -- Laleh Bakhtiar. Sufism: Expressions of the Mystic Quest. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1976. p 82.

"The Universal Prototype or Logos" -- ibid. p 11.

Christianity's cosmic claim -- See especially Jn 1:1-3, Rom 1:20, Eph 1:9-10, Col 1:15-17, Col 1:19, Col 2:3, Col 2:9, Heb 1:2-3, Rev 11:15, Rev 21:6.

Copyright 1997, Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved. 20 Feb 1997