Living Graciously on Planet Earth

Faith, Hope, and Love in Biblical, Social, and Cosmic Context

Robert P. Vande Kappelle

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781498294171
• eBook ISBN: 9781498294164
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Humans are happiest when they live virtuously. Building on the premise that the purpose of life is happiness conducive to the equitable flourishing of all humanity, Living Graciously on Planet Earth argues that the appropriate way to regard our abilities and moral opportunities is as gifts for the common good, to be used for the glory of God, guided by the biblical principles of stewardship and community. Utilizing a biblical approach and a Trinitarian perspective, while maintaining an appreciative eye to the contributions of the world's living religions, Dr. Vande Kappelle argues for a hierarchy of values necessary for gracious living in the twenty-first century.Ancient wisdom claims there are seven primary virtues, four "natural"--prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance--and three "supernatural"--faith, hope, and love. As the natural virtues help us grow morally, the supernatural virtues are designed for transformation. Using insights from the Enneagram as well as from diverse scholars such as Karen Armstrong, Marcus Borg, James Fowler, Matthew Fox, C. S. Lewis, Robin W. Lovin, and Huston Smith, Living Graciously examines the seven virtues in biblical, social, and cosmic context. This book's uplifting message delivers the perfect antidote to the current social malaise, characterized by arrogance, suspicion, negligence, and consumption. In addition, this book addresses difficult questions such as "Do we live in a moral universe?"; "Is there a benevolent deity watching over us?"; "Is there a purpose to life on earth?"; and "Is there a summum bonum (a greatest good)"? The answers in this insightful presentation will challenge your thinking and energize your living.Useful for individual or group use, each chapter contains aids to learning, including (a) a thesis statement indicating the central idea of the chapter, (b) a list of key biblical passages, (c) a chapter summary, and (d) questions for discussion and reflection.

Chapter 1

Cosmology, Anthropology, and Morality

Central Idea: To give meaning to existence and to promote socio-environmental wellbeing, human beings construct cosmologies.

Key Biblical Passage: John 3:16–17

Albert Einstein was once asked, “What is the most important question you can ask in life?” He answered, “Is the universe a friendly place or not?” In the first century AD, when Jesus lived and when the New Testament was being recorded, the most important question in the Mediterranean world was, “Are the angels friend or foe?” Since angels were understood to be the driving force behind the elements of the universe, it is clear that the people of that era wanted to know if the universe was a friendly place or not.

The early Christians had a definite response to Einstein’s pressing question: The universe is a beneficent place, for it is created by a loving God, maintained by the Son, and renewed by the Spirit. This affirmation is clearly stated in John 3:16–17, a biblical passage beloved by Christians and non-Christians alike: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” The First Christians came to this conviction about the nature of reality through their experience with the incarnated Christ, who for them represented the love of God, the goodness of the universe, and sovereignty over all its powers, including the invisible angels. The Gospels and the early Christological hymns composed by first-century Christians celebrate the power of Jesus Christ over all dominions, visible and invisible.

Human beings have always been fascinated with the universe, including their place in the order of things. Over time, they devised models of reality to help explain their experience and to guide their conduct. The ancient Greek philosophers were deeply interested in this endeavor, developing cosmological models to explain their understanding of reality. In the fifth century BC, two pre-Socratics, Parmenides and Heraclitus, set the stage for later thinkers, arriving at diametrical conclusions about the universe. Parmenides, a monist, argued for the unity, permanence, and eternity of reality, declaring that all things in the universe are made of one thing, which he called Being. A rationalist, he arrived at his model of the universe through reason, rather than through the senses, which he distrusted. Heraclitus, an empiricist, focused on change and diversity in the universe. His observations led him to conclude that there is no permanence, for everything changes. As he put it, “no one steps into the same river twice.” Unlike Parmenides, whose focus was on Being, Heraclitus was concerned with Becoming.

Two successors, Plato and Aristotle, championed their concerns, developing comprehensive views of reality. Plato’s model, the first grand synthesis, explained permanence and change dualistically. Plato posited two realms to reality, the Physical World, consisting of “particulars” (temporary things such as trees, horses, chairs, and triangles), which are always in flux, and the Ideal World, consisting of “universals” (ideals, essences, or “forms” such as treeness, horseness, chairness, and triangularity), which are eternal and unchanging. Concerned with permanence (Being), Plato viewed objects in the Physical World as copies of forms in the ideal world.

In Plato’s Ideal World, forms were related hierarchically, meaning there were lesser forms (such as treeness and triangularity), intermediate forms (such as beauty and justice), and a supreme form or highest ideal, which Plato called The Good. Using a mathematical model for reality, Plato ingeniously combined the views of Parmenides (Being) and Heraclitus (Becoming), creating a model that demonstrated the superiority of permanence over change.

Aristotle, Plato’s pupil, seeking unity in the universe, disagreed with Plato’s dualistic approach, using a biological model to explain how things can change, yet remain the same. Aristotle claimed there was only one reality—the physical—arguing that the form (essence) of a particular thing is within the object. Using analogies from nature such as how acorns become oak trees, he explained that what changes is the matter, but not the form of an object. Building on the principle of Becoming, Aristotle postulated that all things change, going from potentiality to actuality, and that all motion or change originates with a Prime Mover or a First Cause, which he called the Unmoved Mover. For Aristotle, this first cause of motion was itself unmoved, unchanged, and unalterable.

Later scientists—Ptolemy, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein—contributed substantially to Western cosmology, thereby creating a series of shifts in worldview known successively as Ptolemaic, Copernican, Newtonian, and Einsteinium. Curiously, each view contradicted the previous understanding of the cosmos. While initially resisted as heretical, each eventually became acceptable, replacing the previous mindset. Like the narrative of the history of life on earth, the story of the cosmic universe continues to be revised, its portrait redrawn.

The current age is fraught with uncertainty; even experts disagree on the nature of reality. Since the birth of modern science in the seventeenth century, essential hypotheses concerning the cosmic universe and the history of life on earth have been abandoned, and our understanding of reality continues to be revised. Affirming that scientists cannot explain how nature behaves the way it does, postmodern science presents not another model of the universe, but no model at all.

Despite the contributions and improvements of modern science, its ability to provide us with a worldview is limited, for we now know that science is limited to that part of the world that is physical, calculable, and testable. We cannot look to science to tell us about realities such as God, soul, and the like, for science now declares itself limited with respect to the invisible. Large parts of the universe (some say 90 percent of the scientist’s universe; others posit as high as 99 percent) are at present invisible. Protons, for example, derive from photons, and photons are only “virtually” real; they have no rest mass, lose no energy to the mediums they traverse, and are not objectively detectable because they are annihilated upon being perceived. Using instruments such as atomic particle colliders, scientists are conceding that invisibles exist and also that these invisibles precede the visible and in some way give rise to it.

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider, located beneath the France-Switzerland border, are now embarking on the quest to probe some of the biggest puzzles about the universe, such as dark matter and the possible presence of other dimensions or universes, as postulated by “string theory.” These scientists have greatly increased knowledge of the Higgs boson, the invisible particle responsible for giving other elementary particles mass. Without this particle, known as the “God particle,” the universe would be cold, dark, and lifeless. Data from this collider have also confirmed the existence of quarks, tiny ingredients that make up subatomic particles such as proton and neutrons, and proved the existence of mesons, unstable particles found in cosmic rays (consisting of one quark and one antiquark).

According to Paul Dirac, the father of antimatter, “All matter is created out of some imperceptible substratum. This substratum is not accurately described as material, since it uniformly fills all space and is undetectable by any observation. In a sense it appears as nothingness—immaterial, undetectable, and omnipresent. But it is a peculiar form of nothingness, out of which all matter is created.”10

In his 1976 book, Forgotten Truth, the renowned scholar of comparative religions, Huston Smith, delves into the “primordial tradition,” the common, fundamental experience of humankind, as found in the core teachings of the world’s religions, identifying therein a cosmology based on the idea of an ontological gradation of reality.

According to Smith, the “primordial tradition” is perhaps best distinguished by its recognition of the many-layered nature of both reality and the self. Smith narrows these layers to four: reality is composed of the terrestrial, intermediate, celestial, and infinite levels, while the self is composed of the body, mind, soul, and spirit, as depicted in the following diagram:11

These tiers correlate in such a way that higher levels of reality correspond to deeper levels of the self:

• the terrestrial tier (also called the material, physical, sensible, corporeal, and phenomenal) corresponds to the body;

• the intermediate tier (also called the subtle, psychic, or astral) corresponds to the mind;

• the celestial tier (this realm views God as personal; here one speaks of God’s attributes and personality) corresponds to the soul;

• the Infinite tier (this realm views God as transpersonal; this level is best spoken of through analogy, in negative terms, or through paradox) corresponds to the Spirit.

The highest and deepest tiers, Infinite and Spirit, are, according to Smith, without limitation; while the Infinite is unbounded externally, the human Spirit is unbounded internally. These two (undifferentiated) levels, therefore, are in fact the same. As one moves down the tiers of reality and out the tiers of selfhood, one encounters increasing levels of differentiation and/or materialization: on the levels of reality, God’s attributes and personality as well as “archetypes” on the celestial plane, the psychic reflections of the archetypes on the intermediate plane, and finally material reality on the terrestrial plane; and on the levels of selfhood, the soul as the source of mind and locus of individuality, the mind, and finally the corporeal body.

Smith’s cosmological image shows the earth, symbolic of the terrestrial sphere, enveloped by the intermediate sphere, which in turn is enclosed by the celestial, the three concentric spheres together superimposed on a background that represents the Infinite. “Considered in itself, each sphere appears as a complete and homogeneous whole, while from the perspective of the ar...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Cosmology, Anthropology, and Morality
• Chapter 2: The Role of Religion
• Chapter 3: The Promise of Nature
• Chapter 4: The Promise of the World’s Religions
• Chapter 5: The Cardinal Virtues
• Chapter 6: The Theological Virtues: Faith
• Chapter 7: The Theological Virtues: Hope
• Chapter 8: The Theological Virtues: Love
• Chapter 9: Growing Graciously
• Epilogue: Realized Eschatology
• Appendix A: Table of Interrelated Virtues
• Appendix B: The Seven Virtues: A Brief Look
• Appendix C: Love Never Fails: A Sermon
• Bibliography