Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Jesus Creed

Home
Evangelical
The Light of the World (RJS)

The Light of the World (RJS)

Last updated on: December 13, 2018 at 5:11 am by RJS

The Light of the World (RJS) 2018-12-12T21:42:14-06:00 RJS

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Apostles’ Creed has more to say about Jesus than God, the Holy Spirit, or anything else.

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.

…

I Believe in the Holy Spirit.

Yet the nature of Jesus as ‘his only Son our Lord’ was the focus of much controversy in the early church. The council of Nicaea was called to address the issue and the Nicene Creed, both 325 and 381, add much detail to the description.

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.

…

And we believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life.
He proceeds from the Father and the Son,
and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.
He spoke through the prophets.

Concerning the person of Jesus 3 lines become 13. The description of the Holy Spirit also required elucidation – one simple statement becomes five lines. The Trinity is not an easy concept to understand. It wasn’t easy in the first few centuries of the church and isn’t easy today.

Without claiming to find modern science in the pages of the Bible, Andy Walsh (Faith Across the Multiverse: Parables from Modern Science) suggests that science – particularly quantum physics and the nature of light – can help us understand more about the nature of the trinity, and particularly mutual divine and human nature of Jesus as “true God from true God” … become incarnate and made man. Andy reflects: “While Jesus was on Earth, he described himself as “the light of the world” (John 8:12). Fitting, then, that we should examine different properties of light in order to understand Jesus better. … I find our present understanding of light provides a conceptual framework for further exploring what Jesus was like.” (p. 87)

Light is not easy to explain. At times it behaves like particles – photons – that can be counted one by one. Yet these photons interfere – even with themselves – and behave like waves. Pass them through slits onto a screen and they diffract (the double slit experiment). Each individual photon goes to one place, but send a thousand through one at a time and an interference pattern emerges. Cover one slit and a completely different pattern is seen – even though in both experiments the photons can be separated by seconds – they don’t interact with each other at all. The same thing happens with electrons. It boggles the mind because photons, like other elementary particles including electrons and protons, behave in ways that do not fit into the neat categories we have based on our “normal” and macroscopic intuition. In fact, if we rely on our experience, the properties seem incoherent and irreconcilable.

As a physical chemist and spectroscopist, I find the wave-particle duality of electrons and photons a useful analogy to help understand a number of theological mysteries – and have used it before. Andy Walsh uses it to help understand the nature of Jesus as both human and divine.

There are three principle points Walsh makes.

First – we have to go with the data and not our reason and intuition. Walsh notes: “Just as we looked at various experiments that reveal properties of light, we’ll need to look at the data for Jesus we have from the Bible.” (p. 96) Some of the images we see of Jesus – emphasizing his human or divine characteristics – seem contradictory and may not fit our image of God. But Jesus, himself teaches us what it means to be human and divine. He also teaches us much about the nature of God.

Second – while we might tend to connect the three persons of the Trinity with the discrete particle-like nature of light, the properties of waves may also provide a useful analogy for how three can be one and one can be three. Although this seems contradictory from our particle-like understanding of personhood – it is not contradictory behavior for waves. Two or three waves combine to become one, one wave is easily decomposed into two or three or more. Now God isn’t a wave (as Walsh would agree) and the analogy is far from perfect – but it does point to the fact that three in one is not foreign to our experience if we know where to look.

Third – we can take advantage of interference to get a clearer picture of Jesus and of God. Large telescopes composed of multiple small mirrors rely on interference to produce a clearer image.

This ability to make a big telescope out of many small ones is quite handy, since it can be much more expensive to build a single large telescope than the equivalent array of smaller ones. It also handily paints a picture of how we can work together to understand God. Rather than trying to be the big telescope and see everything for ourselves, we can instead compare notes, see where our theological signals reinforce each other and where they cancel each other out, and infer from that combination a better picture of God than any one of us could see on our own. This is not equivalent to a lowest common denominator approach with a final image that is simply whatever is common to all observers. The interference from the combined signals is instead a careful and rigorous reconciliation of data from telescopes that are tracking together to look at the same part of the sky. (p. 101)

Among other thing those Christians who study God’s creation (scientists) and those who study Scripture (theologians and biblical scholars) working together should come up with a clearer picture than either group could alone.

Walsh concludes:

Having reflected on the nature of Jesus as both God and man and determined that, as with light, we need to let Jesus define our categories rather than be restricted to inadequate ones, we can apply those categories to our own lives. If Jesus is the ultimate expression of what it means to be human, then it is reasonable to orient our lives so that we are following his example. (p. 103)

It is not enough to understand God or Jesus better. We have to follow through and commit to that understanding of reality.

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail [at] att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

December 13, 2018

American Paganism On The Rise?

Next Post

December 14, 2018 A Child And A Dream

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Acts of the Apostles Adam Advent Anabaptism Angels Anglican Apologetics Atonement Baptism BCP Prayers Bible Biblical Studies Birds Blogging Bloglossary Bonhoeffer Books Calvinism Christianity Church Church History Coffee Colossians Commentary Recs Conversion Creation Creeds Culture Death Ecclesiastes Economics Education Embracing Grace Emergent Emerging Movement Eschatology Essays Ethics Eucharist Evangelicalism Family Fasting Fathers Fellowship of Differents Footsteps Tour Fun and Whimsical Gospel Grace Happiness Heaven Hell Holy Spirit Irenaeus James Jesus Jesus Creed Job Justification Kingdom of God Law Lectures Lent Liberalism Love and Marriage Mabanteneni Manhood Mary Miracles Missio Alliance MissioLife Missional Missional Jesus Movies and Film New Perspective Northern Seminary OneLife Origins Project Orthodox Parables Pastor's Spouse Pastoring and Leading Pastoring and Preaching Patristics Paul Paul-John Tour Pharisees Pietism Political Theology Prayer and Formation Preaching Problems for Faith Psalm 119 Psalms Public Issues Purgatory Religions Resurrection Revelation Romans Rule of JCreed Science and Faith Sermon on the Mount Sports Ten Commandments Theology Third Way Top Ten Lists Translations Uncategorized Universalism University Ministry Way Out Weekly Meanderings Wisdom Women and Ministry Work Worship Writing & Blogging Youth Ministry

Select a Month July 2021 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

To where did Jesus' family flee from Bethlehem?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Nazareth Greece Egypt Samaria