The Scripture’s gospel is shallow enough for babes to wade in and never drown and yet deep enough for scholars to swim in and never touch bottom.
—Saint Jerome
In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton developed formulas to explain the behavior of all moving objects. Falling apples and falling stars, the Cambridge University professor discovered, obey the same laws of motion. Principles of universal gravitation apply to spinning tops or spinning planets. The elegant simplicity was breathtaking. Surely, here was the ultimate insight into the God-ordained order of the universe. Unfortunately, a few centuries later Albert Einstein upset Newton’s applecart. Apparently, the great seventeenth-century mathematician’s equations could not offer exact predictions when velocities increased. Einstein’s theory of special relativity proposed that moving objects behave differently when traveling near the speed of light.
Newton was not wrong. His theories are still used for most calculations in the everyday world. Unless you are on the starship Enterprise approaching warp speed, Newton’s degree of error regarding moving objects is negligible, just as the curvature of the earth is negligible when builders are laying the foundation for a house. Scientists call this acceptable degree of accuracy a “domain of validity.”1 Within their domain of validity, Newton’s theories of motion are actually better than Einstein’s, because they are far simpler to use for everyday needs (even though in high school many of us did not care which of the two trains moving at different speeds reached the station first).
Think of our everyday distinction between matter and energy. Because of the low energy states of most matter around us, we assume matter is matter and energy is energy. Chemistry classes still teach the law of conservation of mass: in burning wood, for example, the total mass after the process is completed must equal the total mass before the process began. Matter can in fact be converted into energy, as predicted by Einstein’s most famous equation, E = mc2, yet seldom do we think of matter as another form of energy. In our daily lives (and in the chemistry lab), the law of conservation of mass has an appropriate domain of validity.
In the twentieth century, a scientific revolution even greater than Newton’s profoundly changed how we understand our world. It was quantum mechanics. Subatomic particles do not follow the laws of classical Newtonian physics but behave in quite aberrant and even whimsical ways. Fritz Rohrlich speaks to the challenges of moving from the familiar world of classical Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics: “There is no reason other than prejudice to expect the quantum world to be expressible in classical terms. Since that world is admittedly strange to us, being very far removed from our experience, it should come as no surprise that many of the problems we have in comprehending it are due to our lack of proper words for its new and unfamiliar concepts and for its peculiar nature. The analogies we can draw to the world we are familiar with are in general rather poor. . . . This is why the quantum world offers a very special challenge” (emphasis added).2
What first led to discovering this quantum world is the familiar paradox of light, which can be partly explained by the properties of a wave but has other behavior consistent with particles. This “wave/particle” paradox makes no sense as long as we evaluate it with Newtonian concepts that define what we mean by “sense.” Hence, to comprehend this new subatomic world, we make a paradigm shift3 away from analogies from the world we know (classical Newtonian physics) to be guided by different (quantum) concepts appropriate to this new and very different world.
Levels of Reality
Newtonian and quantum physics introduce us to levels of reality. Because nature is complex, to study something carefully, we must ignore some aspects in order to concentrate on others. Take Newton’s apple. A botanist might study the texture of the fruit, a molecular biologist the cell composition, a physicist the atomic structure, and a theoretical physicist the behavior of particles that make up its atoms. All these scientists have the same reality in view, but each is concerned with a different level. Scientists call this idealizing: shrinking a complex system into a simpler (ideal) system to study selected aspects. The botanist never thinks about the atoms that compose the apple, while the theoretical physicist couldn’t care less whether the atoms being studied came from an apple or a Chippendale chair.4 A traffic engineer studies the movement of cars during rush-hour traffic but couldn’t care less how well each car engine functions; an auto mechanic is focused on tuning a car’s engine but couldn’t care less where it is driven during rush hour.
As we seek to know God, could there be different levels of reality, just as there are in the physical world? I think this is quite possible. Such a notion should not be used to promote false spiritual hierarchies, whether the age-old strains of Gnosticism offering secret knowledge to the specially initiated or the more modern hierarchies based on spiritual gifts. The levels I want to think about are available to anyone with the simple desire to explore them; as with the scientists with Newton’s apple or the traffic engineer and the auto mechanic, it all depends on where we focus.
On one level, God has certainly revealed all we need to know for human salvation—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As with the classical world of Newtonian physics, most Christians operate within this framework most of the time. When asked for his definition of the gospel, Karl Barth, theological giant of the twentieth century, is said to have replied, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so!”
But as with Newtonian physics, it is dangerous to assume this is all there is. Einstein and others showed that reality has deeper mysteries. The quantum world did not mesh well with what classical physics had come to expect, and while this new world was not irrational, it was rational in a way never before considered (or different from what Newton might have defined as rational). If God created reality in such a way that the subatomic world operates on a completely different set of principles than the world we see and touch, why might the same not be true in the realm of the Spirit? And if the paradoxes discovered in natural phenomena (light exhibiting properties of both particles and waves, for example) stimulated the exploring instincts of scientific seekers, why might biblical paradox not do the same for spiritual seekers?5 Saint Jerome might have had a notion of such levels of reality in mind: “The Scripture’s gospel is shallow enough for babes to wade in and never drown and yet deep enough for scholars to swim in and never touch bottom.”
Think of the Newtonian spiritual truth “Jesus died for our sins.” Shallow enough for babes. But when I made the point with my students that the triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—are all involved in redemption, suddenly things got complicated. “If God was in heaven, how could God also be dying on the cross?” With our worldview shaped by a space/time universe, it seems impossible that God could be in two places at once. In fact, the statement “Jesus died for our sins” might honestly be called an idealization—a focus on the big picture of salvation while not considering other levels of reality. The paradox of the Trinity opens up all sorts of issues for scholars to swim in and never touch bottom. Indeed, they have been doing so for centuries!
A Quantum World of the Spirit
James Gleick, in his bestselling Chaos: Making a New Science, shows how chaos theory has forced us to change our views of reality: “Nonlinear systems with real chaos were rarely taught and rarely learned. When people stumbled across such things—and people did—all their training argued for dismissing them as aberrations. Only a few were able to remember that the solvable, orderly, linear systems were the aberrations. Only a few, that is, understood how nonlinear nature is in its soul.”6 If the soul of creation is indeed nonlinear (not straightforward or orderly), what might this say about its Creator?
Does not our experience with God push us toward a quantum world of the Spirit? We are frustrated that God’s help does not arrive as we hope it will, then are surprised when it shows up in totally unexpected ways. We find comfortable answers about how God works in our lives, only to discover new questions we cannot ignore lurking beneath our answers. Might we find we have accumulated solid evidence for the ways God functions as waves, only to bump into equally compelling evidence for the ways God functions as particles?
This prompts me to ask, Do the familiar Christian beliefs we employ in daily living also have a domain of validity? Remember, a domain of validity shows us when our questions fall outside its boundaries. Might the mystery of God exist as a level of reality alongside (or within or underneath) our familiar beliefs? Indeed, a quantum world of the Spirit might be waiting to be discovered, with paradox first catching our attention (as the contradictory properties of light alerted physicists) regarding this new level of reality. Some apples might fall farther from the tree than Newton expected.
Reflection Questions
1. This chapter uses an analogy from discoveries about physical reality to suggest that different levels of reality might also exist in the spiritual realm. Do you find this possibility threatening or stimulating? How so?
2. We know that paradox in natural phenomena (for example, the strange properties of light) forced scientists to go deeper, exploring different levels of reality. As you have encountered paradox in your spiritual journey, how has it forced you to go deeper?
3. Can you think of any examples of different domains of validity in the Christian life, whereby the answers that work on one level are not adequate for a deeper level? Might spiritual growth be imagined as moving from one level to explore another one?
4. Is it fair or honest to apply analogies from the physical world to the spiritual world? Why or why not?