Orthodoxy and Cosmology
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The Andromeda Galaxy - nearest to our own, the Milky Way
(poem by Alice Meynell - bottom of page)
This is a transcript of a lecture given by Fr. Gregory
The astrophysicist Robert Jastrow once said:-
"He (the scientist) has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
This a long way from the supposed and utterly ridiculous enmity which is supposed to exist between theology and the natural sciences. There is evidence of such enmity of course in the enduring antagonism between Creationism and Evolution but this is very much an American Protestant phenomenon. It is not at all a feature of Orthodox theology. There are issues here on how Orthodox use the Bible and its relationship to Tradition. There is not enough time to examine this in depth. Suffice to say that we do not subscribe to the exclusively literal (fundamentalist) or historical (sceptical) approach. This means that we do not expect the Bible to function, even in part, as a contemporary science text book, nor do accept that the Scriptures stand on their own, either isolated from the Tradition of the Church or wider spheres of knowledge. St. Justin Martyr is typical of an early Orthodox Christian apologetic in this respect. He does not only say that Christ is the Truth; he claims that the Truth is Christ. So, in my brief tour tonight through the heavens, I hope to show how contemporary cosmology and Orthodox theology are on many points agreed or, at least, compatible. We shall start with a little science and then move on to the theology whilst yet keeping both firmly in relation with each other.
The so-called "three-decker" universe of heaven, earth and hell or the underworld which formed the consistent backcloth of the cosmology of the ancient Judaeo-Christian world is gone for good. Yuri Gagarin no doubt thought that he had made a tremendous discovery when he declared that heaven was not in sight from earth orbit. The rest of us just yawned. So what has replaced this tripartite structure of heaven, earth and hell and how does this relate to the Orthodox understanding of the Cosmos?
To answer this I need my balloon!
In the 1920’s the astronomer Edwin Hubble noticed that certain galaxies were much more distant from the earth than previously thought. In the 30’s he observed that such distant objects were redder than they should be. He soon discovered that this was because they were moving away from us at incredible speeds. In the same way that a train leaving a station has a lower pitched sound than one arriving so also light’s wavelength increases from objects receding from us … the so called "red shift" to longer wavelengths of the optical spectrum. By measuring the red shift you measure the speed and with certain other measurements you can ascertain the distance. To his surprise, Hubble discovered that the entire observable Universe was expanding. Earth is not at the centre of this expansion, as you will notice from this inflating balloon ……. You will also notice that the fabric of space is stretching as well with its contents. Although an imprecise analogy, it is a good visualisation.
Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that at some dim and distant time in the past the entire Universe would have been concentrated in a much smaller volume of space, which might suggest an explosion of some sort, or Big Bang. Without evidence though this would have remained merely conjecture. Indeed for a time a theory of continuous creation of matter was proposed by Fred Hoyle to account for this expansion. This Steady State theory was discredited, however, in 1965 with the discovery of a remnant of this initial explosion or Big Bang. In this year Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, American scientists from Bell Labs, recorded microwaves emitted from every direction of space. This is known as the cosmic background radiation and corresponds to an absolute temperature of 3 degrees Kelvin. After that, it was learned that this radiation contained enormous amounts of energy and was spreading in all directions in precise uniformity. The finding showed that the Universe in its early days was extremely dense and hot and had cooled down to 3 Kelvin as it expanded. The finding gave great credence to the Big Bang theory. This theory was reinforced in 1992 by the Cobe satellite data which detected minute temperature ripples in the background radiation, much like the ripples of water in a pond caused by falling stone. Ten years later new evidence has confirmed these findings in greater detail and it is indeed these ripples that appear to account for the development of galaxies, stars, you and me. That the Big Bang happened is now beyond reasonable doubt although the court is still out on what precisely happened at the the ground-zero point and how it was caused.
Over many decades observation and theory has filled in the picture of the origin of the Universe. Many people now know about the Big Bang, but less well appreciated is the fact that this beginning was an explosive creation of something OUT OF NOTHING, or in theological terms, "ex nihilo." This extraordinary idea gets some getting used to but it’s attraction lies in the fact that it is an Orthodox theological truth about Creation as well.
I began this lecture tonight by a somewhat smug but truthful reference to theologians having already at a point where no scientist, until recently at least, had boldly gone before. This is what I meant. Unbelievably, every speck of matter, every radiance of energy, every push-me-pull-you of force, originally came to be out of literally, NOTHING. Now, if you bear in mind that for every man, woman and child on this planet there are 16 galaxies, making 100 billion galaxies in total, and that there are, on average 100 billion stars in each galaxy, making a staggering 10,000 billion billion stars just like our sun in total, and if you imagine that a pin head is far, far too big for all of this to be crammed in the first billionth of a second of the Big Bang; then we are talking an order of magnitude of power here that is inconceivable to our finite minds. Furthermore, it is not just matter and energy that are created in this scenario but space and time as well. So, although we know this happened about 15 billion years ago, to the question: "what time was it before this happened or in what space was it conceived?" the answer is :- "erase the question!" for it is meaningless if time and space are themselves created realities as well. Before the Big Bang, there was, literally, (save God), "nothing."
This discovery of "everything from nothing" has been a central tenet of creation in Orthodoxy, both before and after Christ for thousands of years. It is a necessary article of faith because the radical transcendence of God requires it. There can be nothing before or after God. There can be nothing greater than God. God, therefore, does not create the Universe out of some pre-existing "stuff." He would have to have created that "stuff" as well. All that there is comes to be out of the divine mind, in the divine heart and by the divine will, (I talk in anthropomorphisms of course … God does not really have a mind, heart or will analogous to our own). Sometimes, non-Orthodox Christian theologians in the Second Millennium have speculated after the manner of Aristotle about God as the "First Cause" or considered that maybe the Universe is eternal. That God is the First Cause is acceptable provided that He is every other succeeding Cause as well. It is not Orthodox, however, to suggest that the Universe is eternal … to impart, that is, to any created reality by nature that which properly belongs to God or is God. God sustains the Universe not only in its Alpha-Origination but in every succeeding nanosecond and indeed, paradoxically at its Omega-End.
The list of witnesses concerning "everything from nothing" is truly impressive although it is not an area of concern generally within the Bible as such, embracing as it does a rather primitive science and undeveloped metaphysic. Although there is only an unequivocal reference in 2 Maccabees 7:28 and extra-biblically in the Community Rule of Qumran, references in the early Christian centuries are impressive … Philo the Jew, Hermas, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Theophilus of Antioch, Tertullian, Origen, (Orthodox in parts!), Lactantius, Victorinus, Athanasius, Ephrem the Syrian, Ambrose of Milan, John Chrysostom and Augustine of Hippo … all these affirm the doctrine. St. Augustine is worth quoting in this respect:-
"Since God … is Creator and Ordainer of time, assuredly the world was made, not in time but simultaneously with time." (City of God)
Many atheist or agnostic cosmologists (as opposed to believing cosmologists of which there are many) have tried to get round the need for a Creator by invoking quantum mechanics. In this scheme of things space is not "empty." Indeed it is a seething mass of potentiality … a field of energy in which real time particles borrow energy, exist and then disappear again … the quantum foam of the subatomic world is like a pan of boiling milk. More bizarre are current models of intersecting quantum reality skins or membranes, branes for short, whose silent incursions upon each other generate the explosive ferocity of new creations. But is this really "nothing?" or some pre-existing eternal stuff or reality? It seems that the unbelieving continually feel the need to get rid of ex nihilo singularity Creation precisely because of its theological implications.
The militantly atheistic Oxford chemist P.W.Atkins for example has written :-
"The only way of explaining the creation is to show that the creator had absolutely no job at all to do, and so might as well not have existed."
Atkins draws comfort from the notion that quantum cosmology has shifted away from the ‘blue touch-paper’ model, in which everything arose from a single inexplicable moment, towards various types of proposal in which space-time arises by chance out of a simpler state.
In his famously popular book "A Brief History of Time" the successor to Sir Isaac Newton in Cambridge, the Motor Neurone Disease imprisoned Stephen Hawking, outlines such a Universe with no boundaries and time as a virtual or imaginary concept. In this scenario, the Universe generates itself from within its own eternal geometry. It’s a bit like watching crystals form within a liquid … the silica gel magic gardens of our childhood chemistry sets. In a well known quotation he says :-
"So long as the Universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a Creator [the cosmological argument]. But if the Universe is really completely self- contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?" (pp. 140-1)
Hawking and others try to suggest in all of this that nothing is not-nothing and that time has no substantive reality, although he is not entirely consistent about this. He does seem to be torn between the mathematical atheism of his boyhood hero, Bertrand Russell and the Christianity of some of his colleagues and his ex-wife. Sometimes he slips into "scientist as ecclesiastical victim" mode as when he compared his position to that of Galileo when disputing at a Pontifical conference on Cosmology in Rome. Old suspicions die hard it seems! One cannot help wondering whether this leading edge of cosmology isn’t actually controlled on all fronts by certain guiding a priori presuppositions, whether theist or non-theist, and not simply a reasonable interpretation of the evidence. This is to be expected. After all it’s not what happens to us in life that matters so much as the sense we make of it.
Back to my balloon, (deflate) ….
Is this how the Universe will end … from Big Bang to Big Crunch? That used to depend on whether or not there was enough matter in the Universe to put a brake on the expansion and through gravity reasserting itself, slam the expansion into reverse. The fate of the Universe would be to disappear again into a singularity fireball, a black hole to end all black holes and, perhaps, a return to sheer nothingness and the mind of God. In the 90’s, however, cosmologists realised that there was not enough visible matter in the Universe to do this, so many started hunting around for invisible "dark" matter, in order to achieve this. It’s almost as if cosmologists wanted a "nice proper ending" … to go out with a Bang as it were. No such luck! Recently it has been observed from very distant supernovae or exploding stars that the velocity of light may not have always been constant and that actually, incredibly, the expansion of the Universe may be speeding up! So, what is driving this increasingly energetic expansion? Well, the prime suspect seems to be some sort of vacuum repulsive force counteracting gravity on big scales and built into the very fabric of space. If this is correct, (and it is by no means proven yet), then Universe will end with a whimper, not a Bang! The fate of our beautiful Cosmos is to get increasingly distended and then in about 100 billion years to grow stone dead cold. In a billion years we will not see as many stars and galaxies as we do now. They will have passed beyond our observable cosmic horizon. The more distant future is not only lifeless but one without any energy at all. The inexorable Second Law of Thermodynamics triumphs. This is the increasing entropy Heat Death of the Universe in its final totally inert state. How depressing. But is it true? We don’t know yet. Others have shown that each nanosecond we may be standing on the edge of extinction since, at the quantum level, there is very final balance between oblivion and existence. So, whether it is to be the Big Crunch, the Final Whimper or the Present Wobble, Creation will end.
How does this impact on Orthodox Cosmology and eschatology, (the Christian doctrine of the End of All Things)? Interestingly, there are resonances between each scenario and Orthodox doctrine. The fiery end is depicted in the Apocalypse of St. John; the imminent return of the Lord and the wrapping up of this World is a gospel preoccupation; the fading of all things in Sheol is an older witness but nonetheless a valuable insight for all that. However, the final Christian word is not death but a New Creation, (literally). The resurrection, in Orthodox terms, is not an isolated event attaching only to Christ himself but a Cosmic renewal of the whole of Creation beyond the death and decay which besets this one. Listen to St. Paul in Romans :-
"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labours in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, namely, the redemption of our body."
(Romans 8:18-23)
So the focus here is on a completely New Order, a New Creation that is a deliverance from the present scheme of things which has no future outside of God’s regenerative power. Indeed this power is seen by St. Paul as having a focus in human life and through human life extending to the whole Cosmos.
One of the more hopeful expressions in contemporary cosmology of this invincibility of life is to be found in the works of Barrow and Tipler although not from a theistic point of view. In their scheme, life finally conquers the Universe but this is not the death-destroying Life of God, rather the naked power and intelligence of creatures or machines. It seems that the only alternative to the resurrection is a frightening cosmic fascism. Nietzsche would have been proud. Superman lives!
To be honest there is very little in contemporary cosmology that comes anywhere near the resurrection which probably indicates the spiritual poverty of the west conditioned as it has been over many centuries to stay this side of the grave, at least in the public domain of scientific "truth." Here, therefore we meet an impasse for Orthodox cosmology. That which matters most in Orthodoxy, the resurrection, doesn’t get a look in with modern science. The dialogue between the sciences and Orthodoxy is, therefore, especially important in this area.
One way forward, perhaps, is for the Church to articulate her experience of how the energies of God (in a Palamite sense) reverse these directions toward death and decay. The incorruptibility of the transfigured body, manifested partially at least in the relics of the saints, is an interesting case in point. After all, it was this that the atheistic Soviets were most keen to refute even erecting their gross parody of the redemption of matter in Lenin’s mausoleum in Red Square. The resurrection, cosmological hope, is for Orthodox an issue of sanctity, the pursuit of holiness, deification. There is an unbreakable link between our salvation and the future of the Cosmos. Save the former and you save the latter. The fate of the Universe really does depend on what happens to you and me, the choices you and I make and the future of humanity by the hand of God.
All this neatly brings me to the final cosmological question … Life itself. Are we here by accident or is there is a divine purpose at work?
Introducing the Anthropic Principle!
What on earth is that? Well at the moment at least it is firmly on earth and nowhere else. Life. The Anthropic Principle is based on the astounding fact that the physical laws that govern the Universe from the very small to the very large are so finely tuned that if any part were slightly differently set life would be impossible.
There are four basic forces in Nature … the weak and strong forces that apply at the atomic level, gravity and the electromagnetic force that apply on bigger scales. Somehow these are all intimately connected, although no one has yet discovered a quantum theory of gravity that might unite all four in one Grand Theory of Everything. Having said that we know a lot about these forces; enough to know that life crucially depends on the precise alignment of each one. Dr. Christopher Southgate writes:-
"If the relative strengths of these forces were different, the resultant universe would also be different. For example, increasing the strong nuclear interaction by 3% relative to the electromagnetic interaction gives a cosmological model in which none of the known chemical elements could form. Conversely, decreasing it by 1% gives a model in which carbon atoms would be unstable. Both scenarios would preclude carbon-based life. Other tiny variations in these forces might have given rise to a universe which was 100% helium or one in which supernova explosions could not occur (since these explosions are thought to be the chief way in which the chemicals necessary for life are ejected from stars, this too would preclude the evolution of life). These ‘precisions’ in various parameters such as to give rise to life are known as the ‘anthropic coincidences’."
Coincidences or planned? Well, the only way you can say that they were not planned, built into the Cosmos from the start, is to suggest that there are many Universes and we just happen to live in an inhabitable one. This is the corollary of the so-called "Weak Anthropic Principle." According to this theory there are countless other Universes built on different physical laws that prevent the evolution of life. It is a selection effect rather than a cause of wonderment that we are so blessed with Life. Life was bound to emerge somewhere … but not everywhere. There are parallels here with what we know locally about the viability of life in this galaxy. The fact that we live precisely within the habitable zone of both our star and galaxy is not really amazing when one considers that life cannot exist and therefore make such observations in less hospitable environments. However, the multi-Universe, selection effect, Weak Anthropic Principle does not account for why there should be life anywhere. Ultimately the roll of the cosmic dice requires an absurd "wastage" of Universes. Surely this pushes the Copernican principle of the non-special character of order in the chaos too far. After all it is built on the very non-scientific idea of realities (other Universes) that by definition we can have no evidence for or know anything about. Furthermore, the mere existence of life is a flat denial of the triumph of disorder over order, especially from a resurrection point of view. The Strong Anthropic Principle (that life is hardwired into the Cosmos for a purpose) fits the evidence better, and, in turn, points to the possibility of a creative Mind behind it all, God. Orthodoxy strongly affirms that this Universe, although to be replaced by a New Creation at the End of Time, has its own purpose and incalculable value in the mind, heart and will of God. It is this Cosmos that it is the "seed corn" of the next in heaven. Our responsibility as priests, (all of us that is as priests), of this Creation is to offer it back to God enhanced as His co-creators, His viceregents on earth and beyond. The ecological dimension of salvation should not then be lost on anyone from an Orthodox point of view.
It used to be theology that was criticised for unworldly speculation. How extraordinary then that the tables have been turned on unbelief … and all this because atheism as an ideological position has become arguably less rational and more fantastical than belief was ever falsely accused of being. This is perhaps why there are so many cosmologists today who are believers, (Polkinghorne, Carr, Dale, Sandage, Page, Lovell), contrary to many commonly held assumptions by the ill-informed. Not all of these cosmologists are Orthodox of course, but insofar as they pursue truth boldly where few have gone before, they, according to St. Justin Martyr’s witness will not fall from Christ who is the Truth in all its myriad forms.
Alice Meynell:
"Christ in the Universe"
With this ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us. These abide:
The signal to a maid, the human birth,
The lesson, and the young Man crucified.
But not a star of all
The innumerable host of stars has heard
How He administered this terrestrial ball.
Our race have kept their Lord's entrusted Word.
Of His earth visiting feet
None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,
The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,
Heart shattering secret of His way with us.
No planet knows that this
Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,
Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,
Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.
Nor, in our little day,
May His devices with the heavens he guessed,
His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way,
Or His bestowals there, be manifest.
But, in the eternities,
Doubtless we shall compare together, hear
A million alien gospels, in what guise
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
Oh be prepared, my soul!
To read the inconceivable, to scan
The infinite forms of God those stars unroll
When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.
