#106. Ritual & the Evolution of Culture

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This is the 6th in a series of blog entries beginning with #101. It's a collection of notes and essays from my files all dealing in one way or another with the emerging new religious consciousness. They are mostly things I've written over the last decade or so to clarify my own thoughts but which I now want to make available for anyone who might be interested. This post (#106) originally was a followup to a phone conversation with a friend about the sophiological ideas of Sergius Bulgakov described in post #104.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com 

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Dear R,

As I said on the phone, this topic is too big! But I can't pass up the opportunity to try to spell out some thoughts about it, and hope that something here may be along the lines of what you're interested in. I hardly know where to start, there are so many inter-related things to think about! 

Ritual may be the focal point, but in a sophiological context things like church, eschaton, the cosmic evolutionary process and our place in it-- all go together along with ritual. Since my last note to you was about Bulgakov's Bride of the Lamb, some of his ideas about church may be a good take-off place for talk about ritual.

In section 5-1 on "The Essence of the Church" (where he begins with what he calls "the primordial significance of the Church") he says that the church is nothing less than the foundation and basis of the created world. God’s eternal plan is "to gather together all things into one" and the church is the fulfillment of that plan.

It is, as I've said, a profound set of ideas. The created world has a purpose, that purpose the unity of all things, and the fulfillment of that purpose is the church. What a contrast, indeed, this is with the prevailing conventional views of scientific rationalism (that can't acknowledge that there is any meaning or purpose to our existence) and also with the views of religious dualism (that claim only that we are to escape from the world rather than be united with it utterly). And as I also mentioned, even many of the new cosmologists seem unable to acknowledge a goal to cosmic evolution. So right from the start, "the sophiological perspective stands in the greatest contrast to all the conventional views about the world as either evil or meaningless."

To all that I added the note that it is precisely sophiology's unitive perspective which makes it so relevant to our understanding of the church tradition and the new cosmology. What the church is all about is unity; its very essence is the unity of all things. "To gather together all things into one."

This means that "church" can be understood only within a cosmic context. In the old (static) cosmos, church became the means of escape from the cosmos. But the very essence of the new cosmology is its understanding of the cosmos as dynamic, and this is totally in accord with the original ekklesia's self-understanding. In Bruno Barnhart’s words, the essence of the New Testament vision is "the transformation of cosmic matter (in the human person) into its ultimate unitive state in God." And it's that unity of cosmos, anthropos and theos which in Bulgakov’s view is church.

One thing we can see immediately is how the central place of individuals-- as the agents of this cosmic unity-- stands out in this dynamic and transformational view. It's clear that sophiology and the new cosmology agree on this critically important point: that we exist and live in a dynamic person-centered cosmos. Far from being incompatible, the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the emerging scientific worldview see the one same thing. (And indeed, they have the same source: the Exodus experience and Hebrew ontology.)

It's easy to say that "church" is what sophiology and the new cosmology have in common, but conventional Christianity has little real sense of ekklesia, and of course ekklesia is not part of the contemporary scientific perspective (even though the new cosmology supports the ekklesia's self-understanding and they have a common source). In both conventional Christianity and new cosmology, what's missing, as you've heard me say before, is eschatology: that the world has a purpose and we are its agents. So the new cosmology is much closer to a sophiological anthropology than is conventional Christianity, in that it sees human persons as participating in the cosmic process; it also clearly supports sophiology's view of personal creativity and inspiration in that context. Both Bulgakov and Brian Swimme even use the same word, "mission," to describe our personal participation in the process, and Bulgakov calls it the church's "very life."

So all that is the very messy situation in which we have to pursue the question of ritual!

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When I mentioned Bulgakov's note about language not being precise enough for what needs to be said about "church" I added in parenthesis, "[That's] one of the reasons why realistic ritual remains a major need in the immense transition!"

I emphasize "realistic ritual" because an authentic understanding of ritual is as much in contrast with the conventional dualistic perspectives as are sophiology's ideas about the world's purpose and about the church as the fulfillment of that purpose. It is also, of course, equally in contrast with rationalist secular views, which see ritual at best as only meaningless and at worst as repetitive or compulsive-- pathological-- behavior.

The situation is even more complicated, however, in that, for religious dualism, "ritual" is considered to be only empty gestures except when those gestures are done by authorized persons (and for the purpose of providing temporary freedom from the possibility of eternal punishment once the individual is freed from the cosmos). 

I'm aware how odd that sounds, but you know it's not a caricature of how sacraments were (and, alas, still are) understood.

For many good-willed church people today, those who have titles such as "religious educator" or "liturgist" or "liturgical musician," and who thus find themselves responsible for educating people (primarily kids) about ritual ("sacramental preparation"), "ritual" takes on the meaning of educational activities or artistic performances. They are essentially thought of, at their best, very much like plays or lectures and concerts, or even spectator sports, where the few do something for the edification and/or entertainment of the many. I don't, of course, mean to say there's anything wrong with concerts or lectures or games; but I do mean that such spectator events are not ritual.

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In her talk, "Teilhard and the Fabric of the Universe," (which I sent you a while back), Sister Kathleen Duffy, from the physics department at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, describes Teilhard as a pioneer who had to "break through to the core" of both science and religion. Today, many have broken through to a post-rationalist view of science; and also many are at work on a post-rationalist view of religion. But the break-through to a specifically post-rationalist view of ritual hasn't happened yet.

The best we've come up with so far is the New Age movement from back in the 60's. It was a mind-blowing mixture of authentic ritual and utter nonsense, and although it had a broad impact on people interested in spirituality, almost none of it (good or bad) rubbed off on church leaders (clergy, DREs, liturgists, musicians). Thus church-goers (the people in the pews) are for the most part in an incredibly impoverished situation.

And of course ritual was held in utter disdain by academic people. That includes even cultural anthropologists, who do pay attention to ritual, in that they collect and record data about it. But nobody, as far as I'm aware, is into studying what it is and how it works in itself. Ritual in the academic world seems to be much like "religion" was until the early 20th century or shamanism was until the late 20th century: irrational activity, unworthy of serious attention.

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So. All of that (all those many words!) is background explanation for why I said, when we were talking on the phone, that any talk of evolutionary ritual may be premature. It's just "too big" an issue to deal with. I said the old things (of tribal, native, "first" peoples) are best: sweat lodge, vision quest, talking-staff council, sacred pipe; things that allow us to be in right relationship with the earth. That's essentially what rituals are, a saying "yes" to our human situation, an affirmation of our belonging to the universe; and the more authentic they are, they more they result in empowerment for growth and development. (They "give grace," exactly what's said of the sacraments, but it's much more clear when we see "grace" as Bulgakov does: a "new how, not new what"). So authentic ritual is about our personal and communal growth, our development as participants in the developmental cosmos. (Which is why it is especially powerful in liminal moments, such as dawn, sunset, winter solstice, spring, puberty, birth, sickness....)

The issue, as I see it, is that for ritual to be authentic the persons involved need to have an active, participatory role in the rites themselves; they can't be passive spectators or recipients. Remember "active participation" as the rallying cry of the liturgical movement back in the 50's? The liturgists of that time were on the right track. One of the (many) reasons the liturgical movement fizzled was the "active participation" that was permitted was almost totally verbal, whereas participants in authentic ritual have to do something, not just say words. It has to be something primarily physical. (This also explains why dualistic religious disdain for matter and body is also a disdain for ritual; it explains why even the seven "legitimate" church rituals are almost totally reduced to nothing but words.)

As far as I can see, we won't be able to evolve appropriate contemporary ritual until we have moved beyond projecting "sacred" in to another worldly category. (Again, it's consciousness of making the "immense transition"-- to a dynamic cosmos, a unitive theos and a participatory anthropos-- that makes all the difference.)

Once we are moving toward making that transition, we see that there is, in fact, a treasury of appropriate ritual available to us. Much of it from tribal (native) peoples, but also much of it that is long-neglected, indeed buried, within the Christian tradition, covered over with the dust of the centuries. Someday, those buried treasures will make sense as "just what we need" by future new cosmologists and post-patriarchal Christians.

One more point to all this. I don't mean to say that we have no appropriate rituals available to us right now. But we have to "do" them in a non-dualistic and non-rationalistic context: with non-dualistic and non-rationalistic attitudes. Whatever we do, it always has to be in affirmation of our real lives in the real world, a 'yes' to our material and biological existence. It either allows us to stand at the center of the world or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it's either escape from the world, which is why secularism condemns it, or it's only artistic performance or audio-visual education. Neither of which is bad in itself, but they have to be distinguished from ritual.

Making that distinction is nearly impossible in our culture, due to the pervasiveness of rationalism and dualism. The contrast with authentic ritual-- affirming our belonging to the universe and thereby being empowered to active collaboration with the cosmic process-- is great.

In a sophiological context, authentic ritual makes good sense. It is precisely our affirmation, to use Vagaginni's neat terms, of the caro that is the cardo of salvation. (And of which the essence, as Irenaeus says, is healing and wholeness; or in Bulgakov's blunt statement, "that the body will be restored to the person and be changed.")

Also helpful are the terms of sarx and pneuma: ritual is affirmation of the developmental cosmic-body process (sarx) in light of its realization or fulfillment (pneuma). It's easy to see why rationalism would dismiss all this, and why church sacraments so easily slip in to a dualistic framework. But it's a delight to see that the new cosmology gives us a much better context for keeping ritual grounded and thus authentic.

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So one of the main things I want to say about "evolution and ritual" is that, in the immense transition, an understanding evolution, not an understanding ritual, takes priority. Conceptually, an evolutionary cosmology supports and helps us to understand ritual, but ritual can't help us to understand evolution. We have to have some real sense of the evolutionary worldview before we can ritually "own" our place in it. (This would be true even if we created an initiation rite for moving into the evolutionary worldview.) But we don't need to "ritually" embrace the new cosmology; what we need to embrace is the cosmos. We don't really need any new rites or ceremonies; we only need to do the old ones, even the Christian eucharist, in the ways they were done before religious dualism set in.

And Homo sapiens has been doing earth-rites-- cosmos-embracing rites of belonging and participation-- for many thousands of years. If we want to recover good ways of doing ritual we have to go to those indigenous peoples whose early cultures pre-date Western civilization and who have managed to hold on, to some extent, to something of those old ways. They are, as Matthew Fox said many years ago, a great gift to the world. So at least with regard to ritual, the immense transition includes a going back as well as a moving ahead. (All this is "very messy," indeed!)

In a nut shell, what's needed, re "evolutionary Christianity," is not ritual but kerygma. Only after there's been a proclamation-- a declaration, a consciousness-expansion-- is there something to which we can give our fiat. As I mentioned in one of the earlier notes I sent, the old Angelus provides a clear pattern for authentic ritual: first the announcement by the angel, then the fiat by Mary. And only after that comes grace, cosmic empowerment, "not a new what but a new how," an incarnation of the holy breath/wind/spiritus.

So people like Michael Dowd and his wife Connie are on the right track. If you looked at the list of churches participating in "Evolution Sunday" (on one of their links I sent recently), I'm sure you noticed how few RC groups were listed: out of more than 460 congregations, only two were RC for sure. (Maybe three. There were two "Antioch Catholic" parishes listed, one of which also calls itself Malabar rite, and which may or may not be in communion with Rome; the other, also called "Antiochan Catholic," is definitely not: it lists a female bishop!) Quakers and Unitarians, the least sacramentally oriented groups, are leaders in the proclamation of the evolutionary kerygma. (I find it interesting that it may be because they are the least sacramentally oriented groups. An interesting question to pursue sometime!)

In any case, the main point I'm trying to make with all this is that-- far from being a pathological escape mechanism (from the universe and from punishment in the hereafter, as sacraments are, in a dualistic context)-- ritual is essentially the acceptance and affirmation of our cosmic-material-physical-bodily reality and, thereby, of our active role in the world's on-going development. As I've said before (probably too many times!), "it all fits together."

In a sophiological context, all these things-- evolution, cosmos, matter, caro, non-duality, salvation, ekklesia, eschaton, ritual-- all are part of a post-patriarchal "package." If we move into any one of these areas, we eventually find ourselves dealing with all of them. One very nice example is Bulgakov's comment that the physical universe is "the cosmic face of the ekklesia." Here are a few more examples of that interconnectedness.

1) As I've mentioned before, the Sanskrit term rita, from which our words "rites" and "ritual" come, means the order of the universe, the way the world works: the wisdom of the cosmos which (or who, as the old Advent hymn has it), "orders all things mightily." As the very means by which we enter into and are empowered by the universe to participate in that wisdom-ordered cosmic process, ritual is what makes evolution happen at the human culture level. So just from the Sanskrit word alone we can see how Sophia-wisdom, cosmic evolution and our unitive participation in it are all connected.

2) Thomas Berry's Principle Twelve of New Cosmology is that “the main task of the immediate future is to assist in activating the inter-communion of all the living and non-living components of the earth." Ritual activates that inter-communion; it empowers us to enter into communion with "All our relations." (Native Americans use that phrase in connection with almost all their sacred ceremonies and even in public talks.) So ritual is at the heart of the New Cosmology.

3) The "inter-communion of all the living and non-living components of the earth" is the human task. In Panikkar's words, the focused energy or concentrated consciousness of ritual is “the act by which the ‘thing’ is converted into a bit of the human world.” That's the "public work" which is accomplished by every person and community participating in the cosmos process to bring about the new creation of diversity and communion, peace and justice. (In Bruno’s words, that work is "the transformation of cosmic matter [in the human person] into its ultimate unitive state in God.") This is the work of the ekklesia, done "on behalf of all and for all," and for which the Greek word is, of course, "liturgy." So once again we see evolution at the cultural level, cosmic unity, ritual and ekklesia to be utterly interconnected.

4) The almost forgotten Christian image of "the lamb slain at the foundation of the world"-- an image which goes back to the Paleolithic (hunting culture) understanding of the game animal willingly giving itself "so that the people can live"-- is an image of the most primeval of all rita: God's, not ours, the divine kenosis by which the world comes to be.

The New Cosmology doesn't have the lamb imagery, of course, and neither does most of the Christian world. But Sophiology has it, and sees our on-going participation in the world's evolution (what Bulgakov calls Bogochelovechestvo) as nothing less than our participation in that original creative kenotic rita. So yet again we see how ritual, evolution and participatory unitive reality all go together.

Here's a few comments about our basic 'mind and body' needs with regard to ritual. I see dealing with those needs as essentials in the recovery of an authentic religious anthropology:

1) Patriarchal culture's lack of understanding of imagery makes understanding life-giving ritual all but impossible. So whatever can be done to raise consciousness of the four-fold nature of the psyche-- and thus help validate images, intuition, feelings and emotions as legitimate modes of human awareness-- is important.

2) Our collaboration with the workings of the wisdom of the universe obviously depends on our contact with nature. Legitimating for people things like walks in the park, "wasting time with the ocean," enjoying good cooking, are important. Ultimately, the need here is to see our very caro as nature. The chart on page 40 of Mary Conrow Coelho's book is invaluable kerygma.

Well, as I've said, the topic is too big. I hope something here is along the lines of what you were interested in. If it's helpful, great. If not, let me know. I can give it another shot. - Sam

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#94. Religion "At Its Best"

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This post now contains all three parts which were originally published separately.

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"There's more to religion than it seems."

I've made that statement many times during my years as a teacher. And in the home-stretch reflections that I described in the previous post (#93) about my nearly five-year-long blog-writing effort, I discovered that what stands out most for me is the inadequacy I feel with regard to sharing my thoughts about that "more."

So in this post I'm going to try say, as well as I can, what I mean by "Religion 'At Its Best'."

The very fact that there is a "more"-- an inner core of wisdom at the depths of Western culture's Judeo-Christian tradition-- is difficult for many of us to realize. It's difficult because it's precisely that "best" that got lost.

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Religion's "best" was replaced by body-soul and matter-spirit dualism-- the basic outlook of patriarchal culture and classical philosophy-- which has dominated western culture and religion for many centuries.

I'm aware that I am more personally attuned than many, apparently, to that kind of depth awareness often called "right brain" or "intuitive" perception. But still I have to say that I'm continually amazed that the very fact that there is a "more" to religion-- more than the static dualism of rational empiricism-- remains for the most part unknown to the general public.

The "more" is still there. That inner core of wisdom is preserved in the rituals, customs, art and music, creeds, feasts and seasons of the Western religious tradition. But it's precisely the significance of such things that rational empiricism can't see because of its position at the bottom rung of the Great Ladder.

We need to move up the ladder. It's only when we make use of our intuitive rationality that we can recognize the "more" of the Judeo-Christian tradition and can enter into an experience of that inner core of wisdom which is our Western culture's religion "at its best."

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I have referred repeatedly in these posts to the four-fold way our minds work-- the fact that we don't just think sequentially and we don't just perceive our existence in terms of its surface details. We can, in fact, be aware of our connections with everything; and we can, in fact, see the whole picture-- the big picture of how the world works and how our lives fit into it.

Even though the Judeo-Christian tradition originally gave the world its evolutionary viewpoint, the dynamic and unitive perspective at the base of Western religion was gradually replaced by the static-dualistic outlook of classical philosophy. For many in our patriarchal culture, the word "religion" still means only that world-rejecting outlook of patriarchy's static dualism.

So if we are to get to the heart of our Western religious tradition, we need to move higher up the ladder; we need to see the world, and ourselves in it, from the dynamic and unitive perspectives.

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Everybody know what "dynamic" means in contrast to "static," but hardly anyone is comfortable with either "unitive" or its opposite, "dualistic."

Nowadays, our world is changing so fast that no one any longer thinks that "there's nothing new under the sun." Indeed, we know now that the world has never not been undergoing great changes. We know from science that over billions of years galaxies, planets and the stars have evolved; that on Earth living matter has emerged from the dust of the stars; and that we ourselves have developed from those earlier life forms.

But it's still a surprise to many to learn that that dynamic (emergent, evolutionary) worldview comes originally from our Western religious tradition, and that we even have a biblical name for the "energy" or "power" of the cosmic process: dynamis in Greek, spiritus in Latin.

Spiritus also means wind, air and life-breath; the holy spiritus we understand to be empowering the evolution of the universe is the same dynamis which gives each of us our life and breath and personal self-awareness.

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This dynamic perspective-- that we are not separate from the matter of the physical cosmos, nor from the Earth's biological life-forms, nor from the holy spiritus which empowers the evolution of the universe-- also helps us to understand what's meant by "unitive."

For most of us, it's an unfamiliar word. As the opposite of "dualistic," "unitive" refers both to our union with the natural world and to our union with the world's creative source.

And while "Big History"-- the big picture of the universe we have from contemporary science-- makes clear that we are indeed part of the natural world, we don't yet have something analogous to "Big History" which we might call "Big Religion." The most explicit contemporary perspectives available about our non-duality with the divine come from the unitive views of the Asian religious traditions.

While the spiritualities of Asia have remained more open than have those of the West to the sense of divine-human unity which goes back to Paleolithic times, in Western culture the unitive view was smothered by the static dualism of patriarchy. So the non-Western religious traditions such as Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism can help us recover the human-divine aspect of the unitive worldview.

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I've mentioned in several posts the twentieth-century religious thinker and British monk Bede Griffith. He not only makes the point well that science is helping religion recover its "inner core"; he even left England and went to live in India "to find," he said, "the other half of my soul."

Bede's words may sound confusing, but the unitive view is in fact two-fold, and we need to be especially clear here in thinking about it: there is a human-cosmos unity and a human-divine unity. We need both, if we are to recover the non-dual vision of cosmic-human-divine unity at the heart of the Western tradition.

But while help for seeing the cosmic-human view comes from science, and while the divine-human perspective is clearer with the help of Eastern spiritualities, that's not enough. It's the convergence of these two perspectives-- the cosmic-human from science and the divine-human from Asian religions-- that provides the context for us to enter into and to experience the inner core of wisdom at the depths of our own Judeo-Christian tradition.

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You may be thinking, "All that is just the context? What, then, about the content?"

Well, I have three Greek words which, in addition to "evolution," seem to me to be needed to spell out what I'm calling the Judeo-Christian tradition "at its best." They are eschaton, eucharist and ecclesia.

In the previous post I mentioned that if I were sharing these thoughts in an article for an academic journal, the essay would have a title something like "Evolutionary Eschatology and Eucharistic Ecclesiology."

That's quite a mouthful, but those are the words I have to work with! 

"Eschatology" is a deep-level comprehensive view of the purpose of our evolving universe, "Eucharistic" refers to our human response to that understanding, and "Ecclesiology" is concerned with the nature of the community of those who respond.

What holds all these ideas together is, as I see it, the modern understanding of person-- which, remarkably, is honored both in Western secular culture and by Western religion. In what follows, I will use each of these ideas-- eschaton, eucharist, ecclesia and person, all in the context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution-- to do my best to spell out my understanding of religion at its best.

If you've been feeling that this post has been heavy-going so far, you're right. But you've got through the worst of it. And while the rest is relatively easy, it's long. So if you're reading it at one sitting, this is a good place to take a break.

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ESCHATON. Eschaton is our understanding of the world's end-purpose. 

In the old static context, "the end of the world" meant its annihilation-- "when God will come to judge the world by fire," in the words of the hymn sung at Catholic funerals for a thousand years.

In the dynamic context, we're not talking about the world's "end" in the sense of its annihilation, nor in the sense of the coming of the "Rapture" repeatedly announced by religious fundamentalists. In unitive (non-dualistic) terms, the world's "end" is its purpose: why it exists-- and why, of course, we exist.

If we are to appreciate our Western religious tradition "at its best," we need to understand the end-purpose of the world in terms of the tradition's own dynamic-unitive insights.

I noted back in post #20 that even those who promote the New Cosmology seem to shy away from this aspect of the Western tradition. 

But as I see it, no matter what we may call the divine creative power-- the ultimate, the numinous, the great Mystery-- we have a profound need to understand-- in terms of the Western tradition's own evolutionary and unitive context-- the tradition's insights into the creative source's purpose.

And this is one area where the rational empiricism of science isn't of help. We simply can't see the "end" or "purpose" of anything-- let alone the purpose of everything-- from the bottom rung of the great ladder. 

Our Sensing function's focus on details just isn't good enough. We need to use our mind's Intuitive ability if we are to see the biggest of all Big Pictures: why there is anything, rather than nothing.

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In writing this blog over the last four-and-a-half years I've worked hard to spell out my understanding of modern Western culture's upward movement to this higher rung of the great ladder-- where we can, in fact, see the Big Picture.

I focused on that cultural transition especially in post #80, where I described the mid-20th-century efforts of the "two mavericks"-- depth psychologist C. G. Jung and atomic physicist Wolfgang Pauli-- to accept and express their understanding of our mind's intuitive capacity in the face of several centuries of its neglect and denial by Western science's empirical rationality.

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In the science of cultural anthropology, any social group's response to the basic human need to understand "our place in the vast scheme of things" is called its cosmology. The "New Cosmology" is new precisely because it replaces Western culture's previous static cosmology. And as 

I've mentioned frequently, in that older dualistic religious perspective we were told that our purpose was to escape from the world.

We can now see, however-- thanks to the evolutionary worldview of modern science-- that we do in fact have a place in the evolving cosmos. And it's this insight which allows us to recover the older inner core of wisdom-- that "more"-- that I've been calling the West's religious tradition "at its best."

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I've noted many times that the very idea of evolution comes originally from the Judeo-Christian tradition. And that to this day, the perspective of an on-going emergence of newness-- imaged traditionally in terms of Exodus, Passover and new life arising in Spring-- remains an essential aspect of its inner core of wisdom. When we think in terms of transformation, we can see that it's not an exaggeration to say that evolution is what Western religion is all about.

Christianity sees this transformation process at the heart of the cosmos as a manifestation and embodiment of the divine source. We even have familiar words for this understanding: "epiphany" and "incarnation." But it is precisely the deeper meaning of those terms which got lost when patriarchy's static dualism replaced the earlier dynamic perspective.

In that patriarchal context, the meaning of "incarnation" came to be limited to one time, one place and one person. As its broader meaning was lost over the centuries, that limited understanding came to be taken for granted and, eventually, it was presumed to be the very basis of Western religion.

But as we recover the earlier dynamic-unitive perspectives at the inner core of the tradition, the entire evolutionary process can once again be recognized as the incarnation of the creative source of the cosmos. We can see, in that evolutionary context, that the embodiment of divine creativity is happening always and everywhere-- and that it excludes nothing and no one.

Here are some examples of this understanding, from three profound 20th-century religious thinkers:

Karl Rahner says, "The Mystery is always and everywhere giving itself to us." It is "always and everywhere making itself known to us."

Sergius Bulgakov calls the cosmic process the "actualization of the divine potentialities."

Raimundo Panikkar-- in his demanding but significant language-- names what's being embodied "the cosmo-the-andric unity." The union of the cosmic (cosmos), the divine (theos), and the human (andros) is what's being manifest by the cosmic process.

Rahner was a German Catholic and Bulgakov was Russian Orthodox. Panikkar had a Spanish mother, an Asian Indian father, and he described himself as "Catholic when I'm in Rome, Hindu when I'm in India, Buddhist when I'm in China."

Each of these profound religious thinkers, with their highly varied cultural backgrounds, is expressing-- in the dynamic-unitive perspectives available to us from modern science-- the same inner core of wisdom at the heart of the tradition. And that is "religion at its best."

My whole point here is that the "more" isn't new. Rahner, Bulgakov and Panikkar are saying exactly what the New Testament's Second Epistle of Peter proclaims, for example, when the apostle says that we are called to be "partakers in the divine nature." That "more" is expressed even more dynamically in Paul's letter to the Ephesians where he describes the end-purpose of all things to be "the fullness of God in everything."

It is a great gift that, in our time, thanks to science, we can understand once again this dynamic and unitive understanding of eschaton as the embodiment of the divine-human-cosmic unity, "God all-in-all."

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EUCHARIST. Gratefulness is the normal response to anything we experience as a gift, and clearly this deep comprehension of the eschaton evokes in us a very deep response.

To this day, Jewish tradition preserves this fundamental human response to the dynamic world in words of thanks-giving over bread and wine. The early Christians continued this form of grateful response when they gathered in homes on the first day of the week in remembrance of Jesus; and this tradition, too, is still continued daily throughout the world.

But just as with the dynamic understanding of eschaton, the evolutionary meaning of eucharist was lost when the static-dualistic-- patriarchal-- view replaced the earlier Judeo-Christian perspective. But also as with eschaton, the shift in our day away from the static perspective to a recovery of the older dynamic understanding is happening with regard to eucharist as well.

I wrote about the recovery of the dynamic view of eucharist in two recent posts. In post #91 (Evolution and the Passover Seder), I described how the seder's central act of thanks-giving is an explicit response to the evolutionary worldview which originated in the historical Exodus from Egypt.

And I wrote about the unitive meaning of eucharist-- our cosmo-the-andric union with all things-- in post #92 (Evolution and Holy Communion).

I don't feel the need to repeat those thoughts here. But I do want to note just how different was the original dynamic understanding of the eucharist from its later static meaning. In the same way that eschaton in the dualistic worldview came to mean not the fulfillment but the annihilation of the world, so eucharist in the dualist context came to refer not to an activity by a group of persons, but to an object. A sacred object, surely, but an other-worldly sacred object.

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You may be expecting me to say that a similar process happened with regard to ecclesia, the third of the Greek terms needed for understanding Western religion at its best. You are right, again!

Of those three terms, ecclesia is by far the most difficult to understand from the dynamic-unitive perspective. This is not, however, because the meaning of ecclesia is difficult to understand in itself-- it isn't-- but because patriarchy continues to dominate the (essentially unconscious) perspectives of the Western religious tradition's own self-understanding.

That self-understanding is what the following section is all about. It's challenging material in that it requires time and effort to work through it well, so if you are reading this post in one sitting, you might want to take another break.

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ECCLESIA. We don't have a English equivalent for the Greek word eucharist, but the English equivalent of ecclesia is, of course, "church." 

It comes from an Old English word, kirk, which simply means "assembly" or "gathering"-- just as the Greek ecclesia does.

Probably the best contemporary translation of ecclesia is "community"-- not in the sense of a geographic or genetic group, but in the sense of a gathering of persons who intentionally get together for a specific purpose.

In the New Testament, eucharist was the name for an action, what the early Christians did when they gathered; ecclesia was their name for themselves when they got together to do it.

As the perspectives of static dualism took over, however, "church" lost its meaning as community and eventually acquired the patriarchal meaning it has today: a hierarchical institution or sociological establishment, often top-heavy with authority. And as it's commonly used nowadays, especially by journalists and media people, "the Church" has come to mean only those authorities.

This patriarchal, static and dualistic understanding of ecclesia obviously does not represent our religious tradition at its best.

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But just as with eucharist and eschaton, the modern evolutionary perspective helps us in recovering the original-- dynamic and unitive-- meaning of ecclesia. It does takes some effort, however.

We know from contemporary science-- and specifically from the study of complexity theory-- that the 14-billon-year evolutionary process has been continually characterized by the emergence of new levels of self-organization.

We know that stars can produce chemical elements, that some of those elements can combine to form living cells, and that some cells unite to form the kind of brain and nervous system which is needed for the emergence of our uniquely human self-reflective awareness.

That's a greatly simplified summary of the idea of emergence in the evolutionary process, but I think it's good enough to make fairly clear that the natural next step-- beyond atoms and molecules, life-forms and personal consciousness-- would be those groups and gatherings of persons we call "communities."

It's in this context of evolutionary emergence that we can better understand the ecclesia as a community rather than as a patriarchal and hierarchical institution.

In the Western religious tradition at its best, what characterizes the ecclesia is its self-understanding precisely as a community of those who gather to give thanks. Just as in the evolutionary context we can better understand the meaning eucharist in terms of eschaton, so in that came context we can better understand the meaning of ecclesia in terms of eucharist.

A fancy way to summarize these confusing-sounding thoughts is to say that "as eschatology is evolutionary, so ecclesiology is eucharistic." (That's where my imaginary academic title for this post-- "Evolutionary Eschatology and Eucharistic Ecclesiology"-- comes from.)

But those fancy words aren't helpful. In fact, they get in the way of our entering into the deeper meaning of the insights they are attempting to express.

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For me, the two religious thinkers who are most helpful for an understanding of the meanings of eschaton, eucharist and ecclesia in the context of evolution are Alexander Schmemann and Thomas Berry.

I quoted both of these profound religious thinkers in recent posts: #90 ("Returning" the World...) and #87 (Stardust's Imperative). If you haven't read those posts, I hope you will. Here's a very brief summary of some of their main thoughts.

Both Berry and Schmemann begin with the primary evolutionary insight that, in Berry's words, "persons are a cosmic phenomenon," and that it's this cosmic perspective-- that we are "the evolutionary process come to self-awareness"-- that allows us to see "our proper role in the universe."

Each describes "our place in the vast scheme of things" with quite different words, but with remarkably similar meanings.

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Alexander Schmemann speaks in a more traditional and liturgical language. "Our primary role in the cosmos is to be priest," he says. The "first, the basic definition of humanity, is that a person is a priest." And it is the "only natural reaction of humanity, to whom God gave this blessed and sanctified world, to bless God in return."

Returning the world to God in thanks, says Schmemann, is "our common task." Because we are "the world become conscious of itself," we humans are its "spokespersons." We speak as the world and for the world. In Schmemann's words, "We stand in the center of the world and unify it, in our act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God."

And "by filling the world with this eucharist," he adds, "we transform our life." In a wonderfully Teilhardian sentence in summary of these thoughts he says, "The world was created as the 'matter,' the material of one all-embracing eucharist, and humanity was created as the priest of this cosmic sacrament."

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Thomas Berry's words sound much less traditional, but his meanings are very much the same. Here too, we humans are understood to speak as the world and for the world. It's easy to overlook, but Berry even uses the word "return," just as Schmemann does, in describing our cosmic role. We are "to return the universe to itself and to its numinous origins," he says. And we "return" the world to its source by returning the world to itself.

Berry is especially strong in his emphasis on our need to recognize that "community" is the very goal and purpose of the cosmic process. Eschaton and ecclesia come together in Berry's words when he says, quite explicitly, that "the ultimate community is the whole universe together."

Understood in this way, we can see that ecclesia includes everything: no one and nothing is outside the cosmic process of divine incarnation. 

This-- obviously-- is an understanding of ecclesia utterly unlike the conventional understanding of "church" as an authoritarian patriarchal institution.

And when we do see ecclesia in this way-- as the ultimate community, the whole universe together-- then "church" is simply another way of expressing the meaning of eschaton, as God all-in-all and the fullness of God in everything.

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You may be thinking the meanings of these Greek words are starting to overlap. They are!

Our rational, right-brain, linear Thinking ability just isn't able to produce the words and concepts well enough to express these profound, deeper-than-rational, left-brain intuitions. The religious tradition itself offers an outstanding example of this fact about the limitation of our rational-only minds: since New Testament times, the underlying realities referred to by the words eucharist, ecclesia and eschaton have all been given one same name.

The eschaton as the embodied cosmic community of the fullness of God in everything, excluding nothing... the eucharist as humanity's deepest response of thanks-giving for the evolution of the universe as the manifestation of the divine-comic-unity... the ecclesia as the community gathered around bread and wine in thanks for this divine incarnation of God all-in-all, and for our participation in it-- all of these profound realities are traditionally called the Corpus Christi.

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These are deep thoughts. It's not easy to wrap our minds around them. 

And yet they are in fact what Western religion is all about "at its best."

For me, what holds them all together is the centrality of person. In the convergent perspective-- where eschaton, eucharist and ecclesia are understood within the context of cosmic-biological-cultural evolution-- what stands out most for me is our personal uniqueness.

We are unique from the moment of our conception. The chance that anyone else might have the exact same DNA is said to be one in 10, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

We not only have our own inner world from the first moment of our existence, however. Our personal self-awareness is continually being modified by every life-experience. And once we reach the stage of self-reflective maturity, we add to it ourselves by our personal relationships and free choices.

And all of this-- the mystery that we are-- becomes our unique contribution to the Corpus Christi.

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So that's the "more" as I see it. In the simplest words I'm able to come up with: Each of us makes a difference with regard to the ultimate end of the world.

In my previous post about reviewing my almost five-year-long blog effort (#93, The Home Stretch), I said that what stood out most for me was the feeling of inadequacy I had with regard to doing a good-enough job in expressing my thoughts about the depths of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

I think I've probably done as well in this present post as I'm going to be able to do. It's my best in sharing my thoughts about religion at its best. My thanks to you for staying with me through all these efforts!

sam@macspeno.com

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