Is the universe a unified single system, or is it a manifold, wherein man, other animals and plants, and inanimate nature are all different systems?
Human knowledge, in its various disciplines, has always been an attempt to relate the parts of the universe to each other. Even myth and ritual are such attempts. In modern science there is a desire to unify all knowledge through a single field theory which brings all the levels and dimensions of observed reality into its scope. Similarly there is an attempt also to understand all reality in terms of the laws of one discipline-- say physics or chemistry. In Marxism there is a similar attempt to unify all reality through the three Laws of Dialectics.
The fact that none of these efforts have fully succeeded in unifying all reality may mean either that our theories are deficient, or that we do not have as yet sufficient data to bring everything together under one unitary conception, or again that the universe is not really united. Whichever may be the case, neither an ..... scientific theory nor a reductionist approach would be able adequately to explain the human reality in all its complexity. It is only by placing the knower somehow outside the object of knowledge that Physical science in the past has sought to understand the universe objectively. A theory which unifies reality leaving out the human being and his complex aspirations, cannot be the last word in human knowledge. Would such a field theory be able to explain human history and human hope? Christians would add -- would such a field theory take into account the reality of God, or would he still remain an unnecessary hypothesis in the Laplacian sense?
The fact of the matter is that the unifying conception of the universe is always a human act of creativity, an act which invariably involves more than mere objective knowledge of reality outside of us. Such a unifying vision of the created order is provided usually by religious world views or secular philosophical systems.
Whether it is a religious or a secular view, man comes into it as more than a subject standing apart from the objective world. The evolutionary hypothesis sees man as emerging from the material world in process, relating himself to it not only in terms of origin, but also as resuming within himself aspects of the world -- material, vegetative and animal. Even a philosophical view such as Husserl's Phenomenology which starts by bracketing out the objective world finds the world as contained in his consciousness. Physics is coming to the conclusion that the observer is integral part of the reality that he observes. The observer is also participator.
The separation between subject and object which was once the essence of the scientific enterprise seems useful only at macro levels of observation. The universe does not consist of discreet objects spread out in time; it turns out to be a pattern of connected events of which man himself is an integral part as he observes, understands, and changes the world.
There is also a commonsense level at which we can understand man's integral relation to the universe. The following aspects seem to be obvious:
a. Man was produced in the course of creation or evolution from the elements of the material world. As the New Testament puts it "The first man is from the earth, earthly" (I Cor. 15:47).
b. Man recapitulates in himself material elements, vegetative elements and animal elements. He shares with the rest of creation a body in time-space which obeys the same laws with some possible qualifications as all the other levels of earthly existence.
c. Man is dependent on the elements of the external world without which he cannot live -- the food he eats, the air he breathes, the sun on which the biosphere depends for its energy supply, the delicate eco-balance on our planet so essential for sustaining life -- all these are elements of his being as man. Without matter and the life of plants and animals, there is no human existence.
d. Man is dependent on work for his sustenance, which is a way of interacting with the external world. The health of his body and mind require this interaction with the material world.
This integral relation between man and nature has often been partially overlooked in the attempt to understand nature (a) as object and (b) as the creation minus man. Only a unitary vision of man as an integral part of creation can be faithful to the reality we know. To think of the non-human world as something which is out there, to be an object of our scientific knowledge and technical manipulation, is not only wrong, but has disastrous consequences as the ecological crisis is already showing. Man is part of the eco-system, and his actions by their impact on that system, can be self-destructive if such actions do not have regard for the system.
But are man and nature the only two realities that we need to take into account in their inter-relation? Can we understand the man-nature relationship without reference to anything outside it? Secular thought so believes. Modern science and technology have developed in a secular atmosphere where only man and nature were taken into account. The successes of science and technology in explaining and changing the world have reinforced the secular philosophy which believes that the universe can be explained in terms of itself without reference to a creator (the unnecessary hypothesis of Laplace).
The attempts of intellectually respectable philosophers and theologians to make God a necessary hypothesis have ensured only a deus ex machina, a God outside the machine of the mechanistically understood universe. The question: "Why is there a universe at all?" has been dismissed as unanswerable, and therefore as irrelevant. Philosophically respectable interpretations ascribing the source of Creation and creativity to a Creator God (e.g. Whitehead), despite the philosophers' adequate knowledge of science, have generally received a bad press. Theology itself has been tempted to abandon the ‘unnecessary hypothesis‘ of a Creator God, and has proceeded to give 'secular' interpretations of Christian gospel. The 'observable' reality of man and nature are affirmed to be the only two realities that exist, since they are the only ones to which we can point.
Why does Christian theology resort to such extreme measures, contradicting its own nature as theology, the reasoned discourse about God? We suggest that theology itself is to blame in large measure. Not only by its often standing in way of scientific progress, but also by failing to incorporate adequately the knowledge gained by science its deliverances about the nature of reality, and by conceding to science an autonomy which is absolute and a monopoly on knowledge which few scientists would claim today. Perhaps also by overemphasis on the transcendence of God in an almost spatial way, dissociating God from the life of man (who is regarded as totally sinful and therefore totally alienated from God), and by dissociating salvation history (Heilsgesohichte) from the history of man and nature.
Today Christian theology seeks to overcome these errors of the past. The Christian vision of God attempts to bring all reality together in inter-relationship, without blurring the distinctions. God is no longer seen as a reality ‘outside of' or apart from the reality of man and nature. Man and nature can exist only in God. They cannot be outside God for God has no outside. Only finite entities, beings with boundaries can have an outside. Outside God there is only nothing. All that exists, whether man or nature, exist only in contingent dependence upon God, whose loving will sustains them in existence. God, man and nature are thus seen not as three separate realities, but as one reality -- the fundamental reality of God upon whom all other reality depends and from whom created reality is derived.
This is not to blur any of the distinctions, as has been said. The tensions remain, between God's transcendence and His involvement in the creation, between God's ‘is-ness' which is self-derived and sui genesis and the is-ness of created existents, between divine creativity which brings all existents into being and sustains them in existence and the creativity of man which depends upon God's creativity and can only shape and give form to what is given.
There is a further problem in this unitary vision of God, man and cosmos -- the problem of sin and alienation. There is now no harmonious unity between the three. The Biblical narrative of the Fall refers to a rupture in creation, a revolt of man against God, of nature against man. The ecological crisis can be seen also as a pointer to this unity yet to be achieved. But are not the two revolts inter-related, and can one be solved apart from the other? Alienation exists, from the human perspective, at many levels -- man from God, man from man, man from nature, and even man from his own true being. The overcoming of this alienation is the drama of creation, fall and redemption, in which the present ecological crisis constitutes one scene. In Christ, the alienation is overcome, but the victory is yet to be consummated.
The drama itself goes on, and will probably go on beyond the overcoming of the crisis of ecology and the crisis of human justice. We of the present generation must play our God-given role in the present scene of which the crisis of justice and the crisis of ecology are the two main elements.
God, man and nature -- their unity affirmed by faith is also the object of the Christian hope. Hope realized is no longer hope. Hope, however, moves us on.