relda,
Thanks again for info about the Trinitarian doctrine. I have to concede that it is not an “indispensable part of all versions of the Christian message“, though e.g. in Wikipedia you can find the sentence “Most denominations within Christianity are Trinitarian, and regard belief in the Trinity as a mark of Christian orthodoxy“.

As far as I can see it, Newton could not fit into his mechanistic world the notion of “one Being Who exists, simultaneously and eternally, as a mutual indwelling of three persons“ the same as he would not have been able to understand how something could be a particle and a wave at the same time. Today we are more used to hard to visualise concepts even in science.

The problem of “God intervening as a direct cause of particular events, in addition to his more usual action working through secondary natural causes“ is today heavily discussed by scientists/theologians with a professional insight also into the seeming paradoxes of quantum physics, again in a way Newton could not have possibly understood.

To complete my, probably simplistic, theological insights, Teilhard de Chardin introduced an extended understanding of Christ as the God incarnate: not only in (human) history (with the focus some 2000 years ago) but also in the evolving material world (with the focus, point Omega, in the far future).

As for love, there are its two expressions eros (reflecting the individual's desires or self-centred as you put it) and agape (unconditional love), and I can only agree with what you wrote about the importance of the latter. On the other hand, the present pope in his Deus Caritas Est seems to have “rehabilitated” the Catholic view of eros.

The polarity eros-agape can perhaps be seen also from a different angle, as two intimacies in the psychological make-up of a human being: a horizontal, sexual one, (eros) concerned with a partner (real or virtual, accepted or denied), and a vertical, religious one, (agape) concerned with God (real or virtual, accepted or denied).

Following Paul (Ph.3:2), Pierre Teilhard said – Beware of those who would cut the TOTAL Christ down to the Mediterranean dimensions of the Nazarene.[1] Even Pontius Pilate was moved to probe more deeply and ask, “Where DO you come fiom” (Jn.19:9). Whereas the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke focused mostly on the “Jesus of History” [roughly 33 years] Paul and John focused rather on the “History of Jesus” from BEFORE the beginning to BEYOND the end of time. TIME is a dimension of CREATION but not of its CREATOR – revealed to us by Jesus as a trinity of uncreated persons whom he encouraged us to call “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Just before he died on Easter Sunday in 1955 (10 April) Teilhard said there is more in the TOTAL Christ than MAN and GOD – there is also He who gathers to himself the whole of creation.[2] Ten years later [1965] Vatican Council II affirmed that we - through our bodily composition or incarnation – gather to our selves the elements of the material universe. In our genes and reflective brains they reach their crowning glory and through us they are able to raise their voices in praise of the Creator. 14 years later Pope John Paul II extended that doctrine specifically to Jesus. The Redeemer of Man, he said, is also the CENTRE of the universe and of history. In Christ we find the on-going and ascending CENTRE-POINT of the cosmos as a whole and of its history, which extends from the beginning or ALPHA POINT [15 billion years ago?] to the end or OMEGA POINT of time (Rev.1:8, 21:6, 22:13). In other words – Christ is the “centre of centres.”[3][1] Gabriel Allegra OFM 1971 “My Conversations with Teilhard on the Primacy of Christ”[2] Teilhard 1955 p.93 in :The Heart of Matter” 1978[3] Teilhard 1944 “Centrology” pp.97-127 in “Activation of Energy” 1970

Relda and George.

Just because the doctrine of the Trinity is post biblical does not mean that it is not true. Any religion in which God is revealed in history as in Judaism and Christianity is Trinitarian at its base because God is revealed as the given in the past, experienced in the present and comes to us from the future. This is the unique structure of time that is the centre of faith. The mistake that was made in the West was that the three ousia became the three persons and thus materialised. Instead of their existence being essentially relatedness to each other as in the Eastern conception they could not help but exist as three different gods. The Western tradition always reduces to pantheism.

Thus Trinitarianism is integral to all speech about God, we cannot say God without also saying Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If we do we become pagan, Stoics really. I get the feeling I have said all this before but am too lazy to check.

My concern with Teilhard is that his cosmic Christ again gets mixed up with the material universe and we are back to something more sophisticated than Newton’s physico-theology. But I have never read him, he seems to have dropped out of mainstream consideration.

The point of my article is really that theology is high culture not natural science even though natural science finds a place under its umbrella.

SELLS said – “My concern with Teilhard is that his cosmic Christ again gets mixed up with the material universe and we are back to something more sophisticated than Newton’s physico-theology. But I have never read him, he seems to have dropped out of mainstream consideration.”

Having emptied himself of his divinity or equality with God (Ph.2:6-7) – omniscience and all the rest – so as to relate to us and save us not as a “god” but as a man like every other man [except in sin], there was a certain “development of doctrine” [1] in the life of Jesus of Nazareth (Lk.2:52). A similar “development of doctrine” may be seen in scriptures attributed to St Paul. The first disciples were finally given the fullness of revelation in Jesus. “I call you my friends,” he said, “for I have revealed to YOU all that the Father has revealed to ME”(Jn.15:15). But there was too much for them to grasp – so Jesus promised to send to them not another set of books but the Holy Spirit to remind them of all that he had said and done and to open their minds to complete truth (Jn.14:16; 16:12-13). Similarly, Teilhard was led from the “Christ of History” to the “History of Christ” – and from the “Cosmic Christ” to the “TOTAL Christ.” It became increasingly apparent to him that there is more in the TOTAL Christ than the Cosmic Body of his incarnation. There is also MAN [the “perfect” or complete man] fully mature with the fullness of Christ – the utter fullhess of God (Eph.4:13; 3:19) - [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_doctrine

Sells,
It is not Western tradition which has led to Pantheism (the idea that God is the entire universe) but rather an extreme realism. Pantheism mutes or rejects the biblical teaching of the transcendence of God in favor of his radical immanence - it is, rather ironically, a polite form of atheism where 'God' becomes indistinguishable from any sense of reality or 'truth'.

The idea of total immanence eventually birthed logical positivism, with Ludwig Wittgenstein its founder. For the logical positivists, "since statements about God are in principle not empirically verifiable ... they are not only false but are from the outset meaningless as assertions."( Wittgenstein)

I would also hardly say the Stoics were related to the pagan folk religions of the day as, for example, those associated with Pantheism. Their idea of nous (mind) was a part of the divine logos residing in each human individual - the Stoics divided their philosophy into three branches: Logic, Ethics and Metaphysics. Stoicism is also the forgotten ancestor of our own psychotherapeutic tradition. Whilst no longer a living tradition, this ancient philosophy has given us Erasmus, Calvin, Descartes, Spinoza, Shakespeare, Milton and Michel de Montaigne, amongst others.

Gregory of Nyssa, who exemplified the Eastern view with his hypostases Father, Son and Spirit, said they should not be identified with God because the divine nature is unnameable and unspeakable. This is very similar to a Judaic conception even if, as a result, Father, Son, and Spirit are only names we use to refer to the ways he has made himself known to us. Trinitarianism, thus, is certainly not integral to all speech about God. Perhaps, quite ironically, the West can actually embrace Gregory's eastern view through an Hebraic idea - as found within our own Judaic tradition.

Your last point I do agree with as Science arose alongside of and in many cases out of religious worldviews - Christianity played a particularly important role in the rise of modern science. For most historians of science, they now recognise the complexity and inter-relatedness of the history of scientific and religious ‘knowledge'.

Roch

Teillhard, as Sells points out, does not represent mainstream theology. His role in Piltdown, while probably quite innocent, has brought discredit to him in the scientific community and therefore also in the theological community.
At any rate he is more of a 'scientific' mystic than a theologian. He is therefore widely misunderstood. His most accessible work is probably 'The Phenomenon of Man' in which his scientific thought is prominent in what is still primarily a 'mystical' interpretation of 'creation'. Its appeal is still limited and generally of little interest to the wider theological community. Much of this work, however, foreshadows current work in the field of 'biological complexity' and is interesting for that.

Sells interpretation of the Trinity in terms of time is not 'orthodox' and has a very similar structure to the misinterpretations of both Newton and Teillhard in that it identifies a physical structure, in this case time, that coincidentally has three parts and concludes that there is a connection between the triune nature of God and the triune physical nature of time. Its cute. It might even be modestly productive theologically. It remains, however, just a slightly more sophisticated version of Newtons materialistic panentheism.
While I am entirely sympathetic to Sells objection to metaphysical dualism I must acknowledge that his Trinitarian musings illustrate the difficulty in formulating a non-dualistic theology. At best Trinitarianism is an honest attempt at making sense of the Christ event historically and theologically. It is Christian orthodoxy in its Nicene formulation but all attempts to explain it seem to fall into one or another heresy. Orthodoxy, however, does not guarantee its 'truth'. The Jews manage without it and most certainly are not pagan as Sells asserts.