John Breck

“Traditional” or “Orthodox” Christianity is founded on the conviction that God exists in the paradoxical state of “infinitely distant” yet “closer to us than our own heart.” That state is characterized by “superimposed” and “entangled” conditions that involve antinomies: God as both One and Three; Christ as both God and man; the Church as a fallen earthly institution and as a source of divine grace and life, etc. This article demonstrates the analogous relationships that exist between such elements of Christian faith and the domain of quantum mechanics. The presence and activity of God are seen in a new perspective, shaped by recent scientific discoveries concerning the microcosm. The world of the “very small” holds the key to a perception of God that reveals both His continuing creative work and His ineffable mystery.

Introduction

This text is adapted from a chapter of the book Beyond These Horizons. Quantum Physics and Christian Faith, published jointly by St. Sebastian Serbian Press, Alhambra, CA, and Kaloros Press, Wadmalaw Island, SC., 2019. The book itself is structured as a novel, with lectures given by a young professor of physics to a group of alumni of his university.

God beyond Reality

A prayer in the Orthodox Christian tradition describes the Holy Spirit as ‘everywhere present, filling all things’. It is that Spirit, who creates and sustains the underlying Reality—the transcendent Force or Field—that gives birth to both the virtual and the actualized aspects of the world we live in. Genesis declares that at the creation the Spirit ‘moved across the face of the waters’, bringing order, harmony, and beauty out of primeval chaos. That is, the Spirit ‘realizes’ or ‘actualizes’ the cosmos (from which we get our word ‘cosmetic’, implying order and beauty). In a Biblical perspective—the perspective held by traditional Christianity, based on individual and communal experience—the Spirit of God is the Spiritus creator, who relates to his creation in personal terms, terms of communion and love. This does not contradict the Biblical affirmations regarding the creative activity of Christ, the Son (Jn 1:3; Col 1:16; Heb 1:2–3), but rather complements them. Together with the Second Person of the triune Godhead, the Spirit creates, shapes, and directs all of reality toward its final end, which is eternal participation in divine Life (Rom 8:5–11). This is a trinitarian perspective.