THE NEW STORY

In Search of a Functional Cosmology

OUR BEGINNING

You have come from the energy and the power thas has brought the universe into being the beginning of the Universe is also your beginning.

You were born from the fire that created the stars that fire is alive in you B.Swimme

Fire of the Beginning

WHAT IS COSMOLOGY?

Cosmology aims at articulating the story of the universe so that humans can enter fully into the web of relationships within the universe.

A çosmology helps us to understand our relationship to the Earth, Cosmos, world.

THE NEED FOR A NEW STORY OF CREATION “It is all a question of story. We are in trouble because we do not have a good story. We are in between two stories.

The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer affective.

Our traditional story of the universe sustained us for a long period of time.

We knew our place in creation and the circle of life.

WE NEED A NEW STORY  We need a new story that will provide a context for our lives.

 We need a story; about how things came to be, how they came to be as they are now and how the future can be given direction.

THE BIBLICAL CREATION STORY

 The creation story in Genesis Chapter 1, tells how the world was made in seven consecutive (Gen 1: 2-4a) days. The chapter tells how humankind arrived on the scene (Gen 1:26-31).  This account of how our world came to be is no longer adequate or effective in the light of modern science.

IT IS ALL A MATTER OF COSMOLOGY How do we see ourselves In the world we live in.

What do we see when we look at the world around us?

Hildegard of Bingen: Cosmic Human

THE WORLD OF TODAY IS CONTROLLED BY ITS COSMOLOGY “The present Ecological crisis has everything to do with the cosmology that underpins our view on the world.

Once we are aware of this, we will understand where the destruction of the Earth comes form.

“A radical reassessment of the human situation is needed, especially concerning those values that give life some satisfactory meaning”. (T.Berry)

THE WORLDVIEW THAT HAS DIRECTED US

The universe includes the human but is larger than the human.

Because we have not understood this, we caused so much devastation on earth.

MOVING FORWARD TO A NEW STORY “We need to connect with the Dynamic Force behind the Universe and how through it all came into being.

It is that same power – that after so many ages has made us aware of our place in the universe.

If we open ourselves to that power, that Wisdom and that process we can look with new hope to the future of the human.” Thomas Berry in “The New Story” in Dream of the Earth

The quest of humans of all cultures and all ages

Where do we come from? Where are we now? What are we to do? How are we to live our lives today? What is our destiny? What does the future hold for us?

Origin

In the Beginning was the Dream The Dream was with God The Dream was God….

Through the Dream all things came to be.

Origin Diana Lynne Anderson

A New Creation Story has evolved in the Scientific Community

 The New Story that has been developed by Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme in the light of modern scientific knowledge, has provided us with a credible and acceptable story.  This story is the context within which all other stories of origin find their fulfilment.

This New Story is the greatest change in human consciousness since the rise of human civilization WE MUST BEGIN WERE EVERYTHING BEGINS BEGINS

A Story in Four Phases: The Galactic story The Earth story The Life story The Human story

There is no moment of transition from the material to the spiritual.

All was there at once.

SEEING EARTH FROM SPACE

. At the beginning of the 21 st century we are beginning to see the Earth in its context of the universe. Because of space travel, we have been able to stand apart from the Earth and see it, at least in photographs, as a whole. We have become used to a new picture of the Earth, as a single, beautiful, blue-green planet shared by all living creatures.

Earth: Icon of our time.

CHRISTIAN COSMOLOGY

A THEOLOGY THAT LISTENS TO SCIENCE  Will see God as creatively at work in and through the whole process of the emergent universe as described by contemporary cosmology.

 It will see God as empowering the emergent universe and every aspect of it from within.

 God creates in such a way that all potentialities of the universe emerge from the primeval events

WE ARE BORN OF THE UNIVERSE God creates human beings As emergent creatures: We are born of the universe, constituted of the hydrogen atoms that emerged in the early 13.7 billion years ago.

DEEP INCARNATION The universe from its beginning had a Christ dimension: “all things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made”. John 1, 3

In Jesus of Nazareth God becomes a vital part of an ecosystem; interconnected systems that support life on Earth.

DEEP INCARNATION  Incarnation is not restricted to humans; it is the whole interconnected world. Also the biological world of living creatures. The Word made flesh is the whole world of interrelated organisms.

 In becoming flesh God embraced all creatures in the interconnected web of life.

D.Edwards

In and through Jesus God suffers with creation

CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY  Christian Community can be seen as integral with the larger story of the universe, of Earth, of life, and of the human community.

 The ultimate community is the whole universe together.

 The integral universe constitues the sacred community par excellence and needs to be recognized as such in Christian thought.

Th.Berry

TO CONCLUDE

All that God created was already in Gods presence before the world began, before the beginning of time. Hildegard of Bingen ( 1098 – 1179)