Essay by Pat Crawley

Title: I am The Lord of The Dance.

What’s it all about

In my essay I intend to establish a notion of God in the fullness of the Trinity as being
imbued into creation and thus opening up more fruitful ways we can relate to that presence
and become aware of the new responsibilities this challenges us with.

Chapter 1 In the Beginning when God created Heaven and Earth…

1.0 Introduction
In this Chapter I will look at the magnificence of God’s creation and the gift that it is

for us.

Firstly, I will examine creation as it was originally and how people fitted into it.

In Section1.2 I will examine our response to God’s gift, and, in Section 1.3 I will give

an overview of what the implications of this choice have resulted in over time.

1.1 The Gift of Creation

In the book of Genesis, we read how God created the heavens and the earth,

the plants and animals to populate the land and seas. Finally, ‘So God created

humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he

created them’ (Gen 1:27).1 At each stage of creation God looked at his work and saw

that it was good. And when all was complete, God looked and saw that, indeed, it was

all very good. God blessed his creation and provided plants and fruit as food for all. It

1
(The Catholic Youth Bible 2010)
 was an idyllic world to live in. All around was the glory of God’s gift and blessing.

People were free from worry and stress and had no need to carry weapons to protect

themselves. They walked around naked, unarmed and carefree. There was a great

sense of harmony and natural joy in everything they encountered. Nature provided

everything that people required for their health and happiness and the whole of

creation worked in unison and harmony.

God, having created this wonderful universe, also permeated it in a very

intimate way; the whole Trinity leaving footprints and constantly breathing new life

and energy throughout with the Divine essence, love in relationship. God’s infinite

loving nature, bounteously reflected in creation, exuberated joy and peace and all was

well. Nature related with exquisite balance to sing praise to the creator and in that

perfect environment everything strove to build up every other and further enhance the

dance of union so beloved of God. God imbued Trinitarian life into creation and

delighted in its reflected love and celebration. Rather than a remote and transcendent

presence, God’s loving nature was, as all loving relationships are, enraptured and

eternally hungry for greater and greater union, and so there could not exist the

smallest degree of separation between lover and beloved – our God led the dance of

life in creation. This joyous dance continued throughout the seasons, with each season

vibrating to the ineffable harmony of the universe, all in synchronous interrelatedness,

God and his universe.

In his wonderful book ‘Science and Belief, The Big Issues’2 Russell Stannard,

himself an eminent scientist, examines in scrupulous detail how magnificent that

harmony in nature is and how unimaginably huge mechanical forces of nature came to

2
(Stannard 2012)
achieve and, even more amazingly, maintain, the perfect conditions for life to exist

and flourish. These conditions display an order and complexity in nature which is

outside the comprehension of science with all its efforts. It seems clear that both

science and faith must accept that we do not know the answers to all the questions that

arise from existence and, as we peel back the fascinating layers of reality and open

nature to ever deeper investigations, nature seems to have an infinite complexity and

yet, as quantum mechanics is beginning to reveal, a teasingly simple flow in its basic

structures, structures which replicate at deeper and deeper levels, an inner harmony of

interrelatedness, dare it be said, a reflection of God’s essential nature, Trinity.

Stannard traces the early development of the universe from what is the widely

accepted view, the Big Bang, and how the incredibly hostile environment of that

event came to provide the ideal conditions for life to develop. Because of the detailed

history of the event and its subsequent resolution it is not suitable to render relevant

quotations in a work of this length, I will try to give a brief and clear taste of what

staggering coincidences had to be in place at just the right instant.

In the first few millionths of a second after the mega nuclear explosion, the

Big Bang, superheated plasma erupted with extremely high energy. The density of

this matter is critical. Too dense and it exerts a magnetic force that will eventually

slow the expansion down and, indeed reverse it into ‘the Big Crunch’, annihilation.

Not dense enough and the universe just continues to expand as plasma and never

solidifies into stars and planetary systems. The margin of error is very small, but it is

proven by contemporary calculations that the density was ‘just right’, and stars were

formed with their accompanying planetary systems. Next consideration is the relative

strengths of gravitation, as we know it, and the repulsive force of ‘Dark Energy’,

which, is similar to gravity but in the opposite orientation. The science community
 calculated the expected power of this Dark Energy but were very embarrassed when

experiments revealed that the energy was an order of magnitude 120 times less than

expected, i.e. Less by a factor of 1 followed by 120 noughts. Fortunately for us that it

was that weak, otherwise plasma would have been accelerated by it into oblivion. We

now have a suitable rate of expansion of the plasma cloud but how can it coalesce into

touchable matter. That depends on the cloud not being homogenous, but rather having

a very slightly ‘granular’ nature. Contrary to the expected symmetry of the explosion,

the plasma had indeed a crucial degree of granularity which allowed the slight, but

critical, gravitational forces to allow the formation of stars and their necessary

planetary systems. The stars so formed have a very complex chemical composition

which produces a ‘slow burn’ effect in the star’s nuclear furnace which is, again,

crucial for neighbouring, and suitable, planets to allow evolution to proceed at its

ultra-slow pace. Now we have a planet of exactly the right size, and exactly the

precise distance from its parent star, orbiting at precisely the right speed, for the

precise temperature during its whole annual orbital journey, for conditions to coincide

precisely for life to begin its rudimentary start and for the evolutionary process to be

maintained until today.

1.2 You can go Your Own Way

‘They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of

the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the

Lord God among the trees of the garden.’ (Gen 3:8)3

3
(The Catholic Youth Bible 2010)
 Having created this utopia for people and having given them free will to

choose their own path in life, even to the point of disobedience, God learned that his

fabulous gift was deemed to be insufficient to satisfy his people. The rift created by

this spurning selfishness separated mankind from God’s harmonious creation and

presence. God did not turn against creation or mankind, but mankind led the revolt

and set out to conquer that which was freely given in love. How often do we

reminisce and look back in wonder at our decisions to go our own way and find

ourselves mired in a murky mess of our own design? Nor did creation cease to be

fabulous. It was still the wonderful gift that God intended, but, now mankind, in a

state of discordance with it, set to work to force it into a much inferior, but chosen,

state. The reign of chaos had begun and throughout the ages has slowly eroded the

pristine glory of God’s plan for creation.

The universe we have inherited today bears the scars of millennia of

mismanagement and selfish exploitation. Many of our rivers run foully to the sea

saturated with the toxins of industrialisation and ruthless poisoning produced by

gouging huge tracts of land in the hunger for precious metals and minerals. We have

formed into tribes of ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘men’ and ‘women’, ‘followers of Christ’ and

‘followers of Allah’ etc, etc. Fragmentation has been our hallmark down through

history, a history filled with the gore of slaughter and enslavement of both peoples,

animals and natural resources. We have even enslaved the most precious gift that God

gave us, womenkind, our gentle and love filled partners which we have dominated by

sheer force to an inferior status, in a total negation of God’s unitive plan.

Our embarrassing story to date has been one of selfishness, torrid disregard of

the people around us, exploitation at any cost of the bounteousness of nature, even to

its demise and extinction. Our short-sightedness has had tragic consequences on the
 natural world, both plant and animal, with extinction and toxicity being the natural

consequence.

1.3 And know that I am with you always

All is not doom and gloom, of course. We have had people who have been

outstanding by their optimistic outlooks and vision for humanity. People who just

would not accept that we had to be competitive and exclusive, people who loved their

fellow people and empathised and brought that empathy into practical loving for their

neighbour. People like Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Clare and Francis, Dominic, Mother

Theresa, Martin Luther, Nelson Mandela, Oscar Romero and Pope Francis, to name

but a few. Humanity is slowly evolving towards a greater degree of consciousness

about the conditions of our fellow people, and, just like that plasma cloud, we have

had small grains of loving selflessness coalescing into communities, who, like Paul’s

early church communities4 stood in stark contrast to the power, subjugation and greed

of the emperor, Caesar. It is exactly in that granularity in society that the Spirit

breathes new life and Trinitarian being back into the soul of the universe. Those nodes

of togetherness and shared living are precisely what Teilhard de Chardin alluded to in

his work ‘The Phenomenon of Man’5 ‘Considered in its full biological reality, love-

that is to say, the affinity of being with being- is not peculiar to man. It is a general

property of all life and as such it embraces, in its varieties and degrees, all the forms

successively adopted by organised matter.’6 , ‘A sense of the universe, a sense of the

all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music- these

seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.’7 And ‘Resonance to

4
Acts 4:32-37
5
(Teilhard de Chardin 1966)
6
Ibid Pg. 290
7
Ibid Pg. 292
 the All- the keynote of pure poetry and pure religion. Once again: what does this

phenomenon, which is born with thought and grows with it, reveal if not a deep

accord between two realities which seek each other; the severed particle which

trembles at the approach of ‘the rest’.’8

The culture of Duality, ‘us and them’, has informed our thinking for many

generations and, largely because it flew under the radar, remained unquestioned by

the majority of people. In the next chapter I will explore how this dualism

contaminated our thinking and those people who recognised its corroding effects and

worked to eliminate it.

Chapter 2 The Evil of Dualism

2.0 Introduction

In this chapter I will examine the impact of Dualistic thinking on humanity’s way of

living in God’s creation and the people who had a much more integrated view of the world

around them.

In section 2.1 I will examine the shortcomings of the dualist viewpoint and then in section 2.2

I will offer a small selection of people who were able to see beyond the horizon to a more

inclusive understanding of creation and how God’s plan fitted into it.

2.1 A Brief Overview of Dualism

Our history is littered liberally with the debris of dualism. We often think in terms of

belonging and of others who do not. This is one of the most destructive divisions we have

8
Ibid Pg. 293
imposed on the social order because it is essentially exclusive. Exclusivity is directly contrary

to what Jesus of Nazareth taught us from the very start of his ministry. He was always for

inviting the stranger, the despised, the sinner, the sick and the poor into his loving company,

even though what he did was quite contrary to Jewish law and custom. People were shocked

and scandalised by what he did. Because of his divine essence being integral with his

humanity (as it is in all of creation), Jesus loved all the varied and wonderful reflections of

the glory of the Trinity, his Spirit. Excluding anyone, or anything, would have been a direct

contradiction to his natures.

Again, we saw our place in creation as having a superiority which came from our own

abilities, our intelligence, our very clever inventions, our domestication of many animals, we

were always keen to dominate those weaker than us; often this included our female co-

humans. It does not take long to realise how destructive and arrogant this position can be. It

seduced us into exploitation, cruelty, selfishness and lacking any trace of human empathy for

those ‘others’ Things were ruthlessly exploited for our use with scant regard to the ecological

cost involved. Because of our patriarchal society we were deprived of the creative and

intellectual input from more than half our human resources. Our complete disregard for the

flow of creation, its integration and relatedness, the complex interplay of structural,

emotional, creative and, fundamentally, loving cooperation with God’s will has led us down a

spiral of self-interest, theft on a world scale and left a legacy of war, destruction and fear to

bring us, finally, to the very edge of nuclear annihilation.

We think of God in heaven ‘up there’, our world as remote to his gaze, so that our life

can be divided neatly into insulated sections, God’s and mine. There is no need for these two

to relate in any way as this life is our concern and the next is God’s. They do not impinge on

each other and we can easily devote an hour or so a week to God and blissfully concentrate

on more important things for the rest of the week. Even when some of us place a high value
on God, we find him locked up in our beautiful churches, mosques and synagogues. He is

safely out of our way. We do not have to worry about bumping into him on the street when

we blithely walk past a desperate stranger who is begging for some help and a spark of

dignity and recognition. He will not suddenly pop up when we are indulging our weaker

selves in gossip, gluttony or sexual titillation. We are safe.

2.2 Receive the Holy Spirit

Fortunately, in our history, there have been people who chose to be amenable to the

inspirational wisdom of the Spirit and perceived the rhythm of life pulsing through creation,

recognising it as the heartbeat of Trinity. I will now offer a small selection of these

‘illuminati’ who will throw some light on our dark analyses.

Firstly, I call on Jesus of Nazareth to speak.

“Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father.

Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and

you gave me food….” 9 This very familiar exhortation by Jesus to us all is a call to

community caring for our greater family. As in the gospel coming up on the 10th Sunday of

Ordinary time “He replied, ‘who are my mother and my brothers? And looking around at

those sitting in a circle around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers.’”10

These two quotations summarise clearly where Jesus saw his mission and by extension, our

way to the kingdom. He is quite clearly stating that we must treat everyone exactly like we

9
Mathew 25: 34-35
10
Marj 3:33-34
would God, because, each of us, being an image of God, and more importantly, being a Spirit

filled part of God, we are all part of his family.

There is a small but immensely influential group of people who stunned the medieval

world by their revolutionary life-choices and which pointed to a whole-scale rejection of

dualism, as I have illustrated it to be. These were Francis and Clare of Assisi, Bonaventure

and John Duns Scotus, the early Franciscans.

Francis and Clare totally rejected the notion of possessions for self and shared

everything they had with the less fortunate. They followed Jesus as closely as possible in

their life style and, famously, saw everything in creation to be part of one family, a bonded

unitary community created by love, sustained and nurtured by love. Francis called the sun

brother, the moon sister, earth mother and so on. This was not an affectation but a firm belief

of a very humble person. In his ‘Canticle of Brother Sun’, Francis says

‘Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,

Especially through my Lord Brother Sun,

Who brings the day; and you give light through him.

And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendour!

Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness……

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth,

Who sustains us and governs us and who produces

Varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs,’ (Francis)11

11
https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/catholic-faith/the-canticle-of-the-sun-as-
written.html
In this hymn of praise to creation, Francis sees the image of God all around him; it infuses his

world and is a constant companion. There is no place in his world where God is not

intimately present – no place for selfishness or guilty secrets. Some of us would find this

intimacy suffocating and it is salient to ask ourselves, why? Sr. Ilia Delio, a Franciscan nun,

paraphrasing Francis’ ‘Later Admonition and Exhortation’ writes:

‘When love transforms our actions in a way that Christ is “represented”— then we become

mothers, sisters and brothers of Christ. This birthing of Christ in the life of the believer . . . is

a way of conceiving, birthing, and bringing Christ to the world in such a way that the

Incarnation is renewed. It is making the gospel alive.’ 12

Bonaventure, follower of Jesus in the way of Francis, writes eloquently about the theology

and philosophical foundation for the Franciscan view of the infusion of Trinity in all creation

and how we (including animals, nature, cosmos and universe) reflect God’s nature in our

individual and unique way. He writes about the ‘end’ of theology. “Is it for ‘the sake of

contemplation or for the sake of our becoming good?’ Neither theoretical knowledge nor

practical deeds get to the centre of the moral life, which is love – both the ‘affection’ of love

and the theological virtue of charity. The kind of intellectual virtue that prepares the mind for

charity is a ‘wisdom’ that ‘involves knowledge and affection together’ The ‘knowledge that

Christ died for us,’ for example, is far different from the knowledge of the geometer or the

knowledge of the general. Consequently, theological wisdom is both ’for the sake of

contemplation and also for our becoming good‘ through enlivening our knowledge and deeds

with Christian’ affection.’13

12
Ilia Delio, Franciscan Prayer (Franciscan Media: 2004), 150-151.
13
Noone, Tim and Houser, R. E., "Saint Bonaventure", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/bonaventure/>.
Theology’s subject is the object of belief ‘in so far as the believable is transformed into the

notion of the intelligible, and this happens by the addition of reasoning’ With this concise

formula, Bonaventure includes within theology both religious belief transformed by

arguments from natural reason and natural reason transformed by arguments based on

religious revelation. If so, then theology must have the kinds of principles that make possible

both kinds of arguments: the fundamental truths of faith drawn from the bible and tradition,

but also fundamental truths of reason.”14

Elsewhere, Bonaventure reflects on physical things and sees in their ‘origin, size, number,

beauty, fullness, function’ ‘pointing to the Divine Source and its essential properties of

power, wisdom and goodness’ Consequently, intellectual creatures show themselves to be

‘images’ and ‘likenesses’ of God, while they show that all creatures are ‘shadows’ and

‘vestiges’ of God.

Philosophers are inclined to pick one route to God and reject all others, but Bonaventure had

learned from Francis, the poor man of Assisi, “that the world is filled with signs of God that

even the simplest peasant can grasp.”15 (my italics)

From this song of life sung by the Franciscans, I now invite our latest Francis to speak

to us about the paths to holiness from his Apostolic Exhortation ‘Gaudete et Exsultate’.

“104. We may think that we give glory to God only by our worship and prayer, or simply by

following certain ethical norms. It is true that the primacy belongs to our relationship with

God, but we cannot forget that the ultimate criterion on which our lives will be judged is what

we have done for others. Prayer is most precious, for it nourishes a daily commitment to love.

Our worship becomes pleasing to God when we devote ourselves to living generously, and

14
Ibid
15
Ibid
allowing God’s gift, granted in prayer, to be shown in our concern for our brothers and

sisters.”16

John Duns Scotus spoke about this at length when outlining his principle of haecceity, the

‘thisness’ of an individual as a manifestation of God’s choice to create me as a unique image

of the divine.

Mary Beth Ingham CSJ is a brilliant advocate and scholar of Scotus and I will offer a small

selection from her work ‘John Duns Scotus: Retrieving a Medieval Thinker for

Contemporary Theology’

“The God of Scotus is the God of John3:16, who so loved the world he gave his only Son….

He is the God of Mathew 20, the master who rewards workers far beyond what they deserve

and wonders why some grumble because he is generous…

The God of Scotus is the God of Francis, a God so generous he throws everything away out

of love. This may be the very God our world needs today.”17 I will come back to Scotus again

below.

In the above reflections I have endeavoured to show how some of the most important

people of our world have found their reality of God alive in the creation around them and

gained inspiration, not only from the life of Jesus, but, importantly, from recognising the

footprints of God all around them.

16
Apostolic Exhortation Guudete Et Exsultate of The Holy Father, Francis, on the call to holiness in today’s
world. (March 2018, Vatican City)
17
(Ingham CSJ 2002)
 In the next chapter, I will look at some of the spiritualities and ways of praying which

have shown insightful recognition of the presence of the Trinity in creation as being able to

lead us to a deeper knowledge and love of God in all his manifestations.

3.0 Introduction

In this chapter I will give and overview of historical spiritualities which

recognised that God was intimately and essentially in everything created.

3.1 Ancient Wisdom of Celtic Spirituality

The first written record of Celtic Spirituality is found in the writings of Pelagius, the

much-maligned and misunderstood Celtic theologian of the fourth century, whose belief in

‘the goodness of creation, in which the life of God can be glimpsed.’18 Because he saw God

present in all creation, Jesus’ command to love one another took on a much wider scope so

that ‘when our love is directed towards an animal or even a tree, we are participating in the

fullness of God’s love’19 The establishment, in the august form of Augustine, took exception

to this renegade, perhaps spurred by the fact that, typical in Celtic culture was the notion that

women and men were equal, he had the nerve to teach women to read scripture. Even more

controversial was ‘his conviction that every child is conceived and born in the image of

God.’20 He believed that we are born innocent of all sin but with that brokenness which we

have inherited from our ancestors, the propensity to learn first the wayward ways of our

contemporaries. Could God, our infinitely loving and caring creator, engender evil in a new-

born child? Pelagius taught that it is the will in our nature that makes the choice to evil rather

than evil being inherent in us. He looked for the good in everything and expected to find it;

this viewpoint opened up the ‘scope’ of God way beyond the artificial boundaries of the

church institution and buildings

18
(Newell 1997)
19
(Van de Weyer 1995)
20
Ibid
 The next major Celtic theologian, and arguably the greatest, is John Scotus Eriugenia,

a ninth century Irishman. In his works, notably Periphyseon, he gathered the customs and

traditional wisdom from daily life in Ireland. At its centre was the belief that creation was of

God’s essence and therefore, essentially, good. The whole of the natural world was held to be

sacred and was reverenced because of that. Farmers tended the soil with care and respect, not

alone because it brought forth gifts of food, but because it reflected the creative urge of God’s

sustaining nature. Similarly, the fishermen of Ireland respected and cherished the sea.

In Irish society in that era of Celtic mysticism, God’s presence in the world was

deeply felt in the human, both female and male. There was no separation or priority or

superiority of the sexes in society. All were equal and respected all through their life,

especially in old-age, and after death. A startling feature of that social order was that

monasteries of women and men together were common and this caused great scandal in the

Roman church which was heavily influenced by Augustine’s view of the depravity inherent

in human nature and that sexuality was tainted somehow, animalistic and not belonging to the

ideals of Christian life. Married priests and women in leadership roles in the church were not

seen as outrageous in Ireland, but perfectly in accord with the letter of Paul to the Galations

‘there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and

female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ Gal:3:28. The openness between sexes was kept

largely harmonious by the strong ties of respect and love engendered in society; it was by no

means perfect but was surprisingly well maintained. Sexuality in all living things, including

people, was seen as good and as sharing the creative nature of God’s nature, love. No shame

attached to sexual intercourse, indeed it was seen as being holy. Newell puts this notion in the

context of Celtic spirituality in a very clear way:

‘To be made in the image of God is to share fundamentally in the Unity that underlies life

rather than being defined primarily in terms of the distinction of race and colour and sex that
are outward and varied manifestations of the One Life. In Celtic spirituality this led to the

further freedom of being able to use either male or female images to describe God.

...a mother’s heart could be imagined at the heart of God, or God’s love perceived as that of a

father.

…thus, the feminine becomes a rich symbol of the One who gives birth to life, and who

nurtures and watches over creation like a mother her child.

…the attraction between masculine and feminine, was so essential to life and to its continuity

and fruitfulness, that it must also manifest something of the nature of God. The desire for

union, for a coming together between masculine and feminine, and the yearning for creativity

and giving birth, which are fundamental to the goodness of creation, are reflective of God at

the very heart of life.’21

Newell sums up the integrative interweaving of God and nature in the following

passage:

‘There is not in the Celtic way of seeing a great gap between heaven and earth. Rather, the

two are seen as inseparably intertwined. Mary, for instance, loved with a homely tenderness

of affection, is portrayed not as Queen of Heaven, remote from humanity, but as a barefooted

country girl out among the cattle, in immediate contact with the concerns and delights of

daily life. Peter is perceived not as an exalted ecclesiastic but as a simple fisherman,

experienced in the ways of the sea, present to guide and guard, and Christ, as King of the

Elements, is not regarded as a distant regal figure but more in terms of the Celtic king, chief

of the tribe, known to his people and close to them. The Christ who is above them in the

brightness of the morning sun is the Christ who is beneath them in the dark fertility of the

21
(Newell 1997)
earth. The Christ who is with his people in the quiet calm of a windless sea is with them too

in the midst of the wild wintry storm. The Christ who is within, at the very centre of their

soul, is the Christ who is to be looked for in friend and stranger, Christ at the heart of all

life.’22

Newell sums up the revelation of Christ as perceived by John Scotus Eriugena in

these words:

‘The world, therefore, Eriugena regarded as theophany, a visible manifestation of God. Even

what seems to be without vital movement, like the great rocks of the earth around us, has

within it the light of God. To know the Creator, we need only to look at the things he has

created. The way to learn about God, Eriugena believed, is “through the letters of Scripture

and through the species of creation”.’23

I believe that this ancient tradition of seeing God all around and in sharing in the

creative urge still lives on in modern Ireland in vestigial form in my native homeland of

South Armagh’s farming communities, certainly in other rural areas, but also in the great

Irish tradition of music, art, poetry and literature. We still retain the welcoming hand of

friendship to strangers and sing and dance with joy in the rhythm of life.

This natural spirituality is not restricted to Celtic or Franciscan alone but is also to be

found widely in North American Indian wisdom and in the Jesuit theme of finding God in all

things. Indeed, it can be readily seen that Jesus himself used nature extensively in his

parables to illustrate the nature of God’s caring and love (see the birds of the air…Math

6:26), the nature of the Kingdom of God in the mustard seed and God’s mercy and

overwhelming love illustrated by the father’s joy at the return of the Prodigal Son.

22
(Newell 1997)
23
Ibid
 Everything that I have focused on may give the impression that our world is close to

perfect and yet, from our very pragmatic experience, we know that it is far from being so. In

the next chapter I will attempt to address the problem of evil in the world and how that fits in

with the incarnation of the Trinity.

4.0 Introduction.

In this chapter I will take an overview of the problem of evil, both moral and natural.

In dealing with the issue, I do not intend to deal with the Theistic and Nontheistic debates

which have raged, unresolved, for centuries, but, I will take a purely Theistic assumption.

The stance of philosophy is based, largely, on rationality as being the great yardstick for

humanity and divinity, and yet, I believe that in all human transactions we are constituted

with many more agents of motivation than sole rationality. This melange of competing agents

is fundamental to my viewpoint. Some of the more intuitive agents are emotion, historical

attitudes learned by our experiences to date, and including our attitude to God of whatever

genus we have been given by our upbringing. Another agent influencing our daily life will be

our intellectual maturity, our educational background and our status, both financial security

and our level of contentment with our place in society. Most importantly will be the degree

and consistency of our experience of love and respect from significant others in our life.

4.1 All the Best Things in Life are Free.

For the philosopher evil is irreconcilable with a loving God and also, to a certain

extent, to rational humanity. To the mystic, it can be an experience of intimate closeness to

the God of love who suffered with and for us. To the suffering masses it is a curse that is

bemoaned and endured with grim ignorance as to why it is. One thing that every Christian

would agree on is that it is not easily explained to those who are suffering. We all find it very

difficult to seek to comfort the bereaved, the patient with painful cancer, the mentally ill

person who is treated like a pariah by unfeeling bureaucracy and just cannot understand

where the pain comes from, the person who is mugged and beaten for a phone or a pair of

trainers, an old person who has little and is swindled out of what little she has. All of these
happen in this world which is infused by the Glorious and Loving Trinity. It is little wonder

why so many of the world’s greatest philosophers, theologians, poets, physicians, artists and

scientists have grappled with this problem for so long. I am humble enough to have a realistic

attitude to my efforts to understand it.

In my efforts I have looked at the Theodicean argument and have some congruence

with that expressed originally by Irenaeus and extended by John Hick.24 The idea that love

has to be freely chosen and given in order to be love and that it must be tested in the furnace

like gold ‘See, I have refined you, but not like silver; I have tested you in the furnace of

adversity’ Is 48:10 25 is the idea of ‘soul-making’ There is no doubt that in our own

experience we evaluate the earnestness of love by the degree of effort expended to give the

experience of being loved to our beloved. Easy come, easy go does not carry the reality of

love to another. Similarly, in our relationship to God we must overcome the difficulties that

living presents to us so that our love will be refined and purified. ‘… who has attained to

goodness by meeting and eventually mastering temptations, and thus by rightly making

responsible choices in concrete situations, is good in a richer and more valuable sense than

would be one created ab initio in a state either of innocence or of virtue.’26 Hicks also

expresses the truth that most parents will understand from their parenting efforts ‘…children,

who are to grow to adulthood in an environment whose primary and overriding purpose is not

immediate pleasure but the realising of the most valuable potentialities of human

personality.’27

The cosmic order is not mitigated by sympathy of humanity’s suffering in its

transactions with nature’s ways, the order is completely autonomous and not manipulated by

24
(Peterson 1992)
25
(The Catholic Youth Bible 2010)
26
(Peterson 1992)
27
Ibid
God for our benefit. If we take the view that our life span on this planet is the only reason we

are, we cannot rationalise the occurrence of natural evil. Those who believe in God’s

goodness are challenged by nature but in the context of the long view that this is only a way

to build relationship with a loving God. Our investment in this life is only meaningful when

viewed in its whole existential meaning.

The ‘Free Will Defence’, which underpins the Theodicean view is proposed most

vigorously by Alvin Platinga28 and has been used extensively to argue for the necessary

existence of moral evil, was extended, unsuccessfully in my view, by Richard Swinburne in

his essay ‘Natural Evil’29. Natural evil is a fact of the cosmic determinism and, while it can

be precipitated by human agency and mismanagement, comes from the natural order of

creation. God, imbued in creation, is responsible for it undoubtedly and that has to be faced

squarely. My view on it is that it too presents opportunities for mankind to develop caring

and loving solutions to this for the protection of humanity. This is amply illustrated by the

number of scientists working from altruistic motives to eliminate large scale killer diseases

like cancer, malaria and infant mortality. Natural events which prove to be unpreventable

have research on early warning systems and flood defence for tsunamis and inundations. We

try to understand the earthquake phenomena and provide some defence using new

architectural methods and prior warnings. While these efforts may seem puny in the face of

the relentless onslaught of nature, it has to be noted that we have chosen to spend an

enormously greater proportion of our resources on aggression and defence by the military

forces around the world. Mankind still has a lot of natural challenges to face without

inventing more of our own for one another. As a lot of aggression comes from male

dominated and testosterone-fed government it would surely be a better world if the balancing,

28
(Plantinga,1978)
29
(Peterson 1992)
more nurturing, and sensitivity of the female were accepted and encouraged in our social

ordering. These are choices we have the power to make and which can have a huge beneficial

effect on how people deal with the natural world.

From the strictly Christian view we look at Jesus’ experience of the world. In it he

decidedly suffered from the moral evils of slander, hatred and death at the hands of those who

feared the truth of his message. The natural order affected him no less than each of us; he

tired, was hungry, probably suffered from blisters on his travels, maybe the odd headache

from too much sun or wine, undoubtably was ill on occasion also. He did not suffer, to our

knowledge any serious life-threatening illnesses or natural disasters (other than death) but

embraced every risk and peril that we too must face. His example of atrocious suffering at the

hands of the Roman powers and the humble acceptance and obedience to his father he

undertook to show his complete and unreservedly selfless solidarity with humanity. Lewis 30

observes a moral ‘…that if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And

therefore, He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they

will have to discover…. because it is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship

is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up ‘our own’

when it is no longer worth keeping.’ And on joy in our lives ‘We are never safe, but we have

plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach

us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments

of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a

football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some

pleasant inns but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.’

30
(Lewis C. S. 2002)
Before leaving the subject of pain and evil in our lives I want to quote an eminent physician

R. Havard MD31 speaking about his extensive experience observing people in chronic and

devastating pain ‘Pain provides an opportunity for heroism; the opportunity is seized with

surprising frequency’

In the next chapter I intend to summarise my ponderings and draw them to conclusions.

31
Ibid
Chapter 5. What’s it all about

5.0 Introduction

In this chapter I want to reflect on what Trinity Incarnate in Creation means to us in

terms of our relationship with our God, how the Celtic Vision that is our heritage can help to

inspire us and look at some of the challenges that face us today as Christians.

5.1 The Dance

When we profess that we follow the Nazarene, Jesus, we look to Him for examples of

how we should live, and we cherish the time spent with Him in our day-to-day lives. Seeing

our God wholly all around us in the street, river, mist, friends, stranger, patient and child

brings a challenge to us, a challenge from which we have no place to hide. It will hurt at

times and shame us when we fail, as we must, often, but accepting that Jesus, parent and

spirit holds our hand as we stagger down the path of life and lifts us up when we stumble, we

raise our head once more, remembering that the one beside us suffers alongside us daily, we

make a new start. Jesus never counted or accused. Jesus suffered with the failures. Jesus went

out of his way to support the weak and the vulnerable. Jesus never left a debt on us to be

repaid. When the times got tough Jesus acted exactly like us. ‘Hence the Perfect Man brought

to Gethsemane a will, and a strong will, to escape suffering and death if such escape were

compatible with the Father’s will, combined with a perfect readiness for obedience if it were

not’,32 He does not ask us to be perfect because he knows that we are a work in progress and

decidedly not yet complete.

Our ancestors saw God in the wilderness, in the storm, the fertility of mother earth

and the gentleness of a lamb, the wholesome beauty of a child, the savage defence of a

32
(Lewis C. S. 2002)
mother bear for her child. God could never be remote. His wild beauty pervades life and even

if we do not see it some of our poets and great artists see it on our behalf, poets like Eliot,

Kavanagh, Frost and Hopkins, singers like Cohen, Callas, Dylan and David, musicians like

Delibes, Clapton, Pink Floyd and Manu Dibango all bring us to a knowledge of a beautiful

facet of our God.

Life can be difficult and at times we need to be refreshed in spirit. At times like that

we can immerse ourselves in beauty, countryside, friendships, good wine, poetry and music.

For those not able we must bring that relief to them, it is the loving and the life-giving thing

to do. We can bring a smile. Jesus was a joy filled man. He could not have been otherwise,

being filled with the Spirit and the Good News. Our mission is simply to do the same when

we are able. Jesus never asked anything which was impossible. He knows the ways of life, he

lived it every day and still does. Our relationship to Jesus cannot be one of fear, subservience,

rules, burdens or shame. None of these is of Jesus’ nature. He did not come to bring us pain

but ‘life and life to the full’ Jn 10:10. 33Life filled with the hope He has promised.

It is our collective and personal responsibility to find justice for the deprived and

abused, we are charged with this by Jesus’ invitation to be co-redeemers. Not only does He

ask us to redeem but to share in the Divine work of creation. We do this in many ways, some

of which are obvious. The creative collaboration of child making (in which our femaleness

and maleness reach their fullest expression not only of a sacred participation in God’s

kingdom but also in the most holy and sacramental fulfilment of our human sexuality

reflecting the divine intimacy in the Trinity). God’s Word, alive in the gospels, calls presently

the active love that is the effective agent in Jesus’ continuing mission today.

33
(The Catholic Youth Bible 2010)
 As the world faces tremendous challenges of nuclear destruction, pollution, climate

change and the final rape of all living things as science intrudes further and further into

genetic science with decidedly suspect motives, we are challenged to raise our voices and use

all our power and ingenuity to counter the endless hunger to exploit and capitalise our future

and that of our children. This is our sacred mother earth and she is under attack from all sides.

5.2 Conclusion

In this essay I have endeavoured to bring the incredible richness of our Trinitarian

God to our consciousness by following a story of creation both biblical and scientific, looking

at how mankind perverted creation into the good and the bad, the soul and the body and the

other dualistic myths that enslaved the world view for centuries. Then I looked at some of the

people who had the courage and insight to see behind the great lie and discover the

whispering harmony, the song of the Trinity in all of creation. From there I presented an

ancient Trinitarian spirituality which was developed by the Celts and which would embarrass

even the most radical of libertarians by its openness and inclusivity together with its humble

reverence for God’s creation in all its forms. I then tried to deal with the problem of pain and

found that the only view that makes sense to Christians is to see the Christ, the great lover,

crucified innocently and willingly so that we might have the courage to believe in spite of

everything life throws at us. We do not, and never have, suffered alone. Finally, I have shown

how trusted we are by God that He depends on us now to collaborate in creation, redeeming

and saving the world.

The principle of haecceity, developed by John Duns Scotus, points to our individual

uniqueness. There is no other individual, alive or dead, that is exactly like ‘me’. We each are

a unique and special facet of our God. No one else can do the mission that I am chosen to
carry out. If I choose not to love Jesus as called, then there will be a ‘me shaped’ vacuum in

God which can only be filled by ‘me’. Have you ever tried to complete a 1,000-piece jigsaw

and, after a tortuous few days work, find that as you near the final few pieces, that the 1,000th

piece is not there? The whole project is defeated, and we are left in an unfulfilled state which

cannot be resolved. That is how precious we each are to God’s Kingdom

When we relate to God there are many ways to proceed. The most holy way, I

propose, is to speak from my uniqueness in a way that represents my authentic self. Some

will accomplish this with formal prayer, rosary, daily mass and so on. Others find that

contemplative practice suits best, still others speak to God incarnate in informal terms, telling

Him all about my day, my troubles, my weaknesses and my anger and frustration when

appropriate. Still others read scripture and practice meditation in a form of ‘Lectio Divina’

and then recognise Jesus alive today in our world.

I suggest a more integrated way of relating to Jesus.

When we want to meet Him go to the wild places, mountain, sea and forest, it matters little

where because He is everywhere. Listen to His creation in action as the birds gather food for

their chicks. Touch Him when you place your hand in the mountain stream or hold the feeble

hand of a loved elder person. Hear Him in a spoken poem or song, the crack of thunder, the

howl of wind or the soothing trickle of the sea lapping the shore. See His glory in the

common limpet.34 Recognise His face in the faces of those we meet, in everyone we meet,

not only those we like or the ‘good people’. We can cry with Him in the night for the aborted

34
The limpet, Patella vulgate, is a very primitive mollusc which feeds as it moves very slowly over rocks when
they are covered by the tide. When the tide falls, it must return to the exact place it was born and orient itself
at that place so that its shell, which has grown in the exact contours of the piece of rock, and in a unique
orientation, so that the humble limpet can form a water-tight seal that prevents it drying out in the hostile
exposure of the open air. The miracle is that this creature, with its miniscule brain, accomplishes this
unerringly twice in every day it lives.
children denied life. The only thing we need to do to pray is to meet Him as often as possible

and listen.

As promised by Jesus, we can have the fullest life, if we so choose, and most

importantly, he invites us to the dance today.

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