In September, 2003 astronomers made a courageous decision.
They aimed the current most powerful telescope at what was believed to be absolutely nothing. It was a minuscule piece of sky of a size of a poppy seed held at full arm’s length. This small square was just south of the constellation Orion and in this miniscule field were no known stars or other astronomical objects, only empty nothingness. So they aimed the telescope, opened the shutter and waited. They waited through January, 2004 collecting individual photons. When they processed the image they received this picture - it is called the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF). In it are a few small stars distinguishable by their diffraction spikes, and then ten thousand galaxies! Some of these galaxies are currently the oldest and most distant known objects in the universe, more than 13 billions years old. In addition to those few individual stars every single bright puff or dot is a unique galaxy, each composed from millions to billions of stars. What was originally considered to be an empty piece of the sky the size of a poppy seed actually contains in those galaxies about ten trillion stars. Now extrapolate this finding all around the sky in all directions.
It is virtually impossible not to be in awe of this enormous and beautiful spectacle of deep space. The Universe is an unimaginably and humblingly LARGE place. We live in one minuscule, tiny littlest corner on even a smaller speck of dust. Now what does it mean for us and for our religion? Suddenly we realize that old religious and dogmatic answers are not satisfactory any longer. We need to search anew for an answer to the ancient incarnation question Cur Deus Homo? - Why God (became) human. We are forced to re-ask the question, to re-formulate it, Why should God become human? Why should God become human, here and now (and two thousand years is “a now” in scales of billions of light-years). Perhaps we need to abandon logic, even theo-logic, and venture beyond mytho-logic into the realms of mytho-poetry. Come this Sunday to seek insight into the simple, almost childish, yet still inspired mytho-poetry of the Gospel of James.
They aimed the current most powerful telescope at what was believed to be absolutely nothing. It was a minuscule piece of sky of a size of a poppy seed held at full arm’s length. This small square was just south of the constellation Orion and in this miniscule field were no known stars or other astronomical objects, only empty nothingness. So they aimed the telescope, opened the shutter and waited. They waited through January, 2004 collecting individual photons. When they processed the image they received this picture - it is called the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF). In it are a few small stars distinguishable by their diffraction spikes, and then ten thousand galaxies! Some of these galaxies are currently the oldest and most distant known objects in the universe, more than 13 billions years old. In addition to those few individual stars every single bright puff or dot is a unique galaxy, each composed from millions to billions of stars. What was originally considered to be an empty piece of the sky the size of a poppy seed actually contains in those galaxies about ten trillion stars. Now extrapolate this finding all around the sky in all directions.
It is virtually impossible not to be in awe of this enormous and beautiful spectacle of deep space. The Universe is an unimaginably and humblingly LARGE place. We live in one minuscule, tiny littlest corner on even a smaller speck of dust. Now what does it mean for us and for our religion? Suddenly we realize that old religious and dogmatic answers are not satisfactory any longer. We need to search anew for an answer to the ancient incarnation question Cur Deus Homo? - Why God (became) human. We are forced to re-ask the question, to re-formulate it, Why should God become human? Why should God become human, here and now (and two thousand years is “a now” in scales of billions of light-years). Perhaps we need to abandon logic, even theo-logic, and venture beyond mytho-logic into the realms of mytho-poetry. Come this Sunday to seek insight into the simple, almost childish, yet still inspired mytho-poetry of the Gospel of James.
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It was the scholastic theologian Anselm of Canterbury who asked Cur Deus Homo - Why God (became) human. And he even though he found the answer in his deeply feudal and troublesome soteriology (the satisfaction view of atonement). But his asking and his answering were utterly anthropocentric (like so much of theology throughout history anyway). Anselm asked and answered as if there was nothing else but the Earth, and as if God was some kind of a medieval brutal feudal lord.
As we look into the true depth of space and time the mystery or incarnation looms exponentially larger and requires us to ask different and more uncertain questions Cur Deus Homo - Why (should) God (become) human?
As we look into the true depth of space and time the mystery or incarnation looms exponentially larger and requires us to ask different and more uncertain questions Cur Deus Homo - Why (should) God (become) human?
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