Cosmic Theology

The Cosmic Christ 

Studying the chaos to cosmos theme from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 is a fascinating journey. It deepens our understanding of the original creation and the coming new creation. But it also makes us aware of God’s sovereignty over chaos: his turning chaos into cosmos (or micro-cosmos). His intent is to restore his creation to the cosmos he intended it to be in the beginning. Instead of fall and redemption, creation centered spirituality focuses on New Humanity as co-creators. 

 

For Paul Tillich, “God” is the symbol of the infinite ground and power of being and meaning. God is the source of our courage to be as the power that transcends the threat of nonbeing. This courage to be is “rooted in the personal, total, and immediate certainty of divine forgiveness.” 

God is the source of courage precisely because God also embraces nonbeing in Godself and thus eternally conquers it. In the dynamics of the triune life, the ‘Father’ is understood as the abyss, power or depth of Being, the ‘Son’ as the content, meaning or logos of Being, and the ‘Spirit’ as the unity of power (Father) and meaning (Son) in the divine life. Without the logos, the divine self-objectification, God would be abysmal chaos. Without the Spirit, God would not go out from Godself to become creative. 

The logos concept bears some resemblance to the divine soul of the world of the Stoics, formless but creator of forms, the regulating and ordering principle always at work to create cosmos out of chaos. The Logos philosophy took form in Stoicism in which the Logos was the soul of the Universe through which chaos could be transformed into cosmos. It was the Eternal Reason, immanent in human and nature. 

We all share in the Logos of God or to use another symbol in John’s gospel, “the Light which enlightens every man” is one Light, the same in all persons. The Logos appeals to the creative life which is at work in every part of the universe and which seeks to bring all things into reconciliation. Logos must be supplemented and redefined by another word, agape or love... both words mean that which reunites and reconciles. 

The New Being: Renewal of Love 

What is this New Being? It meant that neither to be Jew nor to be pagan is ultimately important, that only one thing counts namely the union with Him in whom the New Reality is present. 

What it says first is that Christianity is more than a religion; it is the message of a New Creation. A New Creation has occurred, a New Being has appeared; and we are all asked to participate in it. And so we should say to the pagans and the Jews wherever we meet them: Don’t compare your religion and our religion, your rites and our rites, your prophets and our prophets, your priests and our priests, the pious amongst you and the pious amongst us. We want only to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard: that in the midst of the old creation there is a New Creation, and that this New Creation is manifest in Jesus who is called Christ. 

“Jesus is not the creator of another religion, but the victor over religion.” - Paul Tillich 

Salvation does not destroy creation; but it transforms the Old Creation into a New one. Therefore we can speak of the New Creation in terms of a re-newal: the threefold “re,” namely, reconciliation, reunion, resurrection. 

Reconciliation, reunion, resurrection - this is the New Creation, the New Being, the New state of things. Do we participate in it? The message of Christianity is not Christianity, but a New Reality. A New state of things has appeared, it still appears; it is hidden and visible, it is there and it is here. Accept it, enter into it, let it grasp you. 

John Wesley and the Cosmic Christ 

It recalls the day when John Wesley attended a group meeting in Aldersgate where he received an experience of assurance of his New Birth. This was the pivotal event in Wesley's life that ultimately led to the development of the Methodist movement. This was his experience of the New Reality. 

“I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt that I did now trust Christ alone - that he had taken away my sins, even mine.” -John Wesley 

Wesley was a member of the Holy Club. It’s method included reading the Bible and books of divinity, meditation, prayer, fasting, visiting the sick, the poor, and those in prision. These things became fixed habits with Wesley. 

What was the change wrought in Wesley? He tells us he had been a slave, and now he was a son. He discovered the greatest of all truths - that God loves him, and the feeling of love cast out fear and filled his soul with a song of gladness.

As children of God, taking on the Sonship of God is akin to New Humanity accepting the role as co-creators. For Wesley, if men love God and serve him as sons, they may be friends and fellow workers, no matter how far apart they may be in theological point of view. 

John Wesley made the great words of William Law his own: “Perhaps what the best heathens called Reason; and Solomon, Wisdom; Saint Paul, Grace in general; Saint John, Righteousness or Love; Luther, Faith; Fenelon, Virtue may be only different expressions for one and the same blessings of the Light of Christ... why then so many words, and so little charity exercised among Christians about the particular term of a blessing experienced more or less by all righteous men!” 

Wesley believed that “the inward witness, this is the strongest proof of Christianity.” 

This represents the resurrection of Christ in our hearts and minds to see ourselves as cosmic co-creators. 

The Coming of the Cosmic Christ 

To move from a “personal Savior” Christianity to a “Cosmic Christ” that renews all of creation. This is the dynamic between the prophetic and the mystical. Deep Ecumenism serves as the platform to unite mysticisms across the world. All are invited into the New Humanity as we accept our cosmic birthright to be co-creators. 

Cosmic Trinity: Creator, Christ, and Comforter