Entropy originally referred to the measure in thermodynamics of how much energy is not available to do work—a sort of energy or heat loss. In a broader sense, almost metaphorically, it is about social decline and degeneration.
It’s hard to apply this concept to living things, since in biology an almost opposite point of view dominates: evolution—that is, that living things are constantly becoming ever more complex and diverse.
Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, scientist and theologian, made a brilliant synthesis of the findings and concepts of science and the developing insights of biblical studies and theology.
He knitted together cosmology, biology, anthropology, and faith into a grand evolutionary vision starting with origin of the universe, through the creation of life, the emergence of humanity, divine revelations, Christ, and the contemporary world, culminating in a final union of all through Christ in God.
Especially in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, teachings, and contemporary faith there is a radical optimism about the universe we live in and the direction of its ongoing development.
This is a realistic optimism, It realizes that there is a certain “entropy” in our lives, a certain sinking to the least common denominator, a kind of decline and loss. Our old words about it were error, failure, disobedience, and sin.
But, fundamentally, it is an optimism, a point of view that sees each person, all human societies, all life, all creation as essentially good and constantly growing, progressing, developing, and evolving—in spite of occasional “entropic” deviations.
In the words of St. Augustine, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
That’s a great way of describing evolution!
Okay, we’re incorrigibly optimistic, confident about evolutionary development, and yearning for an ultimate culminating future for each and all of us.
What do we call it? The kingdom of God? The Omega Point? The Cosmic Christ? The After-Life? Heaven? Paradise” A Better Life?
How do we describe it? A place of everlasting happiness? joy? pleasure? wealth? fulfillment? reunion with others? union with God?
Where is it? No, it’s not up since the world’s not flat. No, it’s not down, either. It’s not a place in the usual use of the word.
What do we really know about it? The only one who briefly returned to tell us of it and show us the way there was Jesus.
Actually, he didn’t give us much detailed information at all, but he was pretty clear about directions to get there. He didn’t give us any road maps but he did propose a pattern of life that leads there.
“Thy will be done…” That’s a sort of title for the detailed lifestyle that Jesus witnessed to and proposed to us.
It’s very consonant with a vision of a developing and evolving universe, for it’s a vision of each of us as developing and evolving persons.
St. John said it beautifully (1 John 3:1-2):
See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
6 March 2022