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The Science and Faith Corner
Articles
Finding Providence in Scientific Law; Colin CM Campbell, PhD
Christian faith still lives in the shadow of the Enlightenment. When accused of omitting God from his book on mechanics, Laplace replied that he had no need of that hypothesis – all events could be explained by scientific law. Modern science now knows that all events are caused by a breaking of a symmetry in Nature by one and the same source, such as the Providential action of God.
Brain and Mind: From Physics to Metaphysics; Colin CM Campbell, PhD
Kant argued that, since God could not be investigated scientifically, he could not be made a valid “object of the mind.” Since then, theology has searched for a way to go from physics to metaphysics. The present work will present scientific evidence from mind-body research that provides an entry to spirituality from physics.
Psychology and the Prayer of Faith; Colin CM Campbell, PhD
God is love and promises to heal us if we pray with faith. (Jas 5:15-16) Some have suggested that the prayer of faith consists of two parts: our part is to have faith; God’s part is to heal. The present work will show how both faith and healing proceed from the finished work of Christ and are received in our hearts by faith alone.
PSYCHOLOGY AND THE PRAYER OF FAITH
Colin C M Campbell, PhD
July 23, 2024
Introduction
God is love (I Jn 4:7) and it is his will that we have life “in all its fulness.” (Jn 10:10) If we find that we do not have it, then he promises to restore it to us through the prayer of faith (Jas 5:15-16). Successful prayers for healing are helped by understanding how the Holy Spirit relates to our soul (“psyche”) and its components: our spirit (“pneuma”), mind (“nous”), and heart (“kardia”). These are Greek terms used by the writers of the New Testament to translate Hebrew terms. “Pneuma” is a translation of “ruach” (spirit); “kardia” of “levav” (heart); and “psyche” of “nephesh” (soul).
In both Greek and Hebrew thought the concept of “spirit” refers to the life force animating an individual. In Hebrew thought, God symbolically “breathes” this life into an individual at birth and removes the “breath” at the point of death.
The absence of a Hebrew word corresponding to the “nous” (mind) is significant. In Hebrew the heart refers to a combination of the will, the mind, the emotions and the inner life of a person. Hebrew did not make the Hellenistic distinction between mind and emotions (heart) and so the New Testament translators found it necessary to combine the two. For example, Deuteronomy‘s injunction, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul and strength (Deut 6:5), in Matthew becomes, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” (Matt: 22:37) In Hebrew spirituality, the Holy Spirit speaks directly to the heart. In the spirituality of the Church Fathers, the Holy Spirit speaks to the “nous” (mind). The Fathers then speak of the necessity of the mind being “drawn into the heart.”
Scripture informs us that successful prayers for healing consist of a prayer of faith. (Jas 5:15-16) Such a prayer begins in the mind but the idea formed in the mind engages the heart, where an emotion is formed. This energizes the prayer, which is finally made from the heart. Belief in the truism that God can heal is knowledge of the mind and, by itself, is an inadequate basis for prayer. In New Testament terminology, the Holy Spirit inspires an individual with the “charism” of faith. This consists of an “idea” for the nous and “energeia” (energy) for the heart, enabling the individual to pray with the faith that heals.
The Impasse of Faith
In his Epistle James gives us a recipe for successful prayer. “When you pray, you must believe and not doubt at all.” (Js 1:6) So, if we want our prayers to be successful, we must pray without doubt. But here we have a difficulty. We cannot get rid of doubt by trying to will it away, any more than we can become holy by trying to be good. Faith and virtue are gifts of the Holy Spirit. To suggest otherwise is to cast us back on our own resources by requiring us to manufacture the faith necessary to ask without doubt.
This exposes a paradox that underlies all prayer. The logic is relentless: Only God can heal us; only our faith can enable God to heal us; only God can enable the faith in us that enables him to heal us. That is, God can only heal us, if he causes us to allow him to do so! We seem to have reached the conclusion that, if we have doubts, that is not our fault. Paul echoes this idea in Romans 9:19, “You will say to me then, why does he (God) still find fault? For, who has resisted his will? “Some have tried to find a way out of the difficulty by seeing healing prayer as consisting of two parts: Our part is to have faith; God’s part is to heal us.
But this simply will not do! Telling an anxious person not to be anxious will simply increase their anxiety telling an angry person not to be angry will simply increase their anger; and telling someone that they are not healed because they do not have enough faith will simply increase their despair.
To recapitulate, it is true that God wants to heal us. It is true that he would, if we would let him. It is true that he would if we could let him. The problem is that, without his help, we cannot let him. We have reached an impasse!
Finding a Breakthrough
Finding a breakthrough will not be done by good advice or by prayers of “vain repetition.“ That is, breaking the impasse will not be done in the way that is usually attempted. Finding a breakthrough involves answering two questions. First, what is there in us that enables a reaction to the Holy Spirit to be involuntary? Second, what is there in us that blocks this reaction from being irresistibly efficacious? Answering these questions involves taking a long step back and establishing how the Bible understands the way in which God speaks to our hearts and minds.
Biblical Psychology
The Hebrew writers of Scripture did not subscribe to the Greek distinction between the soul (“psyche”) and the body (“sarx”). Instead, they spoke of the “nephesh” or “self” and “ruach” or “spirit,” translated by Paul as the “pneuma.” The nephesh obtains its Life (“energeia”) from its “ruach,” as a gift from God, symbolically breathed in at birth and breathed out at death.
So, built into the individual, there is a drive towards “fulness of life,” the same “fulness of life” that God wishes to give us. This spiritual life resides in the heart, from where it motivates the individual to establish goals that produce “fulness of life.” These goals are the same as God’s will for our actions. The faculty, through which God communicates his will, is the “mind” or “nous,” which he inspires with “ideas.” These ideas are explicitly provided by Word and Sacrament and reside implicitly in his Creation, our World, in all its glory. So, ideally the nous, inspired by God, is able to channel the energy of our spiritualized hearts into drives that produce our personal fulfillment.
Things are not so simple, however! Individuals may misdirect their energy and displace it into following goals that conflict with those desired by the Holy Spirit. God allows us the freedom to do this!
The Problem of Sin
When that happens, the nous, no longer under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, channels the person’s life energy away from sacred to profane goals, developing what are known in spirituality, as the “passions,” Such choices constitute sin. Each sinful act creates a memory, that is stored in the heart (“leviv” or “kardia”), Today’s term for the heart would be the subconscious mind.
Here, the word spirit” acquires a more precise meaning. Each memory stored in the heart has an energy, attached to it. So, the Bible speaks of a spirit of anger, or anxiety, or madness. The spirits, stored in the heart, emerge to destroy the individual’s peace of mind, which becomes the battleground for our souls. So, our hearts become storehouses of disordered energies. As Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” (Jer 17:9)
In order to find fulness of life, the first job of the nous, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is to find a way to free the individual of the tyranny of the disordered spirits and passions. The Holy Spirit does this by inspiring the nous with “charisms,” – ideas for the mind, which shape and re-order a person’s spiritual energy to form life-giving spirits in the heart. The Eastern monks speak of this as “the mind being drawn into the heart.” Over time, the Holy Spirit builds up a set of rules, congruent with and informed by the Mosaic Law, or Ten Commandments. These order the energies of the heart, forming the fruit of the spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness,
goodness, faithfulness and self-control. (Gal 5:22–23)
This concludes our long digression into an examination of psychology according to the Bible. We are now in a position to answer the two questions that were left on the table before the digression began. They were: First, what is there in us that enables our reaction to the Holy Spirit to be an involuntary one? The answer is the nous, when there is nothing blocking the Holy Spirit. Second, what is there in us that blocks the Holy Spirit from being irresistibly efficacious. The answer is the wages of sinful choices, stored as wayward spirits in the heart.
The Heresy of Law
The correct role of the nous is to be drawn into the heart in order to discipline the passions. Once it has done this, its job is finished. Heresy occurs when the nous takes over and its rules are used to crush the emotions. This has happened at times, leading our critics to find Christianity joyless, self-righteous and judgmental. Versions of Christianity based purely on Law simply kill the joy of the Gospel. Paul said it, “The law kills.” (II Cor 3:6)
Conversion
“God is love” and his will is that we would receive “life in all its fulness” by his Holy Spirit changing our hearts through enlightening our nous. This process is called conversion or “metanoia.” In Western theology, conversion begins with “justification” and is deepened by “sanctification.”
However, for God to be able to do this, we have to be open to his Holy Spirit. This cannot happen as long as, in our heart, there are spiritual blocks. Many blocks are perversions of a desire that, in itself, is good. For example, the block of anxiety is a perversion of a desire to feel safe. The block of anger is a perversion of a desire for justice. And the block of doubt is a perversion of a desire for God’s support.
According to Plato, the heart is like an unruly stallion that needs to be tamed by the nous. According to modern psychology, it is a subconscious region of the mind that needs to be analyzed. And according to Jesus, it is so corrupt that its owner needs to be “born again” (sometimes translated as “being born from above).
By exchanging our thoughts for Christ’s, we allow his life to live in our lives. Or, to quote St. Paul, “We die with Christ in sin and rise with Christ in glory.” (Rom 6:8) More explicitly, an anxious thought is exchanged for one of courage, an angry thought for one of calm, and a doubt with grounds for faith.
The Suffering Christ
One final issue remains. In his earthly life, when Jesus walked the byways of Galilee, he healed people. This begs the question: why was this not sufficient? Why the necessity of the Cross?
On the Cross, Jesus established a final victory over all sin. From the Cross, he forgave the sins of both penitent sinners and impenitent idolaters. Without having been sinned against, he would have had nothing to forgive. From the Cross, he faced down all disease and demonic attacks. Without being attacked, he could not have been victorious over them. This satisfies the principle: “What is not assumed is not sanctified.” If Jesus did not take on the sins of sinners, then sinners could not have been saved. And, if Jesus had not defeated the demons, then their defeat would not be assured.
It is true that, when Jesus lived on Earth, he healed people but this was not a final victory. These were stages on the way. On the Cross Jesus achieved the final victory and left it to us, the members of his Body, the Church, to impose the fruits of his victory by playing our part in building his Kingdom. The Suffering Christ has won a victory over everything that prevents us from experiencing life in all its fulness. If we unite our lives with his through prayers of faith, then we too will experience the fruits of his victory and be able to share them with others.
FINDING PROVIDENCE IN SCIENTIFIC LAW
Colin C M Campbell, PhD
August 13, 2024
Introduction
Christian truth offers us life in all its fullness, if we follow God‘s law, as described in the 10 Commandments. This is success through faith in divine Revelation. Secular truth offers us power over events, if we apply the laws of science, as described in the Standard Model of the Universe. This is success through faith in human reason.
Science began at the time of the Enlightenment in the 16th century. This period was appropriately entitled the Age of Reason, for it was then that reason and experiment replaced faith in doctrine as the epistemology of most serious-minded persons, particularly in Northern Europe. The scientists of the Enlightenment claimed to be able to explain everything without reference to God. Laplace famously said, “I have no need of that hypothesis.” And so, mention of God was excluded from scientific meetings, as it still is today. The latest scientific findings suggest that it may be necessary to bring him back!
According to Newton and his contemporaries, natural events could be fully explained by scientific law. They believed that truth could only be expressed in the form of laws. Modern physics, however, has establish that scientific law itself is based on a structure of symmetry and that a natural event is caused, less by the operation of a scientific law, than by the breaking of a symmetry. Science has established that it is a single cause that breaks all symmetries and that that one cause cannot be known by science. Physics’ quest for truth has opened up a gap that has provided an entry into metaphysics.
The Greek Origins
The use of reason to establish truth began in the West, with the Greeks. Needing something to reason about, they thought about what they observed and concluded that some things are changeable and some things are unchangeable. For example, the seasons are changeable. However, the fact that there are four seasons is not changeable. The relationship between the changeable and the unchangeable has been the basis of all scientific philosophy ever since.
The pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides labelled what is not changeable as what exists. He called this Being; what does not exist, he called non-Being. Since the existence of non-Being is a self-contradiction, there is only Being that exists. It follows then that all is One and change is merely a change in the appearance of the one unchangeable One.
Aristotle provided more depth to the relationship between the changeable and the unchangeable by introducing the concept of ”nature.” According to him, the world is populated with billions of beings, each of which has a nature. However, Aristotle still needed a theory to explain why tadpoles change into frogs and why caterpillars change into butterflies but cats never change into dogs. Why is it that one life-form changes into another seemingly different life-form, whereas others do not. He reasoned that, since one thing can never become another thing, at some level tadpoles and frogs must be the same thing; caterpillars and butterflies must be the same thing; and dogs and cats must be different things. He asserted that tadpoles and frogs have the same form as each other; caterpillars and butterflies have the same form as each other; and dogs and cats have different forms from each other.
Each nature has its own form. Each form has an “entelechy” or goal that is its purpose to reach. The purpose of a tadpole is to become a frog and the purpose of a caterpillar is to become a butterfly. The purpose of a Christian is to find life in all its fullness or what Aristotle called “eudaimonia.”
According to Aristotle nature by its very nature is teleological. A being may change during its development; that is what is changeable. However, its form is not changeable and so the goal of its development is not changeable. In this way, Aristotle established the connection between the changeable and the unchangeable. The force causing the change was ascribed to a “life force” or “vis viva.”
Newton’s Physics
It was left to Isaac Newton, in the 16th century, to provide a mathematical, and therefore, more precise description of the changeable and the unchangeable. According to Newton, there is only matter. There is no such thing as a “life force.” All matter consists of particles in motion. In gases, the particles move fastest; in liquids, the particles move more slowly and in solids, the particles move slowest. Change is due to the forces between particles, when they collide. These forces can be described precisely by mathematical equations.
However, there was another force, not due to particle collisions and that was the force of gravity. Newton was able to find an equation even for that and so he was able to explain change using force equations which did not change. And, in which there was no place for God!
Modern Physics and Symmetry
And there the matter rested! From Newton’s time until now, his laws have been used to generate a river of manufactured goods. His theory was so successful, that it seemed to be unarguably true - until, at the end of the 19th century, Max Planck discovered a constant, known today as Planck’s constant, written as “h.” This number seemed to appear everywhere but no one, least of all Planck, could explain why!
Then, there came a breakthrough. The assumption of classical physics was that equations were the unchanging basis for all events. However, it turns out that there is an unchanging basis for all equations. That is the concept of symmetry. Space and time are symmetrical. If space were not symmetrical then moving objects would spontaneously speed up or slow down, as they encountered asymmetries in space. If time were not symmetrical then processes would spontaneously speed up or slow down as they encountered asymmetries in time. “So what?” you may say. It turns out that symmetry-breaking leads to an explanation of Planck’s constant and therefore of all change.
Consider a ball, A, at rest on a table. The space around A is symmetrical and so it remains at rest. When it is struck by another ball, B, B stops moving and gives its momentum to A, according to the law of conservation of momentum. It also gives its energy to A, according to the law of conservation of energy.
We can explain the collision using equations that describe the laws of conservation of momentum and energy. However, there is another way to describe the situation. We can say that the space symmetry around A has been temporarily broken. The symmetry has changed. What has not changed are the conservation laws; in this case the laws of momentum and energy. Generalizing this example, Noether’s theorem states: “Whenever there is a change due to symmetry-breaking, there is a conservation law which does not change.
In the present example we can see that the collision temporarily breaks the space symmetry around A over a small distance “x”; it also temporally breaks the time symmetry around A for a small interval “t.” If A receives a small amount of energy “E” and a small amount of momentum “p,” it turns: out that
p times x equals h and E times t equals h
Planck’s constant h, lies at the heart of symmetry-breaking. It is the fundamental unchanging feature that underlies all change.
Least Action and Providence
The Standard Model of the Universe claims to provide a complete theory of all the interactions that occur in nature, with the exception of gravity. The other four are: the electromagnetic interaction, the strong interaction, the weak interaction and the Higgs interaction. All interactions obey a single principle: the Principle of Least Action. It is relatively easy to show, using high school calculus, that the Principle of Least Action leads to Planck’s constant. Since all interactions obey the Principle of Least Action, all interactions have the same single cause, that shows up with Planck’s constant. According to science, there is the same, one single cause to everything that happens in the Universe. I cannot think of a better definition for God‘s Providence!
BRAIN AND MIND: FROM PHYSICS TO METAPHYSICS
Colin C M Campbell, PhD
August 4, 2024
The Mind-Brain Problem
How does the mind relate to the brain? Do they constitute a dualism of two independent realities – the mind, spiritual, and metaphysical, and the brain, material and physical? Or is dualism a primitive conceit that has survived from a superstitious age and that has no place in a world governed by scientific law? Answering these questions has profound consequences for how we relate to God.
Modern medicine had its origins in the scientific Enlightenment of the 16th century with such “greats” as Isaac Newton and René Descartes. They inherited a mediaeval worldview that regarded human beings as a dualistic compound of soul and body, an idea that they inherited from Plato and Aristotle.
As a fully committed materialist, according to Newton, everything was composed of atoms and molecules that collided with each other. These collisions were responsible for the entire past and determined the entire future. Newton explicitly ruled out the notion that there were any metaphysical forces in nature, an idea that he dismissed as “vitalism.” By doing so, of course, he implied that the ideas of free will and moral responsibility were a fiction, a conclusion that was repugnant to Descartes, who proposed a compromise between tradition and the new wisdom.
Descartes reasserted dualism by proposing that human nature consisted of a spiritual soul and a material body. The body obeys the laws of physics; the soul does not.
Modern medicine has warmly embraced Descartes’ idea of a body consisting of atoms and molecules that can be healed by drug-induced chemical reactions. His idea of a spiritual soul has been less successful, largely because spirit and soul are concepts that have no place in the terminology of science. Behaviour once considered the province of spirituality has largely been assumed by the science of psychology, which, like Newton’s mechanism, also takes a bleak view of human freedom. Most psychologists see human behaviour as the product of a blind interplay between a person’s genes and their social conditioning.
Most telling of all, the scientific enterprise operates without any reference to God, leaving us with this problem: How do we find God in the scientific view of nature? How do we find an entry from physics to metaphysics? A good place to start is to return to consider the relationship between the mind and the brain.
Evidence for the Mind
The viewpoint inherited by modern medicine generally leads to the assumption that the mind’s activity, thinking, is wholly a product of the involuntary firing of the nerve cells that make up the brain. The unavoidable, unpalatable conclusion, is that we are the slaves of our brain cells, without any genuine free will.
However, recent medical evidence suggests that this is not true!
The Canadian researcher, Wilder Penfield, studied the brains of epileptic patients, who were not anaesthetized. He found that he was able to stimulate emotional seizures but never intellectual seizures. He found that you cannot stimulate the brain to think, proof that the brain does not produce rational activity.
About the same time, fellow researcher, Ben Libet, showed that not only can the brain not dictate thought, it cannot make the mind choose a course of action. We do have free will!
To demonstrate this, he arranged an experiment, in which a subject was told to press a button, when a dot appeared on a screen. The subject’s recognition of the dot was an action of the brain. The decision to press the button was an action of the mind. The time between the two events was measurable and was found to be about one second.
The subject was then instructed not to press the button (a mind event) when they saw the dot (a brain event). It was found that the subject consistently did not press the button. The mind consistently was able to overrule the brain’s impulse to press the button! The brain cannot dictate something to the mind, nor can it make the mind do something that it wants the mind to do. We do have free will! We are responsible for what we do!
Newton’s determinism does not apply to mental activity. We know that events trigger urges in the brain. However, our minds are free to accept or suppress these urges. We do have free will!
In other experiments it was found that epileptic seizures could be reduced by severing the connection between the left and right sides of the brain. Physical activities were affected. Mental activities like thinking and decision-making were not. You can cut the brain in half, but not the mind!
Freud and Plato
But what do we mean when we speak of the mind? The word is a muddle of associations supplied by three sources: Freud’s psychology, Plato‘s philosophy and Hebrew spirituality.
Freud divided the mind into two regions. First is the conscious mind that reflects on present reality. It is the place of thinking and decision-making, found by Penfield and Libet to be free of control by the brain. Second, is the subconscious mind – a storehouse of repressed experiences, that surface, from time to time, as irrational impulses in the conscious mind.
Plato divided the mind into three parts. First, there are the appetites; unruly passions that, if unchecked, lead to destruction. Second, there are the noble virtues, which if followed lead to honour. Third, there is the rational mind, which has pride of place, with the job of using reason and decision-making to regulate the passions and to promote the virtues. Again, Plato‘s rational mind corresponds to the one described by Penfield and Libet.
Neither Freud nor Plato‘s theory of the mind refer to the idea of God. Hebrew spirituality does!
Hebrew Spirituality
According to Scripture, the human being is a “nephesh,” usually translated as a ”soul,” into which, at the time of conception, a “spirit” has been “breathed” by God. It is the spirit that gives life to the “nephesh.” When the person dies, the spirit leaves the person, who goes to Sheol (the Place of the Departed Spirits), as a “dead nephesh.” The spirit is the life principle of the “nephesh” and lives in the heart. The heart is the centre of the individual’s intellect, emotions and will and, as such, corresponds to Penfield and Libet’s mind.
Hebrew thought does not make the Hellenistic distinction between “mind” and “heart.” In Biblical language, you know completely, with your whole being, which the Bible would term the “heart” but which we would regard as a combination of “mind” and “heart.” With its dictum of “reason before passion,” Hellenism split the Hebrew “heart” into a rational “mind” (“nous”) and an emotional “heart (“kardia).) Influenced by Hellenism, early Christianity believed that the Holy Spirit spoke to the “nous.” (mind) The Eastern monks realized the problem that this gives rise to and spoke of the need “to draw the mind into the heart.”
Summarizing, in Biblical thought, all the life of an individual is centred on the heart. This includes thinking, feeling and decision-taking. Penfield and Libet have confirmed that this Biblical concept is a scientific reality that directs the brain, never the opposite way around. This evidence from science corrects the opinion of many contemporary scientists and provides an entry from matter to spirit and from physics to metaphysics.