The entangled pandemic: Deep incarnation in creation - Simmons - - Dialog - Wiley

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“Long before humans arrived, the way of nature was already a via dolorosa.” Holmes Rolston III¹

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us” John 1:14

While viruses are able to replicate, they are not like cells and cannot grow or process their own energy. They exist suspended between the inorganic and the organic, chemistry and biology, non-life and life.² It is into such an in-between and therefore interrelated existence that the pandemic has thrown human society. While tacitly affirming our connection to nature, humanity in general has seen itself as above nature, viewing it primarily as a natural resource. This has resulted in ecological destruction on a global scale and has set the stage for the emergence of a pandemic arising from our own abuse of nature and its creatures. The COVID 19 pandemic is an ecological as well as medical problem. We ignore the ecological roots of this crisis at our peril and further ill prepare ourselves for the next pandemic.

In the Introduction to Pandemic, Ecology and Theology: Perspectives on COVID-19, Alexander Hampton and Annalea Rose Thiessen observe, “For many, there is a collective sense that this [the pandemic] is more than an issue to manage our way out of. Rather, it is indicative of our broken relationship with the natural world of which we should be a part, and perhaps our alienation from a deeper sense of meaning, one not centred exclusively upon human needs and wants.” Therefore, “To consider the coronavirus pandemic with reflections on ecology and theology is to recognize that all environmental science and technology takes place within a particular social imaginary that profoundly impacts human attitudes and actions upon this earth.”³ While the horrific consequences of this pandemic are personal as well as medical, social, and economic, they are also ecological, and, in questing for wider meaning in the whole, also theological.

The pandemic is indeed entangled with many different dimensions but entangled in the title of this essay has a more specific meaning. It refers to the metaphorical appropriation for theological purposes of the physics concept of quantum entanglement.⁴ I will argue that quantum entanglement (non-local relational holism) helps to conceptualize the relation of God to creation in a way which supports the understanding of deep incarnation. This in turn will assist in affirming God's redemptive relationship to a suffering creation including the pandemic. Niels Henrik Gregersen states, “Deep incarnation means that the ‘divine logos’…has assumed not merely humanity, but the whole malleable matrix of materiality”⁵ (italics not mine). Divine entanglement helps conceptually clarify how deep incarnation is possible in this “matrix of materiality.” The pandemic will then be approached from the perspective of the entangled interrelationship of God and creation, particularly perceived through the cross and the cruciform nature of creation itself.

It is in this fundamental understanding of Emmanuel, God with us, that hope can be generated but only by passing through the cross of suffering endemic to life itself. The thesis of this article is that through the metaphorical appropriation of quantum entanglement, God can be understood to be ontologically entangled with the creation such that, through deep incarnation and the cross, God is present in the suffering of all creation, including the pandemic, providing redemptive hope and meaning in the face of tragic loss.

We will look first at the entangled creation before turning to evolutionary theodicy, deep incarnation and concluding with the cross and the pandemic in hope. It is only with an altered understanding of God and humanity's relation to nature that future pandemics may be more adequately addressed. The pandemic has pointed out on the micro level as has the climate crisis on the macro that humans are intimately intertwined with nature. Through these dual challenges, like in all of life on this planet, it is made undeniably clear that we are in it together and we deny this interrelationality at our own peril. The pandemic is an apokalypsis (to reveal or unveil) of the interconnectivity and interrelationality of all existence.

1 ENTANGLED CREATION

The twentieth century saw the demise of being/substance and the rise of becoming/relationality as a way of understanding physical existence at all levels of complexity.⁶ Along with relationality came the possibility of internal, and not just external, relationships in an evolutionary process of development with emergent complexity. This has been a game changer in understanding the relationship of God and the world. God and the world need no longer be modeled as two mutually independent, self-existing substances that can have only external relations, like two bouncing billiard balls. They can be internally related, mutually influencing each other like mind and body. To explicate this change, we begin by considering the model of God and the world known as panentheism before discussing quantum entanglement and the entangled creation.

1.1 Panentheism

Panentheism (not to be confused with pantheism) means that God is in the world but more than the world.⁷ The world is not divine but is totally related to the divine. Indeed, one might say that the world exists in God so that paradoxically God is always present (immanent) in the world but also more than the world (transcendent) as well.⁸ The divine is present “in, with and under” the material forms of existence but is not limited to them. Martin Luther embraced this paradox. He had a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of divine presence and employed a simple grain of wheat to illustrate this type of relationship. He observed,

How can reason tolerate that the divine majesty is so small that it can be substantially present in a grain, on a grain, over a grain, through a grain, within and without…entirely in each grain, no matter how numerous these grains may be? And how can reason tolerate that the same majesty is so large that neither this world nor a thousand worlds can encompass it and say ‘behold, there it is’?…Yet, though it can be encompassed nowhere and by no one, God's divine essence encompasses all things and dwells in all.⁹

What is being described here is an internal relationship where the world is already within God such that God does not have to be made present or injected into the world from the outside to be present (supernatural intervention) but rather is already there (non-interventionist). John B. Cobb, Jr. wrote extensively about this in an earlier work entitled God and the World.¹⁰

Philip Clayton more recently has employed what he calls the “Panentheistic Analogy,”¹¹ the relationship of God and the world understood as analogous to the relationship of mind and body, to explain this. What this means is that God can influence the affairs of the world from within without having to suspend or violate natural law, just as mind influences body without violating physical muscular processes. (For example, to think about raising and then raising one's right arm.) Indeed, natural law is one of the ways in which God may relate and direct the natural world. This is a form of being-in-relation where indeed the whole is more than the sum of its parts and there is emergent complexity which allows for new action and agency. Within this panentheistic model, as Denis Edwards points out, “Evolution takes place within God.”¹² Quantum entanglement can give further clarity to how this panentheistic interrelationality can take place.

1.2 Quantum entanglement

Quantum entanglement affirms an ongoing relatedness between two particles that have once interacted, such that by measuring one, say the spin of one interacted electron up or down, the measurement of the other can be immediately known to be the opposite no matter how far apart they are separated, even across the universe. (This is the “non-local” which is the basis for treating the whole system as a related whole, the “relational holism.”) This measurement is instantaneous so that no information, even traveling at the speed of light, could travel between them. They must therefore remain connected in some way. This is the phenomena that Einstein labeled “Spooky action at a distance.”¹³ At the initial singularity of the Big Bang, all matter and energy were entangled (interrelated), and as the universe expanded this interrelationality was maintained through the quantum vacuum. It produces what some are now calling a “holographic universe.”¹⁴ This concept of cosmic quantum entanglement could be metaphorically appropriated by theology to ontologically articulate divine omnipresence.

1.3 Ontological metaphor

In this context, such omni-relatedness makes sense. God is other than the creation by being its source but is still related and interconnected to it in its ongoing development.¹⁵ The metaphorical appropriation of entanglement gives ontological identity to the manner in which panentheism models God's relationship to the creation. There is a foundational interconnectivity between God and creation such that not only does one influence the other but they exist in a communitarian relationship. Creational existence is communal just as the trinitarian divine life is communal because it is part of the divine communitarian life.¹⁶ This relationality is constitutive of creation itself. Theologically appropriating entanglement as an ontological metaphor for this divine together-in-separation provides the basis for such communion. God can never be separated from the creation for God is entangled through the divine love that makes the creation possible in the first place. God dances (perichoreo) with the creation by being spiritually immanent within it, guiding it to increased levels of complexity through the natural processes of existence. God is lovingly entangled with the creation.

This does not, however, mean intelligent design or theological determinism. Divine agency would be part of the evolutionary process without being its sole determiner. Depending upon complexity, organisms would have a level of freedom and independent agency as well. The continuing entanglement of God with the creation is one way in which God sustains the creation from chaos, an ongoing example of divine action, of creatio continua, continuing creation.¹⁷ Creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) gives rise to a creatio continua because God remains entangled with the creation and would never abandon it. God is committed to the creation once the act of creation occurs. But what of the massive suffering and death in nature involved with evolution? Reconciling the goodness of God as creator with the suffering of evolution is called evolutionary theodicy and pushes us more firmly into the questions of the pandemic.

2 EVOLUTIONARY THEODICY

The issue of evolutionary theodicy is concisely focused by Niels Henrik Gregersen. The deep question is, “Indeed, if God's way of maintaining and developing the world of creation happens through the means of natural selection, how can the Christian belief in the mercy of God be consonant with the ruthlessness of evolutionary processes?” (Italics not mine)¹⁸ In order to make room for the creation, for the “other” within the divine life, God self-restricts (kenosis) to permit freedom in the creation but this does not mean that God is totally separate from the creation.¹⁹ God is not absent from the world but transcendently immanent in its entirety in a way that no finite limited creature can be. Christopher Southgate's work on evolutionary theodicy proves very helpful here.

2.1 Compound theodicy

The insight that Southgate works with is that questions of theodicy are of different types, such that only one explanation is not satisfactory. He proposes what he calls a “compound theodicy” involving several different approaches. In his very fine book The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil, he offers six affirmations for a compound theodicy;

(1) the affirmation that creation is good, (2) an only way argument, “An evolving creation was the only way in which God could give rise to the sort of beauty, diversity, sentience and sophistication of creatures that the biosphere now contains,” (3) that God co-suffers with “every sentient being in creation,” (4) the Cross of Christ is the epitome of this divine compassion, (5) a pelican heaven (McDaniel) where creatures “that have known no fulfillment in this life” will find it so that, “No creature should be regarded as an evolutionary expedient.” (6) A high doctrine of humanity as co-Redeemer so that humans, “have a crucial and positive role, cooperating with God in the healing of the evolutionary process.”²⁰

Southgate observes, “All evolutionary theodicy, then, should start from a version of the ‘only way’ argument, based on a developmental good-harm analysis. This was the only, or at least the best, process by which creaturely values of beauty, diversity, and sophistication could arise.”²¹ This would necessarily include the loss of species as well as generalized suffering for all biological creatures but this is the price that is paid to achieve such emergent complexity, not the result of a human “fall” which would have had to come much later in evolutionary history.²² Other affirmations including that God is a co-sufferer and that no creature is simply an “expedient” to a higher-level help to ease the impact of such evolutionary loss.

The concept of panentheism assists in explaining how this could all be taking place within God in the God–world relationship, while God is also able to transcend it and preserve the meaning and beauty that has been created. The good-harm analysis that Southgate refers to is precisely this, that overall more good than harm is produced by the evolutionary process even though it may be disastrous for distinct individuals or even species. This is where the “pelican heaven” (McDaniel) affirmation comes in so that all creatures will experience ultimate fulfillment not just the human.²³ Southgate concludes, “The given relationship of entities to God should be determinative of the way we use our God-given propensity to shape the environment.”²⁴ The massive suffering and death that is occurring with COVID-19 is an example of evolutionary theodicy in action. The virus continues to mutate (evolve) becoming more contagious and lethal. Where is God in all of this suffering? How are we to understand the relationship of God to the pandemic? Gregersen's concept of deep incarnation develops the identification of God in Christ with the whole of creation and with the suffering of all creatures and may offer a way to contextualize this loss in wider evolutionary development, providing meaning and purpose in the face of the evolutionary theodicy of the pandemic.

3 DEEP INCARNATION

Historically, in trying to understand the “Word became flesh,” (logos sarx egeneto) (John 1:14), the emphasis has been upon human flesh with an anthropocentric bias. Redemption for the rest of creation was deemphasized. Today, with environmental crises, there is a need to expand “flesh” to a more ecocentric and inclusive focus, to support redemption for all living creatures and the natural environment.

3.1 Ecological context

Regarding this anthropocentrism of Christian theology, H. Paul Santmire observes, “This was a fateful mistake. If theology is fundamentally theoanthropocentric, then the natural world will have its ultimate meaning, its raison d’être, only in terms of God and humanity, as a kind of appendix. Nature will be allotted no integrity of its own in the greater scheme of things. Nature, at best, will have instrumental meanings”²⁵ (italics not mine). We are paying the price for this position today in the ecological crises we are facing, including the pandemic.

Whether the virus emerged in a “wet market” context or escaped from an experimental lab in Wuhan, China, it still emerged from humanity seeing nature as having only instrumental value and something to be consumed, manipulated, and exploited, rather than having intrinsic value of its own. The pandemic is a horrifying example of our general exploitation of nature and represents an ecological as well as medical crisis. H. Paul Santmire argues for a more faithful attitude toward nature based on a theocosmocentric paradigm observing, “This way of thinking takes God's purposes with the whole natural world just as seriously as God's purposes with humanity in particular.”²⁶ To do this requires us to understand God identifying with creation in all its diversity and conditions, including death and suffering. This is where entangled panentheism meets deep incarnation in the ecology of creation.

3.2 Deep enfleshment

To reiterate, Gregersen's concept of deep incarnation proposes that the “flesh” (sarx) of Christ, as with all human flesh, involves the most fundamental processes of biological life and as such connects to all living creatures. That is why it is referred to as “deep,” going below the human macro level alone. For Christians this flesh is also the basis for God's identification with the suffering of humanity and the wider creation so that it holds redemptive power for all of life. Gregersen clarifies,

In this context the incarnation of God in Christ can be understood as a radical or “deep” incarnation, that is, an incarnation into the very tissue of biological existence, and systems of nature. Understood this way, the death of Christ becomes an icon of God's redemptive co-suffering with all sentient life as well as with the victims of social competition. God bears the cost of evolution, the price involved in the hardship of natural selection.²⁷

In effect, deep incarnation affirms a creatio crucis, a form of creation through the cross, and addresses the problem of evolutionary theodicy grounded in the brutality of natural selection. It is a cruciform creation, a via dolorosa as Rolston describes it, but with divine “kenosis” that need not be all it is.

3.3 Kenosis

This kenosis, “emptying,” of God into creation does not necessarily mean a withdrawal or absence of God from the world. Kenosis has often been used to discuss the Incarnation in relation to humanity but not to describe God's relation to the creation. However, there are multiple meanings for kenosis which would also allow for the God-Creation relationship. Gregersen points out that historically there are four different models for kenosis; (1) God as voluntarily abdicating, (2) God undergoes a radical metamorphosis or historization, (3) God kenotically refrains from the exercise of detailed predetermination, and (4) the model Gregersen prefers, and is assumed in this article as well, “By creating the world out of love, God neither withdraws from the world nor gives up divine power, but actualizes divine love in the history with God's beloved creatures. Kenosis is here the self-realization of who God eternally is…. The self-emptying of kenosis comes out of the divine plerosis, [fullness] and flows into the fullness of life in, with, and under the world of creation”²⁸ (Italics not mine). Only models 1 and 2 would require God's absence from the creation. In deep incarnation it means, rather, that it is not a full disclosure of who God is.

Entangled panentheism affirms this same form of kenosis by modeling the divine presence throughout creation in all its diverse and paradoxical conditions, as an entangled transcendent immanence. Here God relates to all creatures at their level of existence but is not confined to their existence. It is not pantheism. While God is revealed through nature, God is also beyond nature, hidden in the very processes of nature itself. Just as in the cross, where God remains hidden behind the masks of materiality. The creation too becomes larva Dei, the “masks of God.”²⁹ This means that while in faith one may appeal to God as Creator one cannot prove such a creation by observation of the natural world. Scientific analysis can neither prove nor disprove the presence of God in creation. In faith, however, one can be called to care for the creation and to see an intrinsic ecological ethic embedded in the theological model of panentheism.

3.4 Ecological ethic

In caring for the body of God we are also caring for our body as well. In his book Ecology at the Heart of Faith: The Change of Heart that Leads to a New Way of Living on Earth, Denis Edwards elaborates the ecological implications of a panentheistic model in some detail. Employing the understanding of deep incarnation, which has both biological and ecological implications, Edwards observes, “The cross of Christ reveals God's identification with creation in all its complexity, struggle and pain. Gregersen finds in the cross a microcosm of God's redemptive presence to all creatures that face suffering and death.”³⁰

In his latest book, Deep Incarnation: God's Redemptive Suffering with Creatures, Edwards further elaborates this understanding stating, “In a theology of deep incarnation, then, the meaning of the cross is both God's forgiving and transforming grace for human beings and God's entering freely and lovingly into the pain and the drama of the existence of all creatures. In this vision, redemption in Christ involves both forgiveness and life for human beings and God's loving accompaniment and redemptive embrace of suffering creatures”³¹ (Italics not mine). The loss to be found within the creation also impacts God as well as the creative emergent novelty of new life. It is a prime example of the entanglement of the divine with the creation, the dynamics within the body of God itself. It is an entanglement brought about by divine love.

4 ENTANGLED PANDEMIC AND HOPE

So where does this bring us in relation to the pandemic? If God is indeed entangled with a suffering creation, then the pain of evolutionary theodicy has been carried up into God even before the incarnation or even the rise of homo sapiens. Much of creaturely suffering has occurred long before the arrival of humans, with 99% of species that ever existed now extinct.³² Pandemic loss is nothing new among living species. That is why Holmes Rolston refers to life as a cruciform creation as a via dolorosa, a “way of sorrows.” It is only with the arrival of a more complex central nervous system and consciousness that this suffering could take on self-awareness and ultimately self-consciousness. Greater complexity yields greater pain but also greater joy. It is with the emergence of human self-consciousness that we get the raising of the question, Why? It is only with the arising of the possibility of self-transcendence that the questions of meaning and purpose arise.

4.1 Entangled redemptive suffering

What I have tried to develop up to this point is that God has been entangled with a suffering creation from the very beginning, working from within the evolutionary process. Such working then brings an intimate connection modeled through panentheism such that this world is within God although it does not circumscribe God. When the question of suffering in the pandemic is raised, this is brought to the level of meaning and spiritual possibilities such that matters of faith and hope are brought to bear on the suffering. It is here that the understanding of deep incarnation brings with it the intimate involvement of God through Christ in the very living cells of human flesh and all biological existence.

Such intimate involvement means that God also suffers with those who are suffering in the pain of disease and the agony of loss due to this virus. In practical terms this means that even if a person is being intubated and unconscious they are not alone. God is with them and aware of them even if they are not capable of being self-aware or aware of anything around them. Simply because one is not aware of God does not mean that God is not aware of you. It is not our awareness of God that makes God's grace effective in our lives but rather God's awareness of us!³³ This does not take away the pain or the loss but places it in a wider context of meaning and understanding such that God, as Alfred North Whitehead once said, is “the great companion - the fellow-sufferer who understands.”³⁴

For Christian theology to understand the Logos as enfleshed in the whole of creation is a way of talking about divine relationship that includes the suffering that is an inescapable part of the evolutionary process. But this struggle also produces emergent change. Natural selection not only means suffering and death; it also means change and growth. Without suffering and death there would not have been the emergence of consciousness and eventually of human beings. The Logos, entangled with life undergoing suffering and death, is also the Logos of creation providing redemption, reconciliation, and new life. Quantum entanglement may provide metaphorical assistance in articulating deep incarnation in ways that can bring hope to life caught in the inexorable vice of natural selection.

4.2 Entangled emergent hope

Entanglement affirms the presence of God throughout creation but most intimately in “enfleshment” in living sensate beings. To be enfleshed means to be entangled biologically. There is a relational connection that pervades the creation, which then intensifies with structural development and complexity. The more complex the creature the more complex the divine relationship can become. The potentiality that complexity permits allows for more divine relatedness such that a difference in level of complexity can produce a difference in level of response in regard to the depth of the relationship. While one can have a relationship with one's dog, that level of complexity does not approach the complexity of relationships one can have with one's spouse or a close friend. There are levels of emergent complexity in biological structures that also permit levels of increased complexity in relationship. God's entanglement with the creation, while universal, need not all be at the same level of complexity.

Deep incarnation then opens the possibility of these gradations of relationship at various levels of complexity in sensate existence. The physical “enfleshed” suffering of Christ is symptomatic of suffering throughout the sensate world. The Christian affirmation that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19) can then be taken quite seriously as the entangled divine redemption of God for all creation. But redemption is also related to levels of complexity and therefore to levels of suffering. Redemption is suited to the level of complexity of the organism being redeemed. Just as love is proportional to a creature's ability to express it, redemption meets the complexity of the organism in proportional fashion so that it is particular to each creature. Divine love while boundless is not “one size fits all” but is appropriate to the complexity of the organism in the relationship. Affirming God's relatedness to the suffering of all creatures does not water down the complexity of love and care that God has for the complexity of creatures at the human level.

Non-local relational holism (entanglement) also can be a helpful metaphor for understanding the presence of the Holy Spirit in the community of faith. We understand the Holy Spirit to be the divine energy (energia) animating the creation at the beginning and sustaining it in its existence, the Spiritus Creator. If change and becoming are primary, as they are now understood to be, then the divine spirit can not only be the animating force of change but also the force for the continuity of becoming of that change which results in identity. The Spirit creates and exists in community, whether human or non-human. The Spirit manifests the grace of hope and peace within the human community of faith, even in the midst of difficult situations, empowering for service in the whole world.

A cruciform creation, however, is only part of the story, for there must also be redemption for creation. Through the creative Spirit, there is also a new creation from the old, creatio nova ex vetere.³⁵ Theologian Elizabeth Johnson refers to this as “deep resurrection,”³⁶ and affirms such deep redemption in her book Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril, which seeks to save not only the human species but all species and “will redeem the whole cosmos.”³⁷ Identity is a process not a possession such that it emerges for all living beings out of the constant flux of existence. With the presence of the creative Spirit there is the possibility of community, change, redemption and hope for such identity that can allow for the preservation of the value of all creatures in God.

5 MADE FROM STARDUST

The principle of the Incarnation is that the spiritual is manifest in the material, that the “Word became flesh,” logos sarx egeneto (John 1:14). There is no radical separation between the spiritual and the physical because human beings can only exist as embodied. To be truly incarnate (incarnatus), “enfleshed,” is to acknowledge that as human beings we are never without a physical presence in space and time, the “matrix of materiality” referred to earlier. The chemical elements in “flesh,” including Jesus’ body, were forged in the thermonuclear reactions of stars and spewed across the universe through supernovae. Denis Edwards points out, “The flesh of Jesus is made from atoms born in the processes of nucleosynthesis in stars, and shaped by the 3.7 billion years of evolution on earth. Social, ecological, and cosmic relationships are not add-ons to the Word made flesh. They are constitutive of the Word made flesh.”³⁸ Robert John Russell further points out that the “… depth of the incarnation pointed to by Gregersen extends not only into the fabric of the evolutionary history of life on earth but into the very physics that underlies life and into the fine-tuned cosmology that makes life possible.”³⁹ Niels Gregersen clarifies,

“Moreover, it is not only God's incarnation that is described in the biological terms of flesh and blood, of living and dwelling. The purpose of life (redemption) is also described as a still-deeper growth in the body of Christ, who is the deep coinherence of everything that exists: ‘In him all things hold together’ (Col.1:17)" (italics original).⁴⁰

This interconnectivity is popularly expressed in the phrase humans (as are all creatures) are “made from stardust.”⁴¹ The concept of deep incarnation simply carries this idea of material incarnation to its logical and inclusive conclusion. Entanglement, understood as non-local relational holism, gives metaphorical clarity to the manner in which the materiality of incarnation can model God's relationship to the creation. Entanglement provides a physical, ontological, metaphor to illuminate God's being both in the world and beyond it at the same time while remaining deeply related, deeply enfleshed, to all the becoming of material existence.

Theologically, enfleshment may be understood as the entanglement of the divine Logos, “in, with, and under” creation in such a way that God is relationally connected to all biological creation, not just the human. Entanglement is one way of conceptualizing this interrelationality, affirming that God is continually present with all creaturely suffering, including that resulting from biological diseases such as the pandemic. Since God is so related, however, suffering and death need not be the end. The point of understanding the Incarnation as deeply entangled enfleshment is that it brings the suffering of creation into the life of the Redeemer as well as the Creator facilitating redemption and hope through the divine life.

Denis Edwards puts it this way, “In my view, the promise given in the resurrection of Christ is essential to deep incarnation. It is not enough to say that God is lovingly present with suffering, sentient creatures. Both God suffering with creatures and the resurrection promise to them are essential to deep incarnation…. Without the risen Christ there can be no theology of deep incarnation.”⁴² The presence of the risen Christ means not only the Divine taking in of creaturely suffering but also its transformation. In that transformation lies hope and the divine promise that death shall not be the end. The Christian affirmation is that Divine love is at the heart of both creation and redemption. Understanding that love as thoroughly enfleshed connects it to all sentient creatures and perhaps to the cosmos itself.⁴³

ENDNOTES

1 Rolston III, Holmes. 2001. “Kenosis and Nature.” In The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, edited by J. Polkinghorne, 43–54. London: SPCK; Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, Ch. 60.

2 The living character of viruses is an ongoing debate in microbiology. See, for example, the interesting debate article, “Are Viruses Alive?” 10 May 2016 on the Microbiology Society web site, at microbiologysociety.org.

3 Hampton, Alexander, and Annalea Rose Theissen. 2021. “Introduction: Theology and Ecology in a Time of Pandemic.”In Pandemic, Ecology and Theology: Perspectives on COVID-19, edited by Alexander J.B. Hampton. New York: Routledge. https://a.co/0iGPeNM

4 The metaphorical appropriation of concepts from different fields is common in theological method. To “carry over” (metaphero) concepts allows for the illumination of possible connections and the deepening of understanding of theological ideas. It is central to religious language itself. See the excellent book by McFague, Sallie. 1982. Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Minneapolis: Fortress. The point here is that physics is not being used to try and prove the existence of God or any other theological concept. It is a metaphorical and not a literal use. Entanglement, understood as non-local relational holism, is employed to explore the relation of God to both the incarnation and the creation. For more detailed explanation see Simmons, Ernest L. 2014. The Entangled Trinity: Quantum Physics and Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, especially Chapters 3 and 7.

5 Gregersen, Niels Henrick. 2010. “Deep Incarnation: Why Evolutionary Continuity Matters in Christology.” Toronto Journal of Theology, 26/2 (Fall): 173-187, 176. Quoted in Conradie, Ernst M. 2020. “From Deep Incarnation to Deep Divinisation?” In God in the Natural World: Theological Explorations in Appreciation of Denis Edwards, edited by Ted Peters and Marie Turner, p. 43. Adelaide: ATF Press.

6 See, for example, Polkinghorne, John. 2010. “The Demise of Democritus.” In The Trinity and the Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology, edited by Polkinghorne, John. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, Barbour, Ian. 1990. Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures Volume One. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco and Russell, Robert John, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne, eds. 2001. Quantum Mechanics: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, Vol. 5. Vatican City: Vatican Publishing and Berkeley: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.

7 “Panentheism.” 2005. In The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church Third Edition Revised, edited by F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, p. 1221. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

8 See, for example, McFague, Sallie. 1993. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress.

9 Martin Luther, WA (Weimar Ausgabe) 23.134.34-23.136.36, quoted in Johnson, Elizabeth. 2008. Quest for the Living God, p. 188. New York: Continuum.

10 Cobb, Jr., John B. 1969. Chapter Three, “The World and God.’’ In God and the World. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

11 Clayton, Philip. 2004. “Panentheism in Metaphysical and Scientific Perspectives.” In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being, edited by Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke, 81–84. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

12 Edwards, Denis. The God of Evolution, 34.

13 For more detailed discussions of quantum entanglement please see Polkinghorne, John. 2002. Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Wegter-McNelly, Kirk. 2011. The Entangled God: Divine Relationality and Quantum Physics. New York: Routledge, and Simmons, Ernest L. 2014. The Entangled Trinity: Quantum Physics and Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, especially Chapter 7 Section 3.

14 See Talbot, Michael. 2011. The Holographic Universe. San Francisco: Harper.

15 For more detailed discussions see Russel, Robert John, Nancey Murphy, and C.J. Isham, eds. 1999. Quatum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, Second Edition. Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications, and Berkeley: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.

16 See, for example, In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being, as well as Polkinghorne, ed., 2001. The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, and Moltmann, Juergen. 1993. God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God. Minneapolis: Fortress.

17 The Subject of “Divine Action” has been a major focus in the science/theology dialogue. See, for example, Polkinghorne, Peacocke, Russell, Clayton, Nancey Murphy, Tracy and Barbour among others. For a good overview of the issues and perspectives see Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, edited by Russell, Murphy and Peacocke. Berkeley: CTNS, 1995, and Clayton, Philip. 1997. God and Contemporary Science. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, Chapters. 7–8. Also Polkinghorne. 1995. “Creatio Continua and Divine Action” Science and Christian Belief 7, No. 2: 101-115, Harris, Lyndon. 1998. “Divine Action: An Interview with John Polkinghorne.” Cross Currents (Spring): 3-14 and Russell, Robert John. 1997. “Does ‘The God Who Acts’ Really Act? New Approaches to Divine Action in Light of Science.” Theology Today 54, No. 1: 43-65. Russell prefers to approach this issue of divine action from the “bottom up” employing quantum theory while Polkinghorne prefered to approach it “top down” employing Chaos theory.

18 Gregersen, Niels Henrik. 2001. “The Cross of Christ in an Evolutionary World.” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 40: 192.

19 For multiple understanding of kenosis see Gregersen, Niels Henrik. 2013. “Deep Incarnation and Kenosis: In, With, Under, and AS: A Response to Ted Peters.” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 52 No. 3 (Fall): 251-262.

20 Southgate, Christopher. 2008. The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil, 15–16. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. See also his earlier essay Southgate, Christopher. 2002. “God and Evolutionary Evil: Theodicy in the Light of Darwinism.” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 37 no. 4 (December): 803-824.

21 Southgate, 48. See also the very fine collection of essays on Southgate's proposal found in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 53:3 (2018).

22 See Southgate, Christopher. 2020. “Did the Natural World Go Wrong?” In God in the Natural World: Theological Exploration in Appreciation of Denis Edwards, edited by Ted Peters and Marie Turner, 61-75. Adelaide: ATF Press.

23 McDaniel, Jay. 1989. Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life. Louisville: John Knox Westminster.

24 Southgate, 112.

25 Santmire, H. Paul. 2020. Celebrating Nature by Faith: Studies in Reformation Theology in an Era of Global Emergency, xiv. Eugene: Cascade.

26 Santmire (2020, p. xv).

27 Ibid., also Gregerson, Niels Henrik. 2001. The Cross of Christ in an Evolutionary World.” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 40 No. 3: 205.

28 Gregersen, Niels Henrik. 2013. “Deep Incarnation and Kenosis: In, With, Under, and AS: A Response to Ted Peters.” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 52 No. 3 (Fall): 251–262, 256–257.

29 For an interesting discussion of the concept of larva Dei in Luther see the fine work by Westhelle, Vitor. 2016. Transfiguring Luther: The Planetary Promise of Luther's Theology. Eugene: Cascade Books.

30 Edwards, Denis. 2006. Ecology at the Heart of Faith: The Change of Heart That Leads to a New Way of Living on Earth, 59. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.

31 Edwards, Denis. 2019. Deep Incarnation: God's Redemptive Suffering with Creatures, 121. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis.

32 This is a commonly known percentage but for one readable summary see, Greshko, Michael, and National Geographic Staff. 2019. “What are Mass Extinctions and What Causes Them?” National Geographic, Sept. 26. See also Southgate, Groaning, Chapter One.

33 See Simmons, Ernest L. 2019. “Aging and the cross: Explorations in deep incarnation,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 58 No. 4 (Fall): 252-259.

34 Whitehead, Alfred North. 1929, 1979. Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, 351. New York: Free Press, Simon & Schuster.

35 Gregersen. The Cross of Christ, 193.

36 Johnson, Elizabeth A. 2014. Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love, 192-210. London: Continuum.

37 Johnson, Elizabeth A. 2018. Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril, 190. New York: Maryknoll.

38 Edwards, Deep Incarnation, 113.

39 Russell, Robert John. 2015. “The Way of All Flesh and the Proleptic Feather of Time.” In Incarnation: On the Scope and Depth of Christology, edited by Niels Henrik Gregersen, 332. Minneapolis: Fortress. Chapter 14.

40 Gregersen, Niels Henrik. “The Extended Body of Christ: Three Dimensions of Deep Incarnation.” Incarnation, Chapter 10, 244.

41 See, for example, Wallace, Paul. 2016. Stars Beneath Us: Finding God in the Evolving Cosmos. Minneapolis: Fortress.

42 Edwards, Deep Incarnation, 123, 125.

43 For an interesting exploration of this topic see Peters, Ted. 2020. “Life in the Cosmos: Deep Incarnation in Deep Space.” In God in the Natural World: Theological Explorations in Appreciation of Denis Edwards, edited by Ted Peters and Marie Turner, 107–138. Adelaide: ATF Press.

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