The Unbearable Wholeness of Being

This book takes up the themes of the previous one using the thought of Teilhard de Chardin as a springboard. The author is a Senior Fellow in Science and Religion at Georgetown University and is exceptionally well informed in scientific, philosophical and theological terms. She begins by analysing the decentring process following the demise of mediaeval theology and the rise of a mechanistic universe. Her discussion of wholeness and nature includes the work of David Bohm on the implicate order, as well as systems biology and holons as we try to go beyond the mechanistic metaphor. Her vision is a journey towards wholeness and love and she argues that we need a new evolutionary vision of God, quoting not only Teilhard but also Paul Tillich and Raimon Panikkar. Her theology is more traditional with respect to the cross as a symbol of kenosis (emptying), vulnerability and transformation. Perhaps the most important insight is her analysis of the breakdown between knowing and loving, also extensively discussed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his seminal Gifford Lectures, Knowledge and the Sacred. She would like to see this link reforged, and defines wisdom as knowledge deepened by love. This is an inspiring vision quite at odds with the impersonal and mechanistic prospect of trans-humanism with its emphasis on manipulation and control and a transition from the I-Thou relationship (Martin Buber) to the I-Phone link. The intimacy of I-Thou is surely of a different and vastly more significant order. It is a worthy and inspiring goal to reconnect love with knowledge in the pursuit of wisdom.