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namic environment which possesses it own autonomous character, grounding the autonomous
character of the persons and communities with which God establishes relationships.
And furthermore it establishes our solidarity with the rest of creation – we
are very much part of it, and radically dependent upon it, not isolated from it, as we
sometimes think.
Fifthly, there is the anthropic principle – there is some indication that the universe has
been fined-tuned for life and consciousness. This can be explained in an intermediate
scientific way by considering our own fine-tuned universe as one of a collection of billions
or even trillions of other universes generated by the same or a connected series of quantum
processes. However, this fine-tuning, just a existence and order, requires an ultimate
explanation which transcends the natural sciences. On a closely related issue, though
cosmic purposefulness cannot be unambiguously discerned within the framework of
the natural sciences, the data provided by them is consistent with such purposefulness.
We cannot conclude to that scientifically, but we certainly cannot rule it out, either!
Sixthly, from the point of view of Christianity, we can say, with George Ellis 3 , that the
universe has been constructed precisely so that self-sacrificing love of persons and generous
self-empyting leading to reconciliation and union with God and with one another
are of primary concern and importance. If that is the priority, then the universe should
be constructed the way it has, even with pain and suffering, and death.
Seventh, the harmony between the crucial interplay of death and life in Nature, with
the pain and suffering that entails, and the mystery of death and life given meaning and
significance in the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The “signum crucis” is writ
large throughout nature and finds its ultimate significance and meaning in Christ.
The Incarnational appreciation of Christianity finds God and God’s presence and
action in things and situations and processes as they are – in all that happens on simple
levels and on more complex levels. And the sciences help reveal things as they are, in
their inter-relationalities and dynamisms. Christianity strongly resists placing God’s action
beyond matter, transience and time. God’s action is precisely in what is concretely
manifested to us in Nature and in Community. But its full significance and meaning is
only revealed in Christ and in what has been promised and what is being fulfilled in his
Death and Resurrection.
3 GEORGE F. R. ELLIS, “The Theology of the Anthropic Principle,” in Quantum Cosmology and the
Laws of Nature: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, edited by ROBERT JOHN RUSSELL, NANCEY MUR-
PHY and C. J. ISHAM, Vatican Observatory Publications, Vatican City State, and Center for Theology and
the Natural Sciences, Berkeley, CA, 1993, pp. 367-405.