Medieval Thoughts On A Monday

[highlyeccentric]

There are four seasons in the year, in which the Sun... tempers the globe... according to the universal solicitude of divine wisom, so that by not always remaining in the same place, it does not devastate the Earth's lovely vesture by its devouring heat. -The Venerable Bede, in "The Reckoning of Time"

Following on from yesterday's exercise in medieval thought- where one focuses on any area of the body besides the head as the seat of one's mind- today, let us think about the universe. The big shift, as I'm finding it, between medieval cosmology and modern, is not the development of the heliocentric solar system. I think that's a just a part of the process by which we have come to concieve of the universe as random.

We no longer ask why does the universe do what it does?
and we no longer answer because the earth is a nice place to live, and everything is designed to keep it that way. For one thing, we're becoming aware that the earth might not stay a nice place to live!
We can't answer that question anymore. We can't even ask it. We can ask why certain parts of the universe act the way they do, and it turns out they act like that because of mysterious things called forces and quantum. The earth goes around the sun because of gravity, and it's miraculous that it ended up in a good place for human life.

I don't know about other (sane) christians, but i have never had an image of big shiny God plonking the earth down and making the universe go just for our benefit. My God is rather more like a... actually, i don't know what he's like. What kind of being, aside from God, sets a whole huge universe in motion? A long causal chain which created stars and galaxies and planets... and along the way, a series of tiny, minutely accurate coincidences- gravity set at the right levels, star at the right size, no random asteroids, all of that- were so finely calibrated as to create the planet earth, and a long succession of evolution. Now, all of that looks like it was done for our benefit, but if i believed that then it would be simpler to stick with Bede's version. Equally, it could be for the benefit of the cockroach. Probably is.
(And despite all that, I can and will sing God Version 1.0 with much enthusiasm. *hums* I don't believe in a watchmaker above- set this world going but now is not involved, who from a distance is watching as we fall- I believe in Jesus God who suffers with us all! Ah, gotta love the dichotomies of faith. And Robin Mann choruses.)

A thousand years ago, my theology would be unthinkable. It's a product of our constant modern awareness that the universe is big and we are tiny. It makes it rather strange to try to concieve of Bede's universe. The mere fact of its mundocentrism (is that a word? it is now) doesn't go near to encapsulating it.