I have been reading a fascinating book by Pavel Florensky called At the Crossroads of Science and Mysticism. This got me thinking about the deep mysteries of the universe, the many ways we discover and know things around us, the impossibilities, mysteries, and riddles of life all around us. There has been an unfortunate divide between science and people of faith. We have tried to split and separate the world of nature and the world of the Spirit. For too long we have tried to pit logic, reason, and Greek philosophy against things we can't or don't understand.
No matter how many Christian philosophers and theologians try to explain the mystery of the Trinity and the incarnation, they will always seem like mathematical absurdities and impossibilities to some people. Christian mystics have a way of breaking pass the impasse between both of these ways of discussing reality but there have been way to few who have stood in the gap or have tried to mend the broken bridge between these two competing viewpoints.
The interesting advances in science is it too must now deal with mystery, paradox, and what seems impossible or contradictory. Whether the scientist is studying the smallest atom or the largest galaxy, things do not fit neatly into rational logical patterns. Electrons can be "here" and "there" at the same time. Back holes and neutrinos and even the chaos theory brings challenges of unpredictability and mystery into the equation. Logical contradictions like matter and anti-matter not canceling each other out and light as both a wave and particle still does not make sense to minds that want their brains to figure everything out.
The answers to all these complexities and riddles is not reductionism or separation but a holistic approach that combines nature with spirit, mystic with theologian. When we discover that the real excluded middle has been God all along who is both the Creator and sustainer of the both worlds of nature and spirit then reality begins to line up even if our minds can not fully comprehend it. We enter into oneness with our Creator and riddles become places we celebrate and laugh with the universe.
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