On all the key issues in spirituality:
the equality of men and women/
the harmony of body and soul/
the holiness of being/the goodness of humans/
the compatibility of mysticism and prophecy
Meister Eckhart exceeded the Aristotelian Thomas Aquinas
and so Eckhart was definitely not a Neo-Platonist
as he is often portrayed – he sought the unity of opposites –
the unity of Heaven and Earth.
But Newtonian physics separated all things –
and thinking of matter composed of hard separate atoms
impacted our view of self – the individual against community
and our view of Spirit – as somehow opposed to material science
and our view of nature – as a product to be exploited for gain –
the result has been massive alienation
from self/God/nature.
The Jewish world of Jesus thought of all things
as created/hierarchical/anthropocentric/
governed by fixed laws with a fixed beginning and fixed end.
But modern evolutionary physics sees reality
as a dynamic interplay of chance/law/interconnection –
Aristotle’s fixed reality of matter and form
has been deconstructed by relativity and quantum mechanics
into a never-ending/interconnected/flow
of energy and information.
The creative union of God and matter
is not a metaphysical doctrine as much as a
pragmatic explanation of the universe –
the religious paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
had an innate tendency/power to see God
not apart from the physical world
but in it/through it/as it.
The Kingdom/Queendom/Kindom/Presence of God
is within us and all around us
so we do not have to die
to get to the Pearly Gates
(owned, conspirists claim, by Bill Gates –
therefore the “Gates of Heaven”)
we only have to be fully alive with God
in this present spiritual/material world.
Intelligent Christian Spirituality 