All Creation, Loved Into Existence

By Louis Canella, M.D.

How and why is it that I exist within this vast universe that surrounds me, spanning from the depths of the earth to the farthest reaches of time in the night sky? Christianity proclaims the good news that we are created and kept in existence by God, who is Love. Manifesting His infinite creativity, power and goodness, He knows and cares about each and every one of us, having made us to share in His everlasting happiness. Yet, what we know to be true in faith is so very different from the generally accepted modern materialistic and utilitarian metaphysics that has misappropriated science to make itself appear true. A world of wonders awaits to reveal itself in the contemplation of our personal human existence in the context of all creation, as seen through the lens that is Jesus Christ. All Creation, Loved into Existence delves into these mysteries with the aim of bring us closer to God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jun 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9781998454693

Louis Canella, M.D.

Doctor Louis Canella is a seventy-three-year-old retired psychiatrist who graduated from the University of Toronto School of Medicine. His life-long interests in physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, philosophy and religion led him to specialize in psychiatry, allowing him to make best use of what he had learned to help his patients with their physical, psychological and spiritual difficulties. Applying that knowledge base to deal with real-life situations and people in their suffering facilitated the marrying of science and religion. All Creation, Loved into Existence was written to broadly share some of what he has learned about the human condition in relation to God.

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Copyright © 2024 by Louis Canella, M.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-1-998454-71-6 (Hardcover)

978-1-998454-70-9 (Paperback)

978-1-998454-69-3 (eBook)

St Isaac of Nineveh: In love did He bring the world into existence; in love does He guide it during this its temporal existence; in love is He going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of Him who has performed all things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.

Wisdom 11:23-26 (NRSVCE): But you are merciful to all, for you can do all things, and you overlook people’s sins, so that they may repent. For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made, for you would not have made anything if you had hated it. How would anything have endured if you had not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved? You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Overview

God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth

How We Come to Know the Universe Scientifically

The Bible: The Unfolding of Creation

The Bible: God Reaches Out to Fallen Humanity

The Bible: Salvation

Reconciling Scripture and Science: Living Things

Reconciling Scripture and Science: The Mind

Reconciling Scripture and Science: The Soul

The Person

The Person and God: Christianity

The Person and God: Modern and Postmodern Views

The Person and God: A Universal Relationship

Reality as Information Conceived in Love by God

God Is Love

Epilogue

Appendix

Introduction

What follows is a collection of thoughts concerning the one thing we can be truly certain of: the unfathomable mystery of existence. The concepts and beliefs that are presented have evolved over the span of my life, influenced by family, the teachings of the Church and secular educational system, as well as a variety of books on science, psychology and religion. They’ve developed through the ups and downs of relationships that have come, gone and remain. Of special note is the impact of the personal connection with patients in my practice as a psychiatrist.

My search for existential answers began after I hit puberty—or should I say, after it hit me. Whenever it was, whatever words were spoken, a particular moment stands out in my memory: that of my mom sitting down with me to have a serious talk. It was unusual for her to do so. She was, in those days, generally bearing the weight of the world, with our encounters boiling down to telling me what to do or reproaching me for something I had failed to do. This was something else: very awkward. I could feel the strain on her face. With some effort, she managed to ask if I knew about whatever euphemism took the place of the word sex. At that point, talking over her to try to end her ordeal, I tried to play it cool, waving her off, pretending that of course I knew about such things, all the while feeling quite embarrassed. As my performance took effect and my mom left the room, I reflected on what she had said just a moment earlier. It was something about where babies come from. Curiosity replaced avoidance, but it was too late to call her back now.

"Where do babies come from?" The wonder and horror of my personal existence emerged from the depths, as it had and would continue to do throughout my life, urging me toward greater understanding and guiding my choices to where—eventually, by twists and turns—I became a physician specializing in psychiatry and had my own family. What are the facts of life, beyond the specifics of reproduction and sexual behaviour? What we know in terms of our physical and psychological nature does not address the reality of one’s own personal existence within the human family of so many billion individuals, each one unique and irreplaceable, each one destined to die as surely as having been born.

We have access to a vast database of thoughts, philosophies, beliefs and opinions that have been accumulated over the millennia, and we interpret these individually and collectively according to whatever our own perspective is in the context of those shared within our society. While there is much knowledge and wisdom available to us providing a basis for the following discussions, the overall impression of what is out there can be overpowering and confusing. Global communication today offers us a multitude of widely different opinions and versions of reality. The passage of time will offer a better perspective, but at the moment we appear to be building an intellectual version of the Tower of Babel, through the sharing of our various visions of reality in hope of collectively reaching the heights of truth, with the end result being one of diverse media rife with babble and conflict. In that respect, this book could be just one more voice adding to the cacophony. It is my hope, however, that taking a God-centred approach, in contrast with today’s postmodern secular view, will provide the reader (as it has myself) with a better sense of who we are in relation to universal order, and primarily assist in the deepening of one’s relationship with God.

How we see ourselves and the world around us, for over a century now, has been profoundly influenced by science. With its area of study dedicated to the natural world, that which transcends nature’s physical structure lies beyond its scope. What is not amenable to empirical methods includes the objective realities of beauty, truth, goodness and being. From a scientific perspective, these are categories of phenomena that essentially exist in the eye of the beholder, and as such can therefore be operationally defined and quantified. By means of questionnaires, for example, the opinions and attitudes of members belonging to a defined population can be statistically analyzed, providing information about individuals and societies. What cannot be discerned is the intrinsic value and reality of the transcendentals eliciting those feelings, emotions or beliefs. The truth that science reveals is that which can be proven experimentally. The concept of being, rather than referring to a transcendental, under that rubric would have to do with the material foundations of what can be observed by the senses, or alternatively, how a person would have come to be who they are psychologically. Empirical methodology requires a detached, operational and utilitarian approach; such attitudes significantly impact the relationship one has with the object of one’s research. It is clear that embracing the scientific perspective of universal order while neglecting other modes of understanding ultimately results in a restricted worldview that sees us as essentially physical beings, with all life emerging and flourishing from simply the interactions of material substances. As the cultural zeitgeist has drifted into this viewpoint, embedded in our minds, for example, is the ubiquitous diagram showing what is believed to be the evolution of humankind, an image of the presumed direct hereditary link of successive generations of primates, from Dryopithecus to Homo sapiens. Such interpretations arise when our understanding rests primarily on the material evidence of differences in the physical structure of organisms that have been present on earth over time, as revealed today in the fossil record. From such images and concepts, a pseudoscientific mythos has emerged, informing us about who we are and where we come from, all the while falling short in its descriptions of humanity in terms of our extraordinary psychological and, especially, spiritual nature. While we may see ourselves as more learned today than those of the past, knowing more facts that enable us to manipulate nature, the risk is that we fall deeper into ignorance by adhering to reductionistic and nihilistic attitudes that hurt us spiritually, and lead us away from God.

All Creation, Loved into Existence sets down some of the thinking that underlay my approach toward patients who came to me with their troubles. As a physician specializing in psychiatry, I dealt with the physical, the psychosocial and the spiritual factors that contributed to their condition, ever mindful that I was dealing not with an illness but with a person, in their suffering and their joys. Having now retired, I felt it important to pass on how I understand our existential reality as a beloved unity of body, mind and spirit. Essentially, this book borrows from Christianity—more specifically Catholic theology (since of the various denominations it is what I know best)—as well as from philosophy and science to describe the ontological and temporal structure of the universe with humankind as its crown, centred on God, who is Love. It addresses our being here, the meaning and value of human existence, why in a universe grounded in Love, we suffer, and how healing is possible. I hope to highlight the relational nature of everything in existence, God’s seal on His creation, and especially that of our complex psychophysical spiritual being, created in the image of the one God, who is Love, Truth, Beauty and Existence itself as perfect relationality in the community of divine persons that is the Trinity.

Overview

About our journey through life, it has seldom been spoken as clearly as in Ecclesiastes 3: For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; . . . a time to mourn, and a time to dance. Encountering moments of joy and harmony, others that challenge and disappoint us, we try for the most part to conduct ourselves in a manner that will bring us some degree of happiness. But there are times when everything is too much; life becomes too difficult, too painful. Sometimes, we bring it upon ourselves, by accident or falling victim to some self-destructive demonic psychological complex.

The Lord’s Prayer sums up very well what we would wish for to make us happy: to praise God and express our desire that all creation participate in His love, that we be allotted enough for our daily needs, to be forgiven for what we’ve done, while at least voicing our desire to forgive those who have harmed us, to ask that we not be put to the test and ask for His help in our struggles with the difficulties that we encounter in life. We are blessed when we can live our lives in that manner, thankful for what we have and with love in our hearts.

The teacher, later in the chapter of Ecclesiastes adds, "All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again." Beyond the issues that arise in conducting our day-to-day lives—at work, at home in our marriage and with family, in our dealings with neighbours and participation within the greater economic and political society of which we are a part—are those that typically surface when things are very much not going right, when we have a serious encounter with a real or potential loss that shakes our foundations. These situations confront us with the nonbeing that defines our finite existence: the transient nature of everything we possess, especially our own lives. We try to make sense of things as they are: How and why do I exist? Within this mind-blowingly vast universe, as one among so much and so many of us, what is the significance and meaning of this speck of existence that I am? And what about suffering? Our minds reach out to find meaning to our lives. From ancient times, philosophers and religious teachers have provided various insights into the mysteries of goodness, truth, beauty, love and the suffering that emerges in their absence.

From Christianity we learn: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.¹

Sacred Scripture offers hope, revealing aspects of God’s nature and His relationship with humankind. The Church teaches that God is the one Creator of everything, and most importantly, He is Love. Divine love is not a feeling, although its reality is joyous. God exists as three eternal, divine persons, united in perfect relationality—a community of one substance, not three. For the most part, this is to be taken on faith since God is ineffable and we are mere creatures finite in our capacities, and additionally in a state of alienation from the Truth as a result of original sin. Once accepted, the truths proclaimed by the Church do make ever greater sense, but what will be ultimately known and obvious when face-to-face with God, has to be at any moment accepted and pieced together as best we can, from what He has revealed.

We understand that within the most holy relationship that is the Triune Godhead, the Father—the First Person—begets the Son—the Word of God, the Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity—with the two joined in one Holy Breath, who is the Third Person. It is from that Ground that creation is brought forth. All existence—the material, the psychological and spiritual—is said to be from the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. The Word of God, the Logos, underlies the order that makes up the heavens and physical universe, revealing to us the Father. In time, to save us from perdition, He became one of us in Jesus Christ, the visible image of the Father, and the Way for us to enter into the very Heart of God. The Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, has been associated with the image of a dove, as a blowing wind, as tongues of fire descending from the heavens, granting us His spiritual gifts and acting as our advocate on earth.

These beliefs, proclaimed by the Roman Catholic Church, rest on faith in the revelation of the Word of God in Scripture and tradition. The magisterium, whose name is derived from the Latin word for teacher, magister, provides interpretations of the faith within the worldview of a particular age, to guide the Church and its individual members in our personal relationship with God.

We are here referring to God as a He which may give a misguided impression that He is an object, a creature rather than the transcendent Ground of all being, to whom we exist in relation. This misunderstanding is expressed in questions such as, Who created God? or in the Pastafarian parody of religion, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. As Love, God is perfect relationality to which we, who are created in His image, point. Our existence is relational and a representation of He who makes everything real and to whom we are able to relate, and we do so not merely intellectually, but in the exercise of our capacity to love, to will the good of the other. It is in that love that we enter into union with all humankind as the mystical body of Christ, through whom we come to know God. We are asked to love Him, to place God above all that is good because He is Goodness, Beauty, Truth and Life itself. He is not so much beautiful as He is the beauty that we can appreciate, and whose absence, we suffer. He does not so much exist as He is Existence itself, which as it turns out is synonymous with Love and Truth.

In quite dramatic contrast, a different picture of ourselves and our place in the universe has developed from the natural sciences—or rather, their misapplication in the mistaken use of scientific theories to address metaphysical questions. Although they offer remarkable insights into the workings of the world, permitting the development of technologies such as those that enable us to communicate here today, empirical methods applied to physical and psychological phenomena are blind to what is spiritual: the reality of being and other transcendentals.

In terms of the physical universe, what we have surmised looking out into space—and therefore, in time—is that the universe, as it appears, has gone through a series of sequential transformations, occurring in a matter of seconds and over billions of years, whereby the galaxies, planets and eventually life on earth developed from an initially created formless energy within a growing field of time and space. A material view of how everything came into being would suppose that there exist eternal laws of nature that not only maintain the universe, but initially set everything in motion, manifesting themselves onward from the big bang, shaping the universe as we know it today. The order that exists would have to include more than what exists in any particular moment, determining the development of the universe in time. It would make possible the eventual emergence of humankind, with all the qualities that we possess, those that have allowed us to transform the earth and, here, today, make possible this communication.

What has brought us into being must be greater than ourselves, possessing at least the order which makes us human. It must transcend our personhood, since we cannot bring ourselves into existence. It would be someone we call a deity. Since science provides only explanations for what matter does, the order that the laws describe cannot be their cause. Matter has somehow come into existence ontologically, as a layering of interactions from the quantum level to complex organic molecules that occurred in time. Something that does not exist cannot bring itself into being, since it does not exist to then create itself. If we are to assume that the laws that govern the behaviour of matter were present at the point when everything was in the form of a singularity, it is not clear how it could exist before there was time and space, before the appearance of the four fundamental forces of nature and even the smallest, most elementary particles. That organizing principle that brought this universe into existence in its present form would have been external to what was present at the very beginning, giving shape to what would follow. It would have been transcendent to what existed, manifesting itself in time as growing complexity in material structures and interactions, leading to the development of the psychological realm and, ultimately, humanity. What existed above the primordial waters of material chaos shaped them into the universe we know today. Since we did not bring all this into existence, that transcendent reality remains above us as the Source of all there is.

Many do believe in the existence of a solely material reality, satisfied that it is what science has revealed. But to be clear, this is not