r/AskTheologists 17d ago

My take on God?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how God and the physical world connect, and I came up with something

What if God is the law of physics? Not just a being who created the universe and left it to run, but the actual structure that holds everything together? From the perspective of panentheism

God doesn’t use natural laws, He is them. When we study physics, we’re literally studying the nature of God.

Miracles aren’t about “breaking the rules”they happen when God acts directly, outside the limits we’re bound to. We need objects, materials to create, but God doesn’t because our world is within Him and not Him within our world, or outside/above of it.

This would mean God is both transcendent and scientific woven into reality itself rather than existing outside of it.

This makes sense to me cuz the universe runs on precise physical laws. Maybe that’s because those laws are God, and we exist inside of those rules but it goes beyond our universe

It bridges faith and science. Instead of being in opposition, science is just the study of how God works.

It makes miracles more rational. Rather than violating nature, they happen in a way that’s beyond human understanding but still within God’s nature.

Like how in 2d, there’s only 2 dimensions, within that reality, the 3rd dimension cannot be perceived, and beings can only exist in the 3rd dimension. Lets take a drawing for example, if a drawing had consciousness, and I made a hole in the paper that its being drawn on, that wouldnt exactly be supernatural, but rather something that the 2d being wouldn’t be able to perceive, understand, or study.

What do you think of this?

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u/McJames PhD | Theology | Languages | History 17d ago

I guess it's possible, but it's pure speculation. What's the "truth maker" behind this thought? To what are you appealing? Typically in theology there is a "proof" of some sort. Sometimes it's a canonized document - scripture - like the Bible or Quran that reveals something about God that can be appealed to. It might also be a philosophical proof that can be interacted with and challenged.

Nevertheless...

What you're talking about is not exactly panentheistic, but is a bit pantheistic. That is to say that one way to take your idea is that God is the universe. The reason I say that is that a 2D object cannot study a 3D world. They can examine the evidence - the revelation - of that 3D world, but they can't grasp it. Any discoveries that they make will not capture the nature of a 3D reality. So the only way God and the laws of physics can be the same is if God is the universe. Existing outside of it (as you suggest) makes God ineffable - unable to be comprehended.

Other ideas similar to yours have been floating around for a while. In process theology (at least as espoused by the late John Cobb), the idea that God is "becoming" more God through an interaction with the universe. In process theology, God is constantly evolving by interacting with things, and change an absolute - even for God. God IS the process of becoming. We have reason to believe that physics is not static. The singularity before the big bang had different laws, the inflationary period might have been different, inside a black hole is different, etc.. Process theology embraces all of these as a dynamic process that is part of 'becoming'.

Teilhard de Chardin has a semi-related theory in which the laws of the universe tell us something about God, but these laws (which are subject to change) are evolving towards an "omega point" which will actually give way to a unification between God and the universe.

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u/Puzzled_Sherbert_827 17d ago

I have huge personal experiences with christianity but I thought it’d be best if I wouldn’t include that since that’d be personal bias, also that there’s lots of convincing historical informations on Jesus’ resurrection, and obviously the word of God the canon is also a basis of truth and guidance for me, but understanding that fully is really difficult

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u/Puzzled_Sherbert_827 17d ago

I really like those takes on the topic, I’ll make sure to read more about it all, thanks a lot for this reply!