Water and Spirit (Part 2 of 4)
Baptism and the Meaning of Matter
And the waters prevailed beyond measure upon the earth: and all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. (Gn 7:19)
In order to feel the full force of the questions raised by the symbol of water, we need to reflect critically on our habitual way of dealing with this reality, which we have absorbed from the surrounding culture. The relationship of our civilization to the twofold symbolism of water is historically unique. Ancient thinkers and religious leaders sought to live in harmony with the cycles of growth and decay, or at least to ward off total chaos through requisite sacrifices and rituals, when they did not condemn the finite corruptible world altogether in the pursuit of pure spirituality. As suggested in the first part, the Bible takes a different approach, but it still recognizes the inseparability of the two meanings of water within the created world, as force of destruction and as fountain of life. New possibilities began to emerge, however, from the unprecedented degree of social, spiritual and intellectual order arising from the synthesis of Christianity with the Roman spirit of rationally ordered conquest in the Europe of the high middle ages. It began to seem plausible that the whole cosmos could be subject to autonomous and definitive human domination through persistent rational investigation. By the end of the nineteenth century, the spectacular results achieved through these efforts seemed to have fully vindicated the original impulse, relegating the dual symbolism of water to the realm of outdated superstition. The subsequent century, however, exposed the hubris of this conclusion, both on a theoretical and a practical level.
On the theoretical level, 20th-century physics seemed to be making steady progress towards the sublime goal of reducing all of reality to a set of fundamental symmetries. These self-evident elements of order would generate the necessary mathematical rules that govern the motion of every part of the universe. The deepest truth about the cosmos would essentially be the One of Parmenides, with time and change as mere epiphenomena, illusions resulting from our limited knowledge. A serious challenge to this project was already implicit in the theories of Ludwig Boltzmann, who re-introduced the ancient insight about the tendency towards disorder as a principle within physics itself. Soon afterwards, quantum mechanics placed disorder at the very heart of the most fundamental level of physical theory. Nevertheless, the vision persisted, with an army of theorists devising ways of eliminating disorder from quantum mechanics, while attempting to relegate statistical mechanics to a mere “engineering” discipline. It is only in the past decade that the research program of perfect order has grown visibly stale, while the physics of disorder in the tradition of Boltzmann is recognizably the place where the discipline is most fully alive.
On the practical level, in the realm of technology, the apparent triumph and sudden reversal of 20th-century progress were more publicly apparent. The central symbol of this process is the atomic bomb. This achievement is founded on the rational conquest of the hidden order of nature at its deepest level, providing the most tangible confirmation of the modern scientific program. But at the same time, the bomb is a machine for multiplying disorder on an unprecedented scale, eventually supplying man with the capacity to annihilate all life from the surface of the planet. This sudden reappearance of disorder and death at the pinnacle of the technological conquest proved an immense shock to many philosophers and scientists, and gave new force to the pre-existing critiques of the technocratic ideology. More recently, these critiques have taken on a powerful and socially effective symbolic form in the narrative of global warming/climate change. This movement has found its way back to the primordial symbol of water, presenting the permanent reality of disorder in terms of the mighty and perilous force of the sea. Continuing to ignore this reality, it is said, will cause the sea to rise, repeating the divine vengeance wreaked upon the world in the time of Noah.
The twentieth century thus restored the dark paradox of water to its ancient primacy. But after the long years of striving for its elimination, the intellectual and spiritual resources for coming to terms with this reality have been lost. For this reason, many thinkers and public authorities continue to desperately close their eyes to this seismic revelation, pretending to reduce every crisis to another technical problem. This leads to countless absurdities, such as plans for reversing climate change by spraying massive quantities of sulfur dust into the upper atmosphere (stratospheric aerosol injection), as if the global climate system were sufficiently well understood to be rationally engineered. But the futility of this approach ultimately seems to leave violence as the only option, with the wealthy and powerful striving to organize the world in a way that shields them from disorder by transferring its effects onto everyone else.
It is precisely the growing consciousness of this aporia that puts us in an optimal position to understand and appreciate anew the Biblical teaching on water, especially as synthesized and fulfilled in the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.