The Emergent Universe: Our Sacred Story

Course Description

Our Christian tradition has its origin in and takes its direction from the universe through its 14 billion year history. This course offers a way of learning the story and understanding the process through which life emerges and unfolds through time and space as sacred story and revelatory process. It invites participants to immerse themselves in contemporary discoveries into the emergent universe in order to appreciate the wonder of the story and the splendor of the divine creativity that inspires and sustains it. The course will also consider the story of the earth as sacred history, attending to the mystique and numinous dimensions of the life community and to the urgency of the ecological issue, with an eye to discerning its implications for the physical, psychic, and spiritual dimensions of our lives.

Course Objective

By the end of this course, it is hoped that participants can more readily discern the divine source of creativity and generativity within the unfolding story of creation and grasp the sacred dimension and theological significance of this long and fascinating evolutionary process.

Course Goals

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• appreciate the sacred dimension of story;
• discern the sacred dimension and significance of the universe story, making correlations between the new story and various creation stories;
• identify and describe the sequence of crucial transformative events which constitute the story of our expanding, emergent universe;
• relate and describe the evolutionary process as our comprehensive sacred story, recognizing and responding to its revelatory insights and “instruction”;
• propose extensions and/or revisions of traditional theological interpretations and emphases such as grace, creation, community, faith, redemption, salvation history, and morality; and
• appreciate and articulate the formation and formative power of the earth as a unique chapter of the sacred story.

Required Readings

Berry, Thomas. The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1990. ISBN # 0-871-5662-22.

–––. “Twelve Principles for Reflecting on the Universe.” Appendix A of this syllabus.

Ferris, Timothy. The Whole Shebang. New York: Simon and Schuster (Touchstone), 1998. ISBN # 0-6848-3861-3.

Swimme, Brian. The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996. ISBN # 15-707-505-80.

Swimme, Brian, and Thomas Berry. The Universe Story. 1992. San Francisco: Harper, 1994. ISBN # 006-250-8350.