Everything Is Relational [002]

God, as the Creator of the universe, is the bedrock idea of whatever one can deduce about the world. Everything operates according to relationship. In support of this concept, consider the nature of relationships as observed within the physical and natural sciences. [1]

Understanding God as the unifying agent holding all things together is not a pantheistic reduction that God is in embedded in every little thing, but an acknowledgment that despite all degree of scientific rigor, there are unexplainable natural and philosophical realities best explained by the existence and activity of a supernatural God."       ~Rob Still 

Iain McGilchrist argues that all created things, all matter, and all natural forces are intrinsically relational. In his landmark study integrating how brain function, scientific inquiry and human philosophy interact, entitled The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (London: Perspectiva Press, 2021), McGilchrist theorizes that the operating system of relationship is the underlying drive or force which precedes everything—every relation, event, or process. It’s all about relationships. [2]

The imminent British physicist and Christian apologist John Polkinghorne writes in his treatises on Quantum Mechanics (Vatican City/Berkley 2001) and further in Quarks, Chaos and Christianity (Crossroad, NY 2017) that within the structure of sub-atomic relationships is an open system with space for divine action between complex dynamical systems. A web of relationships interconnects all existence. [3]

Richard Swinburne argues that based on scientific empirical data, the existence of God is a rational explanation for everything we observe. Swinburne advocates there are good arguments for the existence of a personal relational God based on this evidence. [4] This evidence includes …

These signposts point to a God who is essentially relational in the broadest possible meanings of the term. I agree with these and other scholars [such as …] that attribute God as the connecting factor holding together and affecting every natural sphere of relationship. 

The apostle Paul, describing Christ in Colossians 3:17, writes that "in him all things hold together" meaning that the Triune God is the "controlling, cohesive force of the universe" (Amplified Bible translation). Understanding God as the unifying agent holding all things together is not a pantheistic reduction that God is in embedded in every little thing, but an acknowledgment that despite all degree of scientific rigor, there are unexplainable natural and philosophical realities best explained by the existence and activity of a supernatural God.

1 Lydia Jaeger, “Against Physicalism-Plus-God: How Creation Accounts for Divine Action in Nature's World,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 29: no. 3, Article 4 (2012): 305.

2 Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (London: Perspectiva Press, 2021), 12.

3 See John Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos & Christianity, 2nd ed. (NewYork: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2017); John Polkinghorne, Science and Providence: God’s Interaction with the World (London: Templeton Foundation Press, 2005), 34–36; Robert J. Russell et al., Quantum Mechanics: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City/Berkeley: Vatican Observatory/CTNS, 2001); John Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven: Yale U.P., 2003).

4 Richard G. Swinburne, Is There A God? rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 2.