A Quantum Leap

In the good old school days of physics, waves were waves, and particles were particles. Classical physics was deterministic in nature--given the exact positions and velocities of all particles at a given time, one could calculate the future (and past) positions and velocities of all particles at any other times. It operated based on certain assumptions about reality...assumptions that would prove to be off base when classical physics began to be applied to the atomic level in the late 1800's. Models of atomic vibrations were supposed to look a certain way based on classical theory, but weren't, and no one knew why. When Max Planck discovered that a multiplier of a base frequency (h) could be applied to atomic vibrations in whole number multiples (but not fractional, as was previously thought), it opened the door to what would later be known as quantum theory.

Unlike classical physics, quantum physics is not deterministic, but probabilistic.  It accepts a certain amount of uncertainty. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal pointed out the shortcomings of classical determinism at the sub-atomic level. You can measure an electron's position, but in doing so you destroy the possibility of measuring its momentum, and vice-versa. You have to accept that the combination of position and momentum is uncertain and cannot be measured simultaneously. This 'quantum indeterminacy' (QI) is the necessary incompleteness in the description of a physical system.

The quantum understanding of light, then, accepts a contradictory proposition--that light is both a particle (which has mass) and a wave (which has none).  How can light be both a wave and a particle? The American theoretical physicist Richard Feynman called it "the only real mystery" in science.


What does this mumbo-jumbo have to do with anything, you might ask? The funny thing is, it has to do with EVERYTHING. The implications bleed out into disciplines outside the realm of physics--epistemology, philosophy, theology--challenging the brash and simplistic assumptions we hold about the nature of objective reality and material existence. As Feynman stated with regards to the proposition of light as both a particle and a wave, "While we can tell how it works, we cannot make the mystery go away by 'explaining' how it works."

I think this kind of scientific humility of making room for mystery, of codifying a principal of uncertainty and, to a degree, paradox, finds itself at home in biblical theology. 2,000 years ago believers were interpreting the natural world in light of Revelation. They had no means to study the sub-atomic, but viewing the natural world through the eyes of faith was like wearing a kind of 'quantum glasses.' That which existed beyond the material realm of existence, could be both simultaneously known (in the light of Revelation) and had to be accepted as mystery. It was quantum by nature. Jesus affirmed the place of paradox--a kind of spiritual 'quantum indeterminancy' in Christian belief--weaving it through stories and parables, and manifesting itself most clearly in the mystery of the Incarnation.

The metaphysical reality of an eternal God taking on flesh, crashing through time and space to live among us as a man at a finite point in history, makes room for that which cannot be rationally reconciled. Classical Judaic determinism of adherence to the law as the predictable trajectory of salvation was disrupted by Christ crucified, a "stumbling block to the Jews" (1 Cor 1:23), as the means of salvation for those who believed.

God's own trinitarian nature in a communion of persons, as well, challenges even classical notions of monotheism at the time.  The hashing out of the nature of the Godhead in ecumenical councils (and among heresies) in the early Church was not unlike the the crisis in the world of 18th century physics.  Just how do you explain a mystery? How do you affirm it, codify it? There must be a place for it, a kind of epistemological constant in the life of faith. And yet, in doing so by creed, in attempting to nail down mystery, does one encounter the quantum problem of measuring position and momentum simultaneously?

Nature, Reality, Existence, cannot be simply explained away by scientific method, or reason alone, or atheistic humanism. We are in an age in which such a haughty and overly-confident secular determinism that makes no room for faith is presumed, but leaves in its wake holes and questions yet to be answered. Those who seek truth, those to whom happiness, joy, and fulfillment in this life proves to be frustratingly elusive under the classical secular paradigm, those who see holes in the fabric of reality and encounter paradox in their day to day, who wonder why they are here and what they have to live for, who hear the sound of the wind and know not where it comes from or where it goes (Jn 3:8) and wonder...it is to these that recognize that the world's theory of existence is incomplete, lacking; that expectations of fulfillment do not manifest according to the prescribed deterministic formula. It is only in the quantum leap to faith that one enters into a new reality beyond the material, beyond the immediate, beyond the sub-atomic, beyond time and space...a new creation, born again.