The Fifth Dimension, the Spirit and Incarnation
This is the third in a brief series of posts exploring the growing science interest in the possibility of a fifth dimension and what that might mean for Biblical and Christian theology. The last post explored the possibility of a physicality to our ideas of heaven and a spiritual realm. This is about how a fifth dimension could bring insight into ideas about the Spirit and the coming of God himself into our 4D existence in spacetime.
The Spirit
As we showed with a series on this topic, the Spirit plays multiple roles in the Biblical story. This includes an active role in creation from the very beginning when the Spirit hovered over the waters or chaos of initial creation. The Spirit is presented as a form of energy not only involved in bringing the initial creation into existence, but sustaining it on a continual basis. As we mentioned, there is growing interest in what used to be called the elan vital, the life force, which can be understood as the early Greeks did, as the Breath that gives life. We also explored the idea of the Spirit as the much discussed universal consciousness of early psychology and Eastern philosophy and religion. These discussions now often emerge when talking about the mystery of consciousness as well as the physics of panpsychism and the analytical idealism of Bernardo Kastrup.
