Bosons ~ The Triune Omnipresence of God

Bosons ~ The Triune Omnipresence of God


C.S. Lewis once, said, “If [Christianity] were true, what it tells us would be bound to be difficult—at least as difficult as modern physics.”(1)

Christianity makes many claims about God’s essence that are difficult.  For instance, there is the claim that God is everywhere.  His omnipresence pervades all of time.  We also read of the homousius, in which the Christ who stepped into time can be considered both fully man and fully God.  Then there is the notion of God’s ontology as three persons in one being.  How can we conceptualize a triune God whose being encapsulates the space-time continuum?

These ideas are challenging.  Yet, as Lewis argues, their difficulty is no reason to reject them.  We observe many things in modern physics that boggle the mind, and in much the same way.

One example is a particle called a boson.  Most elementary particles in the quantumsphere move around nicely on the playground.  They take turns, leave plenty of room for the slower kids, and operate under what we call the pauli exclusion principle(2).   This principle lays out in black and white the basic laws of why quantum mechanics prohibit elementary particles to be in the same place at the same time.  If such simultaneity were possible, you’d never want to sit down in your chair because you’d most likely fall right through.  The reason solid objects are impenetrable, the reason we can play ping pong and get stuck in traffic jams and stub our toes, all has to do with this law.

However, our friend the boson didn’t get Pauli’s memo.  Thus, while fermions (things such as protons and electrons) cannot occupy the same space at the same time, any number of bosons (things like photons—light particles and electromagnetic energy) can be in the exact same space simultaneously(3). 

Not only that, but the location of bosons themselves can become difficult to express.  Much energy occurs conscriptively, that is, ‘here and nowhere else’.  For instance, as I type this, my form is located conscriptively within my office.  No part of my being extends beyond my office walls (though if I really stretch I can get close… I’m 6ft1…).  Electromagnetic energy has no such limitations.  It is located repletively, that is, ‘spread out’.  This is more like the sounds that move through a room.  My friend down the hall is taking a phone call, and I can hear her voice in my office.  Thus, while my friend’s essence is located conscriptively, her voice is located repletively.  But imagine if a person’s very essence were repletive?  What would that be like?

My finite human brain is incapable of adequately conceptualizing the properties of bosons, yet this is an empirical part of our reality.  If it’s possible for three photons to occupy the same place at the same time, theoretically, is it possible for three persons in one essence to do the same?  If it’s possible for an electromagnetic field to permeate in and through the entities around it, could not a triune God occupy all spaces?  Our understanding of quantum physics does not prove the existence of God.  But it does shine photons on how a triune being could permeate the space-time continuum in such a way that He Himself is the suspension in which all that exists “lives and moves and has its being” (Acts 17v28).  This triune God not only pervades all that exists, His essence perpetuates reality as we know it.  It is in Him that “all things hold together” (Colossians 1v17).  His presence is repletive, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain Him (1 Kings 8v27)!

I do not claim to fully comprehend the fantastic discoveries we are making in quantum physics, just as I do not claim to fully comprehend the trinity or God’s omnipresence.  Yet I dedicate myself to formulating conclusions based on the information and experiences at hand.  The existence of this God is difficult to grasp, but it is true.  And I’m grateful for that truth every day.

(1) Lewis, C. S. (1996). Mere Christianity. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 121
(2) First coined by an Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli.  Read all about it in Michela Massimi’s aptly named ‘pauli exclusion principle’:  Massimi, M., & Cambridge University Press. (2012). Pauli's exclusion principle: The origin and validation of a scientific principle. New York: Cambridge University Press.
(3)This is true of all bosons.  So the moral of the story is, never play musical chairs with an electromagnetic particle.






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