In Cosmology: A First Course, Marc Lachieze-Rey writes:
The best definition of the cosmos is possibly the ensemble of relations between the constituent parts of the cosmos.
First of all, I’ll point out that the larger context, the entirety of the introductory chapter, makes it clear that the cosmos is the parts as well as the relations between them.
In this essay, I’ll be pointing out that the general idea expressed by Professor Lachieze-Rey is interesting in itself and also leads to other interesting topics involving complex entities in general, living and non-living. It’s very much the same as ideas I’ve proposed in a greater context and I’ll discuss that shortly after some introductory remarks.
Scientists, philosophers, theologians, novelists, poets, and others are engaged in a painfully slow process of developing concepts and words sufficient to integrate the claim of Lachieze-Rey and my more inclusive claim into our thoughts and feelings and acts. Once that thought and language have been developed, more abstract reasoning processes, including contemplation, will allow us to move from a universe to a world. As I define it, this universe becomes a world when seen in light of the Creator’s purposes, when seen as a morally ordered story He is telling. In addition, I define a world, and also a person, as being unified, coherent, and complete. We’re not yet at the point of making this part of our thoughts and feelings and acts. We are in fact rather early in our work of improving our minds so that we can understand all the new knowledge of Creation gained by modern empirical researchers in the context of being a true Creation, the work of a personal God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good. This is the same as saying we’re still moving toward the state of a more fully enriched personhoods, where I think of human beings as potential persons both in their aspects as individuals and as communal creatures.
This modern cosmological view can help us to correct as well as enrich our views even of ourselves and our relationships to Creation and to God. It isn’t some sort of spiritual stuff or spiritual relations we need to add in to move from the universe to the morally purposeful world but that humble art of narration, story-telling. This should hardly be a surprise to those who take seriously the Bible or St. Augustine or Cervantes or the recently departed Jacques Barzun; the reader who can follow Barzun’s masterpiece of history, From Dawn to Decadence, and understand the underlying moral order bereft of any hint of moralism will be able to understand my claim in all its fullness, all its richness and complexity.
Human beings as human animals are comparable to the cosmos in the sense of a universe: we are “the ensemble of relations between the constituent parts of” ourselves, but `ourselves’ include much that lies around us, our communities starting with our families and also our other environments. We can become persons, analogous to a world, by living consciously in our morally purposeful narratives, including the greater one which is the world. Through this way of living, we can encompass the entire world, indeed the entirety of Creation—though only in principle or by sharing in the life of God in the world of the resurrected.
Let me summarize. As human animals, we are analogous to a universe in being not the sum of the parts but being the parts and the relations between the parts including our communities and environment. We become persons, like unto the world when we begin to encompass greater realms of created being, all the abstractions from which this concrete world was shaped, the abstractions which are themselves shaped from the truths God manifested as the raw stuff of Creation. When we reshape ourselves by proper responses to Creation, we become like the world, indeed like that entirety of Creation: unified, coherent, and complete.
Jesus Christ Himself is, in His immanence as a creature all that He has created along with His Father and their Holy Spirit. In principle, those mortal human beings who are developing, intending, toward a state of true personhood are also like this though far more limited in our capacity. Yet, if we accept His offer of true friendship, we will have this greater capacity through our communion with Him, through our sharing of the divine nature of Jesus Christ.