Reinvented Christianity
Copyright © 2025 by William Orchard
1/6/25
Arnold Toynbee believed the Christian covenant with God, unlike all other covenants upon which our species has built civilizations, has the power to reinvent itself. He also said that Jesus was given the option to be worshipped as a god but chose to remain a man, unlike the Buddha, who was given the option to live simply as an enlightened man but allowed people to worship him as a god.
A person needs two things to be a believing Christian – a Hypostasis of God and a man on a cross; everything else is cultural artifact. Christianity has the power to reinvent itself because a civilization on a planet in another galaxy will eventually arrive at this same conclusion. For them the imagery of the murdered Hypostasis probably won’t involve crucifixion, but they will know the paradigm is from God.
The Nicene fathers gave us a vital clue to help us unravel the mess our brilliant mathematicians and theorists have made of cosmology. They told us the Son of God was “…God from God, Light from Light…begotten not made, of one being with the Father.” The fathers never saw a quasar or a galaxy, but their description of the mystery of the Trinty fits very well with what we see in the night sky.
‘God from God and Light from Light’ is the Hypostasis of God on Earth according to the Nicene fathers. However, the Nicene fathers also tell us that all three members of the Trinity are Hypostases; a reinvented Christianity does not do that. To unravel the current cosmological mess, we have to find the Hypostasis of God in the night sky, not just on Earth.
The Hypostasis of God was with God from the beginning and is ‘Light from Light’ but we do not see light in the night sky. We see quasars and galaxies but not where they came from. ‘God from God, Light from Light’ means God must be the light. Quasars and galaxies are ‘God from God, Light from Light,’ but if we could see the light they came from, we could not se anything else. That gives us a starting point we can believe in but not understand.
The Hypostasis of God comes to Earth and lives with us, and we kill him because that is the kind of creatures we are. How we killed him has taken on enormous symbolic meaning, but it could have been any other form of execution, just as it could be on another planet.
The man on the cross has many ramifications. Accepting this intuitively horrifying image is the ultimate act of faith, and the reward is knowing that his death is not the end of the story. By contrast, the image of the Buddha is intuitively gratifying, but the end of his story is always up for speculation.
The Christian Model
11/11/24
In the Christian model, God is the light and energy of everything, and the next level of creation is a mystical union of hypostasis and spirit or being and ground of being. Hypostasis precedes spirit and being precedes ground of being which preserves the Nicene formula. “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”
The original meaning of hypostasis had nothing to do with incarnation or material reality. It was a mystical concept that was with God from the beginning: “God from God, light from light…begotten not made.” Thus, a quasar is a hypostasis, and a galaxy proceeds from the light of everything and the quasar. Think of a galaxy as an electromagnetic mystery: it begins as a network of Birkeland currents without any stars. The galaxy is the ground of being for the next hypostatic level of creation: a self-contained dipole consisting of a cathode heliosphere and an anode star, which we call a heliosphere. Within the heliosphere is the electromagnetic mystery of the solar environment.
The solar environment is the ground of being for the next hypostatic level of creation: the periodic table of elements and isotopes fashioned into a material world. A material world is enveloped in the electromagnetic mystery of a biosphere. A biosphere is the ground of being for the next hypostatic level of creation: all the individual creatures of biology. Each creature is enveloped in its own electromagnetic mystery which is its field of experience. A field of experience is the ground of being for the final hypostatic level of creation: the things and thoughts appropriate to each creature.
The light and energy of everything cannot be a hypostasis because a hypostasis is something and not everything. The electromagnetic spirit is the mystical aspect of a hypostasis, therefore not a separate hypostasis.
A New Theology
8/22/24
What we call electromagnetic energy is a manifestation of the light and energy of everything, which we cannot see. We are inside the light and energy of everything, but when we peer at the night sky it seems as though the light is far away. It is not. The beginning of everything is God who is at once the light and energy of everything and the light and energy of quasars and galaxies. There was never a time when there were no quasars or galaxies, which are electrical events and not material things. Consequently, the new model of God is an energy that is everywhere and the products of that energy. We can say that God is everything, but we cannot say that everything (or anything) is God.
Our own galaxy, with its quasar galactic core, is inside the light and energy of everything with all the other galaxies. Our heliosphere is one of billions that are inside the galaxy. The light of everything is the light of our galactic core and the light of our Sun via a network of electromagnetic currents that are the structure of the galaxy. We are created by God and electromagnetic processes that can be described but not understood.
The light and energy of everything, via the galactic core, and via the Sun, creates all the matter and life in the Solar System. Inside the heliosphere, the Sun causes matter to make a biosphere. Consequently, all matter is alive and interconnected by the light and energy of the Sun. Some of the connections we can measure and see, and many of them we haven’t discovered yet.
What we have is a body of science that balks at considering nonscientific explanations of its deepest mysteries. What we have also is a long tradition of theology that hesitates to incorporate science into its understanding of God. We are inside the light of everything, and we will see it (or be seen by it) when we die.
9/13/24
There are different scenarios of how quasars and galaxies can be created and evolve. If we say there was a time when there were no galaxies, we invite questions about whether God started with a small or a large number of quasars. That reopens the question of number, which we want to avoid. The same thing happens if we say there was a time when there were no quasars. If there were no quasars, how long did God wait to create them?
We want to start with a night sky generically like the one we see today. It has no age and therefore no beginning; it has no size and therefore no number. Quasars clone other quasars and young galaxies clone quasars. This can go on without limit.
However, the best way to have a night sky generically like ours is to have quasars blink into existence and blink out of existence, thus creating an ever-changing sky. We know that quasars unwind to create the arms of a galaxy; that is their reason for existence. In the arms of galaxies Birkland currents pinch out heliospheres, which exist to create matter. Eventually galaxies accumulate a lot of matter, and it makes sense that galaxies would need to be renewed as light and energy.
Small galaxies have been observed to be growing smaller, but no one has seen a galaxy rewind back into a quasar. However, if a galaxy did rewind, it would be renewed and could unwind again. Alternatively, the quasar could blink itself back into the light and energy of everything. Something like this has also been observed: quasars have disappeared from the sky and sometimes they reappear.
The light and energy of everything is like a mycelium and quasars are like mushrooms that can be renewed forever. A quasar that blinks back into the light and energy of everything is reabsorbed, and whatever blinks back into the night sky is a new creation. A galaxy, however, has a life cycle and its clock starts when its heliospheres start creating matter. We have no way of knowing how many generations of galaxies have come and gone.
Revisiting the question of whether there was a time when there were no galaxies, we can imagine that the time lag from everything to quasars to galaxies is infinitesimal. However, we can’t get around the question of whether there was a time when there were no old galaxies. God is a powerful mystery, but God is not a magician. God had to decide that everything needed to become something without losing the mystery of everything. Everything still has no age and no size, and quasars and galaxies have no number, but there was a time when all galaxies were new. By the time a race of intelligent creatures evolved, a generic night sky with old and new galaxies would also have evolved. Like us, these intelligent creatures would not know how many generations of galaxies had come and gone.
A Christian Cosmology
12/5/24
In the beginning, all people worshipped Saturn:
Roman – Saturn
Greek – Kronos
Norse – Odin
Germanic – Wotan
Irish – Elatha
Finnish – Kaleva
Slavic – Kresnik
Egyptian – Atum
Babylonian – Enlil
Hittite – Kumarbi
Hebrew – El
Persian – Zurvan
Hindu – Brahman
Maya – Itzamna
Aztec – Ometecuhtli
Inca – Viracocha
Sioux – Ksa
Chinese – Huangdi
Japanese – Izanagi
Hawaiian – Ku
Some of these ancient people are culturally older than others and their traditions are easier to discern. In all cultures the passage of time and the fading of memory led to a one-time supreme deity being obscured by layered and evolved myths. There are many traditions where Saturn has disappeared completely.
Saturn was universally worshipped because Earth and Saturn were once close to each other. A cataclysm occurred and all people transferred their worship to Jupiter.
Roman – Jupiter
Greek – Zeus
Norse – Thor
Germanic – Donar
Irish – The Dagda
Finnish – Ukko
Slavic – Perun
Egyptian – Horus
Babylonian – Ninurta
Hittite – Tarhun
Hebrew – Yahweh
Persian – Ahura Mazda
Hindu – Shiva
Maya – Huracan
Aztec – Tezcatlipoca
Inca – Illapa
Sioux – Wak-Inyan
Chinese – Zhuanxu
Japanese – Susanoo
Hawaiian – Kane
The cataclysm caused Saturn and Jupiter to switch positions, which was experienced by everyone on Earth. Subsequent cataclysms obscured this theological clarity and made the pantheon of supreme deities bewilderingly complex. My point is that there was a time when humans could see the Gods they worshipped. Eventually the planets assumed their current positions in the sky, and people had to reinvent and reexamine their understanding of God. We know today, of course, that God is not a planet.
God is the light and energy of everything. This is a concept we can grasp today, both scientifically and with religious intuition; our religious ancestors could only grasp it intuitively.
We live in two religious and scientific climates Steven Jay Gould described as “non-overlapping magisteria.” Religion and science give each other a wide berth and have wound up in intellectual dead ends without the insights of the other to guide them. The quandaries of today’s science do not have a scientific answer. What does work in today’s science greatly enhances our spiritual understanding.
There are quasars and galaxies in the night sky that our religious ancestors had no knowledge of. Quasars reside within the light and energy of everything, which the Nicene fathers articulated in 325 CE without realizing it: “God from God, light from light…begotten not made, of one being with the Father.” If we could see the light and energy of everything, we could not see anything else.
A quasar expands into the mystery of a galaxy, which begins life as a network of electromagnetic currents. Electromagnetic energy is everywhere and is a scientific way of expressing the mystery of the Holy Spirit: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”
In Christian terminology, a quasar is a hypostasis. The Nicene fathers articulated the hypostasis of the Second Person of God, which was with God from the beginning. “The word was with God and the word was God” (John 1:1). I do not believe it diminishes the mystery of Jesus Christ to expand this concept to explain what science currently cannot explain.
Hypostasis
12/10/24
For us to exist, the light and energy of everything became the light and energy of something, which is impossible for us to imagine. ‘God from God, light from light…begotten not made, of one being with the Father’ – this is the Hypostasis of God. With the Hypostasis of God at the center, the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, became a network of electromagnetic currents. The Nicene fathers, who never saw a quasar or galaxy, nevertheless described them perfectly.
Electromagnetic currents from God can be as large as a galaxy or as small as an atom. Within our galaxy, electromagnetic currents pinched out our Sun. Think of a quasar blossoming into a vast network and populating it with stars. Consequently, the first level of creation is Hypostasis-quasar, which represents being, and Holy Spirit-galactic environment, which represents the “ground of being.” (Paul Tillich).
The second level of creation is Hypostasis-Sun and Holy Spirit-electromagnetic solar environment, which is contained in a heliosphere. The heliosphere is where all of creation as we know it occurs. God is an unfathomable mystery, but God still uses science to get things done. This should keep scientists and theologians going round and round for a long time to come.
The heliosphere protects us from the vast, wild energy of our galaxy and acts as a conduit for the next level of creation. Energy from the quasar is collected by the heliosphere through the network of galactic currents and directed to the Sun which is a hollow ball of plasma. In the center of the Sun, the smallest electromagnetic currents pinch out neutrons, which decay into protons and electrons, which combine into all the elements of the periodic table. The Sun fashions these elements into a gas giant planet and expels it into the solar system.
We have four gas giant planets in our solar system. One of them, probably Uranus or Neptune, fashioned its trove of elements into our Earth and expelled it into the solar system as its satellite. The Sun created the elements of matter, and the gas giant combined them into the complex compounds of matter including the DNA of life. The Earth was born with all it needed for the third level of creation.
The Holy Spirit is the giver of life, and the third level of creation is Hypostasis-Earth and Holy Spirit-biosphere. Earth occupied many locations in the solar system and interacted with other spheres created by the Sun and gas giant planets. When planets and satellites interact with each other, their electrically neutral state at rest is stripped away and they exchange violent electrical discharges. That is where the scarring we see in the solar system comes from. On Earth violent electrical discharges created quantum evolutionary leaps; the DNA of life did not change gradually.
The fourth level of creation is Hypostasis-living creatures and Holy Spirit-fields of experience appropriate to each creature. The Earth sciences have much to tell us, but scientists often do not realize how much of what they study is mystical and spiritual; many lay people also don’t realize it. My human field of experience produces the final hypostatic level of creation which is my thoughts and the things of my life. Because I am human, I believe my thoughts and creations are my own. I will continue to believe this until I turn my thoughts and creations over to the true Hypostasis handed down to us by God and the Nicene fathers.
The true Hypostasis of God, which is Jesus Christ, is not a thought or a human creation. He was with God from the beginning, and He has come down to us and is with us by faith.
Hypostasis Controversy
12/17/24
Hypostasis – According to the doctrines of the church the three hypostases of the Trinity–Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are individually and collectively the same as God; taken separately they are not the same as each other.
My take – The light and energy of everything became the light and energy of something, which is the Hypostasis of God. However, everything is still everything and therefore not a hypostasis. The Hypostasis represents being and the Holy Spirit represents the ground of being. Since being and the ground of being are manifestations of each other, the Holy Spirit is also not a separate hypostasis.
Quasar – Big Bang cosmology (BB) holds that quasars are powered by black holes. Electric Universe cosmology (EU) holds that quasars are plasmoids, i.e., concentrated plasma. Both BB and EU agree that quasars are active galactic nuclei.
My take – I agree with EU that quasars are concentrated electromagnetic phenomena. BB cosmology is guided by mathematical theory, which is a mental reality with no corresponding material or divine reality. Everything theoretical physics has come up with in the past hundred and fifty years is nonsense of the mind. In contrast EU bases its cosmology on falsifiable laboratory experiments. Neither BB nor EU consider spirituality in their theories.
Galaxy – BB believes stars come before galaxies, which form after a star becomes a black hole. Once formed, however, galaxies become star factories. EU believes galaxies are star factories and there are no black holes.
My take – I am with EU on galaxies and black holes.
Sun – BB believes stars formed from vast clouds of matter created when first-generation stars exploded. The nebular hypothesis holds that gravity causes these clouds to collapse and form solar systems. EU believes Birkeland currents in the galaxy come together in a Bennett pinch to create stars. Wal Thornhill of the Thunderbolts Project came to believe in stars expelling planets before he died.
My take – Apart from Wal Thornhill, EU is not addressing planet formation, so I am on my own with the planet expulsion theory. The BB nebular hypothesis is absurd on its face. Edwin Kaal has a new theory called the Structured Atom Model (SAM) in which neutrons are really proton-electron pairs. I expanded his theory to create my model of gas giant planets forming inside the Sun. If gigantic Birkeland currents can pinch stars into existence, tiny Birkeland currents can pinch neutrons into existence. Once created, neutrons decay and an electromagnetic mystery becomes a scientific, material reality.
Earth – Life Science (LS) believes DNA was formed in the primordial ocean through a combination of acidic compounds and extreme thermal energy. However, LS admits this is only a guess. BB and EU do not venture into Life Science, but EU naturally assumes that electromagnetic energy is a factor.
My take — The Sun created all the elements in a hot, gaseous state. The gas giant planet that eventually expelled Earth cooled down and let its elements form compounds. I have no idea how DNA was formed, but I see the hand of God in it. I put the creation of DNA in our birth planet so Earth could get on with the journey of life right away.
Living Creatures – LS follows the lead of Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell from the early nineteenth century in which evolution in both geological formations and living creatures takes millions of years. However, there is a small amount of research in electromagnetic modification of DNA. EU believes all the craters, scars and ridges in the solar system were caused by cataclysmic discharges of lightning, including the Grand Canyon on Earth and Valles Marineris on Mars. EU does not speculate about the modification of life forms.
My take – I am with EU on craters, scars and ridges. My leap to cataclysmic biological evolution is unique to me as far as I know. I am willing to see the hand of God also in evolution.
Fields of experience – No one, as far as I know, has a theory in which we share a common field of experience based on material reality, and individually have our own field of experience. Material reality has a corresponding mental reality, but mental reality does not have a corresponding material reality. That is why science, based on the mental reality of mathematics, has led us so far astray. Time, space and dimension are mental realities that have no corresponding material reality. Neither do they have any reality in the divine realm beyond our understanding.