Fractals, The Scriptures, and Infinity

I am so in favour of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author. Georg Cantor, 1845-1918

Fractals are awesome (too bad that adjective is so blunted by overuse and misuse). Sure they are beautiful and of course the fact that math is involved is intriquing to me. But the real reason I like fractals so much is because I can think of no better way to describe how I think about the universe and eternity. And today, as I was taking time to just “contemplate,” I came to the conclusion that a fractal also best describes my understanding of scripture.

“Whoa, back up!” some of you are saying. “Fractals? Is that some kind of crunchy new candy?” OK, Fractals 101.

  • Definition: “A fractal is a geometric object which can be divided into parts, each of which is similar to the original object. Fractals are said to possess infinite detail, and are generally self-similar and independent of scale. In many cases a fractal can be generated by a repeating pattern, typically a recursive or iterative process. The term fractal was coined in 1975 by Benoît Mandelbrot, from the Latin fractus or “broken” (full citation can be found here).
  • A great website for further exploration can be found here (really worth your time).
  • Here’s a nice explanation of self-similarity.

So what do fractals have to do with anything? For one, they are an easily accessible visual aid to the complex idea of infinity. One of the most amazing things to teach, I think, is astronomy. When you contemplate what you are really seeing when you look at the night sky it takes your breath away. With the naked eye you see the moon, constellations, planets. Zoom out… with binoculars or a telescope you can see more. And when you look at images from the Hubble telescope you are looking at stars and galaxies that are huge, old, distant, beautiful, and oh-so-numerous. A field of what looks like stars is really a field of entire galaxies. Kind of reminds me of the end of the movie Men in Black when the camera pans out from earth, to the solar system, to the galaxy, to a marble that contains the galaxy and is in the hands of some alien who is playing a game with it. I’m not interested in the alien aspect… I’ve just always been fascinated by the degrees of immensity. Now go the other way… zoom in to the earth, to the rocks, the minerals, the elements, the molecules, the atoms, the sub-atomic particles. But it is so hard to see the “big” picture of the universe and the “small” picture of the details all at the same time… except in a fractal! Looking at that one image I can keep going deeper and deeper and pondering the immensity of the created universe.

But just as amazing as that (or maybe even more so), is being able to look at scripture in the same way. For so long I looked at scripture far too linearly. I saw the history and the stories and prophesies. I memorized the Gospel accounts and looked for the symbols and types in the Old Testament and fulfillment in the New. That was good. But there is so much more. Just as a fractal is one whole that beautifully communicates a single equation, so the Scripture is one communication–a breaking into creation by God–with both a singleness and multiplicity. One story, unfolded in many iterations. Acted out over centuries, through many generations, cultures, languages, and individuals. Story upon story. But all part of the same one communication. God is breaking through to us to tell us about Himself. Using our own human context to speak to us, so that we can understand. It’s more beautiful and more amazing than a hundred thousand galaxies or the patterns repeated over and over in nature or the dancing movement of electrons and quarks and leptons. So fractals will be in my mind as I write my hermeneutics papers… telling one redemptive story, embedded in a bigger story, part of an entire progressive redemptive history culminating in the revelation of Jesus Christ. The pattern keeps revealing itself over and over, whether I zoom in to an individual story or zoom out to the big picture. Sometimes the beauty and majesty are hard to see in the black and white text, and so I keep a mental bookmark of a fractal image in my Bible to remind me of just how glorious and precious the book in my hands is.

8 thoughts on “Fractals, The Scriptures, and Infinity

  1. Ryan Emanuel

    Hi Karyn,
    Wow! What a great perspective on God’s revelation to us. Here’s something wierd: last in Bill Wilder’s Genesis discussion I mentioned that God’s immutability through history and His repetition of the same message in different ways throughout scripture was reminiscent of fractal scaling. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. But you know what they say about great minds thinking alike 🙂

  2. Richard C. Shipp

    Thanks for your article. Fun to ponder.

    I thought you might find this interesting: the Latter-day Saints have a scripture that appears to deal with this type of “evidence of God” in the nature that surrounds us. It is found in their book, “Pearl of Great Price,” the first portion of which is a revised version of Genesis by their founding Prophet, Joseph Smith. (Their belief is that his work restores the Biblical text to its original form, as it first came from the Prophet Moses.) The verse that follows contains a portion of a revelation from God to Father Adam:

    “And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me.”

    (Moses 6:63)

    For the record, this scriptural verse is also chiastic (that is, a chiasm in the Hebrew tradition):

    And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me,
    both things which are temporal,
    and things which are spiritual;
    things which are in the heavens above,and
    things which are on the earth, and
    things which are in the earth, and
    things which are under the earth,
    both above and
    beneath:
    all things bear record of me.

  3. Richard C. Shipp

    Addendum (to show the chiasm graphically–as the previous try stripped out leading spaces)

    And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me,
    …both things which are temporal,
    ……and things which are spiritual;
    ………things which are in the heavens above,and
    ………things which are on the earth, and
    ………things which are in the earth, and
    ………things which are under the earth,
    ……both above and
    …beneath:
    all things bear record of me.

  4. Richard C. Shipp

    This Moses 6:63 chiasm has a double center, with a complementary match of “heaven” and “earth.” The “earth” portion is called a “triplicate” which often appears as three items at the center point of a chiasm. More information on “Chiasmus” can be found in the works of the Bible scholar, Nils Lund. (He did his notable master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation on Chiasmus at a divinity college.)

  5. Joseph Becerril

    I have created fractal art with the Scriptures in mind. I try to find relevant or non-relevant scenes within different fractal universes and then post relevant or non-relevant scriptures to match them into a decent work of art. See my website for some samples – http://www.ourchurch.com/member/s/scripture-art/ I have created over 170 so far, all with different fractal scenes and all with different Scripture verses. Enjoy.

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