Everything
in creation is in development. The early human civilizations contributed to
development in mathematics, cosmology and philosophy. We continue to be
surprised by new findings every day. This is attested by discoveries in
cosmology of the Big Bang Theory, the universe still accelerating; in the
development of life partly through the mechanism of evolution confirmed by
fossils and genetic DNA molecules of creatures; and in the development of the
mind in the appearance of humans. Each human also grows from childhood to
adulthood and beyond.
In
Christianity for example, we read in the first letter of Paul to the
Corinthians “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child,
reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things” (1 Cor 13,
11). The development of the Church was brought to light by Jesus Christ himself
when he said that the kingdom of God "is like a grain of mustard seed
which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but
when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the
birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." (Matt 13, 31-32).
The Church grows not only in size but also in understanding because she reflects
on the truth she received from God and is guided by His Spirit to interpret it
and proclaim it as she more fully perceives it in time. She elaborates the
truth as she perceives it, not remove from it. The truth does not change for
God is the Truth but the Church’s perception of the truth develops as the
Church, like Mary mother of Christ, pondered in her heart the meaning of the
message of God (Luke 2, 19). In the 19th century, the recently beatified John
Henry Newman proposed an essay on the development of Christian doctrine in
which he defended Catholic teaching from attacks by some non-Catholic
Christians who saw certain elements in Catholic teaching as corruptions or
innovations. He relied on an extensive study of early Church Fathers in tracing
the development of doctrine which he argued was in some way implicitly present
in the Divine Revelation in Scripture and Tradition. He argued that various
Catholic doctrines not accepted by some Orthodox and Protestants (such as
Purgatory) had a developmental history analogous to doctrines that were
accepted by all Christians (such as the Trinity). Such developments were the
natural results of reason working on the original revealed truth to draw out
understandings that were not obvious at first.
In
the same vein, new perception of the truth does not change the substance of the
truth but provides more insights into it. In physics, Albert Einstein built on
Newtonian classic physics with his insights about the relationship between mass
and energy. In modern physics quantum theory elegantly provides evidence for
the entanglement of subatomic particles at a huge distance from each other. But
the new insights of Einstein, Bohr, Schrodinger, or Edward Witten do not
fundamentally contradict the earlier findings of Isaac Newton. They give us
more insight into the essence of matter and energy. The same could be said of
technology. Everyday new tools in information systems help humans communicate
better in a global village. With the difficulty of face-to-face social networking,
interactions are increasingly made in virtual space via digital social
networking. For some years now
large computer companies have been developing robots and automated systems that
are aimed at assisting in manufacturing systems and possibly replacing human
resources. This development by itself is not without its dangers and threats to
human society. For three decades now, globalization, enabled by the Internet,
has been a predominant force in the trade between nations. As a phenomenon,
large businesses benefited to the near exclusion of small business.
