| This dissertation demonstrates that religious belief is intimately tied to entropy as articulated in the second law of thermodynamics and its analogous expressions in statistical mechanics and information theory. I view the theological theme of created contingency in light of Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory and Terrence Deacon's work in symbolic cognition and emergent complexity. Through a thematic reading of the Trinitarian controversies, Augustine's Confessions, and Karl Rahner's Hearer of the Word in the context of systems theory, I demonstrate a dual operation in theology for addressing the problem of entropy in human experience. On the one hand theology, as "faith seeking understanding," is an active reflection in the life of the believer that helps one achieve some semblance of existential satisfaction within experience. But theology as "faith seeking understanding" implies that this existential understanding is sought in the context of a cultural tradition---e.g. the Nicene faith. As such, I conclude that when considered in the context of the physiological limitations of embodied existence, theological meaning represents an existential protest against the entropic condition asserted by the individual-in-community in response to an inference that discloses the possibility of an anentropic reality unconstrained by contingency as the ultimate referent of meaning. |
