R.C. Sproul

Well, we know what chaos is.

Chaos is where everything is running around wild, unbridled, unshaped, unformed, where there can be all kinds of things going on.

But the problem with chaos is what?

Nothing fits together.

Everything is in a state of confusion.

It is disharmony rather than harmony.

And so the assertion that Carl Sagan was trying to make at the beginning of his book was, even though our life is an experience of a vast variety of different things—we have stars and we have moons, we have plants, we have animals, we have houses, we have towns, we have cities, we have woods and forests and all these different things, and we live in a world filled with all kinds of different people—

Tall people, short people, fat people, thin people, old people, young people, black people, white people, all different sorts of people.

How does it all fit together?

How does it all make sense?

And at an emotional level, sometimes we feel our lives are

are overwhelmed by all of the different pulls and tugs that are going on in our own experience.

And we long for some point of unity.

something that will make sense out of everything that's going on in us and everything that's going on around us.

So that very practical, emotional, everyday question is a question that Carl Sagan is concerned about from a scientific viewpoint.

And we might say that it was one of the most pressing questions of ancient thinkers.

The late Francis Schaeffer once made the comment that the overarching concern of ancient philosophers was the concern about the relationship between unity and diversity, between the pluribus and the unum, between the one and the many.

Now, what in the world does that have to do with theology?

What does that have to do with our understanding of God?

And particularly, what does it have to do with the names of God?