The Fantastic 4 and the Quest for Understanding

You could probably have heard my eyes roll from a mile away when I learned they were rebooting the Fantastic 4 franchise. I’ve seen a handful of the past movies, and none of them were great. But I have to admit, the new one ain’t bad. It also provides a good excuse to revisit an old philosophy and the perennial quest for meaning.

Once upon a time there was a philosopher named Thales who is credited as inventing science for accurately predicting a solar eclipse. That was kind of a big deal 2,500+ years ago, apparently. In his time people were pretty obsessed with trying to understand the world and their place in it. Things have really changed, haven’t they?!

Thales believed reality could be boiled down to water. It was the real stuff at the bottom of the barrel of existence. Not a bad guess as water can be a solid, a liquid, or a gas. It also has the ability to move itself it would appear, if you were watching the tide and contemplating the origin of motion. Who hasn’t done that on a summer vacation to the beach, amiright?! But Thales view was challenged by others, some asserting fire as the fundamental element, others matter or earth, and some holding their breath for air. These competing views led other thinkers on a quest for the fifth element, the quintessential that could solve the mysteries of life.

Maybe that’s why when Paul spoke to the philosophers in Athens (read Acts 17) he describes God as the one in whom “we live, move, and have our meaning.” In this way, Paul was showing them that God, in Christ, is the ultimate way to make sense of the human condition. There’s a lot there to unpack here, but it’s worth stopping for a hot minute this morning to consider the Christian theory of everything that we call the gospel.