Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Nature

Christology of Nature

The task before us in this section is to show precisely how nature is Christological. Emil Brunner affirms this notion as grounded in Scripture, “all that is taught in accordance with Scripture about the revelation of God in the works of creation is to be understood Christologically.” According to Brunner, natural knowledge presupposes the Creator-Logos of creation. Revelation in creation, whether discovery of scientific truths or revelation of spiritual messages, has one and only one foundation, that is the Creator-Logos in whom, for whom, by whom and through whom all things were created. Since we are assured by the Apostle Paul that “all things hold together in Him” (Colossians 1:17) how can we expect not to find a Christological connection between that which we discover in nature and the things of the spirit realm?

Alister McGrath in his book Re-Imagining Nature: The Promise of a Christian Natural Theology says, “Natural Theology is to be understood primarily as a “theology of nature”—that is, as a specifically Christian understanding of the natural world, reflecting the core assumptions of the Christian faith, which is to be contrasted with secular or naturalist accounts of nature.” According to McGrath, a Christian Theology of Nature is precisely that, intentionally Christian. To claim a Theology of Nature as intentionally Christian implies that it believes the scriptures to be true concerning Christ; not only in all that holds salvifically for the individual, but in undertaking the whole of understanding concerning what nature is and what nature’s purpose is in terms of God’s plan for humankind. For McGrath, this undertaking is a “meta-project” located in the core assumptions of the Christian faith. In this respect, the undertaking of such a project might use an imaginative conceptual framework (McGrath refers to this as the “Imaginarium”) where nature is imagined from a Christian viewpoint. A view such as this is an invitation into a new and fresh understanding of reality from a “transformed capacity of seeing.” The first place to begin is by transforming our capacity to see Jesus of Nazareth, including his own teachings of nature, who He is as the “perfect image of the Father,” his very incarnation into the creation, and his metaphysical participation with the creation. By doing so, we incite a new imagining of how the natural world is seen, known, and experienced.

Thus, both Brunner and McGrath have lead us into a Christian Theology of Nature because of Christ. In order to advance the discussion a bit farther we can explore the dimensions of a Christology of the natural world by posing two important questions that naturally flow from this thought. First, can our knowledge and understanding of Christ inform and incite a knowledge of the Triune God in nature? Secondly, perhaps we can also ask the reverse—can nature inform and incite a knowledge of the triune God, especially of Christ? We will seek to answer both of these questions in the affirmative, and in so doing, attempt to place the answers within the scheme of God’s Original Ultimate End in Creation.

Metaphysical Connection between Christ and the World: All Things are Created by Him, in Him, through Him, and Ultimately, for Him

To begin, let us attempt to answer the first question, Can our knowledge and understanding of Christ inform and incite a knowledge of the Triune God in nature? To address this multidimensional question, we begin with Scripture. Scripture indeed indicates a strong Christological connection with the natural world, far beyond the universe being created as the stage upon which the play of redemption is performed. What, then, do we know about Christ in relation to the natural world? What does Scripture teach regarding the knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth as the Incarnate Son, the Christ of God, and his relation with, and role in, the fabric and framework of the creation? This is a two-fold question. First, we see many examples in the Gospels where Jesus used images from the natural world in his sermons and teachings. We read things such as, “The kingdom of heaven is like . . .” followed by diverse images from the natural world such as wheat and tares (Matthew 13:24), yeast (Luke 13:20), seed sown (Mark 4:1), a mustard seed (Matthew 13:31), and so on. Second, we see Scriptures that refer to a metaphysical connection of Christ with the creation. We shall begin with the latter and come back to the former later in this chapter. Let us begin with what we know of Jesus by exploring his metaphysical connection with the natural world and how this communicates divine Christological knowledge and glory.

As we have already explored earlier in this book, the original Greek text in the New Testament indicates precisely how the creation itself is intricately embedded in Christ, how it comes through Christ and reflects back to Christ who is upholding the creation, and cohesively holding it together as an ontic whole. The original language of the New Testament provides insight into a metaphysical undertaking of Jesus, as second Person of the Trinity, offering knowledge of the Triune God in and through the natural world. We exegeted from the original language in John 1:2–3 and John 1:10 how the original meaning implies that the creation came into being by way of Christ. In Romans 11:36 and Colossians 1:15–17, separate prepositions offered a nuanced insight into the Christological connection with the natural world indicating not only that creation came into being “by way of” but “from the interior outwards” and finally “into” Christ. From this complex architecture of propositional relations, a structure of connections is signaled between Christ and the natural world such that out from the interior of Christ, and passing through or by way of Christ, and into Christ are all things. This intimate metaphysical connection between Christ and the workings of the natural world is ultimately, and finally, for Christ in eschatological time. This represents a complex metaphysical relation. However, this relation is not only spiritual leading to salvation. The relation between Christ and the physical world constitutes a metaphysical connection to all things in existence, so that as Savior and Redeemer he is incarnated into the very creation he brought into being, and thereby redeeming it unto himself.

As we have seen, the metaphysical relationship of Christ and the creation, derived from the original language of the New Testament, is from the interior of Christ, passing through the person of Christ and into Christ. This implies a sort of reciprocity. The relationship between Christ and the natural world originated in Christ, flows out of Christ, and then is retuned back to Christ. Edwards says it this way, “[He] is the beginning, middle and end in this affair.” In Edwards’ creation metaphysics, such a construal can only and best be explained in a panentheist God-world relation. All of the creation exists within God as ontologically real ideas in what we have already posited as a type of res-idealism. For the universe and all it contains to be construed as originating from the interior of Christ, passing through the person of Christ and into Christ implies that all of the creation is within God, in Christ. There is no separation of God-world relation where God encounters a creation that exists outside of God’s Self. Also, this distinguishes a God-world relation from pantheism by retaining a distinction of the world from Christ, the creation is not God.

We have also seen, it is Christ who sustains and upholds all things in the creation. These interconnected metaphysical construals uncover provocative insight into Christ’s ontological connection with the actual molecular structures of the creation, showing his absolute divinity, origination, and Lordship over the mechanisms governing the natural world. For example, we read the narrative in the synoptic gospels of Jesus and his disciples on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. A storm arose and the disciples feared for their lives as Jesus slept in the stern of the boat. When they woke Jesus with the question, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” Jesus replies by rebuking the wind the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” The disciples were amazed, and terrified, that “Even the wind and the waves obey him!” This narrative indicates a metaphysical connection of Christ with and over the creation. It is Christ who has the power and authority to control natural forces, laws of nature, ecosystems, in fact, all of the processes in the biosphere and cosmos. Jesus re-orients the law of gravity by walking on water, alters biological mechanisms by cursing the fig tree causing it to wither, and commands ecosystems by telling his disciples to cast the net on the right side of the boat directing fish for the greatest catch of their career. Likewise, the healings and miracles reflect this very same principle. Jesus can control the structural integrity of the creation, forming and breaking molecular bonds, commanding cells to change their physiology, and multiplying atoms, molecules, and structures to multiply loaves and fishes at his command. These Scriptures show the metaphysical connection of Christ with and over the elements of the natural world in his power over all the creation. Let us explore this idea a bit further.

As we have previously explored, Scripture indicates two different conceptual frameworks for the Christ-world relation: first that Christ is holding up, bearing, carrying the creation, and second as holding things together as a cohesive whole, such that what reality is composed of in terms of forces, structures, dispositions, and mechanisms is cohesively held together in Christ and by Christ. From these Scriptures, the Christological connection designates a creation that was made, and is sustained, in ontological moment-by-moment relation with Christ. It follows, that a metaphysical, Christological connection to the ultrastructural components of the natural world, and the dynamics under which they operate, in some way reveals the knowledge and glory of Christ, and of God’s plan for the world. As Christoph Schwöbel indicates, “Christ becomes the key to understanding all reality through the experience of reality.”

The metaphysics of Christ’s connection reflect in a genuine and intentional manner how the world was made by Christ, in Christ, and through Christ. It was the divine Λόγος that was in the beginning, and brought all things into being. The divine logos, Christ, brought into existence all that was brought into existence, as Olson and Hall say in The Trinity, “Finally, John writes in John 1:3 that it is through the pre-existent logos that creation itself has taken place.” We have already seen in the beginning of this chapter Emil Brunner indicating the very same idea of the Creator-Logos. By grounding our Christology of Nature in this scriptural understanding then, we can propose yet another Christological connection. Not only is Christ ontologically connected to the physicality of the natural world, but also Christ is the origination of the spiritual messages pointing to the truths of God embedded therein. We have previously explored the ensconced knowledge of God in nature as onto-types pointing to their ontological antitypes. Continuing with our Edwardsean scheme, all of the natural onto-types which serve as analogical messages of the antitypes of the divine, or shadows of divine things, have come into being by the divine logos.

In this way, all natural onto-types, which prefigure their antitypes as supernatural revelations of the divine Being and spiritual reality, are brought into existence, that is emanated/communicated, by Christ, into the very structures of the natural world, or as Schwöbel states, “from the Creator-Logos incarnate in creation to the structures of creation.” As argued earlier, the onto-types themselves are divine existence-conferring action, rooted in the logos, which is Christ. In this context, Olson and Hall deem “the Son as the agent through whom God created the world.” All onto-types come into existence by the divine action of Christ. In such a scheme, then, nature itself and all of the onto-types embedded therein, are ontologically dependent on Christ in actual existence. Analogical onto-types and their corresponding antitypes in this construct, constitute as Edwards would say, the emanation/communication of the knowledge and glory of God into the creation, by Christ. This knowledge is the life that was the light, or spiritual illumination and salvation, of all humankind. Thus, the whole of creation (not just what it is, but how it is so) was made by God’s existence-conferring action, and the ontological truth of that existence is emanated/communicated through, by, for, and in Christ.

It is upon this ground—namely, that the creation was made by God’s existence-conferring action, and its ontological truth emanated/communicated through, by, and in Christ—that we must reassess the historically accepted starting point for any doctrine of creation in Genesis 1–2. We can turn once again to Emil Brunner’s Doctrine of Creation to provide a different understanding of “in the beginning.” This offers us a new narrative from which to build a contemporary Theology of Nature, one that is grounded in Christology. Brunner affirms the “weighty and enriching testimony” of the Old Testament’s two creation narratives as a preparatory expression of the self-revelation of God in Christ. In this way, Brunner brilliantly places the Genesis creation narratives in a much wider context of biblical typology, as a foreshadowing of the “real” starting point of creation which, in Brunner’s estimations, is the first chapter of the fourth gospel. Brunner offers this new way of thinking of the creation in terms of a true Christology of Nature,

The uniqueness of this Christian doctrine of Creation and the Creator is continually being obscured by the fact that theologians are so reluctant to begin their work with the New Testament; when they want to deal with the Creation they tend to begin with the Old Testament, although they never do this when they are speaking of the Redeemer. Namely, that the basis of all Christian articles of faith is the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.

By placing the starting point for a Doctrine of Creation in the New Testament, Brunner frames the decisive interpretive analysis of the Genesis narrative as a foreshadowing or biblical type of the incarnation of Christ. Namely, that God, in His unified and eternal Trinitarian existence, is creating the world by, in, through, and for the Logos of God, the Son. It is here that we see the “necessary connection between Creation and Revelation.” In Brunner’s Doctrine of Creation, it is the very same Word who created the world revealing the truth that indeed, this world is created in the freedom of God recognized in his Self-manifestation. Here Brunner goes on, “In the Prologue to the Gospel of John the Creation is mentioned in a way which we find nowhere else in the Bible; here “explaining” in this witness to the Creation that the meaning of existence is defined. Word . . . Jesus Christ . . . Word of Creation, are one.” Brunner here is affirming that the redeeming Word is the Word of Creation. There are two communications of the Divine, revealing one meaning for all existence; the Incarnate Son, the Word, Jesus of Nazareth, and in the creation itself, as the Word of Creation. The detailed mechanisms of nature reveal a theme, the very same theme that permeates the Gospels. In other words, the very workings of the natural world represent the birth, miracles, suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ.

It is easy to find natural onto-types (as Edwards so often did) pointing to the beauty and attributes of God in the sublime beauty found in stunning vistas, beautiful and complex mechanisms and structures, as well as in nature’s miracles of birth and regeneration. But what of the death, suffering, and apparent waste found in nature? Can we account for that as well? Yes, we can. The Christological connection to nature is not all butterflies and rainbows. It involves pain, suffering, death and loss, even disgust and repugnance. McGrath proposes the following, “Yet perhaps the most significant aspect of the Christological dimension of natural theology is the connection between the suffering and pain of the natural order . . . and Jesus of Nazareth.” There is a deep spiritual and theological significance in correlating the suffering observed in the natural world and the suffering of Christ. A Christology of Nature provides the existential realignment of understanding the workings of nature that perhaps contemporary scientific and even theological thinking may deem as “evil” or “repulsive.” We are often disturbed by the suffering, death and decay in nature or the aspects of nature that are not uniformly beautiful. One can eschew a discarded carcass being decomposed by maggots, find the lion eating the antelope still half alive as grotesque or morbid, or be disturbed by the thought of the praying mantis female who decapitates her mate after copulation. We may be saddened at the thought of the brilliant star that “dies” in a supernova. The realities in nature such as starvation of animals by drought or mass wildlife death by wildfire cause us to take pause, oftentimes feeling uncomfortable, even wondering about the goodness of God.

However, the suffering, destruction, and death found in nature can be viewed typologically, pointing to the suffering and death of Jesus of Nazareth; this can be viewed in such a way that the cross of Christ is incorporated into the very mechanisms of nature, so that God’s redemptive plan could be known. All of nature, reveals Christ in his birth, life, crucifixion, death, and resurrection. Death in nature is neither a moral nor a natural evil but rather, an onto-type. Even the perceived repugnance in nature is a manifestation of exemplars that God intended to convey through natural onto-types for our instruction.

The suffering in nature that is most difficult to explain and accept can be taken into a greater context, one that always is for a greater good. In this way, we must not stop at the violence, death, and destruction in nature and see revulsion. Instead, we are invited to see the violence and suffering involved in Christ’s death, followed by life-giving resurrection in all its power and redemptive beauty. After death in nature comes rebirth. For example, the wildfire is necessary to add needed nitrogen to the soil, and to germinate certain seeds that cannot open without intense heat, in order for that particular ecosystem to regrow, change, and evolve according to God’s plan. The maggots feeding on the decaying carcass are crucial decomposers in the environment, without such we would be neck-deep in dead animals over the course of our midafternoon walk in the woods. And, these larvae morph into the common housefly which is a vital food source for other animals such as amphibians, birds and bats. While a look at the distasteful aspects of nature may cause us to turn away, deeper understanding shows the ultimate beauty, vitality, resurrection and renewal in them, necessary for the whole of the ecosystem to function and thrive.

This powerful onto-type, probably the most powerful and spiritually important in all of the creation, points to the antitype of Christ’s suffering and horrific death on the cross within the wider context of God’s plan of redemption, with all of the beauty, magnificence, and power it holds for the believer in the resurrection. It is the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ that is the story of our redemption and the victory over death. In nature, death is never final, it always leads to new life. Thus, a greater good embedded in perceived “evils” in nature, one that is fully and eternally grounded in God’s love, are intended to be a communication to the creatures He loves of the spiritual truth that Christ conquered death, once for all. This is the redemption that nature groans beneath, yearning to be set free and brought into glorious freedom, as described by the Apostle Paul.

McGrath continues to discuss how there are no extant views that can account for what seems like meaningless destruction in the natural world. He says, “Both naturalism and deism fail to provide any means for seeing pain and suffering against a more complex background; a Trinitarian vision of God allows suffering to be positioned both receptively and existentially.” I would like to add that not only do naturalism and deism, at the extremes of the divine action views (naturalism claiming no divine action whatsoever) fail to offer an explanation, but likewise neither do (mere) conservationism, concurrentism, nor occasionalism. However, the alternative view of divine action proposed here, Divine Compositionalism, does provide an account. This view holds that all mechanisms in nature, including even the seemingly destructive, violent, or “evil” ones, are part of God’s plans and purposes in Christ. Divine Compositionalism affirms the existence-conferring action of God, real-izing exemplars in the natural world (even the ones that are seemingly repugnant) through onto-types that will communicate the divine excellences of God in Christ. In this way, communication of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ in nature is divine action with divine intent. A Trinitarian vision of God, understood through Divine Compositionalism, allows “suffering to be positioned both receptively and existentially” in terms of God’s Original Ultimate End for the world in Christ

Thus, natural onto-types reflecting all of the glories of God, while not excluding the repugnancies in nature, were all brought into existence by, in, for, and through Christ by intentionally reasserting the story of his suffering, death, and resurrection. Interwoven throughout the natural world and the cosmos, the very meaning of redemption and God’s supreme love reaching to us through his life is told and retold, in order that creatures would “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” The creation, containing the “invisible qualities, eternal power, and divine nature” (Romans 1:20) communicates Christ.

Natural onto-types represent this communication. It is suggested here that that the divine knowledge beneath each and every natural onto-type was intended by the Love that Created as part of the original end in creating. This divine communication was a sheer delight, made finally, and ultimately, for Christ. It delighted God to create for the Son to glorify the Father, and the Father to glorify the Son. We would be remiss not to pause and reflect on Jesus’ priestly prayer in John 17:1–5:

After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

The words of Jesus here speak to the greater mystery: “now this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Perhaps this reflects what Edwards understood as the Original Ultimate End: that God be known. Not just the Creator God who “displays” glory, but the whole essence of God, “the one true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.”

This is an intimate picture of God who communicates in order to share the immense Love that he is with creatures who have the capacity to receive that love and delight in it. This also provides an intimate picture of God accomplishing his end in creating by Self-disclosing the divine excellencies in the Son who carries the perfect image of God, and in everything in the created realm that also communicates divine beauty and excellence. In both of these unified, but different revelations, natural onto-types and their corresponding antitypes serve as divine acting—in communicating the intra-Trinitarian glory shared “before the world began.”

In this section, we have explored how the metaphysical relation between Christ and the creation reflects a species of divine action in emanating/communicating the invisible qualities of God into the creation by natural onto-types, prefiguring their ontological antitypes in and through the second Person of the Trinity. In this way, knowledge of Christ, in metaphysical relation to the creation, reflects the triune God. Next, we continue this line of thought by exploring the incarnation of Christ, as divine action, and as a shadow pointing to the divinity of the triune God in the world.

Christ Born into a Natural World

We have just discussed a metaphysical connection between Jesus Christ and the created realm. However, in that discussion we have only answered part our first question (How does our knowledge and understanding of Christ inform and incite a knowledge of the Triune God in nature?). There is yet another aspect to further explore in order that we fully answer this question. In some way, the metaphysical connection between Jesus of Nazareth and the natural world must also be an aspect of the exemplars in God’s mind. How these exemplars are manifested, including all of God’s ideas about himself coming into the creation in the person of Christ, and are created by, in, through, and for the person of Christ, can be accounted for in several ways. Primarily, we turn next to the incarnation itself. The incarnation is accepted in Christian theology to mean that God entered the creation in the fully human, fully divine person of Jesus of Nazareth, thus becoming part of the creation. God, before the foundation of the world, had the exemplar of descending in human form taking on the likeness of man to suffer, die, and be resurrected for the redemption of humankind.

Here is where we have previously made a clear distinction between the two revelations of God: in the incarnation of the Son and in the structures of the natural world. In Chapter 3 we discussed that there are not two separate revelations of God in the Incarnate Son and in the creation. The revelation of God in the incarnation of the Son and the revelation of God in the physical structures of nature are one unified, consonant revelation, albeit they are different and have different functions. Over the course of that discussion, the conclusion was drawn that Jesus in his humanness is revealing the knowledge and glory of God, and in his divinity is ὁμοούσιος (homooúsios) “one in being with the Father.” The natural world, as proposed earlier, can reveal the knowledge and glory of God, not as ὁμοούσιος (homooúsios), not “one in being” with God, but as ὁμοιούσιος (homoiousios) conferring knowledge of the divine Being. Nature is not divine, but gives us an authentic analogy of the knowledge of the divine.

With that reminder, we now turn to the incarnation as a complex revelation because in it we have both a) the real-izing of exemplars as the communication of the knowledge and glory of God into the very physical structures of Christ’s created body (all the onto-types embedded in the creaturely body), and b) the actual, identical essence of God’s Being. In this way, Christ is both onto-type and antitype. For example, Christ experienced hunger and ate food, was thirsty and drank, experienced fatigue and slept, experienced pain and death. In these biological processes within the physiological body of Christ, just as in all human creatures, God was willing into existence the typological manifestation of all exemplars through exemplar causation. As we have shown in the previous section, this represents the Theo-logy of Nature at work in the very physical body of the Lord Jesus who was human in every respect yet without sin. Yet this is complex because Christ is also one with the Father God and the perfect representation of his Being. In this way, Christ is also the perfect communication of God’s very Being, yet in a form that is not Spirit as God is, but a physical body. In this respect, Christ was the penultimate antitype. He is the fulfilment of every onto-type pointing to the Self-disclosure of the divine in creaturely form (for example, the ionization of sodium chloride was operating in Jesus’ physical body as an onto-type).

Thus, the incarnation holds the greater (and most supreme) significance in terms of God’s own divine Self-disclosure. The human man Jesus of Nazareth in his earthly body was not only emanating/communicating the manifestation of divine exemplars (as all creation is) but He was also emanating/communicating and bringing into the creation the actual ontological divinity of God’s very Being in his own very Being, which “is begotten of the Father.” In this way, only Christ can offer salvation to the world by being one in essence and being with the Father. Nature cannot offer salvation, it can only point to its truths.

It follows then, that the man Jesus of Nazareth was a substantive presence of God in the realm of matter and energy. Jesus, even in the structures constituting his physical body, reflected the perfect idea of God into the creation. As Edwards says in his Discourse on the Trinity, “And this person is the second person of the Trinity, the only begotten and dearly beloved Son of God. He is the eternal, necessary, perfect, substantial and personal idea which God had of Himself.” Edwards continues later in this discourse to say how Jesus, as the perfect idea of God’s Self, is the communicated knowledge of God into the world, as the “light of the world.” In this regard, Jesus of Nazareth is an onto-type pointing to the antitype of the Father. In terms of our question regarding how the knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth incites and informs the knowledge of the Trinity in nature, he is the very embodiment of the knowledge of the Trinity, living and existing in the natural world. This is poignantly expressed at the baptism of Jesus. All four Gospels report this event with great similarity and clarity. The Trinity was represented through natural, created forms: as Christ in human form is baptized, and upon being baptized the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove, and the Father speaks with a voice. Each person of the Trinity is represented in the creation by created elements.

In the previous two sections we have addressed the first question we began our constructive Christology of Nature asking, How does our knowledge and understanding of Christ inform and incite a knowledge of the Triune God in nature? Our next task is to address the second of the two questions we began this chapter seeking to answer: Can nature inform and incite a knowledge of the triune God, especially of Christ? In the next section, we will seek to answer this question through exploring natural onto-types and their corresponding antitypes in the creation made by, in, though, and for Christ.

Deciphering Natural Types and Antitypes

in the Christology of Nature

As we have just explored, a Christology of Nature is grounded in the end for which God created the world, namely to communicate the knowledge and glory of God to creatures God intimately loves. Christ, in addition to his very Self incarnated into the creation, also emanates/communicates into being the onto-types that point the way to all truths in the heavenly reality.

As we have argued, all natural onto-types point to the ontologically real antitypes that exist as eternal exemplars in God’s mind. The antitypes themselves are all God’s ideas that God intended to convey to the creature in order for the creature to know him, not merely know of him. The antitypes are of the utmost importance in this scheme since these are the ideas of God’s Being that God wanted the creature to know. It was out of the great love and wisdom of God that these truths were placed within the context of the natural world. Since these truths ontologically exist in the spirit realm, it would not be possible for the creature to understand them otherwise.

As previously discussed, the antitypes conveyed through the structures, forces, mechanisms, and dispositions in the natural world are but an inferior representation of the superior. The antitypes revealed through onto-types are given proportionally, since the creature is limited in ability to understand spiritual things. Thus, antitypes are given in the physical realm to convey meaning to the creature in a way that the creature can understand, with the acceptance that the knowledge and glory of God conveyed in this way is still incomplete and limited. Full knowledge and glory of God, and full union with the Creator, cannot come until the creature encounters the beatific vision and enters eternity with him. However, onto-types and their corresponding antitypes that are in the world by, in, through, and for Christ are one of the means by which God chose, in perfect freedom, to accomplish his Original Ultimate End.

It is of utmost importance at this juncture to remember that Jesus himself used natural types throughout his ministry and teaching. In the form of parables, primarily recorded in the synoptic gospels, these stories serve as internal analogies in which elements in nature become a witness for the spiritual world. Biblical scholars disagree on various points regarding the parables in form and function. For example, the absence of parables in the Gospel of John is disputed. Some scholars take the allegories, such as the allegory of the Good Shepherd, as parabolic teaching. Other scholars retain that the “true parables,” which represent approximately one-third of Christ’s teachings in the synoptic gospels, vary in number between thirty-three and sixty. Many of these refer to elements in nature, using ecological elements that the people hearing Jesus’ teachings would be familiar with, in order to witness to spiritual truths. We find Christ using images such as the seed: in the parable of the Sower, in the parable of the mustard seed, and the parable of the Growing Seed. In each of these parables, the same natural onto-type was used (the seed) in various ways to convey the antitypes of the Word of God, faith, and growth in the Kingdom of God, respectively. Jesus used agricultural elements such as wheat and tares, the barren fig tree, and the budding fig tree, pointing to the antitypes of distinguishing the righteous from the unrighteous, bearing spiritual fruit, and the coming of the Kingdom of God, respectively. Likewise, Jesus used the analogical type of a fungus (that is, yeast) in the Parable of the Leaven to convey the spiritual truth of immense growth from small beginnings. Jesus also used many other natural images such as pearls, oil, and sheep.

Given Jesus’ extensive use of natural onto-types in his teachings, I would like to propose that there was an ontological grounding in Jesus’ use of them. The connection is grounded in God’s Original Ultimate End in creating. The natural onto-types used by Christ as depicted in the synoptic gospels were created in order to bear witness to the spiritual world and to spiritual teachings. The precise types taught by Christ incorporated elements in nature that typified or shadowed that which God intended to convey. Teachings from these natural elements would be crucial in God reaching to humanity through the elements of nature. The knowledge of spiritual truth in these very elements was real-ized into being by Christ just as all things that have come into being have come into the world by, in, through, and for Christ (as discussed above). In this way, we see the Christology of Nature in operation here in both the metaphysical association of Christ with the natural world, all that came into being through him (as discussed in the previous section), and the onto-types that Christ brought into being for use in his earthly ministry.

Christ’s use of natural onto-types gives validation to their use in a Trinitarian Theology of Nature. In using elements of nature, embedded with ontologically real analogical types, Christ taught that spiritual truths do exist in the structures of the natural world, with the explicit purpose of conveying knowledge of heavenly things. In Edwards’ hand, all natural onto-types were placed here to serve in precisely this way. As we shall see in the next chapter, all of the natural onto-types that co-existed eternally in the mind of God, brought into existence by Christ, must be revealed to the individual in order to be made alive in Christ. This is the work of the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and will be considered in a Pneumatology of Nature.

Next, we will go on to show that there must be an account of how these messages are appropriated by the creature. Can the creature go out and “find” spiritual truths in the created realm through the use of reason alone? This question will be answered in the negative. It will be proposed in the next section that natural onto-types are grasped through the revelatory work of Holy Spirit. In this way, God’s acting takes the form of dynamic revelation to the creature through what has been made; thus, learning the language of nature. In this way, God’s Trinitarian powerful and magnificent glory is not merely displayed by what has been made, but is intimately shared.

. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 29.

. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 30.

. McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 21.

. McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 41–44.

. McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 54.

. I refer the reader to Chapter 5 for a complete discussion. For ease, I give the Scriptures again here that were discussed in detail in Chapter 5:

John 1:2–3: “He was with God in the beginning, through (δι’, di’) him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

John 1:10: “He was in the world, and though the world was made through (δι’, di’) him . . .”

Romans 11:36 has three separate prepositions for the relation of Christ with “all things,” it reads, “For from (ἐξ, ex) him and through (δι’, di’) him and for (εἰς, eis) him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”

Colossians 1:15–17: “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in (ἐν, en) him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through (δι’, di’) him and for (εἰς, eis) him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together”

Hebrews 1:3: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining φέρων (pherōn) all things by His powerful word.”

. Edwards, “Dissertation I, Concerning the End for Which God Created the World,” in Ethical Writings, 531.

. Edwards’ panentheist position raises several other theological questions that will not be addressed here. While Edwards never used the term “panentheism” in his writings, a term coined a century later, he implies that there is nothing outside of God or greater than God, but that all of the creation exists within the mind and Being of God. This immediately raises the question of evil, and hell. If everything in existence exists within God, then is evil in God? And what of a literal “place” for the damned? Is hell then also in God? These are crucial theological questions worthy of further reflection and will be exploration in future work.

. Matthew 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41; and Luke 8:22–25.

. Matthew 14:22–36; Mark 6:45–56; John 6:16–24. Please see Chapter 6 for an account of miracles according to Divine Compositionalism. In this account, Jesus is not “violating” natural laws, but is simply choosing an alternative manifestation, among a range of possible manifestations, in God’s created order in what is perceived as an irregularity or “miracle.”

. Matthew 21:19.

. John 21:16.

. Dr. Walter Schultz and I have formulated God’s divine action in each of these miracles in terms of Divine Compositionalism. I refer the reader to Chapter 6 for a full discussion of miracles as God’s acting on condition selecting a manifestation not regularly seen from the set of manifestations {m}pre-ordained in the actual world by God’s awareness of his omni-competence. In this way, Christ is willing into being these miracles from the set of manifestations that are within his absolute and divine control at every moment of his earthly life.

. Hebrews 1:3; and Colossians 1:17.

. Schwöbel, “We Are All God’s Vocabulary,” 62.

. As John 1:1–3 teaches, “In the beginning was the Word (Λόγος), and the Word (Λόγος), was with God, and the Word (Λόγος), was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

. Olson and Hall, The Trinity, 7–8.

. As Proverbs 8:22–23 instructs, “The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works before his deeds of old; I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be.” In this passage, “brought me forth” is referring to the divine wisdom, the very knowledge and glory of God that intended to be communicated to the creatures.

. Schwöbel, “We Are All God’s Vocabulary,” 63.

Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 8.

. Genesis 1:1—2:3; 2:4–25.

. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 7.

Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 12. We shall explore the connection between creation and revelation later in the Pneumatology of Nature.

. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 8.

. I refer the reader to Chapter 1 where the two revelations were discussed as being consonant and unified, but different.

. McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 64.

. McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 74.

. The death, suffering and repugnance in nature is a type revealing the antitype of Christ’s suffering, and repugnance. According to Isaiah 53, the messiah would raise like a shoot (an image from nature) yet grow to become repugnant, distasteful to look at, would suffer and be forsaken, “For he grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground; he has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him. he was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face, he was despised, and we did not esteem him. Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried; yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” In this way, the distasteful and repugnant aspects of nature, some of which can even cause some to question the goodness of God, are in fact pointing toward Christ.

. Paul writes in Romans 8:21, “that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”

. McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 65.

. McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 65

. Ephesians 3:8

. Proverbs 8 continues in verses 30–31 affirming that wisdom was “constantly at his side, filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.”

. The third person of the Trinity is not being omitted or forgotten here. Jesus assured his disciples that after he was gone He would send the comforter after him in John 16:7, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you” (KJV). The role of the Holy Spirit will be taken up in a separate chapter. As each of the three Persons in the Trinity are being treated separately in separate chapters, it is not intended to imply that they operate separately (a form of modalism or partialism), but rather that the workings of each are fully interrelated, fully known, and fully integrated in a unified divine action comprising the creation. This shall be addressed in the following chapter.

. Grudem, Systematic Theology, 524–29.

. There are numerous Scriptures supporting God’s everlasting and eternal knowledge of himself in this creation in the person of Christ. I refer to Revelation 13:8 and First Peter 1:19–20, and many passages where Jesus foretold his death in fulfillment God’s plan as prophesied in the Scriptures, including John 12:20–36, Matt 16:21–28, Mark 8:3, and Luke 18:31.

. I refer the reader to Chapter 3 for a complete discussion.

. Matthew 4:2

. John 19:28

. Mark 4:38

. Matthew 27:32–56, Mark 15:21–41; Luke 23: 26–43; John 19–21

. Hebrews 2:14 and 4:15, Philippians 2:7–8, Second Corinthians 8:9

. John 10:30, Hebrews 1:3

. John 3:16

. McGrath, Christian Theology, 129, 154, 245–46, 295.

. Edwards, Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith. Vol. 21, 117.

. Edwards, Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith. Vol. 21, 119. Edwards making reference to such Scriptures as John 1:5, John 8:12, First John 1:5, declaring Christ as the Light of the world.

. Matthew 3:1317, Mark 1:911, Luke 3:2122, John 1:2934.

. McFarland, et al., The Cambridge Dictionary of Theology, 369.

. Throckmorton, Gospel Parallels, 145.

. Matthew 13:1–23; Mark 4:1–20; and Luke 8:1–15.

. Matthew 13:31–32; Mark 4:30–32; and Luke 13:18–19.

. Only found in Mark 4:26–29.

. Matthew 13:24–30.

. Luke 13:6–9.

. Matthew 24:32–35; Mark 13:28–31; and Luke 21:29–33.

. Matthew 13:33; Luke 13:20–21.

↑ Back to top