Conclusion
Conclusion
We began with the observation that there can be no coherent and comprehensive understanding of nature based on a scientific ontology alone. Thus, we have sought to advance the theological dialogue around a new Natural Theology and then to contribute an original, constructive theology offering a Trinitarian Theology of Nature. In doing so, the creation metaphysis of Jonathan Edwards was a useful tool to explore what nature is, and how the Creator might communicate in a Trinitarian way to the creatures through what has been made. Likewise, the Doctrine of Creation proposed by Emil Brunner became a useful starting point for a valid theological justification of God’s revelation in and through what has been made.
The work here has made a distinct contribution to theological knowledge and discourse in three ways. First, a prominent problem in earlier versions of Natural Theology was solved. That problem was positioning humankind at the epicenter in attempts through human reason alone to find and prove God. This was Barth’s primary criticism, and rightly so. This anthropocentric approach was the mainstay of Natural Theology which, in more contemporary discussions, revealed the inherent flaw in thinking that the finite can “find” the infinite; only God reveals God. Through the arguments in this book, the anthropocentric position was turned up-side-down, placing God at the epicenter, showing a God who reaches to humankind in revelation. In this way, a theocentric approach was proposed to advance the discussion whereby God initiates revelation of the divine Self, through the Incarnate Son, and through the natural world, according to the Scriptures.
Second, a new Theology of Nature was proposed, advancing the Barth-Brunner debate by showing that creation can and does reveal the Creator. It was argued that if the creation reveals the Creator, then it must reveal the Trinitarian God of the Christian faith. Supported by the work of Jonathan Edwards, Emil Brunner, Thomas Torrance, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Alister McGrath, and others, it was proposed that the natural world is full of the knowledge and glory of the divine Self in messages reflecting God’s eternal truths and the spirit world. The approach taken here proposed that these messages were intentionally embedded into the creation by God, out of his supreme and infinite Love, to communicate to his creatures the knowledge of divine excellencies, fullness, and glory as shadows of divine things.
Third, a new and original constructive Trinitarian Theology of Nature was proposed to supplant older versions of Natural Theology, and to augment more contemporary Doctrine of Creation within Systematic Theology. Using Edwards’ notion of an Original Ultimate End, and his creation metaphysics incorporating natural typology as a way of God’s self-disclosure to the creature, onto-typology was proposed. This new understanding of creation proposing an onto-typology suggests that God intentionally embedded messages of the Trinitarian God and all spiritual things into the very structures of nature. These messages convey eternally representational-intentions-for-existence that order God’s ideas for divine-acts-of-willing-existence. These intentions or ideas that God wills into existence carry messages of the divine Self in what Edwards’ frames as a natural typology in order to communicate God’s excellencies and love to the creature. An example was given applying a creation metaphysics and natural onto-typology to the sodium chloride halide cycle of salt solubility. This, to my knowledge, is the first molecular mechanism analyzed both metaphysically and typologically using the biblical scriptures. This analysis showed how natural onto-types prefigure the message of the Gospel and God’s divine truths all the way to the molecular level of creation.
Natural onto-types as shadows of divine things are emanated into the creation in order to communicate to the creatures in a way that creatures could apprehend. In Edwards’ view, this is a form of divine action, in the sense that God is actively emanating and communicating the knowledge and glory of God into the things that have been made, and also revealing these truths to the human mind and heart. This lends to an examination of God’s willing, communicating, and revealing in and through the creation as unified ways of divine action. A new and original contemporary divine action view, Divine Compositionalism, was proposed in order to account for God’s willing, communicating, and revealing in a continuous creation. In this view, if the whole of creation is God’s acting according to his commitments, then the Edwardsean construct of emanation can be applied to the externalization of the knowledge and glory of God into the creation. Likewise, if the creation holds the messages of spiritual things in the analogical form of natural onto-types, then as God is willing the creation into being, God is also emanating the knowledge and glory of himself into the very creation. However, these messages would go unnoticed or not apprehended without the divine revelation of these truths to created minds fashioned to receive them. In this way, it was proposed that nature itself is a complex construct of God’s acting. This willing, communicating, and revealing entails a) both transcendence (creation ex nihilo) and immanence (creating moment-by-moment, communicating through natural structures, and revealing to human minds), and b) represents a Trinitarian view such that revelation of analogies through natural onto-types is by God, in Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit. This construct bridges the gap between natural knowledge and revealed knowledge of God in a form of natural-revealed knowledge of God.
The newly developed constructive Trinitarian Theology of Nature was proposed, describing, in accordance with a doctrine of Trinitarian appropriations, three ontologically unified ways that God acts trinitarianly to produce the natural world as we experience it. Such a Trinitarian theology of the natural world extends Systematic Theology by contributing new information to the Doctrine of Creation. The first, a Theo-logy of Nature, provided an account of the “ideas in God’s mind” before the creation of the world as grounded in Thomistic exemplars. Thus, exemplars in God’s mind carry the sublime totality of knowledge of all that God intended to create including what the structures are, such as the mass of an electron, the elliptical orbit of Mars, etc., and the typological messages that they contain pointing to the ontological antitypes. The antitypes ontologically belong to God and represent the ground for all of the natural onto-types embedded in nature. These antitypes which are God’s ideas are ontologically real since, although they are not God, they exist in God who is ontologically real, thus God’s ideas are real. Construed as a form of res-idealism, creation is ideal with respect to God, but real to the creature as God appropriates this knowledge to the creature. This represents God’s existence-conferring action, willing the creation into being. This aspect of the Trinitarian Theology of Nature, the Theo-logy of Nature, represents the economic office of the Father/Creator person of the Trinity.
Second, a Christology of Nature was proposed such that the world was made in Christ, for Christ, by Christ and through Christ. In this way, knowledge of God’s Self is communicated/emanated into the creation: through the incarnate Son and through onto-types embedded in the natural world. These are two unified, but not equal, revelations since God’s own essence is in Christ, being one with Christ, but is not in the creation since the created realm is ontologically not God. Nevertheless, knowledge and glory of God is emanated/communicated into the creation by Christ, in Christ, through Christ, and for Christ. All the messages of God’s divine nature are embedded as shadows of divine things and prefigure their ontological antitypes. This is part of the end for which God created the world: to communicate the divine Self ad extra. This aspect was proposed as a Christology of Nature since it represents the economic office of the Son/Christ, the second person of the Trinity.
Third, a Pneumatology of Nature was proposed as a work of the third Person of the Trinity. In this model, the Holy Spirit reveals the knowledge of God in the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture, out of infinite divine love. The Spirit reveals both the truth of salvation in Christ, and truth of the knowledge of God’s glory in the creation. While natural onto-types are embedded in the creation, they would have remained unknown to the creature without the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is revealing the knowledge and glory of God to individuals who have the free will to accept, or reject, this knowledge. If rejected, humankind is left with the scientific ontology alone, with physical descriptions of systems and mechanisms, without a complete understanding of the dynamic underlying reality of God’s divine continuous, compositional acting and self-disclosure. This aspect was proposed as a Pneumatology of Nature in that it represents the economic office of the Holy Spirit/Comforter, the third person of Trinity.
This ontologically unified interworking of the three Persons of the triune God in the creation was envisioned by Edwards in a sermon in 1745 where he proposed that “The whole Trinity is concerned in every work of God,” and that “each person [of the Trinity] has a distinct part . . . in their acting in all affairs pertaining to the glory of the Godhead in the creation of the world.” Thus, the model of a Trinitarian Theology of Nature proposed here expands and extends Edwards’ idea to include the unified and intentional action of each of the three persons of the Godhead in constituting the reality of creation which creatures encounter each day. In this way, the whole of nature is act-result. While these works are distinct to each person of the Godhead, all the works of God are the indivisible works of the triune God as explicated by hermeneutical tool of the Doctrine of Appropriation. Simultaneously, this theology buttresses Emil Brunner’s debate with Karl Barth affirming that, as grounded in the biblical text, God can indeed be known from what has been made. In fact, we can claim that God is the ultimate reality and this world is made in anlaogy.
Thus, we have argued for an ontology where scientific discovery can inform what nature is, regarding descriptions of structures, events, and processes, but more importantly, to describe how it is so through a Trinitarian Theology of Nature, grounding nature as divine action. A Trinitarian Theology of Nature not only includes all of what science describes, but can answer the questions of how nature is so through an ontology that shows what science discovers is God’s commitments to act and to communicate the divine Trinitarian Self to the creature. In this construct, the Father wills eternally real ideas into existence, the Son communicates/emanates knowledge and glory of God into the structures of the creation in the forms of natural onto-types, and the Spirit reveals those real-ized types and their antitypes to created minds. Nature as God’s divine acting is a dynamic revelation of love to the creature in and through an understanding of the natural world, by 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. There is nothing more beautiful, more valuable, more worthy in all of existence. It is the efflux of that that mutual intra-Trinitarian love ad extra, when it is received, delighted in, and appropriated by faith that the end in creation is accomplished. In this way, a Doctrine of Creation viewed as a Trinitarian Theology of Nature, is a doctrine of God’s divine and continuous loving action.
. Edwards, “Of God the Father,” in Sermons and Discourses, 1743–1758, 145–46.