Introduction
Introduction
Traditional Natural Theology left in its legacy several theological problems needing to be revisited. In a contemporary scientific age, the question becomes, can there be an account of nature in terms of scientific and theological views? It might seem from experimental science that all there is to any mechanism are states of some physical system standing in structural and “causal” relations to other states. From the standpoint of science, establishing a statistically-significant regularity by repeated experimentation entitles one to claim to have explained the mechanism. Thus, basic science according to the scientific method is limited to a description of physical states of a system based on measured values such as mass, charge, spin, etc. These physical descriptions are extremely valuable and form the basis of experimental and theoretical science as such.
However, the physical descriptions in and of themselves cannot give a complete picture of a physical system or mechanism. In other words, as we shall explore later in this book, contemporary physicists are telling us that a purely scientific ontology (grounded in the four fundamental forces acting on entities) cannot completely and rigorously account for productive causation all the way down to bottom out levels of matter and energy. A complete explanation would have to identify not only the physical descriptions of what is going on in the mechanism, but how it is so from a metaphysical or ontological understanding. Perhaps the challenge was put best in 1935 by Albert Einstein who wrote to Schrödinger that the real difficulty lies in the fact that physics is a kind of metaphysics; physics describes “reality.” However, as Einstein so eloquently put it, we do not know what “reality” is; we know it only by means of the physical description. Saying what reality is—having an account of the nature of the fundamental entities that are presupposed by a particular scientific theory—is not something that can be settled scientifically or mathematically. Rather, as Einstein seems to be implying, saying what reality is will inevitably involve religious and philosophical views.
In the chapters that follow, I will explore this idea by arguing that the findings of science and the mechanisms operating in nature simply reveal ways that God acts, according to His plans and purposes. What emerges above and over other views is a re-evaluation of Emil Brunner’s Doctrine of Creation alongside the creation metaphysics of Jonathan Edwards framing the natural world as divine action, and a concomitant active divine communication to the creature. Using this understanding of creation as a foundation, a new constructive view is presented here. This brings forth a fresh theocentric construct overcoming the anthropocentric starting point inherent in older views.
Thus, appealing to a theistic view, not by trying to recover an outdated 19th century Natural Theology or to insert a “God of the Gaps” explanation, but engaging with a new Theology of Nature may provide, as Swinburne and others have rigorously shown elsewhere, as an inference to the best explanation of ontological commitments. As Alister McGrath states,
the scientific enterprise often focuses on the empirical, on surface phenomena, passing over the deeper structures and meaning of the world.
And again,
The key to . . . the orderliness of nature is ultimately expressed in the basic mathematical laws of the natural sciences. Swinburne offers an inductive and probabilistic approach, which sets out to determine whether theism offers a superior account of such regularities in nature than does its alternatives.
Perhaps as both McGrath and Swinburne suggest, consideration of a contemporary, scientifically consistent theistic view may promise a better, more complete ontology of nature.
The argument is taken up by opening the discussion to inherent theological problems in Natural Theology. A brief discussion of Karl Barth’s vehement rejection of this “way of knowing God through natural science” in his famous polemic against Natural Theology is presented to set the framework alongside Emil Brunner’s assertion that God can indeed be known from nature. I explore more of Brunner’s creation dogmatics drawing an interesting parabola between Brunner’s assertion that creation is God’s divine communication with Jonathan Edwards’ views along similar lines. The idea is put forth that perhaps more of Brunner’s ideas and insights serve a new Theology of Nature appealing to the Christian faith in a Triune God as a lens of revelation. This is affirmed by Alister McGrath who says it this way,
This is not to be understood as an attempt to deduce the existence of God from observing nature, but as showing the capacity of the Christian faith to make sense of what is observed. Natural Theology emphasizes the resonance between the intellectual framework offered by the Christian faith and observation; it does not set out to prove any core element of that faith and observation; it does not set out to prove any core element of that faith from an appeal to nature.
For McGrath, there is a naturally occurring “resonance” between current theories in science and observations in nature, confirmed by the fundamental themes of Scripture and the Christian faith. Thus, the premise for the argument here begins with the foundation that revelation of God in and through the natural world does not supplant God’s revelation in Scripture, nor revelation of God in the Incarnate Son, but rather is part of a unified, consonant revelation. However, an inherent problem in Natural Theology placed humankind at the epicenter, thus attempting through human effort and reason alone to find God. This view is turned up-side-down, placing God at the epicenter, reaching to humankind through revelation. In this way, a theocentric approach is proposed whereby God initiates revelation of the divine self, both through the Incarnate Son, and through the natural world. We will explore how these two revelations are unified and consonant, albeit different in essence and function in communication of divine attributes to the creature, and importantly, soteriologically. Only God can reveal God, only God can save, and in the Christian tradition, this is the triune God of the scriptures. Thus, the contemporary view of nature presented here is a Trinitarian Theology of Nature.
The argument continues to explore the position of how God is communicating to the creature, and precisely what is being communicated. The possibility is considered that analogies are embedded in the structures of the actual world. These analogies, pointing to divine truths, are not mere metaphors constructed by human minds. Rather these analogies were intentionally embedded into the structures and mechanisms of nature by God as part of God’s intended plan for the world. These analogies eternally exist as ideas in God’s mind, and are thus ontologically real. All things that God intended to create, containing messages of the divine Self and all spiritual things, are communicated into the structures of the creation, moment-by-moment in a continuous creation. This is where an exploration of the analogies in nature draws again on Edwards, who wrote extensively about a novel typological method of understanding the physical world.
In addition to being a theologian and pastor, Edwards was also well read in the science of his day and wrote extensively on various subjects. This knowledge of modern science gave Edwards the keen advantage of constructing a creation metaphysics that included a natural typology from the biblical scriptures and scientific knowledge. Edwards’ method is brought forth to provide a useful methodology for framing God’s communication through the natural world. Edwards proposed natural typology as a language of God, which intended to convey spiritual, biblical, and theological messages to the creature. We are calling these types in nature, onto-types, pointing to their ontological antitypes which constitute actual spiritual and divine things. It is argued that onto-types are ontologically real prefigurings or types since they originated in the Divine mind with the intent to communicate knowledge of the Divine Self to the creature through what has been made (Romans 1:20). It is proposed that nature, as communication and revelation, is, in its most brute and ontological sense, a Divine action. In this way, relying on Brunner’s insights once again, a bridge between natural knowledge of God and revealed knowledge of God is proposed as a natural-revealed knowledge: God reveals Himself by and through his works. Using this line of theological reason, based on the commands in Scripture, perhaps Brunner won the debate after all is said and done.
I argue that these messages in nature are intentionally woven, by God, into the fabric of the structures and mechanisms of nature (as discovered by science), in order to reveal God’s invisible qualities, eternal power, and divine nature in ways that creatures can comprehend with the intellect, as well as the heart. Alister McGrath puts it this way:
Might nature be studded with emblazoned clues to its meanings, and human minds shaped so that these might be identified, and their significance grasped? Nature is here understood to have the capacity to represent and to speak . . . it might be “instressed” with the signs and symbols that point to its wise meaning.
McGrath attests, as did Edwards, to the intentional, embedded spiritual language of nature, a language that human minds have been fashioned to understand.
One might take all this as a complex unfolding of Romans 1:20, as stated above, perhaps to recover the cry of the psalmist who declared,
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
This Scripture instructs that the natural world declares the glory of God: we are told that the natural world “pours forth speech” and “reveals knowledge.” We are encouraged to press into a revelatory faith that can unblock the eyes of understanding that can be enlightened in such a way that although nature does not use words, its metaphorical “voice” has something vital to communicate, “into all the earth . . . to the ends of the world.” Nature is speaking. Exactly what nature is speaking is explored here, in order to fully comprehend what the Creator wants for us to know. The goal is to discern one consonant unified revelation in both the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture that is continuously communicating God’s Trinitarian, redemptive, identity of Being to all humankind, to all God’s creation. Thus, we may view this divine communication as a gospel of nature.
With the typological method grounded in Divine revelation, the contemporary view of Divine action, Divine Compositionalism, is proposed as a preferred view to account for God’s actively willing into existence and communicating/emanating the knowledge and glory of God into the very structures of the creation. This willing and communicating (as modes of divine action) in the form of natural types also includes the divine act of revealing those real-ized types and their antitypes to created minds. In this way, nature itself holds a three-part unified appropriation of divine acting: willing, emanating/communicating, and revealing. Such a tripartite divine action theory reflects in some way the Trinitarian essence of God’s divine acting, trinitarianly, in and through the structures of the natural world. Jonathan Edwards proposed such an idea of God’s Trinitarian acting in his 1745 sermon, “Of God the Father,”
The whole Trinity is concerned in every work of God. All the persons of the Trinity are concerned in the creation of the world. Each person [of the Trinity] has a distinct part, and as it were, sustains a distinct character and charge in that affair. They are all not only concerned as joint actors and co-workers in the affairs of creation but each has a distinct part in the affair assigned to him. There is this order that is observed by the persons of the Trinity in their acting in all affairs pertaining to the glory of the Godhead in the creation of the world.
Here, Edwards is putting forth the idea that in terms of the ontological reality of creation, each person of the Trinity “has a distinct part, in the affair assigned to him.” Edwards seems to be saying that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit each play a distinct role, while remaining perfectly unified, in divine action to produce the cohesive whole of the creation as we encounter it.
As such, a constructive Trinitarian Theology of Nature is proposed where each person of the Trinity is viewed as acting coordinately and compositionally, out of infinite divine Love, in what we, as humans, experience as the natural world. Nature is not God: nature is God’s acting in willing structures into being, communicating the divine Self through what has been made, and revealing such knowledge to the creature. This is for the ultimate end of the creature receiving the fullness of divine love, and delighting in it. A constructive Trinitarian Theology of Nature expounds three separate, but unified discourses: a Theo-logy of Nature, a Christology of Nature, and a Pneumatology of Nature.
I argue for a theological ontology of the natural world where scientific discovery can inform what nature is, regarding descriptions of structures, events, and processes, while addressing the theological/metaphysical question of how nature is so. In order to explore this methodologically, a simple scientific mechanism is presented, the solubility of NaCl, in terms of its metaphysics of divine action, as well as typologically in onto-type messages embedded in the multistep reactions leading to ionization of Na+ and Cl- from halite salt embedded in rock. This is done through an account claiming that what science discovers is God’s commitment to act and to communicate of the divine Self to the creature. As such, natural and revealed knowledge of God are viewed synergistically as a single natural-revealed knowledge of God. 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 form of natural types, and the Spirit reveals those real-ized types and their antitypes to created minds. Knowledge of the Divine was intentionally embedded in nature by God before the foundation of the world and is grasped through divine revelation of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. In this way, God’s Trinitarian powerful and magnificent glory is not merely displayed by what has been made, but is received and intimately shared in a gospel of nature.
. Swinburne, The Existence of God. Here, Swinburne appeals to Leibnitz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason, stating that there must be an explanation for everything that exists. Since the scientific ontology alone cannot provide a complete explanation of how things are the way they are—not what they are or why they are the way they are—an alternative, more coherent explanation must exist. He appeals to an a posteriori premise based, p-inductive argument providing supporting concepts and truths that add to probability and decrease incoherence. From his argument, a theistic explanation provides inference to the best possible explanation with the least inconsistencies.
. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe, 4.
. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe,18.
. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe, 20, 27–28.
. Much of the work presented in this book was taken, in part, from D’Andrea-Winslow, Lisanne, “A Great and Remarkable Analogy: A Trinitarian Theology of Nature.” PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, Scotland, 2018.
. This work is found in many of Edwards’s writings including throughout his Miscellanies, in Religious Affections, in his Two Dissertations, and in numerous sermons. However, the main source of this work would be Jonathan Edwards, Images of Divine Things.
. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe, 3–4.
. Psalm 19:1–4.
. Edwards, “Of God the Father,” in Sermons and Discourses 1743–1758, 145–46.