chapter4:The Christian View:Creation
The beginning of the Christian view of nature is the concept of creation: that God was there before the beginning of the space-time continuum and God created everything out of nothing. From this, we must understand that creation is not an extension of the essence of God. Created things have an objective existence in themselves. They are really there.
Whitehead, Oppenheimer, and others have pointed out that modern science was only born out of a surrounding consensus of historic Christianity. Why? Because, as Whitehead has emphasized, Christianity believes that God has created an external world that is really there; and because He is a reasonable God, one can expect to be able to find the order of the universe by reason. Whitehead was absolutely right about this. He was not a Christian, but he understood that there would never have been modern science without the Biblical view of Christianity.
It is the same in the area of nature. It is the Biblical view of nature that gives nature a value in itself: not to be used merely as an argument in apologetics, but of value in itself because God made it.
Jean-Paul Sartre stated that the basic philosophic problem is that something exists. And nature is there—even if man doesn’t know why. Christians know why it is there: because God created it out of nothing, and it is in its place! Created things are not an extension of God’s essence. They are not a “dream of God,” as some Eastern philosophies claim; they are really there. That may sound naive and obvious, but it is not; it is a profound concept with profound consequences. Think of Hume’s arguments against cause and effect. They were demolished in Hume’s day-by-day experience because nature is really there, and it exists because God made it to exist; and existing, the particulars of nature affect other particulars of nature which are there.
It is intriguing to note, as we did in the preceding chapter, that after the Reformation the Dutch painters began to paint nature, no longer feeling any necessity to restrict themselves to religious subjects. In fact, from that time on religious subjects were relatively rarely painted. Most artists had suddenly found that nature was worth painting, and that it is properly Christian to paint it.
Now it follows that if we return to the Reformation’s Biblical view that nature is worth painting, so the nature which we paint is also worth something in itself. This is the true Christian mentality. It rests upon the reality of creation out of nothing by God. But it also follows that all things are equally created by God. All things were equally created out of nothing. All things, including man, are equal in their origin, as far as creation is concerned.
All of this depends, of course, on the nature of God. What kind of God exists? The JudeoChristian God is different from all the other gods in the world. The Judeo-Christian God is the personal-infinite God. The gods of the East are infinite by definition, in that they contain everything including the male and female equally, the cruel and the noncruel equally, and so on. But they are not personal. In contrast, the gods of the West—the Greek and the Roman gods, the great god Thor and the Anglo-Saxon gods—were personal but were always limited and finite.
So the Judeo-Christian God is unique: He
is infinite and He is, at the same time, personal.
Now how did He create? On the side of His
infinity there is the great chasm. He creates all
things, and He alone is Creator. Everything else
is created. Only He is infinite, and only He is the
Creator; everything else is dependent. So man, the
animal, the flower, and the machine, in the Biblical
viewpoint, are equally separated from God in that
He created them all. On the side of infinity man is
as separated from God as is the machine.
So on the side of the infinite the chasm is between God and everything else, between the Creator and all created things.
But there is another side—the personal. Here the animal, the flower, and the machine are below the chasm. On the side of God’s infinity everything else is finite and equally separated from God; but on the side of His personality, God has created man in His own image. Therefore, man’s relationship is upward rather than downward—a tremendous factor that opens door after door for the comprehension of confused modern man.
Man is separated, as personal, from nature because he is made in the image of God. That is, he has personality, and as such he is unique in the creation; but he is united to all other creatures as being created. Man is separated from everything else, but that does not mean that there is not also a proper relationship downward on the side of man’s being created and finite.
But his relationship is not only downward. Albert Schweitzer related himself to the hippopotamus coming through the bush, because Schweitzer had no sufficient relationship upward. But man is made in the image of God, who is personal; thus he has two relationships—upward and downward. Of course, if he does not find his relationship upward he will have to find this relationship (or integration point) downward. Christians reject this totally because we know who man is; we are not threatened by the machine as modern man is, because we know who we are. This is not said proudly, but humbly and reverently; we know we are made in the image of God. We reject an attitude that makes our integration point downward. Christians reject the view that there is no distinction—or only a quantitative distinction—between man and other things; and they reject the view that man is totally separated from all other things.
As a Christian I say, “Who am I?” Am I only the hydrogen atom, the energy particle extended? No, I am made in the image of God. I know who I am. Yet, on the other hand, when I turn around and I face nature, I face something that is like myself. I, too, am created, just as the animal and the plant and the atom are created.
There is a parallel here to our call to love. The Christian is told to love as brothers in Christ other Christians only. All men are not our brothers in Christ, as the liberal theologian would have us believe. From the Biblical point of view, brothers have the same father. Only when a man comes and casts himself upon the prophesied Messiah of the Old Testament as the Savior (for Christ has come in His substitutionary work) does God become his Father. This is clear from the teaching of Jesus. Therefore, not all men are our brothers in Christ.
However, just because the Bible says that not all men are our brothers, it does not follow that we are not to love all men as our neighbors. So one has the tremendous impact of the teaching of Jesus about the good Samaritan: I am to love on the basis of my neighborliness all that which is one blood with myself. And the New Testament uses that expression, “one blood,” to indicate the unity of all people by God’s creation. We are people who know we have one common origin with all races, all languages, and all people.
But only the Christian knows why he has a common origin. The evolutionist, the “modern” man, has no real reason to understand a common origin or a common relationship among men, except a biological one: people breed. That is all with which they are left.
The Christian, however, understands that people are all from one origin. We are all of one flesh; we are of one blood. One can say that from the Biblical viewpoint, there are two humanities: one, the humanity that stands in revolt against God, and the other, the humanity that used to be in revolt against God (because none of us came into this second humanity by natural birth). The members of this second group, having believed on Christ, have cast themselves upon God and have become the sons of God.
Yet one must never forget there is only one humanity, and this is no paradox. There are orthodox Christians who will not let it be said that there is only one humanity, because they so strongly reject the liberal emphasis upon the one humanity at the expense of justification, but this is shortsighted. There are two, but one. The Christian is called to understand that there are two humanities, and to love his brothers in Christ especially; and yet Christ also lays upon us the love of all men, as our neighbors, because we are one.
It is the same in regard to nature. On a very different level, we are separated from that which is the “lower” form of creation, yet we are united to it. One must not choose; one must say both. I am separated from it because I am made in the image of God; my integration point is upward, not downward; it is not turned back upon creation. Yet at the same time I am united to it because nature and man are both created by God.
This is a concept that no other philosophy has. Among other things, it explains the machine functions of man. For example, we have a common lung system with dogs and cats. This is not surprising. Both man and these other creatures have been created by God to fit a common environment. There is a common relationship in these mechanical functions, which relates man downward. There are machine functions to man. Psychologically there is a conditioning, not only in the animals but also, to a more limited extent, in man. This is to be expected, in view of our relationship both downward and upward. Nevertheless, this is not my basic relationship. I am not afraid of the machine. I am not overwhelmed or threatened, because I know I am made in the image of God. I can see why I have mechanical functions and some conditioning, because I have this downward relationship to “lower” things (though, as we shall see, the term “lower” is not ideal). Therefore, intellectually and psychologically, I look at these animals, plants, and machines, and as I face them I understand something of the attitude I should have toward them. I begin to think differently about life. Nature begins to look different. I am separated from it, yet related to it.
Notice the phrase “intellectually and psychologically.” This is a very important distinction. I can say, “Yes, the tree is a creature like myself.” But that is not all that is involved. There ought to be a psychological insight, too. Psychologically I ought to “feel” a relationship to the tree as my fellow-creature. It is not simply that we ought to feel a relationship intellectually to the tree, and then turn this into just another argument for apologetics, but that we should realize, and train people in our churches to realize, that on the side of creation and on the side of God’s infinity and our finiteness we really are one with the tree!
This relationship should be not only for aesthetic reasons—though that would be enough reason in itself because beautiful things are important—but we should treat each thing with integrity because it is the way God has made it. So the Christian treats “things” with integrity because we do not believe they are autonomous. Modern man has fallen into a dilemma because he has made things autonomous from God. Simone Weil’s statement that modern man lives in a decreated world is acutely perceptive. Everything is decreated; everything is autonomous. But to Christians it is not autonomous, because God made it, and He made things on their own level. The value of the things is not in themselves autonomously, but that God made them—and thus they deserve to be treated with high respect. The tree in the field is to be treated with respect. It is not to be romanticized, as the old lady romanticizes her cat (that is, she reads human reactions into it). This is wrong because it is not true. When you drive the axe into the tree when you need firewood, you are not cutting down a person; you are cutting down a tree. But while we should not romanticize the tree, we must realize God made it and it deserves respect because He made it as a tree. Christians who do not believe in the complete evolutionary scale have reason to respect nature as the total evolutionist never can, because we believe God made these things specifically in their own areas. So if we are going to argue against the evolutionists intellectually, we should show the results of our belief in our attitudes. The Christian is a man who has a reason for dealing with each created thing with a high level of respect.
We warned earlier against allowing Platonic concepts to color our Christian thinking. Platonism regards the material as low. But we certainly cannot think the material low when we realize that God created it. We can think of things being created in different orders, but that is a very different concept from thinking things are low in the sense of base, as opposed to high. God made everything, and any sense of lowness (with its poor connotations) has no place here. To think of them as low is really to insult the God who made them.
The second reason why the material is not low is that Christ’s body was raised from the dead. This really is a very important point. The resurrection of the body should be held as a doctrinal reality, and further as a truth that gives us an attitude toward life.
Christ’s body really was raised from the dead. It could be touched, and He could eat. And this resurrected body is now somewhere. We would reject Tillich’s view of Heaven as a “philosophic other.” I think that John Robinson, in Honest to God, was right, from his viewpoint, in making the ascension, rather than the resurrection, the crucial point. I think he really understood the implications. A physical resurrection might happen somehow or other in the modern theologian’s world, but what you could not have is a body that could eat ascending into “the philosophic other.” To the modern theologian, that is an unthinkable concept. In contrast to this, we believe in the ascension; the Bible tells us that the physically resurrected body of Jesus is somewhere in the unseen world.
The resurrection and ascension prove there is no reason to make false dichotomy between the spiritual and the material. That is a totally nonBiblical concept. The material and the spiritual are not opposed. The fact that our bodies are going to be raised also speaks of this.
Another thing to notice from the Biblical viewpoint is God’s covenant of creation. God has given us certain written covenants in the Scripture. He has made tremendous promises— for example, the covenant promise to Abraham and to the Jewish people. And He has given the promise to the individual in the New Testament: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” But with God’s written covenants there is also the covenant of creation. The covenant in the Scriptures is a propositional, verbalized covenant; the covenant of creation rests upon the way God made things. God is going to deal with them as He made them. God will not violate either covenant. He will always deal with a plant as a plant, with an animal as an animal, with a machine as a machine, and with a man as a man, not violating the orders of creation. He will not ask the machine to behave like a man, neither will He deal with man as though he were a machine.
Thus God treats His creation with integrity: each thing in its own order, each thing the way He made it. If God treats His creation in that way, should we not treat our fellow-creatures with similar integrity? If God treats the tree like a tree, the machine like a machine, the man like a man, shouldn’t I, as a fellow-creature, do the same—treating each thing in integrity in its own order? And for the highest reason: because I love God—I love the One who has made it! Loving the Lover who has made it, I have respect for the thing He has made.
Let us emphasize—this is not pantheistic; nevertheless, this respect for all created things must be consciously exercised. Consciously we are to treat each thing in its own order and on its own level. Like so many things in the Christian life, this attitude does not come mechanically, because God is treating us like man and expects us to choose and act like man. Thus we must consciously deal with the integrity of each thing that we touch.
The good modern architect struggles to use materials with integrity. Consequently, for example, if he is using poured concrete, he wants it to look like poured concrete and not like brick. Another area of integrity for the architect was emphasized by the great architect Wright, who put forward the concept of the integrity of the building to the integrity of the terrain. So there is this desire in our own day to treat material honestly. If we are to have something beautiful, a landscaping that is going to stand with strength, we shall have to keep in mind the integrity of the terrain and the integrity of the material used. Although this concept is true for all men (since they are made in the image of God, even if they do not know it), yet Christians have a special understanding of it because of their special relationship with God. And our conscious relationship with God is enhanced if we treat all the things He has made in the same way as He treats them.
In sociological things modern man deals only with sociological “averages.” But in the modern field of ecology he begins to scream, “I am dying in my city and my ocean is dying.” This goes far beyond sociological “averages.” His inner attitude to nature is involved. How is he treating it? Modern man has no real “value” for the ocean. All he has is the most crass form of egoist, pragmatic value for it. He treats it as a “thing” in the worst possible sense, to exploit it for the “good” of man. The man who believes things are there only by chance cannot give things a real intrinsic value. But for the Christian, there is an intrinsic value. The value of a thing is not in itself autonomously, but because God made it. It deserves this respect as something which was created by God, as man himself has been created by God.
It is true, as Lynn White points out, that many “Christians” are worse off in the area of ecology than animists, who think there are spirits in the trees and so they don’t cut down the trees carelessly. However, although this is true, it is not because Christianity does not have the answer, but because we have not acted on the answer; not because Christianity does not have a view that gives a greater value to the tree than the animist can give it, but because we haven’t acted on the value that we know, or should know, it has as a creature of God.
This is an extension of Abraham Kuyper’s sphere concept. He saw each of us as many men: the man in the state, the man who is the employer, the man who is the father, the elder in the church, the professor in the university—each of these in a different sphere. But even though they are in different spheres at different times, Christians are to act like Christians in each of the spheres. The man is always there and he is always a Christian under the norms of Scripture, whether in the classroom or at home.
Now, here is the extension: I am a Christian, but not only a Christian. I am also the creature, the one who has been created; the one who is not autonomous, dealing with these other things that equally are not autonomous. As a Christian, I am consciously to deal with every other created thing with integrity, each thing in its proper sphere by creation.
To summarize this chapter, let us reiterate the fundamental fact that God has made all men and all things. He has made my body as well as my soul. He has made me as I am, with the hungers of my spirit and my body. And he has made all things, just as He has made me. He has made the stone, the star, the farthest reaches of the cosmos. He has done all this!
To think of any of these things as intrinsically low is really an insult to the God who made it. Why do Christians lose their way when it seems so clear and so definite? Why should I say my body is lower than my soul when God made both my body and my soul?
Second, Christ’s incarnation teaches us that the body of man and nature is not to be considered as low. After all, Jesus took on a real body because God had made man with a body. So, in the incarnation the God of creation took on a human body. More than that, after the resurrection Jesus Christ could eat and be touched. The Bible insists on the real, historic, space-time resurrection of Jesus, so that there was a resurrected body that could eat and that could be touched. This body was not just an apparition or a “ghost.” And this same body ascended into Heaven and went into the unseen world. The body that can eat is still in the unseen world, and will one day in future history be visible in the seen world again.
Our resurrection is of the same kind. When Christ comes back again, our bodies are going to be raised from the dead. It is going to be a real physical resurrection, and consequently whether it is Jesus’ body or our body the emphasis is the same: God has made the body, and the body is not to be despised and considered as low.
The same sort of emphasis is found explicitly in God’s covenant of creation at the time of Noah. In Genesis 9:8-17 we have God’s covenant within the relationship to creation. “And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you [mankind], and with your seed after you; and with every living created thing.” So God says this, His covenant, was with mankind, but equally with all creation. Then again, in the thirteenth verse, He says: “I do set my bow in the cloud for a token of the covenant between me and the earth.” God makes a promise here that embodies all creation. God is interested in creation. He does not despise it. There is no reason whatsoever, and it is absolutely false Biblically, for the Christian to have a Platonic view of nature. What God has made, I, who am also a creature, must not despise.