God and Nature Spring 2020
SEEING NATURE FROM CALVARY |
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By George L. Murphy
Views of Nature and God
“How Great Thou Art” is a favorite hymn of many Christians. In it we sing of the beauty and grandeur of the natural world, “Thy power throughout the universe displayed,” which moves us to sing to God: “How great thou art” (1). It seems to us that such praise ought to be everyone’s reaction to the works of the creator.
Our agnostic or atheist friends, however, will respond differently when they reflect on nature. “Yes, certainly there’s beauty, grandeur, and power there,” they will say. “But where is the evidence that some god is responsible for it? Why should we speak of ‘thy power throughout the universe displayed’ instead of just the power displayed by the universe itself? After all, science is doing a very good job of explaining the development of stars, mountains, trees, birds, and other things that this hymn mentions.”
Views of Nature and God
“How Great Thou Art” is a favorite hymn of many Christians. In it we sing of the beauty and grandeur of the natural world, “Thy power throughout the universe displayed,” which moves us to sing to God: “How great thou art” (1). It seems to us that such praise ought to be everyone’s reaction to the works of the creator.
Our agnostic or atheist friends, however, will respond differently when they reflect on nature. “Yes, certainly there’s beauty, grandeur, and power there,” they will say. “But where is the evidence that some god is responsible for it? Why should we speak of ‘thy power throughout the universe displayed’ instead of just the power displayed by the universe itself? After all, science is doing a very good job of explaining the development of stars, mountains, trees, birds, and other things that this hymn mentions.”
"The beauty and grandeur of the natural world and the rationality of the laws that describe it display the greatness of the hidden God revealed in Jesus Christ." |
“Besides,” says the atheist, “Christian hymns about nature always conveniently pick out just the ‘nice’ aspects of the world. I remember from when I was taken to Sunday School a hymn about how God made each bird’s ‘glowing colors’ and ‘tiny wings’ (2). Did that same God make the claws of predatory birds, or Covid-19 and other viruses?”
“Maybe there is some Being behind all of that,” the agnostic adds. “But if so, it’s sure done an excellent job of hiding itself. So why should we sing a hymn to the great unknown?”
Christians can quote Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and cite Romans 1:19 to the effect that the creator’s power can be perceived in the world. But our friends say that they see no evidence for a creator in what they observe. The agnostic could even quote scripture to support her claim: “Truly, you are a God who hides yourself, O God of Israel, the savior” (Isaiah 45:15). How can we talk about or believe in a God who hides from us?
Revelation of the Hidden God
That same verse from Isaiah was referred to by Georges Lemaître, the Catholic priest and mathematical physicist who first called attention to an important feature of models of the universe based on Einstein’s general relativity theory. This is the fact that an expanding universe can have a “beginning” in which the density of energy was extremely high. His theory of a “primeval atom” whose radioactive decay gave rise to the present material of the universe was a forerunner of the big bang model developed some twenty years later. That picture of the universe has now been well confirmed by observations.
Some people assumed that, as a Christian, Lemaître had developed his theory to support the traditional belief, based on Genesis 1:1, that God had created the universe at some time in the past. But the priest’s own attitude was quite different. He said that his view was “consonant with the wording of Isaias speaking of the 'Hidden God’ hidden even in the beginning of the universe” (3).
How can we know a hidden God? Some four hundred years before Lemaître, Martin Luther gave a paradoxical answer: while the revelation of God is hidden, God is revealed in that hiddenness.
Luther, of course, knew Paul’s statement in Romans 1 that our experience of the world can lead to recognition that there is “a God.” But such recognition in itself gives no real knowledge of who God is. In theses (which he called “paradoxes”) prepared for a disputation at Heidelberg, Luther said that a person who claims to know God in that way “does not deserve to be called a theologian.” Instead, the true theologian “comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.”
God is indeed hidden in this revelation because a man mocked and dying on a criminal’s cross seems nothing at all like our natural idea of God. It’s not surprising, then, that Luther supported his claim by again citing that verse from Isaiah (4).
This emphasis on the cross in no way minimizes the importance of Christ’s resurrection. We must, however, remember the identity of the risen One. It is “Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified,” as the women were told at his empty tomb (Mark 16:6). The event of the cross was the death and resurrection of Christ. In two accounts of his appearances to disciples, the risen Christ is identified by the stigmata of the cross.
Viewing Nature from Calvary
Knowing God from God’s own self-revelation in the event of the cross is something that goes far beyond the philosophical claim that there is a “First Cause” of the universe. The cross is an expression of God’s love, and 1 John 4:16 says that God in fact is love (1 John 4:16). The kind of love meant there, agape, is that which intends the good of the beloved rather than of the lover. God doesn’t refuse to grant existence to something that is not God but creates the world “out of nothing.”
A faith based on the cross and resurrection of Christ frees us from any need to identify some specific feature of the natural world, like the bacterial flagellum, as evidence for God. On the other hand, with faith in the God revealed in the cross and resurrection of Christ, we can see everything about the natural world as God’s handiwork.
We are encouraged then to understand things in the natural world in terms of their properties and the patterns or laws to which they conform—in other words, through science. God is behind it all, acting through those things, which can be thought of as the instruments with which God works. Science observes those instruments, not the One who works with them. Thus the “instruments of God” are also, in Luther’s phrase, “the masks of God” that hide the creator from our direct observation even as the divine work is done (5).
The beauty and grandeur of the natural world and the rationality of the laws that describe it display the greatness of the hidden God revealed in Jesus Christ. The seventeenth century scientist and lay theologian Blaise Pascal captured that paradox when he wrote, “What meets our eyes denotes neither a total absence nor a manifest presence of the divine, but the presence of a God who conceals Himself. Everything bears this stamp” (6). It sounds as though he too had Isaiah 45:15 in mind.
What about the Dark Side?
For many people, though, there is that dark side of nature pointed to by our atheist friend, the suffering and evil in the world. There is not just “moral evil” due to human acts, something that all of us as humans know a bit about. There is also “natural evil”—disease, destructive storms, earthquakes, and, for those who know about biological evolution, the idea that that process is driven by natural selection. That forces Christians to think of God as not just allowing bad things to happen but making use of suffering, death, and extinction in order to bring new types of living things, including ourselves, into being.
How could a good and loving God not only allow but make use of suffering and death? That may be a presumptuous challenge to Christian faith, but it can also be a question that prompts Christians to look more deeply at the ways in which God is involved with the world.
There are easy ways—too easy!—of mitigating the problem of natural evil. Some Christians want to hold on to the idea that all suffering and death was brought about by the first human sin. But the Bible doesn’t actually say that, and we know that creatures, including our prehuman ancestors, were dying for millions of years before our species emerged. Some people will point out, quite correctly, that other factors besides natural selection are involved in evolution, which isn’t just a bloody “war of all against all.” But there are predators and prey. Organisms do compete for resources, and some lose the battle. Animals die and species become extinct.
One of those who suffered and died was the Son of God. Because the Word became flesh, God is not just the creator of the world but a participant in the world’s history and its evolutionary process. He shares with the rest of us ancestry with protozoa and primitive fish and ratlike mammals scuttling around under the feet of dinosaurs. He proclaimed and lived the nearness of the kingdom of God, but then lost “the struggle for survival” when “he suffered under Pontius Pilate.”
And the one who became a participant in the history of creation is now risen beyond the power of death. Christ’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s work of new creation, not just for individual believers but for the world. The promise of scripture is of the reconciliation of “all things” to God “through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20).
It’s possible to make some predictions about the future of our planet and even of the entire universe on the basis of our present scientific knowledge. But science itself, which has taught us about things like the butterfly effect of chaos theory, should make us wary of ultra-long-term predictions about complex systems. And the promise of new creation should lead us to expect some surprises. The new creation will be the renewal of the old through the cross and resurrection of Christ.
In the last verse of “How Great Thou Art,” we look forward to the last day, “When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation.” In Michelangelo’s painting of the last judgment in the Sistine Chapel, Christ descending in majesty is accompanied by angels bearing the True Cross and the instruments of his passion.
References
1. “How Great Thou Art", # 532 in Lutheran Book of Worship (Augsburg, 1979), v.1 & refrain.
2. "All Things Bright and Beautiful", #767 in With One Voice (Augsburg, 1995), v.1.
3. Helge Kragh, Cosmology and Controversy (Princeton University, 1996), p.60.
4. Martin Luther, “Heidelberg Disputation” in Luther’s Works, Vol.31 (Fortress, 1957), pp.50-51.
5. Martin Luther, “Psalm 147” in Luther’s Works, Vol.14 (Concordia, 1958), p.114.
6. Blaise Pascal, The Pensées (Penguin, 1961), p.222.
George L. Murphy (PhD in physics, Johns Hopkins, and MDiv, Wartburg Seminary) is a retired Lutheran pastor, who has taught courses in science and theology at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, and The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. Murphy is currently the theological editor for Covalence, the newsletter of the Lutheran Alliance for Faith, Science and Technology (www.luthscitech.org). Dr. Murphy has dealt more extensively with the approach to theology-science relations that is sketched in the present article in his book The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross (Trinity Press International, 2003) and other publications.
“Maybe there is some Being behind all of that,” the agnostic adds. “But if so, it’s sure done an excellent job of hiding itself. So why should we sing a hymn to the great unknown?”
Christians can quote Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and cite Romans 1:19 to the effect that the creator’s power can be perceived in the world. But our friends say that they see no evidence for a creator in what they observe. The agnostic could even quote scripture to support her claim: “Truly, you are a God who hides yourself, O God of Israel, the savior” (Isaiah 45:15). How can we talk about or believe in a God who hides from us?
Revelation of the Hidden God
That same verse from Isaiah was referred to by Georges Lemaître, the Catholic priest and mathematical physicist who first called attention to an important feature of models of the universe based on Einstein’s general relativity theory. This is the fact that an expanding universe can have a “beginning” in which the density of energy was extremely high. His theory of a “primeval atom” whose radioactive decay gave rise to the present material of the universe was a forerunner of the big bang model developed some twenty years later. That picture of the universe has now been well confirmed by observations.
Some people assumed that, as a Christian, Lemaître had developed his theory to support the traditional belief, based on Genesis 1:1, that God had created the universe at some time in the past. But the priest’s own attitude was quite different. He said that his view was “consonant with the wording of Isaias speaking of the 'Hidden God’ hidden even in the beginning of the universe” (3).
How can we know a hidden God? Some four hundred years before Lemaître, Martin Luther gave a paradoxical answer: while the revelation of God is hidden, God is revealed in that hiddenness.
Luther, of course, knew Paul’s statement in Romans 1 that our experience of the world can lead to recognition that there is “a God.” But such recognition in itself gives no real knowledge of who God is. In theses (which he called “paradoxes”) prepared for a disputation at Heidelberg, Luther said that a person who claims to know God in that way “does not deserve to be called a theologian.” Instead, the true theologian “comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.”
God is indeed hidden in this revelation because a man mocked and dying on a criminal’s cross seems nothing at all like our natural idea of God. It’s not surprising, then, that Luther supported his claim by again citing that verse from Isaiah (4).
This emphasis on the cross in no way minimizes the importance of Christ’s resurrection. We must, however, remember the identity of the risen One. It is “Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified,” as the women were told at his empty tomb (Mark 16:6). The event of the cross was the death and resurrection of Christ. In two accounts of his appearances to disciples, the risen Christ is identified by the stigmata of the cross.
Viewing Nature from Calvary
Knowing God from God’s own self-revelation in the event of the cross is something that goes far beyond the philosophical claim that there is a “First Cause” of the universe. The cross is an expression of God’s love, and 1 John 4:16 says that God in fact is love (1 John 4:16). The kind of love meant there, agape, is that which intends the good of the beloved rather than of the lover. God doesn’t refuse to grant existence to something that is not God but creates the world “out of nothing.”
A faith based on the cross and resurrection of Christ frees us from any need to identify some specific feature of the natural world, like the bacterial flagellum, as evidence for God. On the other hand, with faith in the God revealed in the cross and resurrection of Christ, we can see everything about the natural world as God’s handiwork.
We are encouraged then to understand things in the natural world in terms of their properties and the patterns or laws to which they conform—in other words, through science. God is behind it all, acting through those things, which can be thought of as the instruments with which God works. Science observes those instruments, not the One who works with them. Thus the “instruments of God” are also, in Luther’s phrase, “the masks of God” that hide the creator from our direct observation even as the divine work is done (5).
The beauty and grandeur of the natural world and the rationality of the laws that describe it display the greatness of the hidden God revealed in Jesus Christ. The seventeenth century scientist and lay theologian Blaise Pascal captured that paradox when he wrote, “What meets our eyes denotes neither a total absence nor a manifest presence of the divine, but the presence of a God who conceals Himself. Everything bears this stamp” (6). It sounds as though he too had Isaiah 45:15 in mind.
What about the Dark Side?
For many people, though, there is that dark side of nature pointed to by our atheist friend, the suffering and evil in the world. There is not just “moral evil” due to human acts, something that all of us as humans know a bit about. There is also “natural evil”—disease, destructive storms, earthquakes, and, for those who know about biological evolution, the idea that that process is driven by natural selection. That forces Christians to think of God as not just allowing bad things to happen but making use of suffering, death, and extinction in order to bring new types of living things, including ourselves, into being.
How could a good and loving God not only allow but make use of suffering and death? That may be a presumptuous challenge to Christian faith, but it can also be a question that prompts Christians to look more deeply at the ways in which God is involved with the world.
There are easy ways—too easy!—of mitigating the problem of natural evil. Some Christians want to hold on to the idea that all suffering and death was brought about by the first human sin. But the Bible doesn’t actually say that, and we know that creatures, including our prehuman ancestors, were dying for millions of years before our species emerged. Some people will point out, quite correctly, that other factors besides natural selection are involved in evolution, which isn’t just a bloody “war of all against all.” But there are predators and prey. Organisms do compete for resources, and some lose the battle. Animals die and species become extinct.
One of those who suffered and died was the Son of God. Because the Word became flesh, God is not just the creator of the world but a participant in the world’s history and its evolutionary process. He shares with the rest of us ancestry with protozoa and primitive fish and ratlike mammals scuttling around under the feet of dinosaurs. He proclaimed and lived the nearness of the kingdom of God, but then lost “the struggle for survival” when “he suffered under Pontius Pilate.”
And the one who became a participant in the history of creation is now risen beyond the power of death. Christ’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s work of new creation, not just for individual believers but for the world. The promise of scripture is of the reconciliation of “all things” to God “through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20).
It’s possible to make some predictions about the future of our planet and even of the entire universe on the basis of our present scientific knowledge. But science itself, which has taught us about things like the butterfly effect of chaos theory, should make us wary of ultra-long-term predictions about complex systems. And the promise of new creation should lead us to expect some surprises. The new creation will be the renewal of the old through the cross and resurrection of Christ.
In the last verse of “How Great Thou Art,” we look forward to the last day, “When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation.” In Michelangelo’s painting of the last judgment in the Sistine Chapel, Christ descending in majesty is accompanied by angels bearing the True Cross and the instruments of his passion.
References
1. “How Great Thou Art", # 532 in Lutheran Book of Worship (Augsburg, 1979), v.1 & refrain.
2. "All Things Bright and Beautiful", #767 in With One Voice (Augsburg, 1995), v.1.
3. Helge Kragh, Cosmology and Controversy (Princeton University, 1996), p.60.
4. Martin Luther, “Heidelberg Disputation” in Luther’s Works, Vol.31 (Fortress, 1957), pp.50-51.
5. Martin Luther, “Psalm 147” in Luther’s Works, Vol.14 (Concordia, 1958), p.114.
6. Blaise Pascal, The Pensées (Penguin, 1961), p.222.
George L. Murphy (PhD in physics, Johns Hopkins, and MDiv, Wartburg Seminary) is a retired Lutheran pastor, who has taught courses in science and theology at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, and The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. Murphy is currently the theological editor for Covalence, the newsletter of the Lutheran Alliance for Faith, Science and Technology (www.luthscitech.org). Dr. Murphy has dealt more extensively with the approach to theology-science relations that is sketched in the present article in his book The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross (Trinity Press International, 2003) and other publications.