Natural Theology - Followup from Lewis


In reading the 4 Loves by C.S. Lewis, I came across an interesting quote on natural theology

My reading group is currently reading through C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves. Those of you playing along by looking at the right side LibraryThing widget already know I'm reading it. It is a book that I have previously attempted, but never enjoyed enough to finish. I was hoping, in suggesting we read it, that the group setting would cause me to approach it with a bit more diligence, and that the discussion might bring out more of the wisdom contained in the book. I can't speak for the discussion yet, as we haven't had our first meeting on this book, but I'm definitely enjoying the book this time around. I don't quite know what it was that turned me off about it last time I picked it up, but this time it seems much more interesting and edifying.

To praise, or even review, the book is not the goal of this post, however. I came across a section where Lewis is talking about our love or appreciation of Nature, and what it can and cannot teach us. This section reflects a lot of what I was talking about in this post, responding to a post at Mere Orthodoxy. I thought it was worth posting some of Lewis' thoughts on the matter.

"If you take nature as a teacher, she will teach you only the lessons you had already decided to learn; this is only another way of saying that nature does not teach.... Overwhelming gaiety, insupportable grandeur, somber desolation are flung at you. Make what you can of them, if you must make at all. The only imperitave that nature utters is, 'Look. Listen. Attend.'"

Here we see Lewis echoing something that I had paraphrased from Luther - that we see God in nature, but not as He truly is. We seem to see both wonderful and terrible features at the same time - great euphoric highs, coupled tightly to devastating losses. It can tell us that there is most definitely a God greater than us, but it can't tell us that He is good or has provided for our salvation.

Here are a few other quotes in the same vein:

"Nature can't satisfy the desires she arouses nor answer theological questions nor sanctify us."
"We must learn our theology or philosophy elsewhere (not surprisingly, we often learn them from theologians and philosophers)."
"Nature will not verify any theological or metaphysical proposition (or not in the manner we are now considering); she will help show what it means. And not, on the Christian premises, by accident. The created glory may be expected to give us hints of the uncreated; for the one is derived from the other and in some fashion reflects it. In some fashion. But not perhaps in so direct and simple a fashion as we at first might suppose. For of course all the facts stressed by nature-lovers of the other school are facts too; there are worms in the belly as well as primroses in the wood. Try to reconcile them, or to show that they don't really need reconciliation, and you are turning from direct experience of nature - our present subject - to metaphysics or theodicy or something of that sort.... We have seen an image of glory. We must not try to find a direct path through it and beyond it to an increasing knowledge of God. The path peters out almost at once."

Again, the creation bears the marks of the Creator, but His image is veiled in it. Somehow we have to reconcile the beautiful ocean and the destructive hurricane, and we can't do that strictly from nature. As long as natural theology is simply bearing the standard of Romans 1 - that all men know in their heart there is a God because they live in His creation - then it is doing its job. When it begins to stray from that and try to teach us any attributes of God, it is prone to borrow its theology from somewhere other than nature. Or, as Lewis says, "clothe" its views learned elsewhere in what it sees in nature.

It turns out, however, that Lewis doesn't think that is a bad thing. In fact, he thinks that it is often quite profitable to learn the meaning of certain words in our theology from nature. As long as we understand this unidirectional dynamic - we learn our theology elsewhere, and nature gives it meaning - it is a very profitable endeavor.

"Many people - I am one myself - would never, but for what nature does to us, have had any context to put into the words we must use in confessing our faith. Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word 'glory' a meaning for me....I do not see how the 'fear' of God could have ever meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe, if I had never seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags."

Posted: Sun - May 28, 2006 at 07:35 PM | | | | | | |

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