The Bible tells us that God Spoke, but what did He actually say? The good news is that His creative speech has been compiled in the book of nature, the first volume in His word, Word, WORD trilogy. It is a literary work that reveals God’s spirit through its physical pages. It tells us that the world is composed of good parts put together in a very good way. It describes a beautiful world of order and complexity inhabited by special animals and unique humans. We get the sense that it was once perfect, providing us with an idyllic standard by which we are able to judge the state of the world. It fills us with an internal garden optimism but also alerts us to the fact that something has gone horribly wrong in the wilderness. The natural world actually raises more questions than it answers, and we are left wondering how to make sense of it all. Every worldview acknowledges the book of nature but then tries to build a larger metanarrative around those unanswered questions. They are drawn into the drama, but instead of letting it unfold, they arrogantly take the pen from the Creator and write the rest of the story themselves. The good news for Christians is that God wasn’t done talking after He recited the book of nature. He also commissioned image-bearing beings to become inspired spokespeople and scripturally fill in the rest of the details. Once again, God’s immaterial thought became a physical reality but this time through the inspired written word of His image bearers. The questions raised by the creational words found in the book of nature are completely answered by His inspired scriptural Word.
The Bible is a survival manual that helps us navigate the wilderness and directs us to our true home. We know it is reliable because it is the only book that accurately describes the world in which we live. Since it flawlessly maps out the landscape of life, we can trust it to guide us on our journey to the new heaven and earth. We stand in awe of God’s eternal power and divine nature when we read the book of nature but are then prompted to turn the page and meet Him in Holy Scripture. As it turns out, God’s triune nature is reflected in His spoken word trilogy. The creatively spoken words of God are illuminated by the Word of God and direct us to the ultimate source of that light, the incarnate WORD.
We often speak of the book of nature and the Bible as two independent sources of testimony about God, but Paul considered them a seamless whole. I would argue that they are not two separate books at all, but rather the preface and narrative of the greatest story ever told. Since our culture is becoming less biblically literate, even among evangelicals, the traditional apologetic appeal to scripture is falling on deaf ears. We need to once again reacquaint people with God’s natural world preface so that they will be curious enough to open up the Good Book. Since everyone understands God’s common grace where “He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt 5:45) we have been given a wonderful opportunity to stand with our fellow humans in the sun and rain and talk apologetically about the weather. Talking to others about God doesn’t involve teaching them a strange new language but rather introducing them to the One whose words they already know. If we can get them intrigued by God’s preamble, then we can get them to turn the page and read the rest of the story. We need to remember that general revelation only sets the scene for the story, but it is God’s saving revelation in sacred scripture that actually drives the performances on the world stage.
As we all know, a picture is worth a thousand words; therefore, the problem isn’t a lack of creational text, but rather its proper translation. The book of nature presents us with the words God spoke into creation. The Fall resulted in distortion of those words through the devilish appropriation of sinful syntax. The scriptural Word helps us recover the meaning of those created words. Finally, the WORD made flesh restores God’s original garden grammar, and our newfound literacy compels us to hit the Great Commission road to get the WORD out. Maybe it would be more appropriate for us to speak of a Christian Wordview rather than worldview.
I cover this in much more detail in my book The Director’s Cut: Finding God’s Screenplay on the Cutting Room Floor (Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press, 2014).
If we want to better understand how God’s trilogy can bridge the sacred-secular divide, check out my new book. God Spoke
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
