Reflections & Discussion Starters

The Book Of Nature

‘Revelation comes in two volumes: the Bible and Nature’
Thomas Aquinas

‘We’ve ignored nature as a revelation of Christianity for centuries, which includes our human nature and the nature of the universe. It’s just as important as the Bible.’
Matthew Fox

Matthew Fox, an Episcopalian priest, formerly a Roman Catholic Dominican monk, is founder of a movement known today as GreenSpirit. The GreenSpirit website describes the movement’s aims as to:

The GreenSpirit movement can be seen, in part, as a reaction against the Biblical fundamentalist view that the Book of Genesis is, in effect, a scientific textbook. On the other hand, the movement could be seen as a sentimental version of neo-Darwinism – embracing individual insignificant in the vast cosmic dance. Our bodies began as stars and to stars they will return. Does this really satisfy the rage against insignificance and personal obliteration that troubles all of us, even if we push the fear aside most of the time? Philip Larkin expresses this well in his poem The Old Fools:

At death, you break up: the bits that were you
start speeding away from each other for ever
with no one to see...

For the most famous modern neo-Darwinist, Richard Dawkins, the Book of Nature tells us that we are the product of self-sufficient and purposeless processes. Our fears may be natural – may. indeed, have a survival function! – but they have no snaser. Neither do our innate ethical questions: what is good? How should we behave? In a recent debate, though, Dawkins comes close to acknowledging the limitations of the Book of Nature:

‘Homo sapiens is the only species that can rebel against the otherwise universally selfish Darwinian impulse. We are the Earth’s last best hope. Our brains follow their own rules, which can rise above the laws of natural selection. I am a passionate Darwinian in that it is the main ingredient in our understanding of life. I am a passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to human social and political affairs.’
(Royal Institution debate 2002).

But if genes alone define us, how is it possible ‘to rise above the laws of natural selection’?

In the story of the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:30-32), one of the most striking resurrection stories, the disciples who are confronted by the risen Jesus are unable to recognise him. In the Book of Nature death and oblivion are unquestionable realities. Only at the last moment do they realise the truth: ‘When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?”’ As this hints, maybe the Book of Nature isn’t the whole truth.

DISCUSSION