The World Speaks!

Consider the paragraph below by Steve Talbot alongside: John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. and Psalm 19:1-3: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.

The intimate relation between the meaning of our words and the meaning we find in the world may be so obvious as to seem almost trivial, yet its implications are so profound as to have mostly escaped the notice of working scientists. If we took the fact of the world’s speech seriously — the world speaks! — there would be none of the usual talk about a mechanistic and deterministic science, about a cold, soulless universe, or about an unavoidable conflict between science and the spirit. Confronting the many voices of nature, we would inquire about their individual qualities and character, we would look for the direction of their expressive striving, and we would struggle to grasp the aesthetic unity of their various utterances — all of which is to say: we would listen for their meanings. The necessity for such inquiry is implicit in a world that speaks and also in the scientist’s employment of speech to translate the world-text. This turning a deaf ear to a resonant world and even to our own speech accounts for many of the limitations and contradictions of the science we have today.

~ Steve Talbot, “The Language of Nature” in The New Atlantis (Winter 2007), 42.

The Key to Understanding the Struggle Between Science and the Supernatural

Harvard biologist, Richard Lewontin, speaks frankly about the way in which a prior commitment to materialism functions in much of the scientific community. Refreshing to read such honesty.

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community of unsubstantiated just so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

~ “Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New York Review of Books, January 7, 1997, 31.

On the Meaning of Everything

“Because reality is theistically grounded, human beings do not have the freedom of, the justification for, or even the capability of creating and ascribing an independent meaning to the universe. They are not free to do so because God already has done it. They are not justified in doing so because it is a violation of their subordinate, creaturely status. And they are not capable of doing so because of their formidable limitations. Only the rebellious, the proud, and the deceived, that is, only a human nature that is corrupt, would attempt such a ridiculous feat. The meaning of the universe and the authority to determine it are not open questions since both are fixed in the existence and character of God.”

~ David Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2002), 261-262.

The Deep Meaning of Happiness

For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen (Romans 11:36).

“If God is the proper reference point for all aspects and things in life, then God gives them their true meaning and puts them in the proper order in our lives. This grand union of God, ourselves, and the whole cosmos in a sacred synthesis of rightly ordered love constitutes the deep meaning of happiness.”

~ David K. Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 23.

The Trinitarian Life of God

“The Father… Son… and Holy Spirit glorify each other… Self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the Trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt, commune with, and defer to one other… Each harbors the others at the center of his being. In constant movement of overture and acceptance each person envelopes and encircles the others. [So] Creation is neither a necessity nor an accident. Instead, given God’s interior life that overflows with regard for others, we might say creation is an act that was fitting for God… In creation God graciously made room in the universe for other kinds of beings. God’s splendor [glory] becomes clearer whenever the Son of God powerfully spends himself in order to cause others to flourish… Jesus Christ’s pattern of life in the world reproduces the inner life of God.”

~ Cornelius Plantinga, quoted by Timothy Keller in Gospel Christianity, part 1 (Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2003), 16.

Created to be Dependent

“The doctrine of creation confronts us with the reality that we are neither physically or spiritually self-sustaining. We were created to be dependent. Dependency is not therefore a sign a weakness. Rather it is a universal indicator of our humanity. Humans are dependent beings. Yet we do not like to be dependent. It is the legacy of our fallenness to do everything we can to conceptually and functionally repudiate the doctrine of human dependency.”

~ Paul David Tripp, Whiter Than Snow (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008), 23.

The Bible & the Universal Reign of God

“The Bible is unique among sacred books of the world’s religions in that it is in structure a history of the cosmos. It claims to show us the shape, the structure, the origin, and the goal not merely of human history, but of cosmic history. It does not accept a view of nature as simply the arena upon which the drama of human history is played out. Much less does it seek the secret of the individual’s true being within the self — a self for which the public history of the world can have no ultimate significance. Rather it sees the history of the nations and the history of nature within the larger framework of God’s history — the carrying forward to its completion of the gracious purpose that has its source in the love of the Father for the Son in the unity of the Spirit. The first announcement of the good news that the reign of God is at hand can be understood only in the context of this biblical sketch of a universal history. The reign of God is his reign over all things.”

~ Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, Rev. Ed. (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 1978, 1995), 30-31.

The Word that Upholds the World

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made (John 1:1-3).

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). 

“The Scriptures tell us that the stability and reliability of the created order as a whole are not qualities that are somehow built into it as much as they stem from the fact that the creation was freely spoken into existence by a God whose words ’stand fast’ because of his faithfulness; that is, because God has determined to own up to his words.”

~ Craig M. Gay, Dialogue, Catalogue & Monologue (Vancouver, Canada: Regent College Publishing, 2008), 34.