Yesterday, when I was out walking our Collie, Moss, in a generally fairly uniform patch of managed pinewoods, I saw a single rather striking white foxglove. Now most of the foxgloves around us are purple, but there weren’t even any of those in the vicinity either. I found this discovery a very moving spiritual experience and it set me thinking about the revelation of God. 

One view is that God’s Revelation is more or less circumscribed by Scripture and that any consideration of God in Creation is confined to a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2, which themselves contain two quite different accounts of Creation. It would seem that at that point all creatures had been designed and given their place on earth and nothing much has changed in that regard since. God of course also revealed himself in Jesus Christ in ways narrated by the Gospels and attested to in the Epistles.

This view seems to suggest to me that God did Creation and then retired for a while, popping up in the lives of the people of Israel for about 6000 years before deciding to do something decisive about these rebellious folk who had played fast and loose with the Covenant that He entered into with Moses on Mount Sinai and which we know as the Ten Commandments. He decided to enter into a New Covenant through the life and ministry, death and resurrection of His only begotten Son Jesus Christ. Then having sorted things out and inspired a number of folk to write it all up for our instruction, He retired and stopped revealing Himself.

Well you won’t be surprised to hear that I don’t buy that rather reductionist view of God and Revelation. Do we not see the face of God in each other and in the whole of the created world revealing itself anew every day? Of course I am not the first to suggest such a radical thing.  It seems to me that it’s exactly what St Francis’ life and work revolved around and The Patristic theologian Maximus the Confessor claimed that “Creation is the accuser of the ungodly” and even went as far as to say “that by means of the visible [natural] world we should understand whence we came, what we are, for what purpose we were made and where we are going”

Pope John Paul II picked up the theme in January 2000 when he said:

“In beholding the glory of the Trinity in creation, man must contemplate, sing and rediscover wonder. In contemporary society people become indifferent ‘not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder’ (G. K. Chesterton). For the believer, to contemplate creation is also to hear a message, to listen to a paradoxical and silent voice, as the ‘Psalm of the sun’ suggests: ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world’ (Ps 19: 1-5).”

JOHN PAUL II – GENERAL AUDIENCE – Wednesday 26 January 2000

Nor is this only a recent idea, Article II of the Belgic Confession of the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands from 1561 asks: 

“By What Means God is Made Known unto Us”.

Article II of the Belgic Confession

The answer:

“We know Him by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to see clearly the invisible things of God, even his everlasting power and divinity, as the apostle Paul says (Rom. 1:20). ‘All which things are sufficient to convince men and leave them without excuse’. Second, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word, that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to His glory and our salvation.”

Article II of the Belgic Confession

So as you enjoy the summer weather (whatever form that may take), I urge you to rejoice in God’s continuing revelation in all of His Creation and in everyone that you meet and treat both with the care and respect that they deserve as beloved creations of their Creator.

Blessings
James