“The Teaching of the Creatures”: An Early English Free Will Baptist Appeal for a “Serious” and Thoughtful Christian Worldview
Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (NASB)
In 1651, sixty-one men, representing thirty General-Free Will Baptist congregations in England, gathered together to commit to paper a formal statement of their beliefs and practices. Appropriately named The Faith and Practice of Thirty Congregations Gathered According to the Primitive Pattern (hereafter Faith and Practices), this document contains seventy-five articles. Interestingly, nine of the first ten articles are dedicated to the Christian’s responsibility to meditate on general revelation or, as they term it, “the teaching of the creatures.”[1]
Like their Reformed brethren on the Continent, these believers held that studying God’s mighty acts was a serious duty for the believer.[2] God has commanded us to take note of His handiwork. He calls us to this study so we will learn about Him and be changed. The lessons learned from the teaching of the creatures ought to reform our desires, overflow in exhortation to others, and “break forth” into praise-filled gratitude toward God.
Why should we take seriously God’s glory on display in the teaching of the creatures?
In article five of the Faith and Practices, the General Baptists argue that studying creation is an act of obedience since “God commandeth men to take a view of his wise, powerful, and righteous works of creation (Is. 40:26).”[3] This isn’t merely a formal recognition of God’s providence but instead involves “serious consideration [and] meditation.”[4]
Broadly speaking, our consideration of creation takes two forms. First, we study the power and wisdom of God through discovering His laws for creation. Second, we discern God’s glory and wisdom as we meditate on beauty in connection with truth and goodness (or righteousness).[5]
Since the early church, thinking deeply about the natural laws of creation has been important. Clement of Alexandria argued that God had specially gifted the Greeks to perceive His glory in general revelation.[6] More than any other ancient people, they discerned the eternal truths of politics, philosophy, and aesthetics. Though their perception of the truth was incomplete, it was more fully realized in the person of Christ.[7]
Among the world’s religions, Christianity uniquely encourages a rational investigation of the universe. Sociologist Rodney Stark persuasively argues that this phenomenon is a product of Christianity’s faith in reason and progress.[8] As Christians explored the world around them, they found freedom to improve on old concepts and to provide new solutions to ancient problems.[9] However, they were also spurred by a desire to understand God better through His truth.
Concerning the study of beauty, the ancient Greeks were again unique in the ancient world. Abraham Kuyper notes, “[T]he Greeks have always been the people among the nations who seemed to possess the most classical sense of beauty.”[10] Clement purposefully and intentionally drew on the aesthetic ideas of the Greeks when discussing how Christians should interact with the world and the arts. Primarily, he pulled from the Pythagorean and Platonic concepts of the music of the spheres.
According to Pythagoras, people can describe the world in mathematical relationships. These mathematical relationships were based on proportion. This concept applied to the movement of the heavenly bodies, but also to human proportions, architecture, painting, and music.[11] Christians modified these concepts, subjecting them to theology, and refining our understanding of beauty.
What can we perceive of God from studying the teaching of the creatures?
The reward for our diligent study of creation is a better understanding of God and of ourselves. Paul explains that we obtain knowledge of God’s invisible attributes, power, and eternal nature through general revelation. In this way, we glimpse the infinite greatness and power of God. As our appreciation for God’s greatness grows, our own pride diminishes.
Drawing on Romans 1:20 and Isaiah 40:26, article four of Faith and Practices posits, “creation doth plainly declare the power and righteousness of God.”[12] Since God created all things, the “world of beauty that does in fact exist can have originated nowhere else” and teaches us about its creator.[13] Even man’s greatest achievements in art are paltry scribbles compared to the grandeur, complexity, and subtlety of every detail in creation.
In fact, God seems also to take pleasure in beauty. Why else would He create untold numbers of stars and solar systems that remain unknown to us? Or the complex inner workings of a tree’s ability to photosynthesize when the vast majority of humans had no concept of it? In addition, Scripture highlights beauty as something good.[14] For these reasons, “beauty was designed by God to be something powerful.”[15]
However, this world and its impurities are passing away (2 Pt. 3:12). How does this affect beauty? Scripture gives us glimpses of the new heavens and the new earth, which are beautiful beyond imagining. It refers to this eternal coming world as the kingdom of glory (Ps. 145:11). Thus beauty is also a foreshadowing of the coming kingdom and will find its ultimate consummation in glory. By studying creation, we perceive a higher, nobler, and richer reality that only partially corresponds to the material world.[16]
According to Paul, creation displays the divine nature of God (Rom. 1:20). Or as Kuyper says, “Beauty, and beyond that, divine glory is the Spirit radiating through what appears before our eyes.”[17] Therefore, God is communicating Himself to us through the wonder of creation as well as through Scripture.[18] It is important to remember that God intentionally gave us both forms of revelation.
Still, our observations of creation can go astray. People may seek beauty as an end in itself (see John Keats, “Ode on A Grecian Urn”). In addition, sin corrupts our ability to appreciate God’s glory (Rom. 1:21-23). More broadly, the Fall has caused the notion and sense of beauty to function unequally for individual people. As Kuyper notes, some people seem “entirely jaded” to an appreciation of beauty while others are remarkably sensitive.[19] For these reasons, we must always seek guidance from Scripture.
Yet the design of creation is intended to draw us into a deeper consideration of God. As we grow in the knowledge of God, our other perceptions adjust in response. Specifically, our self-estimation changes. According to the Faith and Practice, meditating on God’s handiwork in creation “begets thoughts of . . . His greatness, and our inferiority.”[20] In this way, it pushes us increasingly to abandon our own wisdom in favor of His.
Conclusion: How should we respond to the teaching of the creatures?
Interestingly, the English General Baptists had very specific expectations about how we should respond to our observation of God’s glory in creation. They argued that we should turn our meditations outward as we share our findings with others. Secondly, they expected our meditations to result in gratitude and praise toward God.
In Psalm 145:4-7, the Psalmist describes God’s people as exuberantly passing along their knowledge of His mighty acts. For this reason, the Faith and Practice states, “God doth command men to speak or declare that which they have learned by the teaching of the creatures.”[21] We speak and declare what we’ve learned in three broad forms.
First, we need to allow the Holy Spirit to train our powers of discernment so that we may approve what is excellent, beautiful, pure, just/balanced, true, and honorable (Phil. 4:8). Because these qualities are an intimation of God’s glory shining through the created order, we’re setting aside God’s glory when we ignore them and replacing it with our own desires (the created order). This is dangerous, resulting in God giving us up to our debased minds (Rom. 1:28).
Second, we should express what we’ve learned from “the teaching of the creatures” directly through speech and writing. These communications can be both informal and formal in nature. Informally, we all need to express our reflections with friends and family in the quiet moments of our shared days. On the other hand, people who’ve been called to teach (both in churches and schools), have a responsibility to present their findings more intentionally and didactically.
Third, we must bow in reverent gratitude to our Creator. Paul explains that not honoring God or giving thanks for His mighty works was one of the key reasons that mankind became futile in their ideas (Rom. 1:20-21). For the General Baptists, such ingratitude seemed intentional, since “good meditation” and “serious considerations” of the “glorious works of creation, ought to break forth with admiration unto thankfulness to God.”[22] Gratitude is the natural and unrestrained response to our contemplation of general revelation. For this reason, God punishes our wickedness in this area harshly (see Rom. 1:24-32).
The teaching of the creatures is inescapable. We’re surrounded by them on every side and exist as creatures ourselves. Let us not turn a blind eye to God’s loving communication to us. Instead, let us sit quietly and tune our hearts to His lessons.
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[1] The Faith and Practice of Thirty Congregations Gathered According to the Primitive Pattern (1661), in Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss, eds., Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 3:93.
[2] See the Geneva Catechism (1541-1542).
[3] Faith and Practice, 93.
[4] Ibid.
[5] The separation of beauty from truth and goodness, can lead us into sin rather than to the contemplation of God. For example the human form is beautiful, but if we look on a person’s body lustfully (abandoning goodness), we sin. The beauty of a mathematical formula can be enlightening, but if it is false it could lead to much harm.
[6] Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies, XIII.
[7] Ibid., XVI, XIX.
[8] Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (New York: Random, 2005), xiii.
[9] Ibid., 38.
[10] Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman (1905; trans., Grand Rapids, MI: Christian’s Library Press, 2011), 128.
[11] See Calvin Stapert, A New Song for an Old World: Musical Thought in the Early World, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Liturgical Studies (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006). His chapter on Clement of Alexandria is especially helpful.
[12] Faith and Practice, 93.
[13] Kuyper, 126.
[14] Ibid., 127. For example, Sarah, Moses, Absalom, and God Himself.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid., 144.
[17] Ibid., 131.
[18] For example, the unending instances of diversity within unity in creation give us a sense of the triune nature of God that Scripture more clearly presents.
[19] Kuyper, 128.
[20] Faith and Practice, 93.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid. (emphasis mine).
March 12, 2018
Great article! Really enjoyed this one. Thanks!
March 23, 2018
Matt, thank you so much for your kind comment and readership. I hope you will find this useful in your ministry.