Is Creation always and forever good?
Introduction
This paper seeks to begin to explore the Christian conviction that Creation is good, and that it is the work of a good Creator, particularly in the face of suffering and decay within the non-human world. It will also give consideration to the Biblical picture of a new created order at the end of time, and how Creation transformed will reflect the variety and indeed voracity of this good Creation.
“In the beginning God created….God saw all that He had made, and it was very good” Genesis 1:1- 31 (The Bible - New International Version)
The popular television wildlife series: Springwatch (© BBC) annually opens up the treasure trove of the natural world to millions of viewers, and, together with many other high quality documentaries, regularly bring fresh insights into the wonders of the non-human world well within the reach of “everyman”. There is no doubt that we live in times of great abundance in terms of knowledge and understanding of the natural world, and its variety and beauty, and at the same time, an increased awareness of just how seemingly brutal and violent much of nature is. Even the most domesticated and naïve of wildlife enthusiasts cannot escape the reality that nature is “red in tooth and claw” (Tennyson – In memoriam), and the seemingly callous, and ultimately fatal, attack of a magpie upon a juvenile blackbird, observed no more than ten meters from the back door of an urban garden is sufficient to raise the question: “how good is creation?”
This is of course, only a problem to those who would seek to hold on to a belief in a benevolent Creator God: “The crux of the problem is not the overall system and its overall goodness, but the Christian’s struggle with the challenge and goodness of God posed by specific cases of innocent suffering”[1]
Predation, disease and parasitism, and indeed extinction of species are all examples of suffering in non-human nature, none of which can easily be described from an anthropocentric world-view as “good”. For the evolutionary scientist, the brutality of nature is an inevitable, and indeed necessary part of non-human existence, and in the process individual species have developed into finely-tuned, efficient killing machines. For the Christian scientist, seeking to hold the notion of a good creation and a good Creator in tension with the reality of nature, there is no easy solution: “I still struggle with evil in the natural world – the brutality of nature.”[2]
The Biblical assertion in the book of Genesis about the goodness of creation in the eyes of the Creator, is modified by later scriptures, which, like Genesis were written under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, with Paul in Romans 8:22 describing a creation, groaning in travail, a creation longing for its transformation at the coming of the Lord Jesus. Whilst ultimately the Christian holds out a belief in a future hope for the complete renewal of creation, there equally needs to be a present acknowledgement of the goodness that the Creator saw in His creation, and which He, being beyond time and space, still sees in it as the processes of creation continue. “Ecologists today realize that the world is not a static system, in which natural processes operate according to a fixed, predetermined pattern, but one that is evolving in response to a complex range of variables. The cycle of death and decay is necessary for life…”[3]
It is prudent, therefore, for the Christian, wrestling with these ethical tensions, to maintain a degree of humility, recognising that human perceptions and assumptions about goodness will inevitably not fully reflect the way that goodness is to God, until His good and loving purposes are fully and finally known.
“The wolf will live with the lamb; the leopard will lie down with the goat”” Isaiah 11:6 (The Bible - New International Version)
The nature of the new created order at the end of time forms the basis for the second part of this paper, and, not surprisingly, any consideration in the realm of the world to come, will inevitably draw heavily on imagination, as “we don’t yet see things clearly…but it won’t belong before …we’ll see it all as clearly as God sees us” (1 Corinthians 13:12) The Bible – The Message translation), or as Southgate puts it: “It is very hard to see how the leopardness of leopards could be fulfilled in eschatological coexistence with kids”[4].
Our comprehension of the world is constrained by our mortal physical experiences, and yet the core conviction of the Christian faith is that through God’s redemptive initiatives, fully and finally worked out in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a new relationship between Creator and creation is secured. “There is in the Bible no redemption, no social and personal life, apart from creation. It is therefore reasonable… to hold that the Bible as a whole is concerned with the future of creation”[5]
Indeed, it is a reasonable to suggest further that “only in the light of the eschatological consummation may the [the verdict “very good”] be said of our world as it is in all its confusion and pain.”[6]
A Christian theology of the new creation has to allow space for the existence of representatives of every species ever created by the One who declares it good, whilst at the same time has to have the humility to admit, to use the words from the title of the well-known and currently popular hymn: “I cannot tell…. But this I know”.
The Christian does know the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and how in His resurrection appearances He was encountered by His followers in a new physical and spiritual dimension, no longer constrained by time and space, yet immediately recognizable as the Jesus who had lived amongst them, and who had the scars to show of His complete embracing of mortality.
In the final book of the Bible, a new created order is proclaimed: “I am making all things new”, (Rev.21:5 NIV), and the environment features as part of that new creation: “On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month”. Whilst it should always be allowed that the Creator can enable alternative means of pollination in His new created order, an acceptance that the bee, whose species is currently engaged in that process of creation is part of the creation declared to be good, and therefore destined to be part of that new order, albeit, with a transformed nature which diminishes its capacity to inflict lasting pain and suffering through its sting!
Conclusion
The inspired Word of God, the Bible, asserts that Creation is good, and is the handiwork of a good Creator. Science reveals a wonderful and complex variety of characteristics within non-human nature, including elements which do not sit comfortably with an innocent understanding of goodness. The goodness, which Christians are encouraged to consider as an essential characteristic of Creation has to allow space for both the variety and voracity of nature, which is “red in tooth and claw”. It therefore follows, that a Christian understanding of the nature of a good God, has to consider a broader concept of goodness, than one understand from a purely human moral and ethical point of view. When God says His Creation is good, that affirmation brings with it an endorsement of all such characteristics which make non-human life forms different, and even those which have an inherent tendency to cause suffering for others.
Furthermore, the Bible holds out the prospect of a new creation order at the time of the fulfilment of all of Gods good and loving purposes, a foretaste of which is revealed in the resurrection nature of Jesus Christ. His physical body, still retains and reveals scars from His active engagement within human mortality, whilst at the same time demonstrates characteristics that are no longer bound by time or space. A new created order will surely still reveal the rich variety of all forms of non-human life, even those species which have survived and thrived as a consequence of predatory supremacy, and accordingly will retain and reveal characteristics that will enable them to be identified as specific species with differentiating attributes, but, at the same time, something new and different, akin to the resurrection characteristics of Jesus, and as yet, not evident to mortal humanity, will be revealed.
A further consequence of the transformation that will be brought about by this new creation order, will also surely be, the ability for all of Creation, human and non-human, to fully comprehend the mind and workings of the Creator, so that any present lack of clarity or conviction as to what might be good in God’s sight, is removed, or rendered irrelevant in the everlasting presence of the Lord of all.
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Bibliography
Books:
Marlow, Hilary (2008) The Earth is the Lord’s – A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues, Grove Books,
Wenham, Gordon J (1987) Word Biblical Commentary – Genesis 1-15 Word Books,
Wilkinson, David (2002) The Message of Creation – Encountering the Lord of the Universe Bible Speaks Today, Inter-Varsity Press,
Articles:
Wilkinson D. (2009) God, the Universe and everything! Interview in A Rocha magazine issue 30
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