The Relationship of God’s Natural and Spiritual Worlds

The Relationship of God’s Natural and Spiritual Worlds THE RELATIONSHIP OF GOD’S NATURAL
AND SPIRITUAL WORLDS
By Dean H. E. Speck

I. Introduction

Twenty-three years ago this morning, a little girl was born here in Abilene. In the chapel service at eight o’clock that morning in the college, Sister Sewell christened her ''Martha Washington,” and Abilene Christian College took a holiday. To this little girl who has grown into radiant womanhood and is helping to build a Christian home, I affectionately dedicate this paper.

I also wish to make clear the conscious lack which I feel in attempting to dissuss such a profound subject. The relationship of the natural world to the spiritual world has been a theme of inquiry during all the ages. Philosophers, theologians, and scientists alike have conjectured and theorized in imaginative and dogmatic fashion with respect to their relation. Dare I face all of this with the simple statement that the difference is largely man-made? In order to have a clear notion of the point of view taken in the discussion of the subject: "The Relationship of the Natural World to the Spiritual World,” an effort is being made to define the terms. I shall use the word "natural” to refer to that which is derived from or produced by the universe of things, and "spiritual” to include only that which is of or pertaining to God, his Spirit, or his spiritual laws. The term “world” is used to refer to the realm or sphere of activity of nature on the one hand and of God on the other hand.

It is impossible to conceive of the world, natural or spiritual, through any other medium than through language. That which I conceive by my senses or create out of my ideational data is interpreted in terms of my language. My concepts and my language are not your concepts and your language. We create meanings for our language to fit our concepts. Words can be the signs of ideas only to the individual who has the ideas. Man has created a world of science, or, perhaps it is better to say that man has discovered the fact that the world is scientific. He has divided this science into such fields as chemistry, physics, and biology. Since man has done this, does it follow that the fields of science are unrelated or that the field of science is not one? We speak of the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, and the animal kingdom. Because we do this, does it necessarily follow that these do not in the end constitute a unity? Have they not been separated merely for the sake of convenience? We refer in a familiar fashion to the organic world and of the inorganic world. Do these worlds exist as separate entities, or has the idea been created by man? In like manner, our world has been forced to exist as a natural, world and as a spiritual world.

I do not object to the use of such terms as social environment, educational environment, or economic en-vironment, except in so far as they may hinder my larger concept of environment. I accept the divisions of science as chemistry, physics, and biology, but I have often thought that they hinder my general understanding of science. I classify things as to whether they belong to the mineral, the vegetable, or the animal kingdoms; but I wonder if I have not lost something by thinking in terms of such “logic-tight-com- partments.” There is a unity to individual development as there is unity in the universe. Continuity exists and breaks across all the lines of distinction which man has made.

We classify human beings and their powers along with rocks, trees, and insects. Man is physical, mental, moral, and spiritual. So fixed are our ideas in this re-spect that teachers claim to train the hand, the head, and the heart. As if one develops the use of the hand independent of the head and the heart. As if man could live with his thoughts without their directing his hands or influencing his heart. As if man could be touched by the feelings of others’ infirmities without his head knowing it or his hand doing something about it.

II. God and the Universe

It is easy to play upon words and difficult to make a clear statement. Therefore, man has used these differentiating terms to make himself understood. He classifies and labels materials as a matter of conveni-ence. Although he speaks of the vegetable and the animal kingdoms, he knows that the bioplasm of each is, as far as man can tell, identical. “Oak and palm, worm and man, all start in life together.” There is a state in every living tissue when there is no structural peculiarities whatever between them. It is at the point where life begins. It is when “the whole organism consists of a transparent, structureless, semi-fluid—living bioplasm—masses of protoplasm with a nucleus.” This protoplasm is not only the structural unit with which all living things start in- life, but it is also the unit by which they are subsequently recreated. It is the clay in the hands of the Potter, and there is only one kind of clay. There is in the clay and in the plans of the Potter a unity in the structure of all living things, whether they are to live on land or sea, whether they are to creep or fly, whether they are to walk or swim, or whether they are to vegetate or think. That unity is produced by the Creator of all living things, and he lives in all things which he creates. “There is no world of nature aside from God, and there is no spiritual world that is not natural.” “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” In this statement, we find the natural world of space and matter, but the spiritual was present, for it moved in space and upon matter. In this beautiful description of the creation of the universe, God created matter, vegetation, and animal life. Each is dependent upon the other. Although we separate them in our multiple forms and classifications, they are so closely related that neither can live without the other. They are created and perpetuated by the same power which performs miracles in the supernatural world. When the Psalmist looked at the universe, it was filled with God. And God was as truly in the natural as in the spiritual. “Whither shall I go from thy spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” Shall I go into the natural world of my everyday experience to avoid him? “Thou knowest my downsitting and my uprising. . . . Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all of my ways. . . . Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.” No, he is in that area of my natural world. Surely, says one, if I fly from this orbit of things into space, I shall be in my natural world without God. “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the seas (unknown distances); even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” No, God is there and is in control. If my spirit returns unto God who gave it and my body to the dust from whence it came, surely that part of me which is laid to rest will be under the power only of the natural world. But David says, “If I make my bed in the grave, behold thou art there.” God as certainly transforms the body into dust, and is as certainly there in the process as he is in the passing of a soul from the “kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son.”

III. God’s Universe, the Natural and Spiritual World, Is One of Law and Order In the natural world, everything conforms to pattern. Every organic object is formed after its type. This is just as true of the starry heaven as it is of the flowers beneath our feet. Pythagoras observed that there was a beautiful regularity running through every part of nature. “The planets have a spheroidal shape, and move in orbits which perfectly describe and ellipse.” This order becomes so exact that in many cases definite number systems are used. Ten is the typical number of digits for all vertebrate animals. In the mammalia, seven is the number of vertebra in the neck. There is also a beautiful order in nature with respect to time. The primary and secondary planets are periodical in their revolutions. The moon always makes its trips around the earth in definite periods of time. An eclipse can be calculated with mathematical exactness as to time and place. Even the mysterious comets are so periodic that astronomers can definitely calculate the time of their return.

Such order cannot be admitted without acknowledg-ing the existence of a supreme intelligence. Nothing less than intelligent thinking and planning in the realm of cause can account for such clear manifestations in the realm of effect. David felt the power of this supreme intelligence when he said, “I will praise thee: for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hidden from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” The order which so definitely runs through the entire universe is maintained through the operation of law. If this were not true, we would have a chance universe. Because the sun rose yesterday would be no reason to expect it to do so today. The sun might come up in the west instead of the east, and it might set a few moments after it arose. One might be lighter than air at one time and many times more dense at another. Man as a rational being must be able, however, to depend upon nature for continuity. The principle of continuity is an expression of our trust in nature that she will keep her promises. The laws of the universe must therefore be unchangeable. They are fixed and operate without respect to persons or to things. As long as we live in these natural bodies, it will be necessary for us to obey the laws which have to do with physical life. To disregard them is to invite the penalty of the law; for in the natural world, as well as in the spiritual world, “every transgression and every disobedience receives a just recompense of reward.”
It is impossible to live as a physical being in the natural world in violation of or in disregard to the phys-ical laws without suffering the consequences. The same is true of life in the spiritual realm. It is equally true to say that no one has ever been blessed by Jehovah except as a result of his obedience to law. In the natural world, man has to take food. He may have little to do with it afterwards, but the initial act is his. So in the spiritual world, man has his own part to play. He must choose spiritual life; he must nourish this new life; he must starve the old life; he must abide continuously as a living branch in the true vine. The spiritual life will thus flow out to him, assimilating, renewing, conforming to type, until “Christ be formed” in him. The laws are just as dependable, as reliable, as absolute in one realm as in the other. God’s universe is one of law, and these laws are immutable.

IV. Man Stands Between the Natural and the Spiritual

There is order in the natural world which cannot be the result of chance. Law and order are the rule. The various types in nature were pre-arranged by an in-telligent being. In no other way can they be accounted for. In like manner, to understand the patterns in nature, it is necessary to admit that their author fully knew their adaptations in the natural world. The God of nature and the God of the Bible correspond— indeed they are one—and the two great volumes which he has written are in harmony and are the result of the same intelligent mind.

God has used natural things to reflect his glory. There are but few things in the natural world more striking in their appearance than clouds. They are beautiful and sublime. There is something sacred about them, as well as something very mysterious. Since Job asked, “Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds?” science has endeavored to ascertain the causes which balance them in the air. They seem to defy the natural law of gravity. God used this physica.1 medium to guide the children of Israel; he used it a means through which he revealed himself on the Mount of Transfiguration. When our Savior ascended, a cloud received him out of the sight of his disciples, and when he comes in the glory of his Father with all the holy angels, he will come in the clouds of heaven. And God has selected the most beautiful object of nature as an emblem of his promise to man. This emblem, the rainbow, exists in the presence of clouds. No one can study the beauty of a sunset or the starry canopy without saying, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.”

None of these animate or inanimate things enjoy, in this respect, the distinction which is given to mjan. Everything which preceded him seemed to be a promise of his coming. That he bears a close relationship to the animal below him, no one will question. It is just as evident that he has elements in his nature which relate him to a world above him. He occupies the hiatus between the natural and the spiritual. His very nature seems to be composed of the grossness of the one and the refinement of the other. In his bodily organization, he is an animal, but the definition must not stop there. While man is an animal, he is much more than an animal. The history of creation presents the story of a definite plan, in the first period of which only dead matter existed. Then unconscious life in plants appeared, and in the process of time, intelligent life in the lower animals was introduced. God used pre-existing material in the formation of man’s body, and “breathed into him the breath of life and he became a living soul.” In the material world, the animal feeds upon the vegetable and the vegetable upon the mineral. But what use would the animal, the vegetable, or the mineral have been if God had stopped there? But he did not stop there. The word create is used but three times in the first chapter of Genesis. It is used to refer to the origin of matter, the origin of life, and the origin of the human soul. After matter and life had been created, God said, “Let us make man in our own image. ... In the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” The word used here for create is primary, and indicates that man was not the product of preceding species, but was the offspring of God. He is, therefore, the only being capable of obedience to spiritual law. To bring about obedience, God makes himself known to man through revelation. Man is created in the image of God and with the power to obey. This power is awakened and used as God makes himself known to man. “God who at sundry times in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the phophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son.” Man is created in the image of God, in his intellect, in his feelings, and in his power of free will. When God speaks to him, he is therefore able to understand what is said, to feel a definite oughtness with reference to it, and to make a specific choice in regard to it. It is said that Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, that he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, and that he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.

It seems evident, therefore, that man becomes the shrine in which the natural and the spiritual worlds may live together. In his body, he personifies the natural world, and in his soul, he may bear the essence of the spiritual. It is altogether unlikely, therefore, that the spiritual man should be separated in all the conditions of growth, development, and life from the physical man. It is difficult indeed to conceive that one set of principles should guide the natural life, and these at a certain period suddenly give way to another set of principles altogether new and unrelated. Man cannot, in the nature of thought and in the nature of language, be separated into two such incoherent parts.

While man is a dual being, he needs constant guid-ance-. The history of the race, as well as that of the individual, shows that “it does not lie in man to direct his own ways.” He must be placed under law. There can be no law without a law-giver. The author of man’s dual nature is a law-giver. Man’s nature not only demands physical law, it demands spiritual law. The nature of the human mind is such that it demands an intelligent and a spiritual guide to secure its complete development. The God of the natural who is the God of the spiritual has given a system of revelation by which man may appropriate and enjoy the blessings of the supernatural. This revelation is a system of laws.

V. Some Analogies in the Natural and Spiritual World In one sense all laws are spiritual, because they are God’s laws. These are certain definite laws, however, which are operative in what we call the natural world and in the spiritual world. Their dignity is not as natural laws but as spiritual laws. For the visible is the ladder leading to the invisible; the temporal is but a scaffolding of the eternal.

1. The law of generation.
The existence of natural and spiritual law does not explain the existence of life which is subjected to law. The question of the origin of life has baffled the think-ers of all time. There are two distinct theories with reference to the origin of life: the doctrine of spon-taneous generation, and the doctrine that life can come only from pre-existing life. Moses said, “And God made the beasts of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth on the earth after his kind.” The idea of generation and regeneration must rest upon the principle of life producing life. “Like begets like.” The inorganic world of nature is isolated from the organic world. No change of substance, no modi-fication of environment, nor any other form of energy, nor any evolution can endow a single atom of the min-eral world with the attribute of life. This dead world must be taken up by the organic world before it can associate itself with life. The physical laws may explain the inorganic world, and the biological laws the organic, but of the strange border land between the living and the dead, man is silent and impotent. It is as if God had reserved this point for his own appearance.

Spontaneous generation does not take place in the spiritual realm. Such a thing would mean that a man may become gradually better and better until, in the course of time, he emerges into a quality of life known as spiritual life. The doctrine of regeneration represents man as a new creature and not as a mere development of the natural man. It is as easy to expect that stones become bread as it is to expect man by his own bootstraps to lift himself into this spiritual relationship. He must be born from above and he must first be begotten, “not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God.”

Spiritual life is seldom claimed as the product of the possessor. Jesus came that we might have life. Paul said, “I live, nevertheless, it is not I but Christ that liveth in me.” “He that hath not the Son hath not life.” This great truth distinguishes Christianity from other religions. Christ occupies a unique position. It is not true to say “He that hath Buddha hath life.” There are a large number of statements in the revealed word of God which make the claim or similar claims for Jesus. A few of these • statements are: “Know ye not your own selves how that Christ Jesus is in you?” “Your bodies are the members of Christ.” “At that day ye shall know that I. am . the Father, and, ye in me, and I in you.” “We will come unto him and make our abode with him.” “I am the vine and ye are the branches.” “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

2. There is the law of life.
The law of life as it operates in our natural and spiritual world may be more readily seen if we consider the principles, or opposite tendencies of degeneracy and development. It is possible for a life to develop in one respect and deteriorate in another. The principle of degeneracy in life is easily seen in a garden which has been neglected. Not only will it be choked out by weeds and briars, but the kind of plants which grew in the garden will have changed into something different. Any organism in nature which fails to develop, fails even to keep what it has. It deteriorates and becomes more and more adapted to a degraded form of life. There are certain burrowing animals which spend their lives under ground. Nature seems cruel in the revenge which she takes. She closes their eyes. If an animal persists in living in darkness and refuses to use its optical powers, they will atrophy. “From him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.” When God gave nature the law unto her hands, he seems to have given her two interpretations upon which her sentences were to be based. The first is a positive law and deals with acts of commission. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The other law is negative and deals with acts of omission. “Inasmuch as you did it not unto these.” “How shall we^ escape if we neglect so great a salvation.”

Degeneracy takes place in spiritual life in. the same way as in natural life. To neglect or fail to develop by the spirit of God the finer Christian graces is to lose them. It is unnecessary to trample underfoot the great salvation, to despise its holy calling, or to reject its pleadings in order to destroy life. In the nature of things, we cannot escape degeneracy if we neglect to develop. If an individual hides his talent, even though it does no harm, God will not allow him to have it. God no more allows man to keep his talents than nature allows the mole to keep his eyes. “Thou wicked and slothful servant . . . take, therefore, the talent from him,” was God’s pronouncement against him who failed in the holy stewardship of life. This degeneration takes place while we live. In this respect, every day is a judgment day. God and nature must bring about this gradual decay. It is their defense against misuse. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” else he will lose his ears.

Life does not need to be notoriously bad to de-generate. Degeneracy is a natural consequence of neglect, but growth and development are the natural consequences of care and hard work. “If we neglect the ordinary means of keeping a garden, how shall it escape from running to waste and weeds? If we neglect to cultivate the mind, how shall it escape ignorance and feebleness? So if we neglect the soul, how shall it escape the inevitable relapse into barrenness and death?”

Growth, on the other hand, is natural. Jesus calls our attention to the lilies, how they grow. It is well to consider that they are alive; that they are beautiful; but Jesus wanted us to know that they grew. Seeds are planted that plants may grow. The growth is spontaneous and mysterious. It comes without effort and in a way that we do not know. The flower awakes into the beauty and fullness which only growth can produce. In doing so, “it toils not; neither does it spin.” It grows without trying to grow.

Applied in any direction, to plants, to animals, to man, or to his spiritual life, the law holds true. No one would tell a boy to grow. The doctor has no prescription for growth. He can tell how growth may be impaired, but not how the process takes place. The secrets of the “hows” of these processes nature and God seem to keep in the absolute. There is no prescription for spiritual growth. “If these things be in you and abound,” must be urged, must be longed for, and must be realized. Earnestness, prayerfulness, faithfulness are essential in life, but growth seems to be a by-product.
Spiritual growth, like all other growth, seems to come spontaneously, but naturally. In our spiritual life, we are urged to “desire the sincere milk of the word that we might grow thereby.” The desire is for the word, however, and not for growth. “Culture, for example, the inner richness of an affluent mind and spirit, cannot be secured by methods of direct aggressiveness. Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to the measure of his culture? Culture, indeed, we never get; it comes. It is an aftermath, a by-product, an unconscious consequence of fine conditi" Growth takes place when conditions are conducive to growth. In the plant world, the very things which ordinarily minister to growth and beauty may cause decay. The sun which warms the plant and creates the rich color in its fruit and flower may wither it. The air and rain which nourish it may cause it to rot. These forces may be ministers of life or the unseen hands of death. It is in like manner true in the spiritual world. The Christian graces give the only promise of fruit-bearing. The admonition is to add them to faith, and the law of God in his spiritual realm will prove them to be “a savour of life unto life or of death unto death.” It is comforting to hear Paul say, “Now therefore ye are no more strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints and with the household of God; and are built upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone, in whom the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord.”

3.The law of death.
Life and growth are the things we cling to and death is the reality we most often dread. The natural world is full of it and the Christian system emphasizes it. Its mystery is perhaps as great in one as in the other. From the time that, “If thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” was heard in the long ago, the solem,n reality has been linked wiL* human interests. It is a natural consequence in a world of life. It comes as naturally as life.
In the natural world, a living organism assimilates food, discards waste material, matures, reproduces it-self, and dies. In all normal life, these functions are performed. To the extent that any one or all of these powers are absent, dormant, or destroyed, life is lessened or does not exist. In this sense, death may be partial or complete. A man may have a diseased brain and lose consciousness. The sensory nerves cease to acquaint him with the outside world. The world still exists, but he is dead to it.

Some organisms correspond more fully to environ-ment than others. “Only God can make a tree,” but it is much more limited in its power to correspond to environment than a bird. The bird listens to the love call of its mate. It is more alive than the tree. The tree is more dead than the bird. Let us place man in this same environment. A hundred things the bird never sees appeal to him. Man is the only organism which seems to be able to correspond in full to the environment which God provides. The limited way in which we live only indicates how nearly dead we are. You can dwarf a soul as you can dwarf a plant. “Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.” When there is no functioning of the powers of as-similation, discard, maturation, and reproduction, death is compete. Death is natural, at least it conforms to natural laws. Death is a result which is produced by a lack of adjustment to environment. The organism fails to adjust to its environment, and the result is death. In the spiritual world, life and death are used to express opposites. “You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and in sins.” “To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” With respect to spiritual death, it is lack of com-munion with God. The unspiritual man lives only in the environment of this natural world. To be carnally minded is to correspond only to the environment of the natural man. “She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” The mind may be cultured, refined, and enlightened, and still be carnal. It must be adjusted to the environment which God creates by his holiness to be spiritual. It must “think on these things.” “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him,: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

According to the scriptures, when the natural man becomes the spiritual man, he passes from death unto life. He dies to sin but lives unto God. Before the transition from death to life occurs, the difficulty is how to get in correspondence with the new environ-ment. “Except you are born of the water and the spirit, you cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.” The process is reversed as soon as the new birth takes place. After the new birth, the problem then corresponds to Paul’s statement, “For if ye live after the flesh (although you have been born again) you shall die: but if you through the Spirit do mortify the needs of the body, ye shall live.”

VI. Conclusion

However man may classify and arrange the universe into different worlds and ages, God cannot be removed from the smallest particle or the most distant point. He creates one form of life with greater possibilities than other forms. There is a gravitation of the whole universe towards quality. “Some mineral, but not all, becomes vegetable; some vegetable, but not all, becomes animal; some animal, but not all, becomes human; some human, but not all, becomes Divine.” Quantity decreases and quality increases as we ascend the ladder of creation. We see form rise above form and kingdom above kingdom.

These silent and patient processes, elaborating, eliminating, and developing with unaltering purpose and unfaltering power from the dawn of the creation until time shall be no more, are only stages in the redemptive work of “him who filleth all in all.” Since the Magi saw his Star in the East, signs of these redemptive processes have not been wanting in the firmament of truth. And these kingdoms rising tier upon tier in ever increasing sublimity and beauty are only the signs which proclaim that “the kingdom of God is at hand.” And so out of the infinite complexity of a vast and mysterious universe there rises the fore-shadowing of a final unity of that— “One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.”