Nature or Creation?

Language matters.

A small difference in a turn of phrase or even the changing of a single letter can speak volumes if the context is right. Early in Christian history for example, debates over the doctrine of the Trinity boiled down to two words, two words spelled almost identically but for one letter. As it turns out, that seemingly small distinction would come to mark the boundary between orthodoxy and heresy.

Another distinction, which may seem small at first, is particularly relevant for our present day, the difference between “nature” and “creation.”

Though often used interchangeably, these two words in fact carry with them very different ways of imagining the world in which we live, and the shift from creation to nature has serious implications.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, people saw the world around them as enchanted. The Christian tradition had long spoken of the world as something created and ordered by God, and filled with spiritual forces both good and evil. The land below and the sky above were, in a very real sense, understood as a gift from God, and we as His image bearers were uniquely connected to and responsible for the creation.

Yet over time, for reasons too numerous and complex to expand on here, the imagination of the Western world gradually became disenchanted.

No longer was this world around us “creation,” even if we still used the word. Instead, it was “nature.” The difference being that unlike creation, nature is just material, it has neither a meaning nor a telos, a goal.

This has serious ecological implications, because nature is something for human consumption – hence “natural resources.” The whole debate shifts. We might argue that we should use those resources more responsibly, or more aggressively, or that their use will have this health effect or that impact on the economy, but it all boils down to material that is given meaning by the ways it should or shouldn’t be used by people.

But if world is a creation, if God ordered it and placed humanity in it as his image bearers, then there is more to the story. In that case we have a calling to steward this place on behalf of the Creator whose image we bear.

Case in point, a recent survey showed that 57 percent of Americans believe “that humans are called by God to live responsibly with plants, animals and earthly resources.” These are people who are being shaped by a different story than the pervasive materialism of our day. A story in which the world is more than nature, it is creation. And that story has shaped their imaginations in such a way that it influences their day-to-day choices.

So yes, it is just the difference between two words, words that admittedly many of us use interchangeably without even noticing. But, once we start to pay attention, we soon find that its more than two words, it is two fundamentally different ways of viewing the world, it is the difference between enchantment and disenchantment.

And that enchanted creation, that place God set us over to care for and tend? It is worth fighting for.