" And we are heirs to a Latin
theology grafted on to the Thor-worship of our pagan ancestors. The
idea of a Nature producing beneficently and kindly at the word of a
loving God is foreign to all our inherited modes of thought. And our
views of the heart of Nature are about as correct as those of our
ancestors were of God. A little more of oriental tendencies of
thought would harm neither our theology nor our life.
What, then, is the biblical idea of Nature? God speaks to the earth,
in the first chapter of Genesis, and the earth responds by "giving
birth" to mountains and living beings. It is evidently no mere
lifeless, inert clod, but pulsating with life and responsive to the
divine commands. While yet a chaos it had been brooded over by the
Divine Spirit. It is like the great "wheels within wheels," with
rings full of eyes round about, which Ezekiel saw in his vision by
the river Chebar. "When the living creatures went, the wheels went
by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the
earth, the wheels were lifted up. Whithersoever the spirit was to
go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were
lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creatures
(or of life) was in the wheels." And above the living creatures was
the firmament and the throne of God.
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