Overview of Nature: Sovereignty, Creation, and Providence:

In Christian theology, "nature" is simply the faithful rule of God over everything in the creation.

There are many alternative non-Christian conceptions of nature:

1. The pagan deification of nature, or things in nature such as the sun, moon, animals, rocks or trees.
2. Aristotle's notion of nature as self-sufficient and eternal (naturalism). This view saw the world as autonomous from God, and the philosopher as a detached and objective observer of it.
3. Plato's dualistic view of the world as Being/Becoming, supernatural/natural, ideal/sensible, spiritual/material. This view greatly affected the early Church through Ptolemy and Plotinus to Augustine. It deepened the split in culture between "upper" and "lower" realms that has lasted to this day.
4. The Newtonian view of nature as a closed mechanical system, like an autonomous clockwork that runs by itself and is completely determined by built-in "laws of nature".
5. Modern physical cosmology, including relativity and quantum mechanics as its fundamental basis. This reified, mathematical world view seems irrelevant to the human condition: "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems meaningless." (Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes.)

How should we understand the relationship of God to nature?

Robert Boyle, an important physicist and chemist, wrote a critical appraisal of nature after over 20 years of reflection on the matter. Boyle wrote from the remarkably Biblical perspective of 17th century Puritan England:

"Nature is a licentious word, and one which is detrimental to a fully based faith in the Creator.... Aristotle, by introducing the opinion of the eternity of the world, did ... openly deny God the production of the world. So, by ascribing the admirable works of God to what he calls "Nature", he tacitly denies him the moral government of the world."

--Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, made in an Essay, London, the Royal Society, 1682. (New edition 1996 by E.B. Davis & M. Hunter, Cambridge U. Press).

Boyle had several other objections to the concept of "Nature": like "Fortune" or "Fate", Nature" or "Mother Nature" is a loose and vague notion. The concept is not found in the Old Testament. Instead, there are warnings against the deification of created things (see Job 31:26-27, Deut. 4:19, Rom. 1).

"The Christian is advised rather to pay admiration and praise directly to God Himself, who is the true and only Creator of the sun, moon, earth and those other creatures that men are wont to call the works of Nature."

Boyle, p. 134, quoted in James Houston, I Believe in the Creator, p. 36).

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