God as Author of the World
Chapter 2 of My Systematic Theology Master's Thesis, Contending with the Divine Writer's Block
Chapter 2 of 5: God as Author of the World
The History of ‘God as Author’
In the previous chapter, we parsed out the particular understanding of ‘analogy’ needed to accurately depict God as the Author of the world. In this chapter, we will present a survey of some of the various ways in which describing God as the Author of the world has been used to deepen human understanding of God’s relation to the world. It is important, however, to note that not all of the following uses are strong explanatory analogies, or even considered to be analogies at all by their proponents. In chapter three, we will focus in on our preferred strong explanatory authorial analogy as we explicate the distinctives of Kevin Vanhoozer’s analogia auctoris and position ourselves to answer the troubling questions raised in the introduction, but for now, our goal is to present various theological benefits from viewing God as author.
Before we begin presenting the theological fruit garnered from viewing God as Author, it is important to ask the question “if this is such a fruitful endeavor, why is this chapter even necessary?” That is, if viewing God as the Author of the world can help us think rightly and more deeply about Him, why isn’t it the standard practice in theology already? Why wouldn’t it be so commonplace that a chapter like this would be wholly unnecessary? Shouldn’t we find this analogy littered throughout church history? In short, if the authorial analogy is so beneficial for theology, then a chapter extolling and justifying its use would not be necessary for it would be a well-worn fixture in God-talk. Yet here we are seeking to extol and justify its use in our God-talk, so we are left wondering, is it really all that beneficial after all? In responding to this question, there are at least four possible responses we could give:
1. Authorial analogies are ubiquitous, at least in nascent form, throughout Church history, but the theme was not fully fleshed out until more recently.
2. Authorial analogies belong in a modern context and thus their absence from premodern theology does not proscribe against their use today.
3. Authorial analogies are interesting concepts but do not have enough explanatory power to do any serious theological work and thus have not been put to much serious use.
4. Inherent in authorial analogies is the presupposition that God is the author of sin and evil in a morally objectionable manner, thus godly theologians ought to and have rightly steered clear of them.
While these four responses may not be jointly exhaustive, they are helpful for framing the rest of our study. The majority of this chapter will be spent refuting contention (3) by expounding the manifold applications of authorial analogies in Christian theology. Chapters 4 and 5 of this present work will be spent seeking to demonstrate that response (4) is false, for at least one authorial analogy does not make God the author of sin and evil in a morally objectionable manner. But before we begin our refutation of (3), what are we to make of (1) and (2)? Is there any truth to these contentions?
According to Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, the foil in our ‘metaphor or analogy?’ discussion from the previous chapter, responses (1) and (2) actually fit the facts of history. In his essay, “God as Author”, Bauerschmidt explains that closely related to the ‘God as author’ motif is the ‘nature as book’ motif which he says “is ubiquitous from the Church Fathers, through the medieval period, and persists, though occurring less frequently, even today.”[1] He finds the nature as book motif in Origen,[2] Anthony of Egypt,[3] Augustine,[4] Julian of Toledo,[5] Alan of Lille,[6] Hugh of St. Victor,[7] Bonaventure,[8] John Calvin,[9] Francis Bacon,[10] and Francis of Assisi.[11] But why, if this nature as book motif has been so prevalent, has the God as author motif not followed suit? If nature is like a book, then certainly God, the Creator of the book of nature, can rightfully be called nature’s author, right? Bauerschmidt explains that a possible reason for the asymmetry between the prevalence of the nature-as-book analogy and the God-as-author analogy is the