The World in the Shadow of God. Ephraim Radner

and overwhelming proofs, both to believers and infidels, have been drawn both of the nature, being, attributes, and providence of God! What demonstrations of all these have the Archbishop of Cambray, Dr. Neuwentyt, Dr. Derham, and Mr. Charles Bonnet, given in their philosophical works! And who gave those men this wisdom? God, from whom alone Mind, and all its attributes, proceed. While we see Count de Buffon and Swammerdam examining and tracing out all the curious relations, connections, and laws of the Animal kingdom; Tournefort, Ray, and Linne, those of the Vegetable; Theophrastus, Werner, Klaproth, Cronstedt, Morveau, Reamur, Kirwan, and a host of philosophical chemists, Boerhaave, Boyle, Stahl, Priestley, Lavoisier, Fourcroy, Black, and Davy, those of the Mineral; the discoveries they have made, the latent and important properties of vegetables and minerals which they have developed, the powerful machines which, through their discoveries, have been constructed, by the operations of which the human slave is restored to his own place in society, the brute saved from his destructive toil in our manufactories, and inanimate, unfeeling Nature caused to perform the work of all these better, more expeditiously, and to much more profit; shall we not say that the hand of God is in all this? [. . .] He alone girded those eminent men, though many of them knew him not; he inspired them with wisdom and understanding; by his all- pervading and all-informing spirit he opened to them the entrance of the paths of the depths of science, guided them in their researches, opened to them successively more and more of his astonishing treasures, crowned their persevering industry with his blessing and made them his ministers for good to mankind. The antiquary and the medalist are also his agents; their discernment and penetration come from him alone. By them, how many dark ages of the world have been brought to light; how many names of men and places, how many customs and arts, that were lost, restored! And by their means a few busts, images, stones, bricks, coins, rings, and culinary utensils, the remaining wrecks of long-past numerous centuries have supplied the place of written documents, and cast a profusion of light on the history of man, and the history of providence. And let me add, that the providence which preserved these materials, and raised up men to decipher and explain them, is itself gloriously illustrated by them.

      Of all those men (and the noble list might be greatly swelled) we may say the same that Moses said of Bezaleel and Aholiab: “God hath filled them with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge; and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works; to work in gold and in silver, and in brass, in cutting of stones, carving of timber, and in all manner of workmanship;” chap. xxxi. 3–6. “The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein;” Psa. cxi. 2.15

      The work of imitation is here described in terms of “inspiration,” something that perhaps is less obvious in Thomas’s more general discussion. But it is an inspiration that works more deeply than simply in the efforts and accomplishments of singularly chosen individuals. For, as eighteenth-century writers like Robert Lowth began to recognize,16 it is the same Spirit who leads individual poets who also creates each element of the world that the poet praises, and finally is the Author of Scripture’s words themselves. (Or, indeed, one could speak—as does Maximus the Confessor—of the creative Word whose “words” not only directly take form in the Scriptures, but found the ability of human beings to speak their own words at all.) Indeed, the analogy is “latent” in creation itself, and its imitative character is itself a part of the inspiring work of God, whose description and articulation are given particular form by artists, but hardly invented by them. Indeed, the artist shares with his work the common Cause that draws them together, so that speech or crafted expression become bound up inextricably with the very nature of their created analogy. What is “imitative” is this history of createdness from the one God; and this history necessarily repeats in different ways and according to different aspects the singular and inescapable relation that is God’s initiating formation of all things.

      Analogy as Shadow

      There is clearly a problem, however, with conceiving of natural theology as the articulation of that imitative analogy of creature to Creator that obtains in a broad and exhaustive way with respect to the natural world. In the first place, there is the simple challenge of accurately describing the form of the analogy itself, so as not to distort its divine implications, and thereby its moral conclusions from a human point of view. If human