C.S. Lewis: From Creation to Creator

I also call this "a theology of nature with a touch of Lewis." (It is also an excerpt from this post.)

Several options exist that link nature—and thus science, which studies nature—with how we understanding God. The physicist and theologian Ian Barbour is often associated with the concept of "a theology of nature." It's more or less what I’m outlining here. 

Daniel Halverson describes it as follows: 

“Where natural theology tries to understand God in scientific context, theology of nature tries to understand nature in theological context.” Daniel Halverson

A Christian theology of nature asks this first: "What we can infer about nature from the God we know in Jesus Christ?" Second, it integrates these inferences with scientific discoveries.

And this brings me to C. S. Lewis, who presented a similar view to a theology of nature. It is part of his famous array of apologetics, and one that resonates with all kinds of people: 

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” C.S. Lewis

Lewis concluded that the only satisfaction for our desire for something more than the natural world has to offer is God.

Many call this Lewis’s "Argument from Desire" (which I've discussed in this blog post and here).

Let me pause to consider Ecclesiastes 3:11: God “has also set eternity in the human heart….” This means our hearts search for the Eternal God. Nature—even our human nature—is a sign, but it is not the end, of our journey. God alone is. The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) supports Lewis. In analyzing the structure of the human mind, CSR finds a natural openness to God. 

In 1941 Lewis preached his brilliant sermon “The Weight of Glory.” It is, in my view, one of the greatest ever preached. He presents a form of the argument from desire by calling out in his listeners their desire for beauty. They cannot satisfy this desire cannot in the things of the world, “but through them, and what came through them was longing.” 

Ultimately, Lewis linked this longing with God, the Source of beauty. 

“We are summoned to pass in and through Nature, beyond her, into that splendor which she fitfully reflects.” C.S. Lewis