Two books?

When the discussion turns to the Bible and 'origins' one often years the claim that God has spoken in two books: the Bible, that's a real book, and the 'book of nature'. That's not a real book, its an analogical book.

The two books theme has been used by some very famous people, but it's not helpful, not good and...not even right. In fact, it's so bad as to be not even wrong, to borrow a criticism attributed to Wolfgang Pauli when asked to comment on science so bad that it 'was not even wrong'.

How can this be?

Let's start with the first book: the Bible, the real book. It is full of words. In the original manuscripts the words are there, penned by people whom the Spirit had infused so what was written was the word of God, while retaining the spark of individuality that comes with any writer. 

The words of scripture are congruent with the word spoken in power recorded in Genesis 1 and mentioned by Christ (Mark 13:31, for instance).

Schaeffer discusses the word, the propositional, contentful, communication of God to man, his creation in The God who Is There and Who Is Not Silent. This word mediates the relationship of God and mankind. It is the word by which we make the response of worship to God, our creator, redeemer, saviour.

As Peter Jones says, there are only two religions. The worship of God, the creator, and the worship of the creature (which is every other religion, so called).

When the 'book of nature' is conjured up, the wonder of God in creation is not read through the actual word of God, but is placed in a separate category, almost, in some cases, a separate ontological category, in a separate reality from the Word of God. In this category, the creation is identified with only the words of man in a concrete sense; and these are not inspired by God, but are framed and modelled by man's 'world view'. This is often not founded on God's actual real word, but on words that start from the view that their is a 'neutral' place of only 'nature' and man.

There is in this maneuver the potential to split worship and this second book, so called, the analogical book, usually supplants the words of God culminating in worship of the creation, not the creator as his word takes second place as to the all important grounding definition of our frame of reference by which we see connection between creator and creation. No longer is this his word, but what men say about the creation!

There is only one book. The Bible, by which we are guided into all truth; including the truth of a real world that is amenable to intelligent inquiry because it is intelligently created by the God who speaks and who gave us that ability.