Law, Nature & Dominion
Man by the fall fell at the same time from his state of innocence and from his dominion over nature. Both of these losses, however, can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by the arts and sciences.
- Francis Bacon, 1620
This quote indicates two aspects of the fall of man as a fall from our innocence and from our dominion over nature. I would like to explore how the remedy for each points us to grace.
Our fall from innocence is repaired through faith in Christ and His righteousness becomes our own. This is the Gospel we are familiar with.
God’s standard of righteousness is expressed in the Law. Rather than just being a written code, according to Romans 7:14 “the Law is spiritual”. The Law is a small window view into God’s holiness, an account in our language of His moral qualities and conduct. It is intrinsic to God Himself. This makes it easier to understand why “the Law is our tutor to lead us to Christ” (Gal 3:24) and how Christ came to fulfill the Law (Matt 5:17). The giving of the Law was to lead us to something greater, to a living Word with power to save.
When the man and the woman ate from the fruit of the tree in the Garden it is arguable that they tried to seize control of this Word illegitimately. As God said, “the man has become like one of Us (Gen 3:22). This outcome was circumvented by a dreadful curse, angels and a flaming sword guarding the way to the tree of life and, later, the confusion of languages.
The written Law alone is thus impotent as a source of salvation and men seeking autonomy have a futile quest. Obtaining its fulfillment requires a settling of allegiance, the fundamental challenge to man.
In that men are made in the image of God it is not surprising that the ability to contemplate law is a part of our nature. It is the quality that made it possible for God to communicate his requirements to the people of the Old Covenant. It is also what the serpent appealed to in the Garden when He deceived the woman. When the man and the woman accepted the serpent’s advice they were set on a path in which they would be lured to consider all things given by God in a framework of independence from the giver.
As far as the Law is concerned, a key effect of the fall is that men reject who the Law points to, adopting it as a specification of works to be done for justification. Man seeks to be self-sufficient, detaching the law from Christ and rejecting God’s essential role in salvation.
When we consider the second aspect of the fall, relating to our dominion, we find that man deals with the laws of nature, the subject matter of the sciences, in the same way. Men dislocate these laws from God. C S Lewis highlighted how we are accustomed to speaking about the laws of nature as though they cause events to happen. However law possesses no determinism of its own, as all it can do is to describe what is happening. What we fail to see is that the cause of events is not law but the activity of God and that the laws of nature are describing the regularity of that activity.
In modern times, understanding the laws of nature is seen as essential to achieving control of our world. In the same way that man seeks to use divine law to take control of his salvation, he seeks to utilise the laws of nature to take control of his environment.
We could say that the laws of nature define how we can interact with nature, but this is not going far enough. Rather, if we are observing God at work, then any proper study or application of these laws must be treated as an act of service, as an act of partnership with proper reverence.
It is allegiance which is required by the Lawgiver and the same curse, angels, flaming sword and confusion of languages bar the way to independent man achieving dominion over nature. There is something built in to the reality of things that forbids us to truly flourish holding only law in our hands, something alive at its source that frustrates it.
Francis Schaeffer provides the quote at the top of this post to indicate a confidence in the seventeenth century that the arts and sciences would help us to recover our dominion over nature. If it was devoted men that held this conviction then perhaps God crowned their efforts, as he promised to the psalmist:
“It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.” Ps 18:32
It is a matter of grace, after all.