A Most Elegant Book: The Natural World In Article 2 Of The Belgic Confession

By Gijsbert Van Den Brink

[Gijsbert van den Brink is Professor of the History of Reformed Protestantism at Leyden University, the Netherlands, and Associate Professor of Christian Dogmatics at the Free University, Amsterdam.]

In the night of 1 November to 2 November 1561 a work written by the stained-glass artist and preacher in the Southern Netherlands, Guido de Brès, was tossed over the outside wall of the city castle of Tournai, in the hope that this Confession de Foy, as the document was called, would find its way to Philip II, king of Spain and lord of the Netherlands. In all likelihood it did not reach Philip,[1] but it would very quickly become one of the most authoritative documents in the history of Reformed Protestantism.[2] In this contribution I will explore one famous part of this work, the second of the thirty-seven articles into which it is divided. In the edition that was established by the National Synod of Dordrecht (1618-1619)—the so-called “authentic text”—this article reads as follows:

We know him by two means: first, by the creation, preservation and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely, his eternal power and Godhead, as the Apostle Paul saith (Rom, 1:20). All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse.

Secondly, he makes himself more clearly and fully known to us by his holy and divine Word, that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to his glory and our salvation.[3]

In what follows I will first argue that this text—and especially its use of the metaphor of the world as a book—contributed to the development of what we now call natural science, and what was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries usually referred to as natural philosophy. There is a lot of recent scholarship highlighting significant uses of the two-books metaphor in the pre-scientific era, but, remarkably enough, its appearance in so influential a document as the Belgic Confession is rarely mentioned, let alone analyzed.[4] This paper first of all attempts to fill this lacuna (section I). Second, I will evaluate the widespread claims in twentieth-century theology that Article 2 either does not or should not consider the natural world as an independent source (however dim, partial, etc.) of knowledge of God, my conclusion being that these claims are basically flawed (section II). Finally, I conclude with a tentative suggestion as to how Article 2, and especially its most contested part, might be actualized in our science-imbued world today (section III).

I. Historical Background Of The Book Metaphor

The metaphor of two books, both of which lead to knowledge of God, plays a pivotal role in the text of Article 2.[5] But where does it stem from? What is its historical pedigree, and what is typical of the way in which it is put to use here? Arguably, De Brès added this metaphor to the text of the second article of the French Confession of Faith of 1559 (the so-called Confessio Gallicana) that he used as his primary source.[6] As a result, in answering the question as to how we come to know the God of Article 1, Article 2 first of all points our attention to the book of the world. One should note that strictly speaking the concept of nature does not occur in this connection. It is the world created, preserved, and governed by God—or, in the free translation quoted above, the universe—that is compared to a most elegant book. No doubt nature is part of that world, but history is part of it as well (as indicated by the word “governed” next to the nature-related “preserved”).[7] It is this world that, according to Article 2, points to God’s eternal power and divinity. Secondly, however, we know God more clearly and completely from another book, namely, his holy Word. It is undisputed that this is a reference to the Bible; it is through the Bible that we are able to come to a knowledge of God that leads to our salvation. The Bible does not give us a complete knowledge of God—presumably, there is no single Christian work that claims this[8]—but as much knowledge as we need in this life for our salvation.

This “two-means view” that is presented in Article 2 was far from new; rather, it mirrored a theory that was common for centuries in the Christian tradition and would remain so until the beginning of the twentieth century. As Article 2 shows, the view was adopted by the Reformed tradition at an early stage.[9] It also had been figuratively articulated for a long time already by means of the metaphor of the two books. From recent research into the origin of this metaphor and the way it has been used in various contexts, it turns out that it was already attributed to Anthony the Abbot (ca. 251-356), the Egyptian father of monasticism—in a sense, the first Christian monk. When a visiting philosopher once asked Anthony how he could bear the hermit’s existence without any books, Anthony is reported to have answered, “My book, my dear philosopher, is all of nature, and I can read this book whenever I want.”[10] Other early uses of the metaphor (though not necessarily in the literal wording “book of nature”) can be found in, among others, St. Basil of Caesarea.[11] Thus, the standard view that the first person to use the metaphor of nature as a book was Augustine is by now superseded.[12]

The first time we encounter the metaphor of two books, however, is indeed in Augustine. In his exegesis of Ps 46 he writes: “Let Holy Scripture be a book for you, so that you hear these things; let the world be a book for you so that you see these things. Only those who know letters can read the scriptures; illiterate people can also read [the book of] the world.”[13] As is evident from the context, where it is argued that the salvation of the Jews has passed to the Gentile nations, Augustine has history in mind rather than nature. Elsewhere, however, Augustine refers to nature when he uses the book metaphor. This is clearly the case in one of his sermons: “Some read a book to find God. But there is a great book: the spectacle of what has been created. Look upwards and downward; pay attention and read. In order to enable you to read that book, God did not write in letters with ink but he placed what is created itself in front of you. Why do you seek a louder voice? Heaven and earth are crying to you: God made me.”[14] Just as De Brès would do many centuries later, Augustine refers to Rom 1:20 in this connection, whereas the allusion to Ps 19:1 is equally clear. In this context, the metaphor serves to articulate that what is visible in the world corresponds to what can be read in the Bible.

To be sure, despite his exclamation in the sermon above, Augustine thought that creation was insufficient for coming to salvific knowledge of God, since Christ cannot be discovered via creation.[15] Still, the natural world somehow bears witness to its Maker, and it is important to distinguish how precisely Augustine envisaged the relationship between the two, since this determined the way in which he and his many followers used the metaphor of the book of nature. In Augustine’s symbolic or emblematic worldview, the facts of nature were not interesting in themselves, but only because of their spiritual meaning:

The natural world . . . was reduced to a catalogue of naked signs, the true meaning of which was provided by scripture, the reference of which lay beyond the physical world. To be concerned with natural objects alone was to be “a slave to the sign.” . . . Those who would observe nature were encouraged to look beyond the sensory objects to the spiritual meanings with which they had been invested.[16]

Thus, we do not have to despise nature, as gnostics and Manichaeans taught, but neither do we have to study the natural world carefully in order to come to know more about God. Rather, we should ponder what spiritual meanings might be connected to the various natural phenomena that we encounter.

It is this way in which the metaphor of nature as a book was utilized that underwent crucial changes over time. In his fascinating study on the “legibility” of the world, Hans Blumenberg even attempted to find in the changing use of the metaphor of the book a barometer of sorts for comprehensive cultural changes.[17] He argued that the metaphor of the book could have arisen only in a Christian context. The gnostic disdain for nature, as well as the pantheistic identification of God and nature, is irreconcilable with the image of nature as a book by God. The same obtains, according to Blumenberg, for Platonism (its Demiurge being bound by the Forms, Platonism does not allow for an autonomous Creator God who “wrote” the Book of Nature) and, even more so, for Aristotelianism (e.g., its doctrine of the eternity of the world fits ill with the fact that a book comes after its author, and its determinism is hard to reconcile with the contingency of a book’s content).[18] In Blumenberg’s view, the influence of Platonism and especially Aristotelianism is therefore to blame for the fact that the metaphor of the book does not occur very often in the Middle Ages—not at all in Thomas Aquinas, for instance.[19] Only in the Augustinian tradition can some important references be found, for example, in Hugh of St. Victor and Bonaventura.[20]

A real explosion of the metaphor’s use, however, occurred in the early modern period, when especially Protestant natural philosophers and theologians began to consider it as a stimulus for experimental research into nature. Here the metaphor was, so to speak, exploited to its utmost, and its true potential was revealed. If nature is truly a book by God, then there is every reason to investigate this book closely. And, just as the Reformation (at least officially) put an end to the allegorical method of interpreting the second book (Holy Scripture) because it wanted to stick close to the sensus literalis, so it also stimulated sticking close to nature when investigating it. It led thus to conducting experimental research instead of approaching nature from the perspective of certain preconceived ideas.[21]

Contemporary historians of science even consider the book metaphor, put into operation in this way, to be a new paradigm, in terms of which the changed approach to nature in the seventeenth century can be largely explained. It was not the “mechanization of the world picture” that was primarily responsible for this new approach to nature, as E. J. Dijksterhuis argued.[22] Nor did seventeenth-century people think in terms of a “scientific revolution” that they were to bring about, or in terms of a desacralization or disenchantment of the world, or some other twentieth-century notion that attempted to include all changes in one comprehensive concept. As Eric Jorink, in particular, has argued, such labels do not correspond to how most seventeenth-century natural philosophers/scientists envisioned their work.[23] Their self-understanding was much more informed by their deeply rooted conviction that nature constituted a source for knowledge of its Maker, and that it therefore deserved to be carefully explored.

Whereas this belief led some, along Augustinian lines, to view nature as only a collection of illustrations of biblical truths,[24] for others—and they gradually began to form the majority—the two sources of the knowledge of God were more independent of each other. As a result, they came to investigate nature with more of an open mind, curious about the traces the Creator had left behind of himself, in particular of his power, goodness, and wisdom. Arguably it is this attitude, articulated in a poetic way in Article 2, that gave an important impulse via eighteenth-century physico-theology to the genesis of the contemporary natural sciences.[25]

It is clear that this course of developments casts further doubt on the so-called “conflict theory” that is so often uncritically endorsed, that is, the theory that there is an inherent conflict between science and religion, and that the one can gain ground only where the other loses. Although continuing research has decreased this theory’s credibility,[26] it is still defended in a more nuanced form. For example, in the opening pages of his much acclaimed book on the radical Enlightenment Jonathan Israel states:

During the later Middle Ages and the early modern age down to around 1650, western civilization was based on a largely shared core of faith, tradition, and authority. By contrast, after 1650, everything, no matter how fundamental or deeply rooted, was questioned in the light of philosophical reason and frequently challenged or replaced by startlingly different concepts generated by the New Philosophy and what may still be usefully termed the Scientific Revolution.[27]

This presentation of the matter is open to criticism. It is based one-sidedly on the influence of Descartes and Spinoza, ignores the fact that many seventeenth-century natural scientists were motivated by the classic Christian faith, and conjures up the overly simplistic view of a theology that was always in conflict with science, of a Reason that was opposed to faith and ultimately dealt with its harmful influence.[28]

The idea of the “Book of Nature” offers a much more contemporaneous access that makes it possible to understand the new approach to nature in the seventeenth century. To support this thesis with regard to the Low Countries, Jorink refers to the “important formulation” of Article 2.[29] This formulation could become very influential (even though the word “nature” was not used) because it emerged in a document that served as a cornerstone for the budding Reformed culture in the Dutch Republic. “All Reformed people in the Republic knew the Belydenisse [i.e., the Belgic Confession] and everyone who held a public office—minister, regent, teacher or professor—was required to subscribe to it.”[30] In the middle of all kinds of differences on biblical exegesis, Cartesianism, heliocentrism, and so forth, this was a shared fundamental perspective: God reveals himself to us both via the Bible and via that other book, nature. Precisely the book of nature can play a unitive role, since it can be read by everyone. Apart from the Dutch Republic, the metaphor of the book of nature was no less popular and influential in England and other European countries.[31] In a way unprecedented by, for example, medieval natural theology, the natural world came now to be studied on its own—but still in order to discover the glory, majesty, and wisdom of God.

So we come to a remarkable conclusion. Guido de Brès probably exercised a greater influence on the development of the practice of science in the Low Countries than, let us say, René Descartes did. And contemporary historians of science are enthusiastic about the Belgic Confession because of this effect of Article 2. It was precisely its poetic passage on the world as a beautiful book full of letters, however, that was subjected to sharp criticism in the twentieth century in theological circles. That brings us to the theological reception of Article 2.

II. Evaluating The Twentieth-Century Critique Of Article 2

We already indicated that the distinction between two sources (or means) which enable us to know God was part of the tradition of Christian theology up until the beginning of the twentieth century.[32] From the seventeenth century until the end of the nineteenth theologians still unanimously concurred in the recognition of creation as a source of knowledge about God, whereby also for them this source became increasingly independent of the second source, Holy Scripture. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, this changed completely. Still, this radical change had gradually been prepared for during the previous centuries, when an important philosophical objection to the notion of creation as a source of knowledge of God had emerged, which was later followed by a moral one. Both of these culminated in the vehement theological critique of Article 2 in the first half of the twentieth century. Let us briefly discuss these three objections in turn.

1. Starting in the middle of the nineteenth century Charles Darwin convinced many that it was not necessary to conclude from creation that there is a Creator God. Creation or, better, natural reality, could adequately be explained on the basis of immanent factors, thus on the basis of nature itself. More fundamental, however, was the philosophical shift that had been taking place already in the eighteenth century as a result of the work of Immanuel Kant. According to Kant, it was not even possible to deduce a creator God from natural reality. Because of the inherent limitations of our rational faculties, we cannot know anything that lies beyond empirical observation. As a transcendent being, God is by definition beyond the realm of our empirical observations. Thus, we can never learn to know God via our experiences with the world. With Kant, therefore, the whole project of physico-theology (“look how beautifully God has made all the little animals”) collapses. It is even intrinsically impossible to “know” God at all—let alone to deduce his existence from natural phenomena.

The American philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff relates a conversation he had in his office with a brilliant theology student. She came to thank Wolterstorff for a recent book he had written. “What I find so fascinating about your book,” she said, “is that the book begins and you just start talking about God.” Most modern theologians she had read did not allow her to say the things about God she wanted to say without first proving that they could be said. So the theology she had been studying thus far had frustrated her in this regard, and somehow she had discovered the principal source of this frustrating tendency in modern theology: the influence of Kant. Wolterstorff recognized this but felt so challenged by the incident that he wrote an article called “Is it Possible and Desirable for Theologians to Recover from Kant?”[33] In this paper Wolterstorff answers both parts of his question affirmatively: yes, it is indeed desirable for theologians to recover from Kant, and it is also possible. He elaborates how it is possible more extensively in a later book. We cannot enter this discussion here, but the recent arguments of Wolterstorff indicate at the very least that Kant’s epistemological agnosticism is by no means unanimously accepted by the present-day philosophical community.[34] Quite a number of other philosophers even still hold that God can be known from the natural world.[35]

2. Apart from this philosophical objection, there is another consideration which paved the way for the theological critique of Article 2. This could be called the moral objection to the two-source theory. It runs as follows: if we see the world as an elegant book that refers to God, we think much too naively about nature and history, given that we seem to close our eyes to the innumerable horrors that occur in them.[36] Creation is not at all that beautiful (to say nothing about history, which, as we saw, was included in Article 2). It is quite understandable that this awareness, which became sharper and more universal after the world wars in the twentieth century, caused some reservations (to say the least) about the positive view of the world expressed in Article 2.

In response to the moral objection, however, two things should be kept in mind. First, the horrors in nature and history on the one hand and their beauties on the other cannot simply be viewed as cancelling each other out. For example, the horrors of nature do not affect the fact that we can still be impressed by the ingenuity and reliability with which that selfsame nature is put together. Martien Brinkman has pointed to the fact that the “the most authentic witnesses” on this seem to come from prison and exile literature. He refers in this connection to, among others, the diaries of Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum, which show that these women, precisely in the midst of all their misery, did not allow the encouragement that came through the experience of beauty in nature to be taken from them.[37] Something similar could also apply to Guido de Brès. Whoever reads the letter to Philip II that he attached to the Belgic Confession of Faith will understand how much he and others must have lived in constant fear of repression and physical torture.[38] In this connection, it is striking that precisely De Brès was apparently so impressed by nature’s expressiveness that he added an ecstatic poetic decoration to his sources:

[the world] which is before our eyes
as a most elegant book
wherein all creatures,
great and small,
are as so many characters.

It is precisely those who are confronted with suffering and death who can be all the more struck by the sublime beauty that is also manifested in the world. From this perspective, the description of creation as a “most elegant book” does not necessarily stem from a naive, overly optimistic or romantic world view.

In the second place, it is not the case that, according to Article 2, creation gives us a view of God’s love. To the contrary, it is specified very precisely what the world shows us about God, namely, using Paul’s words, “his eternal power and divine nature.”[39] The beauty of creation is thus connected not so much with the presupposed absence of suffering and misery but with the superhuman powers that are manifest in nature and with the ingenuity by which these forces are geared to one another. It is in those things that we see the power and majesty of God shining through, as the pattern of lights on the CD player’s graphical display (to use an anachronistic analogy). That, it seems, is the intent of the clause in question. In this connection, the word “God” brings to mind what Rudolf Otto called the numinous, the terrifying mysterium that at the same time attracts and fascinates us.[40] Article 1 mentioned this eternal, incomprehensible, infinite, almighty but also completely wise God—thus these terms are still in the back of our minds when we come to Article 2. The same God is indeed “the overflowing source of all good,”[41] but that does not take away from the fact that also the violence of nature can easily be connected with God’s majesty. All in all, nature thus evokes an ambivalent image of God: we do not know exactly where we stand with him. It is therefore not without reason that Article 2 indicates another source for the knowledge of God: God’s revelation in “his holy Word,” that is, in the Bible. From this perspective as well it seems that the moral objection is misplaced: Article 2 does not intend to suggest that the sun is always shining and the birds always singing in creation. It is precisely the omnipotence and incomprehensible majesty of God that come to expression in nature. In post-Darwinian times, we have become all the more sensitive to this. Read in combination with Article 1, Article 2 does not deny or neglect the large-scale suffering taking place both in nature and in history.

3. The third objection that has been put forward since the twentieth century against Article 2 is of a strictly theological nature. Usually it is introduced much more forcefully than the two objections discussed above, which is why I will discuss it somewhat more extensively. The objection is articulated most clearly by Karl Barth who, in the aftermath of the First World War and during the prelude to the Second, discovered the cunning ways in which people could exploit their presupposed knowledge of God derived from other sources than the gospel for nationalistic purposes. That led him to a passionate offensive against all forms of natural theology, by which he meant all alleged forms of knowledge of God (so not only those stemming from nature) that are derived from our own reality instead of from God’s gracious revelation in Jesus Christ. As is well known, Barth saw this natural theology as the great enemy of Christian faith and theology.[42]

Convinced as he was of the correctness of Kant’s critique of attempts to refer to God starting from our own reality, Barth saw in those attempts nothing more than a magnification of human ideas, feelings, and concepts. Ideals that we ourselves would like to implement we project upon God in order to give them legitimacy. In Germany, in the period in which both world wars occurred, these were primarily nationalistic ideals. Thus, a blood-and-soil theology arose to which, to Barth’s dismay, even teachers he admired in the world of liberal theology contributed. The Gott-mit-uns on the belts of the German soldiers was not simply a regrettable blunder but had deep roots in a theological climate whose thinking moved from our world to God. In contrast, in Barth’s view, for our knowledge of God we are entirely reliant on God’s gracious self-revelation in Jesus Christ as testified to in the Bible. Only by beginning there—both in faith and in theology—can we counter the ideological perversion of faith claims.

On the basis of this central concern of his theology, Barth had great problems not only with medieval Roman Catholic theology but also with Article 2 of the Belgic Confession, since here as well another means of revelation alongside Holy Scripture is posited, namely, the creation and history of this world. To be sure, we have to do here with a text from the early Reformation, in which we are still very close to the principle of sola scriptura, but that did not prevent its endorsement of a second source of revelation. Apparently, natural theology managed to conceal itself from the eyes of the Reformers, which were normally so sharp, in order to become active at the appropriate moment. With rhetorical ingenuity Barth speaks of a “masterpiece” of natural theology—a phenomenon that he can even personify in this connection.[43] Today Barth would undoubtedly have seen a computer virus here that manages to establish itself in even the most secure computer without the user being aware of it, so as to slowly but surely spread to all files and finally strike in a destructive way. Even in a persecuted church like the sixteenth-century Reformed communities in France and the Netherlands, natural theology managed to recommend itself “in such a way that . . . the mischief could be done which may now be read in article 2 of the Confessio Gallicana, from which it quickly spread to the Confessio Belgica.”[44] G. C. Berkouwer correctly states on the basis of this passage, “It is perfectly clear: Barth discovers in these confessions a dangerous invasion of natural theology, by which the Church is always seduced—sooner or later—not to be fully satisfied with the only revelation in God’s Word, with the revelation in Jesus Christ.”[45]

This critique by Barth of what he saw as a “dual system of book-keeping”[46] stirred up great interest, especially in Dutch theology. There is a wide range of responses that, despite all mutual differences, show a remarkable similarity qua structure: most commentators agree with Barth’s critique of natural theology, but then attempt to read Article 2 in such a way that this critique is not applicable or at least not completely so. Thus, a different interpretation is proposed—different from its traditional reading—which makes Article 2 invulnerable to the charge of lending support to natural theology. This approach is often accompanied by the remark that the writer of the confession could (or even should) have expressed himself more carefully.[47] Three slightly different proposals for re-interpreting Article 2, which are sometimes combined with one another, can be distinguished here.

The most fashionable reading is that by which the order of the two sources cited in Article 2 is reversed. On this reading, Article 2 intends to say that we begin to know God through Holy Scripture (and most eminently through Jesus Christ) and then, helped by the spectacles of Scripture, find traces of God in creation and history. Calvin, who was deeply admired by De Brès, is often cited as support for this view. Thus, Berkouwer writes: “And on the basis of what has been confessed concerning the two means and their comparative relationship, it [i.e., the Belgic Confession] tries to give an account of God’s manifest activity in the works of his hands, which was truly seen and known only because of the Word-revelation. Therefore, there is actually no essential difference between Article II and Calvin’s view” (emphasis added).[48] Indeed, it was Calvin who coined the metaphor of spectacles in connection with the sources of our knowledge of God:

Just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a most beautiful volume, even if they recognize it to be some sort of writing, yet can scarcely construe two words, but with the aid of spectacles will begin to read distinctly; so Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God.[49]

But Calvin does not say here that we learn to know creation (or God’s work in it) better through the spectacles of Scripture;[50] rather, he is saying that we learn to know God better.[51] In fact, the reasoning is the same as in Article 2: normally, we have vague and confused impressions of God, but if we put on the spectacles of Scripture we gain a much clearer idea of God.[52] It seems to me therefore that both Calvin and De Brès distinguish a source of knowledge of God that precedes and is separate from Scripture. If De Brès had indeed intended that we could understand creation only on the basis of Scripture, why would he not have mentioned Scripture as the first source rather than the second? Therefore, another Dutch commentator, J. N. Sevenster, states correctly, “Article 2 does not say that we need the spectacles of Scripture to be able to read [the book of creation].”[53]

A second post-Barthian interpretation reads Article 2 entirely on the basis of the very first word: “we.” “We know [God] by two means.” The “we” is said to refer here to those who confess their faith. In De Brès’ original text this is even clearer. There it reads: “Nous confessons le cognoistre . . . par deux moyens,” that is, we confess that we know him by two means. From that beginning it is concluded that not everyone knows God in this way—only those who believe do so. In that case the knowledge of God through creation that is confessed here would be a form of faith knowledge:[54] as soon as someone believes, one starts to experience nature as creation, that is, to find references to God in nature. So that is a matter of interpreting nature with the eyes of faith. Presumably, there is little to object to in such an interpretation, but at the same time no universal validity can be claimed for it. This view, however, although corresponding with the way in which many Christians today experience their faith,[55] does not square with the text of Article 2. The citation from Rom 1 that De Brès adds makes clear that, in his view, the book of nature can also be read by those who do not believe. It is precisely for that reason that such people are, after all, in the words of Paul, “without excuse”[56] if they do not worship their Creator as God. The claim is therefore that traces of God are to be found in created reality itself, and not only in our pious interpretation of it!

A good example of the problems that this second strategy entails is found in Hendrikus Berkhof, who devoted a separate article to Article 2. In his interpretation Berkhof does indeed start with De Brès’ original beginning: we—Christians—confess that we know God by two means. Whereas Calvin saw the pagans as also receiving a general revelation, for De Brès it was, according to Berkhof, strictly a matter of a confession by the Christian community. If we apply a close reading hermeneutic to the original text, it becomes clear that the text “has nothing to do with the natural knowledge of God.”[57] In Berkhof’s view, the fact that De Brès speaks in such ecstatic language about the beauty of the experience of God in the world proves that when using the expression “before our eyes” he only had believers in mind.[58] Next, however, Berkhof has to face the task of explaining the following clause, the citation from Rom 1 that ends with the words, “All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse.” It is clear that this line does not refer to believers but to non-Christians. Berkhof recognizes this and as a result sees himself confronted with a major problem. He therefore speaks of a crux interpretum: the clause in question does not square with the preceding clauses. It entails a “sideways leap” (Seitensprung) that supposedly goes back to the “quite complicated” (ziemlich verwickelten) explanation that Calvin gave on this topic in the Institutes. Berkhof finally speaks of a “workplace accident” that damaged the clarity and power of the article quite badly.[59]

Berkhof has to bend over backwards here quite a bit hermeneutically (whereby he even feels himself forced to question De Brès’ intelligence) to preserve his preferred reading of Article 2. It seems, however, that Berkhof is the victim of his desire to read Article 2 as much as possible through Barthian spectacles—something that Barth himself did not do! In my view, Barth here has the better case. For clearly, the problems of interpretation that Berkhof encounters melt away if we assume that the 1566 Synod of Antwerp did nothing improper when it reduced the opening line of the article to simply: “We know him by two means.” “We,” it was properly understood, refers to all people (of course insofar as they have both sources available). If we choose this perspective when reading Article 2, the quotation from Rom 1, including the final words that caused Berkhof so many worries, are in complete harmony with the preceding clause. I thus propose reading the text in this way: the first half of Article 2 does concern a universally available “natural” knowledge of God.

A third strategy for avoiding this conclusion is to interpret Article 2 as indeed confessing some kind of objective divine revelation in the world, but as denying that this revelation leads to a natural knowledge of God. Here, the exegesis is that the Transmitter does communicate himself in creation, but the signal is not picked up by the receivers or is distorted and misused by them, as a result of which creation does not actually function as a source of knowledge of God.[60] This can indeed be stated with some justification about the Gallican Confession of Faith of 1559, which, as we saw, was the basis of De Brès’ confession. The Gallican confession stated in its second article that God “reveals himself” to us in two ways, a formulation that leaves undecided whether or not those manifestations are recognized as such.[61] In the Belgic Confession, however, there is no doubt possible on this point. After all, De Brès does not say that God reveals or manifests himself in two ways, but that “we know him” by two means. Apparently, that knowledge is still there, even though things may have happened that distorted and perverted it.[62]

In short, the conclusion is inescapable: De Brès did intend to say that we humans still have some knowledge about God outside of Holy Scripture on the basis of the book of the world.[63] He also had some occasion to bring this more clearly into the foreground than was the case in the Gallicana, so that it is certainly possible that his deviation from the Gallicana was intentional (perhaps nothing was wrong with De Brès’ intelligence). We know that he was doing everything he could to make clear to the government that the Reformed movement that he represented was to be distinguished from the Anabaptists. According to some, this was even one of the reasons why De Brès was not satisfied with the Gallicana but preferred to write a new confession.[64] Some years later, he would even write a whole book against the Anabaptists.[65]

Thus, it is fully understandable that De Brès did not want to deviate from the existing Roman Catholic views without good reason. And with respect to the two-source teaching, he did not consider such deviation necessary. To the contrary, in Article 2 as well as in Article 1—the opening paragraphs which always draw a disproportionate amount of attention—his position links up more or less smoothly with the Roman Catholic doctrine of the time.[66] The only exception—and here of course De Brès proves to be a typical Protestant—is that he places all emphasis on the superiority of the second book, Holy Scripture, by means of the comparative “more clearly and fully” (or, in his original text, “more clearly and openly”; cf. n. 3 above). This comparative has been much maligned[67] because it was seen as giving too much credit to creation as a source of knowledge of God, but in fact it wants to direct our attention above all to the second source: the Bible. For clearly, the Bible is considered of much higher value when it comes to the knowledge of God. Whoever truly wants to find God must not remain with nature but must read Holy Scripture.

In brief, a strong case can be made for the claim that in Article 2 De Brès did nothing that was alien to the original Reformed understanding of the Christian faith, nor does the later tradition of Reformed theology, until the twentieth century, substantially deviate from his position regarding our knowledge of God. On the basis of a representative selection of Reformed sources it has recently been argued by Michael Sudduth that “the Reformed tradition has consistently affirmed both natural knowledge of God and rational arguments for the existence and attributes of God. . . . There has been a widely instantiated, deeply entrenched, and historically continuous endorsement of natural theology in Reformed thought.”[68]

III. Conclusion

In conclusion, De Brès did not polemicize needlessly against Roman Catholic doctrine but wanted to link up with it via an old pre-Reformation view (i.e., the two-source doctrine) that can, without much exaggeration, be called authentically Christian.[69] In that sense the Belgic Confession in Article 2 is indeed what it wants to be: a fully Catholic document. In this respect De Brès is, compared to Barth, the better ecumenicist (it is not without some justification that Urs von Balthazar once called Barth the first fully consistent—read: all too consistent—Protestant).[70]

That does not mean, however, that Barth was tilting at windmills. Nor does it mean that Barth’s rejection of natural theology was meaningful only in his time when National Socialism exploited this notion. After all, similar circumstances can always arise again, as appeared in 1987 when members of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa appealed to Article 2 to justify their apartheid views: according to them, it was evident from the book of the creation, preservation, and government of the world that people of various ethnic backgrounds must preserve their own identity—and therefore there can be no open church membership for both blacks and whites, no common worship or other forms that would make the unity of the church visible.

This train of thought was countered correctly by the response that this appeal to Article 2 is misplaced.[71] It is not misplaced, however, because Article 2 denies all natural knowledge of God. Rather, Article 2 allows for such knowledge, just as the text from Rom 1 to which it refers allows for it. But an appeal to Article 2 as support for nationalist or racist views is entirely misplaced because this (vague!) natural knowledge of God is used to make claims about the actual will of God. That, in my view, is in conflict with both Rom 1 (and even the whole Bible) as well as with Article 2, which speaks only of the book of the world as giving us some awareness of the eternal power and majesty of God. We should remind ourselves that in Rom 1 the manifestation of these divine attributes is not associated with the positive will of God, but rather with God’s wrath (Rom 1:18). So the awareness of God that stems from our experience of the natural world does not afford us a basis for deriving any theological conclusions regarding God’s will in political or church-political affairs.[72] In order to do this kind of theology we definitely need Scripture. But the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater by denying the existence of our natural awareness of God as such.[73] For clearly this notion continues to have a clear relevance also today: it makes it far from self-evident that atheism or agnosticism has to function as the default position in cultural discourse, as is so often the case in the media, political debates, and so forth, in contemporary Western societies.

Finally, is it possible to actualize the “vague idea” of God’s existence and majesty in terms of a contemporary conceptual framework, largely determined as it is by the impact of the natural sciences? This is not the place to propose a full-blown answer to this question, but let me conclude by putting forward just one suggestion for further reflection. One could think here of the so-called “anthropic principle.” Since the last quarter of the twentieth century it has become clear that the fundamental constants that determine the natural order of the cosmos form a very fine balance that is geared precisely to making human (or, more broadly, conscious) life possible. The British mathematical physicist Roger Penrose estimates the chance of a spontaneous genesis of a universe so closely geared to life at 1:10123—so improbably tiny.[74] In this context, the comparison of the chance of spontaneous genesis with that of a tornado racing across a garbage dump and spontaneously assembling a Boeing 747 with the materials found there is well known. This comparison was made by the cosmologist Fred Hoyle,[75] who discovered some anthropic coincidences and, in connection with that, made the oft-quoted statement: “Nothing has shaken my atheism as much as this discovery.”[76] Apparently, the cosmos can still be experienced as a most elegant book of which the letters (in this case the large letters of physical constants) evoke a sense of God’s eternal power and divinity.[77]

Notes

1. The work was sent to Philip’s half-sister, Margaret of Parma, regent of the Netherlands, who resided in Brussels and had already shown concern about the rise of Calvinism in the areas under her domain. A report about the confession addressed to Philip II was sent to him. See Nicolaas H. Gootjes, The Belgic Confession: Its History and Sources (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 15-17.
2. On the genesis of the document see, e.g., Gootjes, Belgic Confession, 13-58; and J. N. Bakhuizen van den Brink, De Nederlandse Belijdenisgeschriften (Amsterdam: Ton Bolland, 1976), 1-10, who points out on p. 27 that it is inappropriate to refer to the Belgic Confession as the “Confessio Belgica,” as if it had originally been written in Latin. On De Brès, whose authorship of this work is a matter of probability bordering on certainty, see Thomas Kaufmann, “Brès, Guido de,” in Religion Past and Present (ed. H. D. Betz et al.; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2007), 2:219-20; E. M. Braekman, Guido de Brès. Première partie: Sa vie (Brussels: Éditions de la Librairie des éclaireurs unionistes, 1960); L. A. van Langeraad, Guido de Bray: Zijn leven en werken. Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van het Zuid-Nederlandsche protestantisme (Zierikzee: S. Ochtman & Zoon, 1884).
3. Arthur C. Cochrane, ed., Reformed Confessions of the 16th Century (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 189-90. On this and other English translations, see Gootjes, Belgic Confession, 182-87. A look at Article 2 from the perspective of textual criticism gives rise to two interesting observations. First, in a revision at the Synod of Antwerp (1566) the opening phrase, “We confess that we know him as such by two means,” was replaced by the more sober “We know him by two means.” Second, at the Synod of Dort (1618-1619), in response to a question by the Remonstrants, the tautological “more clearly and openly” was replaced by “more clearly and fully.” See Gootjes, Belgic Confession, 123, 154; cf. 144.
4. See, e.g., Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 193-204; Peter G. Heltzel, “Interpreting the Book of Nature in the Protestant Tradition,” The Journal of Faith and Science Exchange 4 (2000): 223-40; G. Tanzella-Nitti, “The Two Books prior to the Scientific Revolution,” AT 8 (2004): 51-83; Arjo Vanderjagt and Klaas van Berkel, eds., The Book of Nature in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Louvain: Peeters, 2005); and most recently various contributions to Jitse M. van der Meer and Scott Mandelbrote, eds., Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: Up to 1700 (Brill’s Series in Church History 36, in 2 vols.; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2008). In none of these publications is Article 2 of the Belgic Confession mentioned.
5. In what follows, when “Article 2” (or some other article) is mentioned without further specification, the reference is to the Belgic Confession.
6. For a comparison of both texts (and of the still more limited draft of the article on divine revelation that Calvin prepared for the Gallicana, but that was not adopted by its composers) see Bakhuizen van den Brink, Nederlandse Belijdenisgeschriften, 70, 72. On the sources that De Brès used (in addition to Calvin and the Gallicana, Theodore Beza’s influence can be detected) see Gootjes, Belgic Confession, 59-91.
7. In what follows I will use the phrase “the natural world” so as to include both nature and history.
8. This could almost be called an analytical statement: if there is such a work, it is not Christian (but, e.g., gnostic).
9. For a concise survey of the way in which God’s “general revelation” in nature and history is treated in other Reformed confessions, see G. C. Berkouwer, General Revelation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 267-68. Jan Rohls, Reformed Confessions: Theology from Zürich to Barmen (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 29, 35, claims that the doctrinal articles of the Synod of Bern in 1532 form an exception in that they categorically exclude a revelation of God next to and outside that in Jesus Christ. However, Richard Muller disagrees with Rohls, arguing that even this document does not “exclude any revelation of God outside of Christ” (Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics [4 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], 2:155).
10. Socrates of Constantinople (= Socrates Scholasticus), Historia Ecclesiastica 4.23 (439; SC 171:695); this saying does not occur in Athanasius’s Vita Antonii but goes back to Evagrius Ponticus’s Praktikos, § 92 (ca. 397; SC 171:694-95). See P. Bertrand, “Die Evagriusübersetzung der Vita Antonii: Rezeption, Überlieferung, Edition; Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Vitas Patrum-Tradition” (Ph.D. diss., University of Utrecht, 2006), 66, 415; and cf. Dieter Groh, “The Emergence of Creation Theology: The Doctrine of the Book of Nature in the Early Church Fathers in the East and the West up to Augustine,” in Book of Nature in Antiquity, 32. For a Latin rendering see Cassiodorus and Epiphanius, Historia ecclesiastica tripartita 8.1.19 (written between 540 and 560; cf. CSEL 71).
11. Most notably in his Homilia de gratiarum actione, 2 (PG 31:221c-224a); cf. Tanzella-Nitti, “Two Books,” 56.
12. This theory is still maintained by Eric Jorink, Reading the Book of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age, 1575-1715 (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 191; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2010). It should be added, however, that Jorink is one of the few authors who includes Article 2 in his survey of the metaphor’s historical trajectories, and acknowledges the pivotal importance of its appearance in this confessional text.
13. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 45.7: Liber tibi sit pagina divina, ut haec audias; liber tibi sit orbis terrarum [lit. “the circle of countries”], ut haec videas. In istis codicibus non ea legunt, nisi qui litteras noverunt; in toto mundo legat et idiota.
14. Alius, ut inveniat deum, librum legit. Est quidam magnus liber ipsa species creaturae: superiorem et inferiorem contuere, attende, lege. Non deus, unde eum cognosceres, de atramento litteras fecit: ante oculos tuos posuit haec ipsa quae fecit. Quid quaeris maiorem vocem? Clamat ad te caelum et terra: Deus me fecit (Augustine, Sermo 68.6 [in PL Supplementum, 2.505]). See also Augustine, Contra Faustum 32.20, and the discussion of that passage by Volker Henning Drecoll, “Quasi Legens Magnum Quendam Librum Naturae Rerum (Augustine, C. Faust. 32:20): The Origin of the Combination Liber Naturae in Augustine and Chrysostomus,” in Book of Nature in Antiquity, 35-47.
15. Drecoll, “Quasi Legens,” 45-47.
16. Harrison, Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science, 30-31; cf. 21, where Harrison provides the example of winged creatures whose only function, according to Augustine, was to remind us that those who have been given instruction in the Christian faith are thus enabled to soar into the heavens (Augustine, Confessions 13.20-21).
17. Hans Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981), 34-35, 47-48; for a critique of Blumenberg see Lodi Nauta, “A Weak Chapter in the Book of Nature,” in Book of Nature in Antiquity, 135-50. Nauta’s criticism of Blumenberg’s method (one can’t draw such wide-ranging conclusions from the use of only one metaphor) is more convincing than his objections to Blumenberg’s thesis. That a search for the metaphor in comprehensive digital databases with classical and medieval texts yields fewer than ten hits (p. 143) confirms rather than undermines Blumenberg’s thesis with regard to the Middle Ages. And that the few uses of the metaphor in the Middle Ages were for theological reasons (pp.145-47) does not deny that they mirrored a positive attitude towards nature that was typically Christian.
18. Blumenberg, Lesbarkeit, 54-56. There is, on the other hand, an important Islamic tradition of viewing nature as a book; cf. Camille Helsminski, ed., The Book of Nature. A Sourcebook of Spiritual Perspectives on Nature and the Environment (Bristol: Book Foundation, 2006).
19. Which, of course, is not to say that the idea of the natural world as a means to come to know God (prior to Scripture) does not occur in Aquinas; surely it does, but still nature is not represented as a book. Only in the early modern period was there “a general alignment of natural theology with the Book of Nature on the one hand, and revealed theology with the Book of Scripture on the other” (Peter Harrison, “The ‘Book of Nature’ and Early Modern Science,” in The Book of Nature in Early Modern and Modern History [ed. Klaas van Berkel and Arjo Vanderjagt; Groningen Studies in Cultural Change 17; Louvain: Peeters, 2006], 8).
20. Hugh of St. Victor, Eruditio didascalia 7.4 (PL 176:814); Bonaventura, Collationes in Hexaemeron 13.12. Cf. Blumenberg, Lesbarkeit, 51-53, 53-54; and H. M. Nobis, “Buch der Natur,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (12 vols.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971), 1:957-60.
21. See Harrison, Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science, 4-8; and cf. his “Hermeneutics and Natural Knowledge in the Reformers,” in Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions, 341-59. For an important qualification of Harrison’s position (from the point of view that the literal meaning of Scripture existed before the Reformation as well), see Isaac Miller, “Cosmos and Exegesis in Late Antiquity,” in Book of Nature in Early Modern and Modern History, 59 n. 5.
22. E. J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture: Pythagoras to Newton (trans. C. Dikshoorn; London: Oxford University Press, 1961; repr., Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986).
23. Eric Jorink, Het ‘Boeck der Natuere’: Nederlandse geleerden en de wonderen van Gods schepping, 1575-1715 (Leiden: Primavera Press, 2006), 23-24.
24. Jorink (ibid., 33-34) cites Gisbertus Voetius, who in this respect stood in the Augustinian tradition (p. 52). Another clear example is Jonathan Edwards, as has recently been pointed out by Avihu Zakai, Jonathan Edwards’ Philosophy of Nature: The Re-Enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 17-24 and passim.
25. See, e.g., Kenneth J. Howell, God’s Two Books: Copernican Cosmology and Biblical Interpretation in Early Modern Science (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 2002); Harrison, “The ‘Book of Nature’ and Early Modern Science,” 1-26 (see esp. his concluding statement on 25-26).
26. Cf., e.g., John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion. Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 34: “Despite the impossibility of an objective assessment, there are . . . indications that the conflict has been exaggerated in the interests of scientism and secularism.” Brooke goes on to show that the arguments of influential advocates of the conflict thesis (esp. J. W. Draper and A. D. White) are “deeply flawed” (p. 35), and that the conflict thesis is largely dependent “on legends that, on closer examination, prove misleading” (p. 40). As the “fundamental weakness” of the conflict theory he mentions “its tendency to portray science and religion . . . as entities in themselves,” rather than “as complex social activities” (p. 42). Thus, in its traditional forms the thesis has been largely discredited, which is not to say that, in fact, religion and science are in perfect harmony (p. 42).
27. Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3-4.
28. Cf. Jorink, Boeck der Natuere, 29.
29. Ibid., 31; see also Eric Jorink, “Reading the Book of Nature in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic,” in Book of Nature in Early Modern and Modern History, 45-68.
30. Jorink, Boeck der Natuere, 31. (Unless otherwise indicated all English translations are my own.)Cf. S. van der Linde, “Karakter en bedoeling der N.G.B., belicht uit de geschiedenis van haar ontstaan,” Theologia Reformata 4 (1961): 110-25, esp. 118-19.
31. For examples from England see Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science, 193-204; on the distribution and diverse use of the two-source theory in the early modern period in all of Europe, see Howell, God’s Two Books.
32. “Up to the early part of the 20th century in Protestant theology no one ever disputed either the fact that we have here [in creation] a different form of knowledge of God from that of the historical revelation in Christ, or the referring of the Christian message to this knowledge by claiming it as a provisional knowledge of the one God whom the Christian message proclaims” (Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology [trans. G. Bromiley; 3 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991], 1:73-74). Pannenberg argues (citing relevant places) that Luther, Calvin, and Melanchthon did not differ essentially from Thomas Aquinas in these respects.
33. Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Is it Possible and Desirable for Theologians to Recover from Kant?,” Modern Theology 14 (1998): 1-18; the story about Wolterstorff’s student is told on pp. 1-3. It seems hardly coincidental that Wolterstorff published this paper in a journal named Modern Theology.
34. The book that the student had read was Wolterstorff’s Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Wolterstorff’s later book is Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
35. See the section on a posteriori arguments for the existence of God in just any recent introduction to the philosophy of religion, such as Michael J. Murray and Michael Rea, eds., An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 135-56; or Paul Copan and Chad Meister, eds., Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008), 83-111.
36. I call this a moral argument against Article 2 because it is immoral to close one’s eyes to any evil that occurs.
37. M. E. Brinkman, “De goedheid van de schepping als goedheid van het kruis? [The Goodness of Creation as the Goodness of the Cross?],” Kerk en theologie 48 (1997): 193.
38. For the text of this Epîstre au Roy (1561), see Marvin Kamps, “Guido de Brès’ Letter to Philip II of Spain Appended to the Belgic Confession,” Protestant Reformed Theological Journal 42 (2009): 80-88; another translation (by Alastair Duke) is included as an appendix in Daniel R. Hyde, With Heart and Mouth: An Exposition of the Belgic Confession (Grandville, Mich.: Reformed Fellowship, 2008).
39. Rom 1:20.
40. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational (trans. John W. Harvey; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923).
41. These are the concluding words of Article 1 of the Belgic Confession.
42. Berkouwer, General Revelation, 21. Cf. (in addition to many other secondary sources) Cornelis van der Kooi, As in a Mirror: John Calvin and Karl Barth on Knowing God: A Diptych (Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 120; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005), 311-15.
43. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 127.
44. Barth, ibid.
45. Berkouwer, General Revelation, 267; cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1, 173, for the way in which this pattern could lead to Adolf Hitler being hailed in 1933 as “a source of specific new revelation of God” which, in the end, was proclaimed as the only revelation.
46. Barth, Church Dogmatics III/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), 414 (the original German reads, doppelte Buchführung). On this final page of the first part of his doctrine of creation Barth explicitly refers to the metaphor of the two books, and his judgment is harsh: “When the two books are juxtaposed as sources of our knowledge of the Creator and creation, it is quite useless to recommend the book of grace. For only the book of nature will be actually read: ‘No man can serve two masters’!”
47. Thus, e.g., J. Koopmans, De Nederlandse Geloofsbelijdenis (Amsterdam: Uitgeversmaatschappij Holland, 1939), who calls the opening of Article 2 “less fortunate” (p. 24), because in fact we know God by only one means; similarly, A. D. R. Polman, Onze Nederlandse Geloofsbelijdenis verklaard uit het verleden geconfronteerd met het heden, part 1 (Franeker: T. Wever, n.d.), argues that anyone who compares Article 2 with the thoughts of Calvin “cannot admire its editing” (p. 158), which is “not fortunate” (p. 173).
48. Berkouwer, General Revelation, 280. That there is no essential difference between Article 2 and Calvin seems to me to be correct, but that is because both did see creation as an independent (albeit limited, etc.) source of the knowledge of God, and thus maintained the two-sources theory. Barth had seen that quite well.
49. John Calvin, Institutes 1.6.1: Nempe sicuti senes, vel lippi, et quicunque oculis caligant, si vel pulcherrimum volumen illis obiicias, quamvis agnoscant esse aliquid scriptum, vix tamen duas voces contexere poterunt, specillis autem interpositis adiuti distincte legere incipient: ita scriptura confusam alioqui Dei notitiam in mentibus nostris colligens, discussa caligine liquido nobis verum Deum ostendit (Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia [ed. G. Baum, E. Cunitz, and E. Reuss; 59 vols.; Brunswick: Schwetschke, 1863-1900], 2:53); hereafter CO. The English translation is from the edition of Ford Lewis Battles (2 vols.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1:70.
50. It seems that people echo others on this point without checking the Calvin quotation. Even Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics 2:154 n. 11, is ambiguous on this point.
51. This is also the case in the only other place in the Institutes where Calvin speaks of (Holy Scripture as) spectacles (1.14.1; CO 2:117), as it is in his commentary on Job (24:25). Only in the foreword to his commentary on Genesis (1555; CO 23:10b) does Calvin appear to say that we can see God in creation through the spectacles of Scripture.
52. Berkouwer, General Revelation, 279, acknowledges that Calvin “also knows the comparative of Article II.” Cf. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 2:153-54: “Calvin himself had argued a ‘two-fold knowledge of God.’. . . We have no evidence that Calvin saw any problem with the language or theology of either document [the Gallicana or the Belgic Confession] or that he viewed these confessions or their authors with anything but approbation.” Gootjes, Belgic Confession, 69-70, even holds that Calvin explicitly approved of the Belgic Confession in a letter (199-200), although he did not mention the document by name there.
53. Sevenster, “Openbaring en Schrift,” in J. N. Sevenster et al., De Nederlandse Geloofsbelijdenis kritisch beschouwd (2d ed.; n.p.: Vereeniging van Vrijzinnige Hervormden in Nederland, 1957), 13. As a NT scholar, Sevenster argues that the appeal to Rom 1:20 in Article 2 is basically correct, and he criticizes Barth’s exegesis in this connection (11-12).
54. Thus, e.g., Polman, Onze Nederlandse Geloofsbelijdenis, 171: “But this confession immediately starts from faith, so that nature and history are seen here from the perspective of a Christian.” Somewhat later (p. 172) he describes believers as those “whose cataracts have been removed.” See also Berkouwer, General Revelation, 278: “It must be remembered, however, that the confession deals with God’s revelation on the basis of the ‘we.’”
55. See, e.g., Luco J. van den Brom, “Interpreting the Doctrine of Creation,” in Interpreting the Universe as Creation (ed. Vincent Brümmer; Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991), 32: “It is the broader background of intentions formulated in other doctrines that determines the interpretation of the doctrine of creation.”
56. Bakhuizen van den Brink, Nederlandse belijdenisgeschriften, 52, observes that it is difficult to determine which Bible translations the authors and translators of the Confession used.
57. Hendrikus Berkhof, “Die Welterfahrung des Glaubens: Artikel 2 des Niederländischen Glaubensbekenntnisses (Confessio Belgica) gedeutet und bedacht,” in Vernunft des Glaubens: Wissenschaftliche Theologie und kirchliche Lehre. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Wolfhart Pannenberg (ed. Jan Rohls and Gunther Wenz; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 336-56 (quotation on 340).
58. Berkhof, ibid., 341: “. . . daß er bei ‘unseren’ nur an die Gläubigen gedacht hat.”
59. Berkhof, ibid., 342: “Dieser ‘Betriebsunfall’ hat der Klarheit und Wirkungskraft des Artikels sehr geschadet.”
60. Thus, e.g., M. Eugene Osterhaven, Our Confession of Faith: A Study Manual on the Belgic Confession (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1964), 31: “Natural theology? No! General revelation? Yes, indeed, as Scripture and the Confesion of Faith clearly teach.” Cf. W. Verboom, Kostbaar belijden: De theologie van de Nederlandse Geloofsbelijdenis (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1999), 79: “Even though the book of created reality is not a source of knowledge from our perspective . . . , it can still be a book of revelation from God.”
61. Confessio Gallicana, Art. 2: “Ce Dieu se manifeste tel aux hommes [As such (i.e., as expressed in the first article) this God reveals himself to men].” Cf. Cochrane, “The French Confession of Faith, 1559,” in Reformed Confessions of the 16th Century, 144.
62. Usually, of course, it is seen as a consequence of the Fall that our natural knowledge of God became destroyed or distorted.
63. This conclusion is corroborated by a piece of internal evidence, which repeats the appeal to Rom 1:20 in a slightly different context: in Article 14 of the Belgic Confession it is stated that after the Fall man “retained a few remains” of God’s excellent gifts, “which, however, are sufficient to leave man without excuse.” Cf. Henry Beets, The Reformed Confession Explained (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1929), 26. Contra Berkouwer, General Revelation, 278: “So, this does not in the least imply that there would already be a sufficient and true knowledge from the first means.” According to Article 2, the knowledge from the first means is indeed not sufficient, but (like all knowledge) it is certainly true!
64. Thus L. Doekes, Credo: Handboek voor gereformeerde symboliek (Amsterdam: Bolland, 1975), 55. Cf. Gootjes, Belgic Confession, 66-67, for some examples of the Belgic’s “more comprehensive and more pointed” rejection of Anabaptist positions.
65. La racine, source et fondement des Anabaptistes (Lyon: Jean Frellon, 1565). It would, for that matter, be well worth the effort to compare this work (as well as De Brès’ earlier [1555] publication, Le baston de la foy Chrestienne) closely with the text of the Belgic Confession, an attempt that thus far has only seldom been undertaken. Remarkably enough, thus far a critical edition of De Brès’ work has not been published.
66. As to the Roman Catholic view on the natural knowledge of God, Vatican I adumbrated a long tradition when it canonized the doctrine of natural revelation by stating (with reference to Rom 1:20) that God “can be known with certainty from the things that were created”; cf. Enchiridion Symbolorum (ed. H. Denzinger and A. Schönmetzer; Freiburg: Herder, 1965, etc.), 3005. For the background of this teaching in Thomas Aquinas, see, e.g., Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 23-25; but cf., for the subtlety of Aquinas’s position, 43-44.
67. In his essay “Natuur en genade” (1938), reprinted in vol. 1 of his Theologisch Werk (6 vols.; Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1969), A. A. van Ruler spoke of a “fatal comparative” (129), and later authors used comparable invectives in this context (whether or not inspired by van Ruler). Van Ruler, who in 1938 completely shared the Barthian critique, writes in the preface to vol. 1 of his Theologisch Werk that he “now wants to judge some points in a somewhat more nuanced way, in particular with reference to the natural knowledge of God” (7).
68. Michael Sudduth, The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009), 40. Despite the fact that Sudduth only highlights a limited selection of the available sources, his conclusion seems well substantiated.
69. That also means that the first of the six Barmen theses (1934) is at odds with Article 2 of the Belgic Confession because it recognizes only one source and form of revelation, namely, Jesus Christ as the Word of God. If the Word of God was identified with the Bible, then the tension would have been considerably less because the Bible itself points to several forms of revelation (cf. Heb1:1) and also views nature as a source of (vague) knowledge of God (e.g., in Ps 19). Cf. the critical evaluation of Barth’s rejection of natural theology from the perspective of biblical theology by James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).
70. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation (trans. Edward J. Oakes; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 22: “We must choose Karl Barth as our partner because in him Protestantism has found for the first time its most completely consistent representative.”
71. On this see Willie D. Jonker, Bevrydende waarheid. Die karakter van die gereformeerde belydenis (Wellington: Hugenote-Uitgewers, 1994), 57-58.
72. I am therefore in agreement with A. van de Beek when he writes that “one does not [have to be] afraid of natural theology, if one distinguishes properly what the range and function of a specific theological statement is. . . . What article 2 confesses . . . is that in the experience of divine presence in nature no other God comes to us than the one in the proclamation of Jesus Christ” (A. van de Beek, Schepping: De wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid [Baarn: Callenbach, 1996], 140-41).
73. For a contemporary defense and development of the notion of cognitio Dei insita (in terms of a universal “nonthematic knowledge of God” that is displayed in the religions of the world), see Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1:107-18. Pannenberg carefully distinguishes between this natural knowledge of God and the concept of natural theology, which is “by no means so widespread” in the Christian tradition (76).
74. Cited in Michael A. Corey, “Anthropic Principle,” in Encyclopedia of Science and Religion (ed. J. W. V. van Huyssteen; New York: MacMillan, 2003), 13.
75. See “Hoyle on Evolution,” Nature 294, no. 5837 (12 November 1981): 105.
76. Denis Alexander, Rebuilding the Matrix: Science and Faith in the 21st Century (Oxford: Lion Publishing, 2001), 414, offers a good discussion of the anthropic principle, which he concludes with the following statement: “Things are arranged too amazingly just right for conscious life to emerge to believe that it was merely a giant fluke” (425).
77. An earlier version of this article appeared in Dutch as Als een schoon boec. Achtergrond, receptie en relevantie van artikel 2 van de Nederlandse Geloofsbelijdenis (Leiden: Leiden University, 2008).