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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJames Hastings Dictionary of the Bible: Nature
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NATURE.—The term ‘nature’ is not used in the OT. nor was the conception current in Hebrew thought, as God alone is seen in all, through all, and over all. The idea came from the word physis from Hellenism. Swine’s flesh is commended for food as a gift of nature in 4Ma_5:7. In the NT the term is used in various senses: (1) the forces, laws, and order of the world, including man (Rom_1:26; Rom_11:21; Rom_11:24, Gal_4:8); (2) the inborn sense of propriety or morality (1Co_11:14, Rom_2:14); (3) birth or physical origin (Gal_2:15, Rom_2:27); (4) the sum of characteristics of a species or person, human (Jam_3:7), or Divine (2Pe_1:4); (5) a condition acquired or inherited (Eph_2:3, ‘by nature children of wrath’). What is contrary to nature is condemned. While the term is not found or the conception made explicit in the OT, Schultz (OT Theol. ii. 74) finds in the Law ‘the general rule that nothing is to be permitted contrary to the delicate sense of the inviolable proprieties of nature,’ and gives a number of instances (Exo_23:19; Exo_34:26, Lev_22:28; Lev_19:19, Deu_22:9-11, Lev_10:9; Lev_19:28; Lev_21:5; Lev_22:24, Deu_14:1; Deu_23:2). The beauty and the order of the world are recognized as evidences of Divine wisdom and power (Psa_8:1; Psa_19:1; Psa_33:6-7; Psa_90:2; Psa_104:1-35; Psa_136:6 ff., Psa_147:1-20, Pro_8:22-30, Job_38:1-41; Job_39:1-30); but the sum of created things is not hypostatized and personified apart from God, as in much current modern thinking. God is Creator, Preserver, and Ruler: He makes all (Isa_44:24, Amo_4:13), and is in all (Psa_139:1-24). His immanence is by His Spirit (Gen_1:2). Jesus recognizes God’s bounty and care in the flowers of the field and the birds of the air (Mat_6:26; Mat_6:28); He uses natural processes to illustrate spiritual, in salt (Mat_5:13), seed and soil (Mat_13:3-9), and leaven (Mat_13:33). The growth of the seed is also used as an illustration by Paul (1Co_15:37-38). There is in the Bible no interest in nature apart from God, and the problem of the relation of God to nature has not yet risen on the horizon of the thought of the writers.
Alfred E. Garvie.