On What We Are by Nature

Q: What are we by nature? 

A: We are part of God’s creation, made in the image of God. 

The first section of the Catechism deals with the topic of “Human Nature,” a section offering insight into what human beings are, what Sin is, and which begins to provide insight into God’s response to Sin by offering an outline of God’s redeeming work. Marion Hatchett points out that this section on human nature is one new to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, and, after some initial reflection, some readers may find its placement a bit odd (Commentary on the American Prayer Book, 574). After all, Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval theologian and foundational thinker for Roman Catholic thought, begins his Summa Theologiae with the question of the nature of sacred doctrine and then the One and Triune God. Karl Barth (pronounced Bart), probably the most influential theologian of the 20th century, begins his magisterial Church Dogmatics with the Word of God and the Trinity. Luther’s catechisms start with the Ten Commandments. Our own doctrinal tradition parallels both Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth, starting with the Trinity and then Scripture in the Articles of Religion and with Holy Scripture in the Book of Homilies. One may well wonder if it is not a bit, well, self-focused to focus on human nature as the first item for discussion. After all, doesn’t the fourth answer in this very section say that “we do not use our freedom as we should” because “we put ourselves in the place of God?”  

Reflecting a bit further on the content of the first question and answer rather than on the section title, though, we become aware that the focus is not on human beings in the abstract. Rather, this section focuses on humans in the interconnected web of God’s creation. Rather than beginning with a discussion about Scripture, this section begins with the order of priority in Scripture, beginning with the creation itself. The catechism thus also follows the order of our central statement of belief, the Nicene Creed, by beginning with an affirmation of our belief in God the creator. It is worth noting then that by beginning with humans as created beings located within the interdependent web of creation, our catechism harkens to St. Augustine’s Catechism or Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Charity, a work beginning with God as the source of creation and the nature of that creation in relation to God (3,9-4,16).

The first question asks, “What are we by nature?” to which the response is, “We are part of God’s creation, made in the image of God. So, what does it mean to be part of God’s creation? To again call to mind Augustine’s Catechism, we Christians affirm that to be part of creation, indeed, to be, to exist, at all, is to be good. Creation flows from and takes its being and nature from God’s Goodness. Genesis affirms that God created the world, looked at all that God made, and saw that “indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Importantly, again following Augustine, no amount of sin, no amount of fall, no amount of corruption can ever take away this inherent goodness of all that exists. Evil is not some thing that exists alongside good; rather, evil is a description of absence or breakdown of a good ordering of the world, like the hole in the middle of a torn garment or the skin that has come apart in a wound. Thus, no thing that exists can be wholly evil no matter how distorted, corrupted, or broken it may be, because to be wholly evil is to disintegrate into nonexistence, into nothingness. This applies to humans as well as the rest of creation, and it means that no matter how heinous or reprehensible someone may be, no matter how corrupt and corrupting their behavior, no human being can be deemed wholly evil or unworthy of love and dignity. 

At the same time, being created also means existing as in some way dependent and limited. To be created means above all not to be the source of our own being—we do not, in other words, bring ourselves into existence. This is true on multiple levels. Fundamentally, it means that the world that we come into being in does not bring itself about but instead owes its existence to God and depends on God to sustain its continued existence from moment to moment. Biologically, we do not bring about our own bodies. Socially, we are always born into a community and society that is larger than us and goes before us and shapes and forms us. And just as our beginning point is dependent on something else, so too is our continued existence. We cannot live independent of air, water, food, and adequate shelter. We cannot thrive without healthy relationships, or intellectual stimulation. Especially in the vast and complex arena of modern American society, almost none of us can secure even our basic bodily necessities through our own efforts and instead rely on the efforts of others. Even ages and societies in which so-called “self-sufficiency” were more plausible still demand an awareness of certain inescapable stages of dependency on other human beings when we are very young, as infants and small children, and when we are very old and less able to engage in the physical labor necessary for producing one’s own food and shelter.

This recognition of dependence, of needing to receive from others, does not, however, mean that we are absolutely dependent. Part of creation in the image of God means that we create and contribute to the life and flourishing of others. We have the capacity to give as well as receive. We may not be the absolute creators of ourselves, our communities, or our world, but we are gifted with the power to contribute to the growth and flourishing of these things—or to use that power for their suffering and destruction. A recognition of dependence as a condition of being created is then not a mere resignation to not having total power over our selves, others, or the world, but, as Rowan Williams says, “we both acknowledge in prayer this dependence and respond to the gift that sets up not only our being but our renewed being in Christ; and in acknowledging that dependence we are empowered to ‘do the work of God,’ to be ‘in Christ,’ as St Paul puts it” (Being Human, 72). 

Just as we are dependent, we must also recognize that created being implies limitation. Such is especially true of our mixed existence as both spiritual and embodied. As beings with bodies, we face all manner of limitations: We cannot be in multiple places at the same time; we face neurological limits to how many things we can focus on at a given time; there are certain activities we cannot perform because of the particular configurations of our bodies; we must face the ways in which habits and environment shape our desires, actions, and thoughts and thus cannot simply will our ways out of certain ways of thinking, acting, and feeling. Ultimately, we are limited by a lifespan, that fact that we exist on this earth as it is now at a particular time not of our own choosing with a particular start and end date. 

To acknowledge our embodied creaturely existence is, like with acknowledging our dependence, to always be navigating and negotiating freedom and power within limits, always asking what limits are artificial and harmful and what are inherent to giving us shape as particular and fearfully and wonderfully made creatures. What it also means is that dependence and limitation are not effects of Sin. While Sin may turn certain limitations and structures of dependence into opportunities for exploitation and harm, of suffering and oppression, and indeed Sin may allow for the construction of unnecessary and burdensome limits, limitation and dependence are not in and of themselves things that must be overcome. The restoration of all things will not see our status as creatures removed because indeed this would mean our annihilation rather than liberation, a fact implying that even in the New Creation we will still continue to exist in limited and dependent ways—even if we can’t fully conceive of what a limited and dependent form of life free of exploitation and oppression would look like here and now. 

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