Articles By: Steve Wilken

Scholars are supposed to avoid nostalgia. Getting attached to old notions, conventional wisdom tells us, breeds a reluctance to test them and discover something new. Nevertheless, I’ve become nostalgic for an idea that held sway for centuries: the belief that nature cannot be truly understood apart from the category of creation. In fact, the progressive decoupling of “nature” from creation has caused us to think different thoughts when we hear the word nature, and I fear that those thoughts create significant problems in our quest to be spiritually attuned with God.