Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

University-Trained Mole Rats

Blog and Mablog

Douglas Wilson

October 10, 2014

Scripture teaches us that the creation is articulate.

“The heavens declare his righteousness, And all the people see his glory. Confounded be all they that serve graven images, That boast themselves of idols: Worship him, all ye gods” (Ps. 97:6–7).

The created order pours forth speech. Nature is not a dumb mute, vaguely gesturing in the direction of some nameless god, who must have made “all this.”

It is far more than that. The creation pours forth moral speech. In the text cited above we should note that the heavens declare God’s righteousness, and does so in a way that makes it unmistakeable that this righteousness is glorious, and that it humiliates those who pray to their statues. An honest look at the night sky, in other words, not only blows away the pretended rationality of idolatry, but also the pretended morality of it. The heavens declare God’s righteousness, and shames the unrighteousness of every alternative pretense.


When we kick against such heavenly declarations, we do it by demanding to see the argument laid out cold on the table and neatly dissected. But who said it was merely an argument? There are arguments that can be extracted from the experience, and if the experience has touched you, the arguments do make good sense.  But if you expect etiolated scholastic argumentation to do the same thing to your head and heart that a harvest moon rising over a spinney of pine can do then you are pursuing the epistemology of a colony of university-trained mole rats.

Looking to the argument alone is the same thing as not following it.

Scripture testifies to the glory of God everywhere, which is not the same thing as saying that the glory of God is locked up in the sealed container of special revelation. The Bible tells us that God is speaking to us all the time, in all things, in every event. Scripture tells us also that this speech is content rich, full of wisdom, power, goodness, and righteousness.

Pretending that this isn’t so is just that — pretending. To be created is to be in a place where God is never silent, anywhere, or in any blessed thing.