Having
done no research on the question, nonetheless I have the conviction that this
awareness, the awareness of creatureliness, has in our culture shrunk to almost
disappearing point. So that those who are aware of being creatures are exclusively
to be found among conservative Christian and perhaps also the conservative Jewish
communities, and Islam. Among its fate in other groups I am almost totally
ignorant.
And
even among Christians there is often only a token recognition of the point.
Which is a great pity. There is not such a thing as a doctrine of
creatureliness; a doctrine of creation, yes, and of the Creator – creature
distinction, of course. Without an awareness that we are creatures of God it is
hard to see us ever being aware of those ills that Jesus came to deliver us
from.
The sense of creatureliness
is a state of mind which is the fruit of other, more obvious doctrines, but
which has its own part to play for those who are aware of it. These other doctrines,
of creation, and providence, when they also are not merely notionally believed,
may water and feed it. To say that they function as an ingredient in a state of
mind shows that it can ebb and flow in our awareness of it. Why it is rather
stricken in the modern Christian western mind is not hard to guess. This fundamental truth is forgotten:
Know
that the Lord, he is God
It
is he who made us, and we are his;
We
are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. (Ps.100.3)
Such
words are now never heard in public, not even at harvest time, which is now a
somewhat antiquated festival. The ‘tone’ of our fellow citizens of themselves is
much more likely to be of one who is an initiator in human life, here to make, to enjoy and to fulfil, understood a set of purely human projects. Human life is for expressing
and enjoying ourselves, and so for ‘making’ ourselves. In this sense we view ourselves not so much as
creatures but as creators. Our horizons are this world, in the sole enjoyment
of some of its riches and of its temptations.
In
the pride of his face, the wicked does not seek him
All
his thoughts are, ‘There is no God’ (Ps.10.4)
Insofar
as such pride is true of ourselves, it shows signs of a lack of belief in our creatureliness.
From this lack flow some of the dominant features of our culture: a
preoccupation with fairness, and with physical
fitness, and of gaining and maintaining our rights.
Christians
hold that God’s eye is on us; and that in him we live and move and have our being.
I suppose, therefore, godliness is not next to cleanliness, as we were taught, but it
is certainly next to creatureliness! Unlike sheep and seals, say, human beings
can be aware of being a creature, and this asymmetry between the Creator and
his self-aware creatures is a fundamental factor in God’s providence and grace,
and of taking stock of human life more generally.
Creatureliness
and freedom
Being
creatures having the awareness of our creatureliness does not make us robots,
or puppets, or fated by the stars, for we are obviously not. But the point is,
human choice can only do so much. From God who ordains who we are, we receive
gifts and are ourselves gifted one way or another, as we say without realizing
what we are saying. And he supports and works through us to bring to pass his
own purposes, re-creating us moment by moment. As the Westminster Confession
puts it, by God’s providence, ‘ordereth them [all things] to fall out according
to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.’
(V. II) God, our creator and Lord, works
through us, and so to speak ‘respects’ our individuality, an individuality
which is distinct of each person, another part of our creatureliness.
There
are contemporary philosophers who hold that it is an infringement of human
autonomy to come into the world with a particular endowment, and subject to
parental nurture and example, and further formed by an early education. In
their view we ought to have the right to choose what character we have, what our strengths and
weaknesses are, and what life chances we are given. What we would the ‘me’ be like who
has to plan his or her own life, selecting one’s DNA and all, is not made clear. It looks incoherent and it in
any event is fantastical. This fantasy can be regarded as an attempt to destroy or erase the features
of our creatureliness or at least to circumvent them.
The desire for a 'freedom' in which we are at
first, or constantly, or periodically, can ave some freely chosen new start in our lives is an illusion. In such situations we believe that
we are faced with a blank future on
which we can impress our character uninfluenced by other effects from sources
not solely our own. In sharp
contrast to this human, freedom is conditioned freedom. Each choice, free in
the sense that the choice is our choice, and is not forced upon us, and is the product of our inner likes and
dislikes, our character as creatures. Libertarian or countercultural freedom,
unconditional choice, is a illusion, in
my view, whether it is the character of our everyday choices, or as the ability
exercisable at some definitive turning point of our lives. It is an attempt to be free from the shape of our
creatureliness. Our creatureliness here is invariably expressed in terms of preferences
or goals, the product of our beliefs and desires, and they are the result of our
initial endowment of genetics, culture, upbringing. We own these as
our own, as indeed they are, and not anyone else’s. We face choices that we may
not know the outcome of. These familiar situations are the results of
creatureliness. This is the nature in which the regenerating grace of God
operates. If we would be pilgrims, then try as we may we cannot avoid our heteronomy.
