Reading the Book of Nature as an Invitation to Prayer

Christian theology has traditionally spoken of creation as a book, a means of revelation that can be metaphorically read by human creatures for a variety of purposes. The thirteenth century theologian Bonaventure takes up this tradition, giving the book of creation a significant place in his theology. He understands revelation to be the purpose of creation, “so that the world might serve as a footprint and a mirror to lead humankind to love and praise God, its Maker” (*Brev*. 2.11.2). Because of the Word by whom all things were made, all things that were made have a place in God’s revelatory purposes.

The focus on revelation dominates the theological language here. This paper takes a different approach, considering more specifically the implications of the metaphor of creation as text. To do this, Bonaventure’s theology of the book of creation is considered in conversation with the concept of the hospitable text, articulated by Rowan Williams. In his lecture, “The Bible Today: Reading and Hearing,” Williams speaks specifically of the text of Scripture, insisting that as a text it has integrity, and that as the narrative of a covenant God dealing with his covenant people, it implicates its readers to find their place in its narrative. This is what Williams calls its “dual nature:” its existence as a finished text and its openness to re-reading as it continually invites its readers. Within the context of the celebration of the Eucharist, Scripture, Williams argues, is part of Jesus’ invitation to sit at the table.

It is from this characteristic of the text as “inviting” that Rachel Teubner develops the term “hospitable text” and employs it in her reading of Maurgerite de Navarre’s poetry. This paper picks up Teubner’s term and seeks to employ it in reference to a different text: that of the book of creation. Read in this way and along with Bonaventure, creation becomes a text that invites the reader to pray.

Bonaventure speaks repeatedly of creation functioning as a means for humans to ascend to God. In the medieval world, this ascent or return to God is impossible apart from prayer.[1] For Bonaventure, “[p]etition and contemplation together form the pillars of his teaching on prayer and are inextricably bound to one another. As he points out in the Journey of the Soul into God, the contemplative ascent into God is impossible without asking for divine assistance.”[2] Read as a hospitable text, the book of creation invites the perceptive reader to these pillars of petitionary and contemplative prayer.

This paper argues that creation’s invitation to petitionary prayer calls on human creatures to fulfill their priestly role in relationship to creation, even as it grounds humanity in humility. To read the book of creation faithfully entails reading the corruption to which it has been bound through human sin. Creation thus invites human creatures to plead with God on its behalf as it groans under the curse, to recognise their complicity in the cause of its groaning, and to seek creation’s redemption. Prayer thus is conceived as an activity that moves us both towards God and towards creation.

This paper concludes by considering Bonaventure’s exemplar of St. Francis as one who reads creation as a “hospitable text.” In his response to creation’s invitation, St. Francis models a life of prayer that integrated contemplation and action. He demonstrated that a faithful use of creation as a means of contemplation does not treat creation simply as a means to humanity’s union with God, but involves a recognition of the “cosmic fraternity,” that unites human and non-human creatures, a recognition which carries with it priestly responsibilities.[3]

[1] Johnson, Timothy. Soul in Ascent : Bonaventure on Poverty, Prayer and Union with God. Franciscan Institute Publications, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ridley/detail.action?docID=3240068, 21.

[2]Johnson, Soul in Ascent, 25.

[3] The phrase ‘cosmic fraternity’ comes from Manuel Lázaro Pulido and Esteban Anchústegui Igartua, “Aesthetics as a Philosophical and Theological Space,” 9.