Nothing has done more to remove God's true lordship from the Western mind than this craven abandonment of creation by the Christian churches in the nineteenth century. In a sense, the natural order itself becomes ultimate, rather than the personal God who made it and controls it; thus, it tends to be understood in an impersonal framework, rather than the expression of the sovereign will of the Holy Trinity. Nature becomes Lord in place of the true Lord (although theistic evolutionists have worked hard to maintain a personal framework, as best they can).

A good illustration of this is seen when there is a conflict between plain biblical teaching on reality and the claims of anti-theistic science (and vast areas of science are in no sense anti-theistic; never more so than today). In that case, most Church scholars hasten to adapt the Scriptures to secularist scientific claims, rather than vice versa; as in accounts of the age of the earth and biological fixity of the kinds as opposed to evolutionary development from one species into another. Whose word then is sovereign? This sort of thinking lay behind much of the German 'higher critical' methodology, which cut the Scriptures into disparate parts and imposed an evolutionary model on their supposed production.

Theology is conceived by hearing God's word, and it comes to birth by prayer. (p. 17)

The reader will discover this as he repeatedly finds us citing theologians such as Athanasius, Augustine, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and especially Reformed divines such as John Calvin, William Perkins, William Ames, Johannes Wollebius, the authors of the Leiden Synopsis, Thomas Goodwin, John Owen, Stephen Charnock, Francis Turretin, Wilhelmus a Brakel, John Gill, Charles Hodge, and Herman Bavinck. We are children who sit on the shoulders of giants. (p. 19-20)

The light of every star, the structure of every cell, the functioning of every organic system, the majesty of every law, the voice of every conscience, the development of every creative potential and 'the change and decay' and renewal of every aspect of nature are all established with their own significance and meaning to be patiently perceived  and proclaimed by created persons. And thus all of these created realities being found to be what they are, all of them -- even if it be in a mute sort of way -- level by level, lift up the eyes of those who behold them in faith to the Triune personal reality, who called everything into being, continually sustains it, and guides it to His appointed purpose. That purpose is personal; an ever-growing, ever-deepening, ever-beautifying communion of life and love between redeemed created persons and the ineffable one, undivided community of Three uncreated Persons, who created them, redeemed them, and will not be without them.