When I walk through the bush, it’s hard not to notice how everything depends on everything else. Trees rely on fungi. Insects pollinate flowers. Birds disperse seeds. Rivers shape forests, and forests shape rivers. Even we become who we are through our relationships with other people. It raises a deeper question: is this interconnectedness simply a feature of nature, or does it tell us something about the nature of reality itself? Philosophers call these questions metaphysics: the attempt to understand what reality is ultimately like, what kinds of things exist, and what holds everything together. As a Christian, I believe it does. The relational character of creation points beyond itself toward the relational God who created it.
I believe there is one ultimate reality: God. This God is not simply one being among other beings, but the source and ground of all being. Because God is eternally relational as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, creation also bears a relational character. Everything that exists receives its existence from God and is continually sustained by God’s presence and ongoing activity. As Paul writes, “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Yet God has not created a world of isolated objects. Created things are genuinely distinct, but they also exist in relationship with one another. God does not intervene only occasionally, but sustains the world from moment to moment through his continual action and presence. To participate in God does not mean that creation is part of God’s being, but that everything receives its life, meaning, and purpose from him.
This differs from pantheism, which identifies creation with God or treats the universe itself as ultimate reality. I don’t believe the world is divine in and of itself. The Creator and creation remain fundamentally distinct. The universe is not divine, and creation is not ultimate reality. Yet this does not mean that creation is merely an impersonal collection of objects. Creation is alive because it continually receives its existence from God and participates in the life that God gives. As Paul writes, “From him and through him and for him are all things” (Romans 11:36). Every creature receives its existence from God, participates in God’s sustaining presence, and reflects something of God’s wisdom and goodness. The world is not divine, but it is holy. It is not a meaningless collection of objects but the temple of our Creator.
It also differs from polytheism. Christianity certainly affirms a rich spiritual cosmos populated by angels, demons, and other spiritual powers. Many spiritual traditions recognise that reality is deeper than the material world alone, and Christianity shares this sense of an enchanted creation. However, these spiritual beings are not rival gods competing for ultimate authority. They are creatures, just as dependent upon the Creator for their existence as we are. Some may oppose God’s purposes, but they cannot rival God as the source of reality itself. Their existence and power are always derivative, never independent. As Paul writes of Christ, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).
Finally, it differs from deism and more mechanistic views of creation, where God creates the universe but then leaves it to operate according to its own independent processes. I believe creation is genuinely distinct from God, but it is never independent of God. Nature is not a closed system operating apart from divine presence. Created things are genuinely distinct, but they are also genuinely interdependent. Their relationships are not incidental; they belong to the way God has made the world. Genesis itself portrays creation through ordered pairs and complementary relationships: light and darkness, heaven and earth, sea and land, male and female, work and Sabbath. These distinctions do not divide reality into disconnected pieces. Instead, they form a harmonious order in which each part finds its place and purpose in relation to God, to one another, and to the whole. God’s presence is therefore not something occasionally inserted into creation, but the continual source of its life and coherence.
This way that I have come to understand reality is through what might be called a participatory Christian metaphysics. God alone is independent and self-existent. Everything else receives its being from God and participates in the life and order that God gives. Unlike pantheism, nature is not divine. Unlike polytheism, there are no competing ultimate powers. Unlike deism, creation is not abandoned to itself. Reality is a communion of dependent beings, sustained by the God who is both beyond creation and intimately present to it, and who continually gives life to all that exists.
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