Summer1
By Geerhardus Vos
Translated by Daniel Ragusa
Though thousands of signs do brim
That he the land has graced,
How shall I ever find him?
Where do his footsteps haste?
What tidings, O lulling wind?
Is he—or soon to be—
At home with his beloved,
To spend the night in glee?
Do not seek to approach him
In the mood of a bride;
His flame forbids all nearing,
His tender arms denied.
Only when, blowing from sea,
Turning winds cool the shore,
May the soul dream in safety
Of summer’s pleasure store.
Yet who can grasp the wonder,
How at his festal tide
He clasps the earth thereunder
And spreads out far and wide!
Valleys with fragrance streaming,
Seas full of golden light,
With streams intoxicating,
The half-drunk heart’s delight!
Do not seek to approach him
In the mood of a bride;
His flame forbids all nearing,
His tender arms denied.
Only when, blowing from sea,
Turning winds cool the shore,
May the soul dream in safety
Of summer’s pleasure store.
Nature Poetry for the Glory of God
“Aestas” (Summer) is the third poem in the collection “Annulis Anni” (Circle of the Year) from Vos’s volume of nature poetry, titled Spiegel der natuur (Mirror of Nature). (The poems are all written in Dutch with Latin titles.) This collection reflects on the seasons and times of day.
We all inevitably experience the seasons, being timebound creatures in a universe upheld by the word of the Son of God’s power (Heb. 1:3). We have observed the distinct characteristics of each season: how spring blossoms like a newborn; how summer delights like a long, slow, satisfying sip; how autumn blazes with glory like a soldier’s last stand; how winter quiets and stills the earth with an icy hush like the grave. Our experience of the seasons may have at times brought us hope or joy or longing or peace. As the seasons mark out the year for us, with each one fading as the next becomes bolder, they may have given us perspective and direction amid the flow of time that moves at a dizzying speed. All of this, of course, is good for us to observe, and we ought to give thanks to God for it. But is there more for us to see in the seasons? Do they have something more to say to our souls? Is there anything spiritual, even something of the order of redemption, reflected in them?
We’ve already considered how Vos’s first poem in this collection, titled “Dies Solis” (Sunday), sits atop these earthly cycles like a heavenly crown. This poem forms a religious (God-centered and worshipful) and eschatological (eternal and perfect) lens through which to read rightly God’s natural revelation—in this case, his preservation and government of the universe in its seasons and times (Gen. 8:22).
Sunday—the Lord’s Day—teaches us to see the seasons not only under the light of the sun that burns some 93 million miles away but under the light of heaven—the supernatural light refracted, as it were, through the sea of glass, like crystal, before the throne of God (Rev. 4:6). This heavenly light sanctifies all the rhythms of time, including each season, for the glory and enjoyment of God (true religion) and offers a foretaste of the higher goal of eternity in the joyful presence of God (eschatology). True religion and eschatology walk hand in hand, for God made us in his image to “live with [him] in eternal happiness, for his praise and glory” (Heidelberg Catechism 6).
We already saw how these twin elements of true religion and eschatology framed Vos’s second poem, “Miracle of Spring.” Might the same hold as we move into “Summer”? Might heaven’s light reveal something more for us to see in “summer’s pleasure store”?
Hidden since the Foundation of the World
Before answering these questions, it will help first to explore another aspect of Vos’s thought that illumines his nature poetry and especially the mystery at the heart of his poem “Summer.” Vos recognized a God-constructed parallel between the natural and the spiritual (or redemptive). He expounds this in his Biblical Theology as the theological principle that undergirded Jesus’s parables—parables that employed the height, depth, and breadth of creation to show as in a mirror the glorious mysteries of the kingdom of heaven (see Matthew 13). Vos writes:
It would be wrong to assume that the parables which Jesus spoke were nothing more than homiletical inventions, not based on any deeper principle or law. It would be more correct to call them spiritual discoveries, because they are based on a certain parallelism between the two strata of creation, the natural and the spiritual (redemptive) one, because the universe has been thus constructed. On the principle of “spiritual law in the natural world,” the nature-things and processes reflect as in a mirror the super-nature-things, and it was not necessary for Jesus to invent illustrations. All He had to do was to call attention to what had been lying hidden, more or less, since the time of creation. This seems to be the meaning of Matthew’s quotation from Psa. 78:2 [Matt. 13:35]. The marvelous acquaintance of Jesus’ mind with the entire compass of natural and economic life, observable in His parables may be explained from this, that He had been the divine Mediator in bringing this world with all its furnishings into being, and again was the divine Mediator for producing and establishing the order of redemption.2
“The nature-things and processes reflect as in a mirror the super-nature-things” (emphasis added). Vos uses this mirror metaphor extensively throughout his writings. He even titled the book we are considering Spiegel der natuur (Mirror of Nature), suggesting that all his nature poetry is undergirded by the same theological principle (“spiritual law in the natural world”) that undergirded Jesus’s parables.
Jesus is the divine mediator (the Logos) in both creation and redemption (new creation), and he is perfectly consistent.3 He reveals in his parables that the order of redemption is mirrored, and intentionally so, in nature. What has been hidden since the time of creation is revealed by Jesus’s own person and work. Jesus cites Psalm 78:2 (in Matthew 13:35) as being fulfilled in him: “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.”
The emphasis falls on the “I”—he whom the gospel (Rom. 1:3) and all things (11:36) ultimately concerns. Christ’s coming with his teaching, preaching, and miracles brought to light what had been hidden—namely, “the mysteries [mystērion] of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 13:11). These “super-nature-things” concerning the kingdom were typified and shadowed in the Old Testament and, less clearly, mirrored in the natural world. But now in Christ the mysteries themselves have arrived. “Repent,” Jesus preaches, “for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (4:17). Herein lies the mysteries: “What else could so suitably have been designated by Jesus ‘a mystery’ in comparison with the Jewish expectations than the truth that the kingdom comes gradually, imperceptibly, spiritually?”4 The spiritual presence of the kingdom of heaven on earth may not be seen directly with natural eyes—it is imperceptible—but its reflection may be seen indirectly in what has been made for the one who has eyes to see (13:13). Was this not also how the King himself was among them? As both hidden and revealed? Who followed Jesus as his disciples but those to whom the Father sovereignly revealed his Son (11:25–26)?
This parallelism, which Vos recognizes between the “two strata of creation,” explains how Christ can utter what had been hidden using parables—parables that depend on similes between the kingdom of heaven and creation. For example, “the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. . . . ” (13:31). The mustard seed had always contained this mystery, but now it is brought to light in Christ who has brought the kingdom of heaven near.
Vos summarizes the principle behind the parallelism as “spiritual law in the natural world.”5 This theological principle, of course, undergirds far more than just Jesus’s parables. The natural world is drawn into Scripture’s prophecies and praises and proverbs, and typically in poetic form. While we rightly distinguish general and special revelation, we ought not to isolate them from one another, just like we ought not to isolate Jesus’s mediatorial work in creation and redemption. For Christ is the source, center, and goal of both. Apart from knowing him, apart from listening to his voice and trusting in him who is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:30), these spiritual mysteries of the kingdom remain hidden not only in the Scriptures but also in plain sight in the things that have been made.
Jesus said to the unbelieving Jews, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. . . . For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:39–40, 46–47). Paul provides the theological rationale: “When they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts” (2 Cor. 3:14–15).
The parallelism between the natural and the redemptive means that a veil also lies over the hearts of all those who seek to read God’s general revelation in a spirit of unbelief. According to John Calvin, those who study God’s works of nature in a spirit of unbelief—contenting themselves with “mediate and proximate causes” while refusing to be led to the “Author of Nature himself”—“learn in such a manner that [they] can never know any thing.”6 He adds, “They employ enchantments to shut their ears against God’s voice, however powerful, lest it should reach their hearts. . . . Far greater is the folly of those philosophers, who, out of mediate and proximate causes, weave themselves veils, lest they should be compelled to acknowledge the hand of God, which manifestly displays itself in his works.”7
The unbeliever cannot understand God’s book of nature in the same way he cannot understand the Scriptures. Unbelieving Jews could discern various facts from the Old Testament—for example, moral requirements, a sacrificial system, historical events, etc.—but not its true meaning or coherence in Christ. Likewise, unbelievers can discern various facts of creation—they could discern various facts about the season of summer—but not its true meaning or coherence in Christ (Matt. 16:2–3). With futile minds and darkened hearts, they look upon the creation not as a mirror of redemptive and spiritual kingdom realities brought near in Christ the King, but as an end in itself, and so they worship it rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:21, 25).
The coming of Christ with the kingdom of heaven does not infuse new things into creation, just as it does not infuse new things into the Old Testament. Rather, it brings to light that which God had already hidden in the mirror of nature “since the foundation of the world.” By knowing Christ as revealed in his word, we are equipped with special revelation, so that every square inch of creation lights up for us with brilliant wonder unto the adoration of God’s goodness and greatness in the gospel concerning his Son.
The parallelism of the natural and the redemptive, as constructed by God, means that God’s general revelation and special revelation presuppose and supplement one another in one grand scheme of covenant revelation that has Christ as its center. It also provides the foundation for a proper natural theology that may teach us “to adore the wisdom of God in nature, His ways and His works. Psalm 104.”8 It is this positive use of natural theology that we primarily see at work in Vos’s nature poetry, including “Summer.”
May the Soul Dream
In keeping with the theological principle of “spiritual law in the natural world,” Vos will often directly address the soul in his nature poems, as he does in the final stanza of “Summer”:
May the soul [ziel] dream in safety
Of summer’s pleasure store.9
And in the penultimate stanza of “Miracle of Spring”:
O Soul [Ziel], so sharply sensing,
Eternal Spring so near.10
Other times he will raise his thoughts to the end or into eternity, like in the first stanza of “Autumn”:
A sweet postlude of summer’s sweet happenings,
As if the sweetest melody had been saved for the end.11
And in concluding lines of “Winter’s Death”:
Though Autumn weep discouraged,
Seeing withered all that flourished,
Yet shall new years be nourished
From the eternal breast.12
God’s general revelation does not only address our senses but our souls—where it is to be received by faith. What the heavens ultimately declare about the glory of God resounds not in our ears but in the deepest depth of our being:
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world (Psalm 19:2–4).
So, we can sing in This Is My Father’s World, “he speaks to me everywhere.”13
For Vos, the soul is that from which all the issues of life flow (like the heart in the Bible). It is the core and center of our existence that was made to rest in God for God’s sake alone. In a programmatic passage, Vos relates our soul and its capacities to our nature as the image of God: “[The image of God] means above all that [man] is disposed for communion with God, that all the capacities of his soul [ziel] can act in a way that corresponds to their destiny only if they rest in God. This is the nature of man. That is to say, there is no sphere of life that lies outside his relationship to God and in which religion would not be the ruling principle.”14
We do not exist for a moment apart from God and his self-revelation both inside and outside of us. We are everywhere confronted with reflections of God’s glory and the spiritual realities of the kingdom of heaven in the mirror of nature—for God constructed it so. We were not made to esteem nature and its beauty in disregard of God. “The fulness of the earth belongs to Him,” says Vos, “and to take any natural object, intended to reflect His divinity, for the purpose of making it serve the exaltation of the creature, is the essence of sin.”15 The fullness of the earth, every square inch, sings of the glory of God—they are songs of the soul about “the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” for anyone with ears to hear (2 Pet. 1:11).
Peering into the mirror of nature, then, we ought to be stirred in Christ, as Vos was, to adore the Lord, our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend! In his sermon “The More Excellent Ministry,” Vos says, “A mirror is not an end in itself, but exists for the sake of what is seen through it.”16 The mysteries of the kingdom reflected in nature, illumined by the person and work of Christ, and seen by faith, are intended to excite in us an eschatological longing for perfected fellowship with our God—who is our portion forever and in whose presence there is fullness of joy (Psalm 16).
With the twin frame of true religion and eschatology and the theological principle of spiritual law in the natural world now before us, we can turn to a brief meditation on Vos’s poem “Summer.”
“Summer”
Analysis
“Summer” is comprised of four stanzas. The first stanza is made up entirely of four questions. Its inquisitiveness invites us to join the poet in his search for a mysterious person whose presence remains elusive though signs of his presence abound everywhere. Every which way the poet turns, he says, “He was here!” but never “Here is he!”
The second stanza reveals that the one sought is a master of disguise. He hides himself in the emblems of spring (in the soft haze) and autumn (in colors set on fire) so that “few can mark his showing” and “he slips from all our searching.” How much more in summer’s golden light?
The third stanza focuses on the poem’s titled season, summer. It pauses at its peak intensity, when he whom the poet seeks clasps the earth with wonder upon wonder that cannot be fully taken in when they are being experienced. The valleys are streaming with fragrance. The seas are shimmering with golden light. And the streams are flowing like wine that rejoices the heart. All of this is experienced, but the poet, mindful of his limits, asks in awe: “Yet who can grasp it?” Can a child’s bucket contain the sea? Can his wagon hold a mountain? How much less the Maker of the mountains and seas? The peak of summer reflects as in a mirror something of infinite, immeasurable, uncontainable pleasure that cannot be grasped by finite minds and hearts and hands, and yet a pleasure for which we long, even for which we were made.
The fourth stanza cautions that the one he seeks must not be approached in the full intensity of his summer glory. Like looking at the sun, our eyes are, as it were, pushed away, lest they be consumed. Like reaching toward a flame, our hand is deflected by its heat, lest it too be consumed. Who can grasp it?
But the poem doesn’t end in despair. Hope blows in on a cool breeze as summer’s intensity wanes. Now in its fading heat can the “soul” approach “summer’s pleasure store,” and that only in a “dream”—remembering and reflecting on what had been experienced. This doesn’t instill nostalgia in the poet but longing, a future orientation. It sets his soul to searching, bringing us back to the poem’s opening question: “How shall I ever find him?” (stanza 1).
The mention of the soul implies that there is a deeper spiritual lesson to be seen in all this, that summer is to be viewed as a mirror, that there is a spiritual law in the natural world at work.
Application
The natural world is depicted in the poem not merely as a cold and mechanical place for scientific investigations and calculations but a living place for personal encounter. It is revelatory of the one sought. Every sign encountered only lengthens the poet’s longing for him. So, he aches, asking, “How shall I ever find him?” (stanza 1). The one he seeks is not under his control; he must make himself known to him, if he is ever to find him. But could the poet even take in the full majesty of his presence, or even just a small measure of it, if the signs of his presence alone overwhelm him with inexpressible beauty?
We naturally wonder who it is the poet seeks. It is likely God himself, who has revealed himself in his works of creation and providence. But if we begin to “fill-in” the poem with direct references to God, we dull its rhetorical edge. We’re better off asking: Why is it that this mysterious person is longed for but not named?
God reveals himself in all that he has made for his glory and the enjoyment of his image bearers. The universe is everywhere charged with his personal presence as a general revelation of himself. “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20). Unbelief suppresses this natural revelation, but belief adores “the wisdom of God in nature, His ways and His works.”
But, in the mirror of summer, Vos sees reflected something of the unsearchable greatness of God (Ps. 145:3), who is clothed with splendor and majesty (104:1) and whose glory the heavens cannot even contain (8:1). There is mystery in all that God has made—mystery for us though not for God who comprehends the entirety of the universe. And while God has made us in his image for fellowship, so that we may truly know him, love him, and live with him, we could never take in the infinite fullness of his glory. If the seraphim must cover their faces before his throne (Isa. 6:2), how much more must we?
The theological principle of “spiritual law in the natural world” teaches us to be gospel-minded and heavenly minded as we experience God’s creation. The seasons could come and go on repeat for a lifetime, and we think nothing of them—nothing of what they might reflect about God, the gospel, and our ultimate destiny in Christ. We could experience the intense pleasure of summer, for which we may long but never be able to fully take in, without ever looking at it as in a mirror, in which is reflected our glorious destiny in Christ: entrance into the presence of God where there is fullness of joy and even nearer to his righthand where there are pleasures forevermore (Ps. 16:11, emphasis added). God is our eternal “pleasure store” (stanza 4). Have you seen in the height of summer the immeasurable love of God that is all your delight—a love stronger than death, fiercer than the grave, from which nothing could ever separate you (Song 8:6; Rom. 8:39)? You were made and remade in Christ for this.
- Geerhardus Vos, “Aestas,” in Spiegel der Natuur en Lyrica Anglica (Princeton, NJ: Geerhardus Vos, 1927), 42–43. This translation is my own; I have tried to maintain the rhyme scheme and meter of the original Dutch. ↩︎
- Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2012), 355. ↩︎
- See Geerhardus Vos, “The Range of the Logos Title in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001), 59–90. ↩︎
- Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church (New York, NY: American Tract Society, 1903), 57. ↩︎
- Vos formulates this principle over against the popular teaching of the liberal evolutionist Henry Drummond in his book Natural Law in the Spiritual World [1884], in which he collapses the two strata of creation, in the spirit of Bishop Butler, by arguing for an identity between the natural and the supernatural in terms of a common natural law. ↩︎
- John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, 3 volumes, trans. James Anderson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1949), ad loc. Ps. 29:5–8. ↩︎
- Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, ad loc. Ps. 29:5–8. The example Calvin gives of a philosopher who weaves a veil is Aristotle and his book Meteorology. Psalm 29:7 says, “The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.” According to Calvin, Aristotle “reasons very shrewdly” about lightning and thunder “in so far as relates to proximate causes” but “he omits the chief point.” Aristotle’s study of the works of nature does not lead him to God, as it ought to have. The chief point is “that not a confused noise only may strike our ears, but that the voice of the Lord may penetrate our hearts.” Lightning and thunder are mirrors, to use Vos’s metaphor, in which God reflects the almighty power of his voice. The unbeliever always omits (and intentionally so) the “chief point” in everything. ↩︎
- Geerhardus Vos, Natural Theology, trans. Albert Gootjes (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2022), 5. Note, by “us” Vos has in mind the Christian who believes God’s specially revealed word for he distinguishes this use of natural theology from its apologetical use: “for refuting those who have rejected the supernatural revelation of God.” Vos, Natural Theology, 5. ↩︎
- Geerhardus Vos, “Aestas,” in Spiegel der Natuur en Lyrica Anglica, 43, my translation. ↩︎
- Geerhardus Vos, “Miraculum Veris,” in Spiegel der Natuur en Lyrica Anglica, 41, my translation. ↩︎
- Geerhardus Vos, “Autumnus,” in Spiegel der Natuur en Lyrica Anglica, 44, my translation. ↩︎
- Geerhardus Vos, “Mors Hyemis,” in Spiegel der Natuur en Lyrica Anglica, 46, translated as “Winter’s Death” in Geerhardus Vos, Charis: English Verses (Princeton, NJ: Geerhardus Vos, 1931), 20. ↩︎
- Hymn 252, This Is My Father’s World, Trinity Psalter Hymnal (Trinity Psalter Hymnal Joint Venture, 2018), verse 2. ↩︎
- Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: Anthropology, trans. and ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014), 13–14; The following edits were made to the translation: “beyond his nature” was changed to “external to his nature” and “exists only in correspondence to God” was changed to “consists only in likeness to God.” ↩︎
- Geerhardus Vos, “Some Doctrinal Features of the Early Prophesies of Isaiah,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001), 282. ↩︎
- Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory: Sermons Preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary (Grand Rapids, MI: The Reformed Press, 1922), 122. ↩︎
