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The Religious Roots of Natural Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Patrick Sherry
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The last few decades have seen a revival of interest among Anglo-American philosophers in natural theology, especially in what is an important part (though not the whole) of it, philosophical arguments for God’s existence. Of course, such arguments have been discussed for centuries, but the present situation contrasts strikingly with much of the twentieth century, when it was assumed by most analytic philosophers that they had been refuted definitively by Hume, Kant, and some later philosophers. There was, too, at that time opposition to the whole enterprise of natural theology in certain theological quarters, most notably, as we shall see, in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics.

No doubt discussions will move to and fro in future centuries, as they have done in past ones. My purpose now, however, is not to follow particular arguments and their counter-positions, but to suggest that there at least two good religious reasons (apart from Biblical texts like Rom. 1:19-20 and Acts 14:17) why natural theology is likely to flourish perennially: (1) behind particular arguments there are certain natural human reactions, especially wonder — not just at the beauty or intricacy of the world, but also at its very existence, at the fact that there is something rather than nothing; (2) theistic arguments are inverse forms of fundamental religious doctrines, e.g. Cosmological arguments reverse the doctrine of Creation, in that the latter claims that God brought the world into being and sustains it in being, whilst the arguments seek to infer His existence from that of the world or from some very general feature of it.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 84 , Issue 988 , June 2003 , pp. 301 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Smart, J.J.C., ‘The Existence of God’, in Antony, Flew and Alasdair, MacIntyre (eds.), New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London, 1955), pp.45-6Google Scholar.

2 Ludwig, Wittgenstein, ‘A Lecture on Ethics’, Philosophical Review vol.74 (1965), pp.3-12Google Scholar. The lecture was written in 1929 or 1930, but only published posthumously.

3 See, for example, Phillips, D.Z., Recovering Religious Concepts: Closing Epistemic Divides (London, 2000), pp.203-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Belief Change and Forms of Life (London, 1986), pp.91-2, for a point similar to that made by Smart.

4 John, Hick (ed.), The Existence of God (London, 1964), p.179Google Scholar.

5 Karl, Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol.11, pt. 1, trans T.H.L.Parker et al. (Edinburgh, 1957), pp.80-1Google Scholar. Calvin himself taught that sure knowledge of God can come only through faith in His revelation through Jesus Christ; our reason has been partially weakened and corrupted by the Fall, so that ‘a shapeless ruin is all that remains’ (Institutes of the Christian Religion, II.ii.sect. 12). Nevertheless, at the beginning of his Institutes he also taught that God has endued all men, even barbarous heathens and those professing atheism, with some idea of His Godhead (I.iii. 1-2); hence we may behold Him in the ‘elegant structure of the world’, as in a kind of mirror (I.v. l), for the heavens and the earth present us with innumerable proofs of God’s wondrous wisdom, e.g. the motions of the heavenly bodies or the structure of the human frame (I.v.2).

6 Anthony, Kenny, Faith and Reason (New York, 1983), pp.64, 84-9Google Scholar, and What is Faith? (Oxford, 1992), pp.44, 57-60.

7 Ibn ‘Ata’ Illah, Intimate Discourse no. 19, in Ibn, ‘Ata’ Illah, The Book of Wisdom and Intimate Conversations, trans. V. Denner and W.M.Thackston, Classics of Western Spirituality (London, 1979), p. 123Google Scholar.

8 Delaney, C.F. (ed.), Religion and Rationality (Notre Dame, 1979), p.54Google Scholar.

9 Dogmatic Constitution ‘de fide catholica’, ch.2 (Denzinger 1785).

10 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis (Miscellanies), Bk.I, ch.5.

11 But see David, Conway, The Rediscovery of Wisdom. From Here to Antiquity in Quest of Sophia (London, 2000)Google Scholar, for a recent defence of philosophical theism by someone apparently unsympathetic to revealed religion.

12 Ludwig, Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, trans. P.Winch (Oxford, 1980), p.85eGoogle Scholar.