AO1: Natural theology:
- Natural theology is the view that knowledge about God can be gained through the power of the human mind, especially reason.
- This is typically a catholic view; that God’s revelation is present in creation and human reason has the ability to discover it.
- Protesnts tend to be more pessimistic about the corruption of human reason. Nonetheless some accept natural knowledge can be gained through sensing God.
- The function of Catholic natural theology is to provide evidence for God which supports faith (E.g., Aquinas 5 ways).
- It also provides access to that knowledge which Catholics believe God has ordained to be discoverable by reason.
- E.g., the precepts of natural law ethics.
- The Catholic view is that God reveals himself through creation, and human reason is the God-given faculty by which this natural revelation can be recognised.
- This does not treat reason as independent from God.
- Human reason is a finite participation in God’s intellect: created and sustained with the powers proper to its human form, and naturally ordered towards truth.
- Therefore, when reason grasps moral law, causal order, purpose or beauty in creation, it is not discovering truth apart from God, but responding to the intelligible order God has built into creation and wills reason to discover.
- “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth” – Pope John Paul II.
AO1: Revealed theology & Fideism
- Revealed theology is the view that knowledge about God is gained through faith in God’s self-disclosure, especially through scripture, Christ, prophecy and miracles
- The fullest human knowledge of God is revealed in Jesus Christ which we access through faith in scripture.
- Pretty much every Christian thinker accepts revealed theology, because doctrines like the Trinity, incarnation, resurrection and salvation cannot be discovered by unaided human reason.
- Another mediator of grace and knowledge of God is the life of the Church.
- This is especially emphasised in Catholic theology, where tradition, worship and sacraments mediate Christ’s revelation.
- E.g., the sacraments reveal Christ as actively present and grace-giving, while tradition and worship clarify how Christian doctrine should shape prayer, morality and communal life.
- For Protestants, the Church bears witness to revelation by preaching, preserving and living out the biblical gospel, but its authority is derivative: it must always be judged by scripture rather than functioning as an independent source of revelation.
- Those who hold exclusively to faith as the only source of Christian knowledge are called fideists.
- Sola scriptura protestants (E.g., Karl Barth) are often fideists, because they hold faith in the bible as the sole ultimate authority for knowledge of God.
- Karl Barth is the clearest example.
- He argued that God is known only through God’s self-revelation in Christ, witnessed to by the Bible.
- Human reason cannot climb up to God through nature, because fallen humanity misuses reason and turns natural theology into idolatry.
AO2: Barth vs Aquinas on original sin & natural theology
- Aquinas justifies natural theology by reason’s source in the ‘imago dei’.
- In Genesis, this distinguishes humans from animals.
- We retain moral responsibility, which comes from reason.
- In fact, we can’t coherently be sinful without responsibility.
- So, we are still greater than animals, must retain God’s image, and with it something of reason’s essential integrity
- Aquinas concludes human reason can know God’s existence (his 5 ways), God’s natural moral law and God’s attributes through analogy.
Counter:
- Karl Barth critiqued natural theology as placing a dangerous overreliance on human reason.
- Sin might not totally destroy reason, but it makes reason unreliable.
- He said “The finite has no capacity for the infinite”.
- Our finite minds cannot grasp God’s infinite nature.
- It’s dangerous to use reason to know God. Mistakes will lead to a false view of God and worshipping the wrong thing, risking idolatry.
- This can lead to the worship of human things like nations, fatherlands, which Barth argued contributed to Nazism.
- Barth concluded we should solely rely on faith in the Bible.
Evaluation:
- Barth is perceptive about reason’s downsides, but fails to balance this against the downsides of not using reason.
- E.g., blind faith and superstition, which also risk error and idolatry.
- Fallen humans have no risk-free approach.
- Adam and Eve warn against the arrogance of total self-reliance, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t rely on our abilities at all.
- Especially when they are the endurance of the divine image within us.
- Aquinas shows appropriate humility in what he claims reason discovers:
- Not the existence of the Christian God, merely an ‘unmoved mover’.
- Not God’s eternal or divine moral law, just the natural law already within us.
- Not God’s infinite nature, but some source of our qualities which holds them in an analogical and proportionally greater sense.
- So, Aquinas represents an appropriate middle-ground between the extremes of avoiding reason verses overrelying on it.
AO2: Barth’s ‘sovereignty’ critique of natural theology
- Barth points to scripture’s distinction of creator from creation
- God transcends the created order accessible to human observation and reasoning.
- So, God has absolute sovereignty over whether and how he is revealed
- Scripture teaches he did so in the incarnation.
- The autonomous epistemology of natural theology therefore fails to appreciate God’s sovereignty.
- And, it introduces prior human conceptions which risk governing and distorting our reception of Christ
Counter
- However, human reason may be a means by which God sovereignly chooses to make himself partly knowable.
- And for Aquinas, reason involves dependent human participation in knowing God; it does not operate independently.
- Reason is a created secondary cause whose existence and operation depend upon God’s sustaining power.
- This includes natural theology in God’s sovereign ordering of how he may be naturally known, alongside revelation in Christ.
Evaluation
- Barth therefore assumes that divine sovereignty and human participation must compete.
- Yet an omnipotent God can create finite things which communicate something of their Creator and rational beings capable of understanding them.
- Furthermore, natural and revealed epistemologies produce different kinds of knowledge.
- Aquinas’s a posteriori arguments reason from created effects towards their cause, providing the preambles of faith.
- Anselm adds that once revelation has been received, a priori reasoning can deepen faith through “faith seeking understanding.”
- While revelation remains necessary to complete natural knowledge by disclosing the Trinity and incarnation.
- So, natural and revealed epistemologies are symbiotic in function and output.
- Reason can legitimately operate both before faith (Aquinas) and within faith (Anselm).
- The strongest position is therefore one of asymmetrical cooperation.
- God remains sovereign as creator of the world, human reason and the means of revelation, while humans participate dependently in the knowledge he makes possible.
AO2: H.H. Price: ‘belief-that’ vs ‘belief-in’
- H. H. Price’s distinction between ‘belief-that’ and ‘belief-in’ has important implications for natural theology.
- ‘Belief-in’ is a psychological relationship and “attitude” to a person (human or divine).
- The the religious case, it expresses things like trust, faith, esteem and loyalty.
- ‘Belief-that’ is an attitude towards a proposition.
- ‘Belief-in’ God requires ‘belief-that’ God exists, which makes reason and philosophical argument relevant to the propositional element of faith.
- However, reason cannot itself create the full trusting relationship defining of ‘belief-in’ God.
- So it looks like Price’s distinction might show that natural theology is limited as it cannot bring a person into the full Christian belief.
Counter
- However, Price’s distinction might actually support natural theology, as its proponents never claim that it can produce full religious belief.
- Aquinas claims reason supports faith, Anselm seeks rational satisfaction after faith, and Calvin thinks natural knowledge leaves atheists without excuse.
- This is compatible with Price’s implication that natural theology can only support the ‘belief-that’ component of faith, but not ‘belief-in’.
Evaluation
- So, Price’s distinction does support natural theology.
- Antony Flew illustrates this. Fine-tuning arguments led him to abandon atheism and believe ‘that’ there was a God, but he only adopted deism, not Christianity.
- Natural theology can produce a general ‘belief-that’ there’s a creator, uncaused cause or fine-tuner, but not full Christian belief-in God.
- This clearly shows the limits of natural theology, but also that it must have at least some value.
- Intellectual openness to a higher power could be a starting point for full belief-in God.
- It might strengthen already existing faith.
- At the very least it can prevent closed-mindedness.
- The role of natural theology is deliberately modest, intentionally limited to a supportive role for faith.
- Barth rejects even this limited role, but Price’s distinction cleanly identifies the limits of natural theology, and thereby actually validates it.
- Once we understand that natural theology deliberately employs reason for a limited purpose, its limits are reframed as not a flaw but a premise.
AO2: Romans 1:20
- The Bible seems to support Aquinas’ style of natural theology.
- Romans 1:20 says God’s “eternal power and divine nature” are “understood from what has been made”, leaving people “without excuse”.
- Paul seems to suggest that God can be known through nature without faith.
- This supports natural theology, especially inductive a posteriori arguments like Aquinas’ five ways.
Evaluation:
- Calvin and Barth both reinterpret Romans 1:20 away from Aquinas’ rational natural theology.
- Calvin argues it only supports his sensus divinitatis.
- The role Paul describes for creation could just be triggering the sensus divinitatis, not providing observations for rational inductive proofs.
- Barth goes further, arguing that even if creation reveals God, fallen sinful humans cannot know God through it.
Evaluation:
- Barth’s reading is weakest because Paul says this revelation leaves people “without excuse”.
- That only makes sense if creation gives humans enough knowledge of God to make them responsible for rejecting it.
- If fallen humans were simply incapable of knowing God through creation, their ignorance would be excusable rather than culpable.
- So Paul’s point seems to be that humans suppress or reject real natural knowledge of God, not that they never possess it.
- Calvin is stronger than Barth, since his sensus divinitatis explains why humans are without excuse.
- However, Romans 1:20 still fits Aquinas better.
- God’s qualities are “understood” from “what has been made”, which suggests reasoned inference from creation, not merely sensing God.
- Furthermore, what is known is not merely Calvin’s vague higher power, but God’s qualities, “eternal power” and “divine nature”.
- Calvin’s natural knowledge is thin; awareness of a generic higher power.
- Aquinas’ natural knowledge is thicker; reason can know God analogically as first cause, necessary being, creator of natural laws, and source of moral law.
- This better captures Paul’s implication that something of God’s divine nature is known, not merely God’s existence.
- All agree full Christian knowledge of God, such as the Trinity and incarnation, requires faith and revelation.
- But Aquinas’ middle ground best fits Romans 1:20: some knowledge of God’s qualities can be gained through reasoning about nature.