CONNECT WITH NATURAL THEOLOGY

Natural Theology

Natural theology is a program of inquiry into the existence and attributes of God without referring or appealing to any divine revelation. In natural theology, one asks what the word “God” means, whether and how names can be applied to God, whether God exists, whether God knows the future free choices of creatures, and so forth. The aim is to answer those questions without using any claims drawn from any sacred texts or divine revelation, even though one may hold such claims.

For purposes of studying natural theology, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others will bracket and set aside for the moment their commitment to the sacred writings or traditions they believe to be God’s word. Doing so enables them to proceed together to engage in the perennial questions about God using the sources of evidence that they share by virtue of their common humanity, for example, sensation, reason, science, and history. Agnostics and atheists, too, can engage in natural theology. For them, it is simply that they have no revelation-based views to bracket and set aside in the first place.

This received view of natural theology was a long time in the making. Natural theology was born among the ancient Greeks, and its meeting with ancient Judeo-Christian-Muslim thought constituted a complex cultural event. From that meeting there developed throughout the Middle Ages for Christians a sophisticated distinction between theology in the Christian sense and natural theology in the ancient Greek sense. Although many thinkers in the Middle Ages tried to unite theology and natural theology into a unity of thought, the project frequently met with objections, as we shall see below. The modern era was partly defined by a widespread rejection of natural theology for both philosophical and theological reasons. Such rejection persisted, and persists, although there has been a significant revival of natural theology in recent years.

Below are the links to respective topics as treated by the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP):

Table of Contents (opens new individual windows)

1. Historical Beginnings of Theology and Philosophy
2. Ancient Philosophy and the First Principle
3. Ancient Jewish and Early Christian Theology
4. Distinction between Revealed Theology and Natural Theology
5. Thomas Aquinas
6. Modern Philosophy and Natural Theology
7. Natural Theology Today
8. References and Further Reading
   1. Primary Sources
      1. Ancient Mediaeval Theology
      2. Mediaeval Natural Theology
      3. Modern Natural Theology
      4. Contemporary Natural Theology
   2. Secondary Sources

• Another interesting article on IEP is about GOD AND TIME.