50 Key Concepts in Theology

Natural Theology
A form of theology that takes its knowledge of God from nature rather than
from revelation.
St Thomas Aquinas was the first to make the distinction between ‘natural
theology’ and ‘revealed theology’. ‘Natural theology’ assumes that we can
understand something of God using our natural faculties of reason and
ordinary experience. ‘Revealed theology’ assumes that our knowledge of God
must come through special channels of divine revelation, such as the Bible or
supernatural experiences.
Natural theology predates Christianity and can be found, for example, in
Aristotle, who believed that the natural world is a rational system of causes
and effects. God, for Aristotle, is ‘the first cause’ or ‘unmoved mover’.
Thomas Aquinas built upon Aristotle’s philosophy to develop his own natural
theology. Aquinas argued that there is an ‘analogy of being’ (analogia entis)
between God and his creation. Although infinitely inferior to God, the created
world is still God’s work, and consequently we can draw an analogy between
what we see in nature and the reality of God.
Natural theology assumes, first, that God has created a rational,
purposeful and ordered world; and secondly, that God has given us the
faculties of perception and reason with which to appreciate his design of his
creation. This way of thinking became popular in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries when natural science appeared to be proving natural
theology right by revealing the basic laws of the universe.
The most famous case for natural theology was offered by William Paley,
who devised the so-called ‘Watchmaker Argument’. If we found a watch on
the ground, we would assume the existence of a watchmaker; similarly, when
we see the design of the world, we assume the existence of a creator God.
Natural theology suffered a crippling blow from David Hume, who
delivered a withering attack on it in his Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion. Hume’s main point was that while we know from experience that
watches have watchmakers, we cannot know from experience that worlds
have creators. We do not know how worlds are generated, and it is not logical
to assume that they are made in the same fashion as human artefacts.
Hume’s arguments – and others against natural theology – have to be
taken seriously. But some kind of natural theology is essential if we are to
reconcile theological and scientific knowledge. If our reason and experience
can tell us nothing about God, then science – whose building-blocks are

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reason and experience – can contribute nothing to theology. But the kind of
natural theology we need is not Paley’s naïve concept of design (currently
being revived by the Intelligent Design lobby) but a theology that works to
reconcile the real achievements of science with the revealed insights of
theology.
THINKERS
Aristotle (384–322 bc) argued that everything in the natural world has a
teleological purpose: ‘Nature does nothing in vain.’
St Augustine (354–430) first used the term ‘natural theology’ to describe
the theological reflections of the pre-Christian classical philosophers, who
could not benefit from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
Karl Barth (1886–1968) argued that all knowledge of God arises from
God’s self-revelation. (See ‘Analogy of faith’.)
Charles Darwin (1809–82): although he admired William Paley’s design
argument as a young man, his own theory of evolution contradicted Paley’s
view that the natural world had been ‘designed’ by God.
Stanley Hauerwas (1940– ) has argued strongly that proper natural
religion must be based upon revealed religion, because an investigation of the
natural world that is not informed by God must be in error. Thus Hauerwas
reckons Karl Barth, of all people, to be the best kind of natural theologian!
Richard Hooker (1554–1600) argued the very Anglican view that we
need both revealed and natural theology: ‘Nature and Scripture do serve in
such full sort that they both jointly and not severally either of them be so
complete that unto everlasting felicity we need not the knowledge of anything
more than these two may easily furnish.’
William James (1842–1910), in The Varieties of Religious Experience,
objected that the God of natural theology ‘must be a God of universal laws
exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot
accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals … [whose]
destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world’s irremediable
currents of events.’
John Ray (1628–1705) argued that God could be understood by studying
his creation: ‘There is … no occupation more worthy and delightful than to
contemplate the beauteous works of nature and honour the infinite wisdom
and goodness of God.’
William Paley (1743–1805), in his Natural Theology, or Evidences of the

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Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802), compared nature to a watch
found on the ground: ‘When we come to inspect the watch, we perceive …
that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose … the
inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker.’
St Paul (3–65) argued at the Areopagus in Athens that the Athenians had
reached an understanding of an ‘unknown God’ without any revealed
knowledge of God.
IDEAS
Analogia entis: the doctrine, associated with Thomas Aquinas, that God
can be known by analogy with his creation.
The Bridgewater Treatises: eight books ‘on the Power, Wisdom and
Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation’, commissioned by Revd
Francis Henry Egerton, the Earl of Bridgewater, in the early nineteenth
century.
The Deists relied exclusively on natural theology, on the grounds that the
being and attributes of God are revealed perfectly in the workings of the
natural world.
Intelligent Design: a form of the design argument revived by
fundamentalist Christians in the early twenty-first century. The argument
suffers from all the weaknesses of the eighteenth-century arguments from
design.
Revealed theology: theology that assumes that all knowledge of God
must come from special divine revelation, as it says in the hymn: ‘Judge not
the Lord by feeble sense’.
BOOKS
James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (OUP, 1995)
Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness
and Natural Theology (Brazos Press, 2001)
Alister McGrath, The Order of Things: Explorations in Scientific
Theology (Blackwell, 2006)

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