General Revelation and the God of Natural Theology

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-213
Author(s):  
Andrew I. Shepardson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
General Revelation

In Who’s Afraid of the Unmoved Mover? Postmodernism and Natural Theology, I defend natural theology against its postmodern evangelical detractors, including Myron Bradley Penner. Penner rejects natural theology because it attempts to ground knowledge of God in human reason, and he claims that my treatment of Acts 17:16–34 is fatal to my argument. However, Penner does not engage my explication of the doctrine of general revelation. The catastrophic effects that Penner perceives turn out to be only against a straw man of the version of natural theology that I defend.

The Contemporary Reception of Aquinas on the Natural Knowledge of God

2021 ◽  
pp. 595-611
Author(s):  
David VanDrunen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Summa Theologiae ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Attributes Of God

This chapter considers key themes from Thomas Aquinas’ view of the natural knowledge of God, or natural theology, from the opening of his Summa theologiae. It is written from the perspective of Reformed theology, which has traditionally supported natural theology of a certain kind, despite its recent reputation as an opponent of natural theology. According to Thomas, natural theology is insufficient for salvation and is inevitably laden with errors apart from the help of supernatural revelation. But human reason, operating properly, can demonstrate the existence and certain attributes of God from the natural order, and this natural knowledge constitutes preambles to the articles of the Christian faith. The chapter thus engages in a critically sympathetic analysis of these themes and suggests how a contemporary reception of Thomas might appropriate them effectively.

Thomas' Proofs as Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Towards a Trinitarian Analogia

1978 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
George Kuykendall
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The West ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The World ◽  
First Cause ◽  
God The Father

Thomas Aquinas argued that, while revelation alone can supply knowledge of the divine nature, unaided human reason can infer the divine existence from the world's existence. His proofs of God's existence are, in principle, extensions and elaborations of the patristic natural theologies. The Fathers believed that Neoplatonic and Hellenistic speculations about the eternal One, the arche of the cosmos, constituted a ‘natural’ knowledge of God the Father and his creation. God's selfrevelation in the incarnation was placed in the context of this natural theology. Augustine's version of natural theology both summed up the patristic achievement for the West and laid the foundation for Western medieval exploration of the natural knowledge of God. Like Augustine, Thomas believed one could reason naturally from the sensible world to God's existence; unlike him, Thomas reasoned with Aristotle and not Plato. Thomas' ordering of the natural and revealed knowledge of God repeats, then, the patristic sequence: first one proves that God is the first Cause of the world, and then one reasons from revelation about God's redemptive and reconciling relation to the world.

The Spark That Still Shines: John Calvin on Conscience and Natural Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance Y Lee
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Moral Discernment ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Sufficient Knowledge

Abstract John Calvin (1509–64), a central figure in Reformed theology, is perhaps best known for his bleak doctrine of total human depravity. This dismal view of human reason has commonly overshadowed his statement that ‘some sparks still shine’. This article proposes that Calvin’s account of conscience, by conserving an illuminated space in human nature, makes possible a formal doctrine of natural law. Calvin enlists the interconnectedness between the knowledge of God and human reason to frame his anthropology. According to this, human reason was originally created to perfectly access knowledge of God but after the Fall, can only attain imperfect access. Within this broader framework, by adopting a dialectic of dual perspectives, Calvin maintains that, however fallen, human nature still partially reflects the Imago Dei as first intended. As through a glass darkly, this divine image is reflected in human conscience endowing it with sufficient knowledge for moral discernment. Calvin’s emphasis on ‘common grace’ in the preservation of this knowledge allows him to simultaneously maintain human ignorance and their universal accountability to objective norms. In this way, Calvin’s account of conscience enables him to hold both apparent extremes in tension: the immanent fallibility of human beings with the external normative standards they ought to pursue.

scholarly journals GLADSTONE, DEVELOPMENT, AND THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY, 1840–1896

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 911-934
Author(s):  
JONATHAN CONLIN
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Scientific Status ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
Joseph Butler ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Natural Historian ◽  
Professional Scientist

AbstractBetween 1885 and 1891, the Liberal statesman William Ewart Gladstone debated the scientific status of the Book of Genesis with the natural historian Thomas Henry Huxley in a series of articles published in the Nineteenth Century. Viewed in isolation, this episode has been seen as a case of a professional scientist dismissing an amateur interloper. This article repositions this familiar dispute as one chapter in Gladstone's lifelong engagement with the concept of historical ‘development’, the unfolding or evolution of Providence to human reason over time, a concept which came to prominence in the 1840s, in both Tractarian theology and in natural history. Gladstone consistently advocated an accommodation between transmutation and natural theology based on a probabilist ontology derived from the eighteenth-century Anglican churchman Joseph Butler (1692–1752). That understanding of historical truth to which Gladstone credited his ability to discern when political issues became ripe for agitation demanded a humble, Christian moral temper that embraced doubt and salutary suffering, rather than certainty and whiggish celebration of progress.

Karl Heim and John Polkinghorne

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-119
Author(s):  
Hans Schwarz ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
World Science ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Stephen Hawking ◽  
Theology And Science ◽  
Science And Theology ◽  
John Polkinghorne

During the last two decades, the dialogue between science and theology has begun to yield fruit. This is partly due to the initiative of scientists like Stephen Hawking and Frank Tipler, and pioneering theologians like Karl Heim and John Polkinghorne. Heim and Polkinghorne propose two of the more credible models for dialogue. Heim's model is that of a transcendent God Who is revealed not only in the world, but also in the person of Jesus Christ. Polkinghorne proposes a new natural theology which is less interested in proving the existence of God than in seeking signs of God's hand in Creation and expanding one's knowledge of God by a close examination of the cosmos. Yet Polkinghorne's model points to Heim's assertion that the ultimate cannot be found within our world, even as it reaches into our world Science and theology need each other in order to make human life meaningful and rewarding. Science can teach theology about the "how" and "what" of God's creative activity, while theology can teach science the "why" and "what for" of God's Creation. Recognizing their autonomy, theology and science can complement their respective quests for truth.

Intuition in Christian Philosophy

Philosophy ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 24 (89) ◽  
pp. 118-132
Author(s):  
G. C. Stead
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Moving Force ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Vexed Question ◽  
Historical Detail

The object of this paper is to examine the concept of intuition and to determine what part, if any, it should play in Christian philosophy. It is a complex inquiry, and I shall have to save space by a certain economy of purely historical detail, and also, if you will allow me, by by-passing the vexed question of Revelation and Natural Theology. It seems to me that whatever the issue of this debate may prove to be, it will not prevent philosophers from plying their trade; and whether they, or some of them, are to be dignified with the title of Natural Theologians is a problem they can leave to others. The only remaining question is, whether it is lawful for a Christian minister to engage in philosophy. As philosophy is not an openly scandalous pursuit, and there is no canon against it, I take the answer to be “Yes.” I would have you regard this paper as an essay in philosophy and allow me to investigate certain aspects of human knowledge, and the light they throw on man's knowledge of God, without presupposing a self-revelation of God to man. Without presupposing, but also without excluding it; revelation cannot be a primary datum for the philosopher, but it may well turn out to be his only ultimately satisfactory conclusion.Adopting this standpoint, we shall inevitably be traversing that current of thought which reached England about fifty years ago and which, with its eddies and counter-currents, is still a moving force: I mean the insistence on religious experience, and more particularly the analysis of religious experience by the methods of psychology. In practice this method tended to concentrate on the experiences of the individual, and to disregard the far richer store of experience which lay crystallized in historic documents and liturgies—except in so far as these acted as a stimulus to individual piety.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document