I think it’s just a “big words” way of saying that you can’t really argue (productively) with somebody without at least some body of shared assumptions and shared worldview. And those are often tricky and shifting even among contemporaries like all of us, much less when we have many centuries separating us from the original writers (as in scriptures). So pulling some verses out of scriptures and wanting to just understand them now in this century is never as simple as the fundamentalists or many modern apologists would like you to believe.
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I dare say this is what every teaching pastor labors over in the course of their ministry. No doubt there has been a serious neglect in the area of understanding the Bible in its cultural context. Not too long ago Craig Keener literally stumbled upon an abyss of understanding in this area and felt called to address it. A difficult task, but still worthwhile as the separation is not total.
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I see no qualitative difference between natural theology and natural revelation. And the nature being invoked… isn’t nature. I can do natural theology, but it’s predicated on nature without compromise, eternal, self-tuned, infinite, wanting for nothing in itself. Lane Craig’s degenerate Islamo-Thomist arguments have nothing to touch nature’s self explanatory power.
Does anyone have a basic, klutz-level definition of natural theology? I’ve heard the term before but really have no idea what it is. If it showed up earlier in the thread, I’ve missed it. Thanks
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Penner writes, “Shephardson, however, argues that the evangelical apologist uses natural theology “to move the skeptic closer to the distinctive claims of the Christian faith,” but does not think this leads to full-blown Christian faith (that is, to “the Triune God”). Natural theology, he continues, “can show Christianity is true by confirming one of its key features, the existence of one God” without lapsing into idolatry."
So based on this, I think it’s safe to say for Penner, natural theology is the knowledge of God that can (supposedly) be known by way of philosophy or pure reason.
In school I picked up a book on perfect being theology and had an unpleasant experience. It did feel idolatrous now that I remember it.
Paul Helm has a helpful definition for perfect being theology which may be meaningful for our understanding of Penner’s use of natural theology:
“Perfect being theology stems from the theological meditations of Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), who sought to reason from biblical statements about God to what God, as perfect, must be like. Today, perfect being theology often does not start from biblical foundations, leading to much confusion and idolatry within current attempts.”
As an aside, about the time reading the book on perfect being theology which might have been written by Katherin Rogers I was also preparing some material for my church and had spent a considerable amount of time outlining Thomas Watson on the doctrine of God.
There was such a striking sense of the divine, like a beatific vision with the latter and with the former, vacuous philosophy.
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Sounds like you have read a lot. I appreciate your insights
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Yeah. I definitely feel like I found the wrong locker room.
You’ll find me over in the library.
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In case you still are curious, here is a reasonable definition that pops up for me just googling it:
Natural theology is a program of inquiry into the existence and attributes of God without referring or appealing to any divine revelation .
And then regarding a distinction between natural theology and natural revelation, I got this from “Got Questions”:
Revelation in theology refers to information that comes from God to reveal truth about Himself or about ourselves and the world around us. Revelation is then divided into two types: natural revelation (or general revelation) and special revelation.
Special revelation is that which comes directly from God and is recorded in inspired Scripture. The content of this revelation is truth that we could not know unless God told us directly. For instance, the Trinity and justification by grace through faith in Christ would be impossible to “figure out” on our own. Our knowledge of such things comes only through special revelation. If a person or a people group does not have access to the Bible in their own language, they will be ignorant of the truth that can only be known through special revelation.
Natural revelation is truth about God that can be discerned by looking at the world around us and by looking within ourselves. Although not everyone has access to special revelation, the Bible makes it clear that people everywhere have access to natural revelation and that people are accountable for their response to it. Natural revelation assumes that the image of God and the mental faculties of logic are still enough intact for fallen humanity to receive and understand some knowledge about God.
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Thanks, Merv. We’ve been running all day, and I haven’t had much time for the Forum beyond reading.
EDIT: i found this this morning, and the intro is enough to start with:
I don’t know a out Got Questions. Will check into it,
REEDITED: i have run across Got Questions before and shied away for irrational reasons. The first was the similarity of their speech bubble logo to a certain pseudo-intellectual apologetics organization that claims to prove God’s truth through their reconception of science and peculiar form of biblical interpretation.
Question about discussion questions: would anyone find discussion questions valuable for Chapter 1? If so, I will put some together as I review the chapter.
Slide 9 Resources: I added links to Penner’s works listed on his page at Trinity Western University, and the sermons page from St. Paul’s Anglican Church, where he is rector. Like many of us, he must not sleep. Unlike me, he must use that time incredibly productively.
Yeah - I don’t know anything about “Got Questions” regarding its overall biases or reliability. I shared their answer to this specific question because it sounded reasonable to me, which I know is a dangerous thing to do when we are ourselves looking for definitions. But at the same time, given all the reading we’ve done by now, we’re not exactly flying blind either, and I think we could recognize and reject nefariously ideological answers at this point.
Added edit: ‘Got Questions’ does in their website header claim to be giving “biblical answers” - which … what self-identified Christian organization doesn’t make that claim these days? Looking at how they treat evolution … they don’t seem as ideologically extreme as AIG & Co., but they do call attention towards the atheism of the “vast majority” of evolution-accepting scientists, and while they do at least give an obligatory nod that there are a few scientists who see no conflict with faith, they nonetheless choose to ring the conflict thesis bell and let that set the tone throughout. So perhaps that tells us where Got Questions is on many matters of interest. I’m sure I’ve been told about them in this forum before … but, like I remember!
On a separate subject; I wonder if Penner’s wholesale rejection of all modernism-based apologetics might go down at least a little easier if it were granted that Christ meets people in each culture where they’re at, and why shouldn’t that include us now in our modernist modes of thought? I don’t think Penner denies that the Spirit will “blow where it will” and use whatever it wants to help bring somebody to Christ. Perhaps it just becomes dangerous if somebody wants to “live in the doorway” so to speak, instead of using the doorway to actually enter in - building your house on the stepping stone, rather than using it to get where there is a better foundation.
And I can just “hear” Penner replying to my thought above, that this “doorway” has also been a point of exit for a whole lot of people.
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As a young student, I about fell out of my chair when I realized a philosopher like Kant didn’t have to cook and clean.
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This part of the definition you quoted may overlap with natural theology.
“Faculties of logic” could be used by the classical apologist for an argument proving a necessary being.
I’ve heard that Thoreau’s mom was doing his laundry for him while he was out musing around the pond.
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Hmmmm. Sure I posted something like this this morning: I trust we can exclude natural theology like Kierkegaard and Barth do. It must be me. No notification from a moderator saying they’ve censored it.
A theology built on the brute facts of eternal nature would be far more robust, and faithful.
More than overlaps, I propose. I should think that ‘natural revelation’ would be claimed to be a subset of (entirely subsumed by) natural theology - which is the system of thought that takes any/all material deemed as ‘natural revelation’ and runs with it.
Then I would distinguish natural theology from metaphysics or philosophical theology.
Natural revelation would be something like what Paul means by the divine nature being clearly perceived in Romans 1. And it’s ironic for Paul to say this because it’s often not clearly perceived, but I dare say that not a single individual will be able to stand before God and say truthfully they did not know.
I don’t follow your reasoning there. How would natural theology not also fit underneath both the other labels you mention?
Let me see how Penner makes the distinction in the book or the 2019 article.