I was glad to read @Eddie’s positive remarks about my work, while of course noting our quite different views on natural theology. It may be helpful for him & others if I say a bit more about my own thoughts on that.
I’ve bottomed out from the position I used to have back when I sometimes used theologia naturala delenda est as a signature line. But even then I never denied that experience of the natural world and human reason could conclude that there is a God. (& I don’t think that Barth ever explicitly did either. Luther affirmed it.) But that is not a theology - certainly not a Christian theology. And in Romans, Paul doesn’t use his statement to that effect in 1:19-20 to start developing such a theology but to say, “So they are without excuse.”
I have found a fourfold typology of views about natural theologies to be helpful.
-
The Classic view: Natural theology can be the “forecourt of the temple” of Christianity. It’s legitimate, but can only take us so far and then must be supplemented by special revelation.
-
The Enlightenment view: Natural theology is all we really need. A significant example is Lessing’s The Education of the Human Race. Humanity needed revelation in its immature state, but when it comes to maturity that’s no longer needed.
-
The Barthian view: “Nein” to natural theology.
-
Torrance’s corollary to Barth’s view: A natural theology independent of distinctively Christian theology is inadequate, but a legitimate natural theology can be developed within the context of distinctively Christian thought.
I think Torrance’s view is very important and certainly the best of these four. The particular Christian theology that should contextualize the knowledge about the world that we get from science will, of course, make a difference. As I’ve said, I have used a theology of the cross, which is why one of my books is titled The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross.
I do not say that the Classic view is in itself heretical, or that a legitimate Christian theology can’t be developed from it. That would be foolish. But I do say that this view is dangerous because it’s all too easy for people to remain in the forecourt and never get into the sanctuary, or to develop doctrines or practices that clash with Christianity from their natural theology. Barth’s concern about the way natural theology helped some Christians into bed with Hitler is an example of the latter concern.
An example of the former problem is pointed out by Richard Westfall in Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England (U. of Michigan, 1973). Some of the scientists placed great emphasis on “natural religion” to combat the threat of atheism. The result wasn’t what they expected. “Although the absorption in natural religion and the external manifestations of divine power did not did not dispute or deny any specific Christian doctrine, it did more to undermine Christianity than any conclusion of natural science”. (pp.106-107)