As human beings, we know all kinds of things. We know that gravity causes things to fall when they are let go. We know that certain laws of aerodynamics cause airplanes to fly when air moves across the foil of a wing at a particular speed. These are examples of things we know about the natural world. We also have certain kinds of sociological knowledge. For example, I (Jamie) know that social difficulty will follow if I walk into a room full of people and proclaim that they are all fools. Epistemologists would identify these as very different kinds of knowledge, but they are examples of knowledge nonetheless. What is interesting about both of these examples of knowledge, however, is that I have learned them all by some kind of experience or observation. I watched the rock (and many other objects) fall from my hand repeatedly. I saw and felt the plane rise into the sky as we moved speedily down the runway. I observed what happened when my uncle walked into the room and proclaimed that we are all fools and idiots. Experience and observation teach us much. In fact, most of what we learn as human beings comes this way. We see, we feel, we hear, we smell, we taste, we observe, and we experiment.
So how do we come to know about God? Fortunately, we have a biblical testimony that reveals God to us, and we are not left to ourselves to wonder what God is like. But what if we didn’t have the Bible? What if we had nothing from sacred theology or Holy Scripture? What if we had to start from scratch, with only what we find in nature to guide us? Could we—would we—know anything about God? Could we learn about God in the same way we learn about the laws of aerodynamics, gravity, or sociology? Could we learn about God and come to have knowledge about God from what we see, feel, hear, smell, taste, observe, or find in experiments?
At first blush it does not look as though it would be possible to know anything about God like this. Who among us, for example, has had the chance to observe God directly with one of the five senses? Under normal circumstances we do not see, touch, taste, smell, or hear God directly in the same way that we see things in the physical world. So, not surprisingly, modern philosophers have been skeptical of our ability to gain knowledge of God via the natural world. But perhaps this skepticism is misguided. Even if we do not have direct epistemic access to God via our five senses, perhaps we can still know something about God from what we find in nature. Perhaps, that is, we can discern things about God from particular aspects of the world as they point in his direction.
Considerations like these lead us to an exploration of natural revelation and natural theology. In what follows, we will define natural revelation and natural theology, showing how they are distinct and yet linked to each other. This chapter will focus primarily on the possibility of doing natural theology by evaluating the prospects of deriving knowledge of God from nature (specific natural theology arguments with be put forward in chapter 12). We will then give an account of natural revelation, identifying biblical data that supports it and how and where we find it in nature. We will then comment briefly on the history of natural theology and how it is envisioned by modern practitioners. After this, we will outline the common objections against natural theology and offer a response.
Defining Natural Revelation and Natural Theology
The terms “natural revelation” and “natural theology” are often used interchangeably. In general, both deal with the knowledge of God that we obtain from nature, and it is therefore understandable that people use them synonymously. But there is a key difference between them that needs to be noticed and understood. To see this, it will be helpful to drop the word “natural” from them, at least for the moment, and see the difference between “revelation” and “theology” more generally. Revelation, as understood by the Christian tradition, refers to what God has done or said or given. Revelation is God’s self-disclosure of himself that allows human beings to know and understand who he is. As such, revelation is something that God does and/or something that God gives. Theology, by contrast, is a derivative of revelation. It refers to what human beings do with revelation, as a human response to God’s self-disclosure. It seeks to organize a body of teachings in light of God’s self-disclosure that makes sense of God, human life, and the world itself. And because it is derivative in nature, unlike revelation, theology is something that can err. It is fallible and in many cases is open to revision, adaptation, rearticulation, or rejection. Because of this, theology evolves and develops over time and from one group to the next. It manifests various schools of thought about particular topics and allows for sharp disagreement and conflicting perspectives among theologians. These theological differences arise not because of differing revelation to which they have access; rather, their perspectives differ because their contexts are different and because they face different kinds of problems and questions. Either way, in theology one often finds diverse perspectives on particular issues.
So then, revelation is something that God gives to us. Theology, however, is a derivative response to revelation. It has the possibility of error and can express different perspectives from one group of theologians to the next. But how does this affect our discussion about natural revelation and natural theology? By seeing the general difference between revelation and theology, we can also see that natural revelation and natural theology are not the same thing. Here the same kinds of points apply. Natural revelation—also called general revelation—is still a kind of divine self-disclosure by God. But in this case it refers to God’s self-disclosure of himself in the natural world of created things as opposed to a selected set of texts or writings like the Bible. It is what can be understood about God from creation, both physical and existential. It is the instinctual awareness of God that most people have, the awe we feel in our hearts as we gaze up at the stars and feel that there must be a God, or the sense of God we feel when we behave immorally and feel guilt or shame. Both physically and existentially, this world points us to God and reinforces belief in him. By contrast, natural theology—like theology in general—is derivative in nature. It is what we do with natural revelation by reflecting on it and formalizing what we say about God in light of that revelation. Natural theology is our attempt to draw theological conclusions from nature and to see what can be said about God by considering what we find in the universe. Though not always true, natural theology often takes the form of an argument that tries to prove, or at least provide warrant for, God’s existence.
Examples of natural theology are numerous, dating from well before the time of Christ, with Plato and Aristotle, and onward to contemporary Christian philosophers who put forth various kinds of arguments. As we will discuss in chapter 12, some of the most popular and influential examples can be classified as cosmological, teleological, moral, and ontological arguments. Cosmological arguments, for example, start with the existence of the universe and argue that God is the best, or only, explanation for the universe. Teleological arguments are similar to cosmological arguments but tend to focus on particular details of the universe that have purpose or seem to be designed in a particular way to perform some function. In this case, teleological arguments argue for God’s existence on the basis of purpose and design. Likewise, moral arguments do the same thing but focus on the existence of moral law and our sense of morality, arguing again that God is the best, or only, explanation for morality. And though ontological arguments are considerably different from cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, they nonetheless are good examples of natural theology. These arguments start with the very concept and definition of God and then argue that it is necessary for this God to exist. Again, these arguments are given attention in chapter 12. For now, let’s consider the case for natural revelation and the possibility of doing natural theology. For those who are interested in religious knowledge, natural revelation may give us what we need to pursue the important epistemic enterprise of natural theology.
Natural Revelation
Some, even in Christian circles, argue that God has not revealed himself in nature. So we must consider whether they are right or wrong. Do we have natural revelation? Has God really disclosed himself in the natural world such that we can know something about him? Numerous texts in the Bible suggest that he has. In fact, the Bible seems to suggest that God has revealed himself in nature, the human heart, and the flow of history.1 Three particular texts are most important for us at this point: Romans 2:14–15; Psalm 19:1–4; and Romans 1:18–21. Consider, for example, Romans 2:14–15, where Paul says, “When Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them” (NKJV).
This is a very interesting passage. Here Paul declares that even gentiles who lack access to the written law of God know what is right and wrong, based on what they have found dwelling within their own consciences. This is because the law is “written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness.” Like Psalm 19 and Romans 1, this passage affirms that God reveals himself in creation. But in this case, it points specifically to the human being and what God has put within each person.
So why is this important? Even if the Bible does say that God has revealed his character to us through our sense of morality, does that make it true? One way to answer that question is to take a look at what we find in the world to see if it corresponds to the claims of the Bible. And interestingly, we find what Paul describes in Romans 2 to be exactly what we find in the human inclination toward morality. Human beings sense, no matter what worldview they might come from, that there is a right and a wrong way to live. We protest when things go “wrong” and argue for a “right” way that things should be. Atheists are no different. They may reject the Christian vision and understanding of the world, yet they continue with the same kinds of protests for “right” and “wrong” that we find in people everywhere throughout history. As C. Stephen Evans explains, “It thus appears to us that we are responsible and accountable for our actions. It is natural to wonder: To whom are we responsible? To whom are we accountable? The obvious and natural answer is that we are responsible to God. I believe our sense of obligation is a natural sign that points us to the one who has created us and has authority to demand from us what is right and good.”2
Along related lines, consider the more general sense of God that is present within us. By nature, human beings are religious. No matter where you look, and no matter when you look, people are naturally inclined toward belief in something transcendent. People all over the world and at every point throughout human history have sought for and directed their lives after some kind of theological belief. Simply put, we are naturally disposed to believe in God, as if God has implanted this knowledge of himself in our hearts and minds. In the Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin famously comments on this: “There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy.”3 He adds, “Yet there is, as the eminent pagan [Cicero] says, no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that they have not a deep-seated conviction that there is a God.”4 As a result of this deep-seated knowledge, Calvin states, “Therefore, since from the beginning of the world there has been no region, no city, in short, no household, that could do without religion, there lies in this a tacit confession of a sense of deity inscribed in the hearts of all.”5 Calvin is right. Something deep within the human mind and heart directs us to believe in God. We are drawn to believe in something beyond ourselves and beyond the physical world.
In addition to the traces of God that we find in the human sense of morality and the general sense of God’s existence within the human heart, the Bible also speaks about the knowledge of God that is evident within the physical world. Consider, for example, Psalm 19. The psalmist says,
The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world. (vv. 1–4 NKJV)
Notice the opening statement of this passage. We are told that the “heavens declare the glory of God” and that the “firmament shows His handiwork.” That is, nature reveals something about God to us—namely, that God exists and is glorious. In the firmament—the sky and the atmosphere—we see God’s work of wisdom and knowledge on display. But the psalmist goes on to say, “Day unto day utters speech, / And night unto night reveals knowledge,” meaning that the regular flow of nature from day to night reveals God to us in a way that is unmistakable. And as he goes on to say, this revelation is given to all people everywhere: “There is no speech nor language / Where their voice is not heard. / Their line has gone out through all the earth, / And their words to the end of the world.” In other words, the voice of this revelation is spread so widely that people of every language receive it, and it goes to every corner of the earth. As Psalm 19 makes clear, God’s self-disclosure is found in nature itself so that people everywhere are moved by creation to ponder the existence and nature of divinity.
The apostle Paul adds to this in Romans 1:18–21. Here he declares that the knowledge of God is found in nature, within the human heart itself, and in the rest of creation.
The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (NKJV)
Several affirmations in this passage should be highlighted. First, Paul affirms that God has placed knowledge of himself within human beings. For example, Paul says this knowledge is “manifest in them.” That is, humans have a knowledge of God that is innate, within. Humans naturally believe in God. But we will say more on this later. Second, this passage affirms that some knowledge of God comes through the things that are created. Paul says, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.” In other words, from the natural order of creation, humans can discern both that God exists (his Godhead) and that God is powerful (his eternal power). Third, this passage affirms that such knowledge leaves humanity “without excuse.” Since God has revealed this to all people everywhere through nature, no one is able to say that they never knew anything about God.
There is good reason to believe that the details of the physical universe also point us to belief in God. In fact, as we will see below, although advances in the natural sciences once led scientists and philosophers to reject the idea that nature pointed toward God, more recent discoveries in the natural sciences have reversed that trend and reinvigorated interest in the idea of nature as revelation. These considerations will be examined in some detail below and revisited again in chapter 12.
For now, the important takeaway from all of this is that we find the world doing precisely what the Bible claims that it does—namely, pointing toward God or offering a form of revelation. This correspondence between Word and world suggests something important and significant to us about the reality of natural revelation. It is one thing for the Bible to tell us that God has revealed himself in nature, but it is another thing to find nature actually revealing God. With that in mind, it is now important to consider how Christian philosophers and theologians have taken the next step of moving from natural revelation to the doing of natural theology.
Natural Theology: Problems and Prospects
Natural theology is as old as the Christian theological tradition, dating back to the earliest theologians of the church and extending into the present day. In his Proofs of God,6 Matthew Levering charts the history of this discipline from Tertullian to Karl Barth. During the patristic and medieval periods, for example, natural theology was advocated and defended by theologians and philosophers like Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. Yet by most accounts and despite its long history, natural theology was considered to be obsolete by the middle of the twentieth century.7 As Alister McGrath puts it, “If my personal conversations with theologians, philosophers, and natural scientists over the last decade are in any way representative, natural theology is generally seen as being like a dead whale, left stranded on a beach by a receding tide, gracelessly rotting under the heat of a philosophical and scientific sun.”8
The specific challenges to the New Testament have come from developments in natural science, philosophy, and theology during and since the Enlightenment; by the end of the nineteenth century, natural theology was considered to be a futile enterprise. Nevertheless, despite the challenges and objections that natural theology faced in the Enlightenment, it has made a significant comeback in recent years. James Sennett and Douglas Groothuis suggest that this is because proponents of natural theology are “using many new developments in science, theology and philosophy to make new and intriguing cases for the justification of theistic and Christian concepts and beliefs.”9 In what follows, we briefly trace what the challenges have been to natural theology in philosophy, science, and theology and note what has taken place to enable a revival in its practice.
Philosophical Objections
Philosophically speaking, natural theology has had its fair share of critics. For example, Paul Moser has registered a variety of concerns with natural theology. In his view, natural theology is largely ineffective because it tends to accept a somewhat naturalistic notion that empirical evidence is all that counts as evidence. This is problematic for Moser since he does not think such evidence is often successful in producing belief in the God of the Bible. Moreover, he thinks that the most powerful and perhaps the only sort of evidence for God is the evidence of a transformed life.10 While many contemporary Christian philosophers would agree with Moser about the evidential value of a transformed life, not all are convinced that natural theology is as problematic as he contends. Nevertheless, Moser has at least raised some important questions for consideration.
Historically, however, natural theology finds one of its greatest philosophical challenges in the criticism of David Hume. As James D. Madden puts it, “Indeed, Hume’s influence can still be seen among many contemporary philosophers of religion. J. J. C. Smart, Michael Martin, J. L. Mackie and a number of other prominent nontheists all employ criticisms whose historical origin can be found in Humean insights.”11 Hume’s famous critique of the design argument was published in his book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.12 Here, the reader finds a debate between three friends named Cleanthes, Demea, and Philo. The argument that Hume critiques is defended by the character Cleanthes, who says,
Look round the world: Contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work, which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.13
Later he says, “Consider, anatomize the eye: Survey its structure and contrivance; and tell me, from your own feeling, if the idea of a contriver does not immediately flow in upon you with a force like that of sensation. The most obvious conclusion surely is in favor of design; and it requires time, reflection and study to summon up those frivolous though abstruse objections, which can support infidelity.”14
In response to this argument, Hume’s work presents a variety of objections. Though Hume’s objections are not presented in chronological fashion, Stephen Davis distinguishes at least five criticisms leveled at Cleanthes’s design argument, including objections regarding (1) who designed God, (2) a coherent universe, (3) insufficient evidence, (4) the problem of evil, and (5) weak analogy.15 Each of these criticisms is presented by Philo and appears to represent the thinking of Hume himself.
The Who Designed God Objection
The first objection contends that if the universe needs a cause, then God must need one too. This appears to be one of Hume’s great questions for Cleanthes when he suggests a cause for the universe. Davis summarizes Hume’s question by asking, “Why can’t we ask who or what caused that mind? What licenses design arguers to stop the regress once they get to the designer? Doesn’t the order exhibited in minds require explanation as much as the order that we see in the universe?”16 Hume argues that any attempt to end the search for a cause with deity is arbitrary. If this is so, then Hume believes he is also justified in either stopping his search with nature itself or continuing to press the issue back into an infinite regress. That is, unless Cleanthes can show why it is justifiable to stop with God, then his approach is arbitrary and no better than Hume’s suggestion.
But how convincing is this objection? Is it really arbitrary to stop the search for a cause with God? It seems as if we have three choices regarding the cause of the universe: either (1) the universe is caused by nature itself; (2) the universe is caused by God, or deity; or (3) the universe has an infinite regress of causes. We have good reason to reject option 1. Nature itself cannot be the cause of the universe since nature did not exist to bring the universe into existence. Likewise, option 3 also has its difficulties. As William Lane Craig argues in multiple places, infinite regresses of this nature seem to be logically impossible.17 Thus option 2 appears to be the best choice. As J. P. Moreland states, “Explanation cannot keep going on forever. One has to stop somewhere with an explanatory ultimate. And when it comes to examples of design as order or purpose, we normally accept an explanation in terms of a rational agent as a proper stopping point and do not so regard an explanation in terms of physical causes.”18 Although Hume’s objection regarding who designed God causes theologians to think more carefully about positing God as the cause of the universe, it is not clear that this objection is a defeater for design arguments.
The Coherent-Universe Objection
Hume also suggests that the structure and orderliness of the universe should not be taken as evidence of a designer, since this is something that would be expected of any universe where life can be found. In his view, life can exist only in an orderly environment, so anywhere life is found, orderliness will be present. He says,
It is in vain, therefore, to insist upon the uses of the parts in animals or vegetables and their curious adjustment to each other. I would fain know how an animal could subsist, unless its parts were so adjusted? Do we not find, that it immediately perishes whenever this adjustment ceases, and that its matter corrupting tries some new form? It happens, indeed, that the pans of the world are so well adjusted, that some regular form immediately lays claim to this corrupted matter: And if it were not so, could the world subsist?19
Moreland explains, “From the time of Hume to the present, opponents of the design argument have pointed out that we should not be surprised at this data. If the world had been one in which intelligent life could not evolve, then we should not be here to discuss the matter. These factors are necessary for people to be around to puzzle over them.”20
This objection seems to miss the point altogether. What design arguments point out is not that a human can observe the orderliness but rather that (1) the orderliness is there in the first place and (2) the orderliness is itself a strong suggestion of something—or someone—beyond the universe. Davis says that “the very fact being noted by the design arguer is the existence of a world of sufficient stability and order to produce such organisms in the first place. . . . We can easily imagine worlds far less regular and law-like than ours. And so it is a significant fact that our world is so regular as to produce intelligent organisms who can notice that fact.”21
The Insufficient-Evidence Objection
Hume’s third objection simply states that the evidence drawn from nature may be enough to establish some kind of creator, but it is not sufficient to prove the God of Christian theism. He says, “For as the cause ought only to be proportioned to the effect, and the effect, so far as it falls under our cognizance, is not infinite; what pretensions have we, upon your suppositions, to ascribe that attribute to the divine being?”22 If this principle is true, then Hume believes that the evidence is not sufficient for Cleanthes to establish theism. Based on the evidence, Hume contends that there are several other possibilities for the designer. For one thing, this creator could be a finite being. Likewise, Hume suggests, polytheism could be justified by the evidence. He says, “A great number of men join in building a house or ship, in rearing a city, in framing a commonwealth: Why may not several deities combine in contriving and framing a world?”23 Because of these possibilities, Hume believed the evidence was not sufficient to justify theism as the clear explanation for the data.
There are at least three things that can be said here. First, Hume raises a fair critique of many versions of divine arguments. In the history of natural theology, there have been times when the arguments overextended themselves, and this needs to be corrected. At the same time, however, this has not always been the case. Second, the advocate of design arguments should point out that, although such an argument does not fully demonstrate Christian theism, it is still enough to disprove naturalism. Third, this objection seems to lose much of its force if all divine arguments are considered in conjunction with one another. That is, when the design argument is used as part of a cumulative case for Christian theism, then it seems that it can be quite helpful.
Hume also suggested that the evidence of imperfection should be given equal weight in determining what kind of thing caused the universe. Thus, given cases of imperfection and evil within the world, one could not conclude that the cause of the universe is the morally good agent suggested by theism. According to the evidence, Hume says there is no reason “for ascribing perfection to the deity, even in his finite capacity; or for supposing him free from every error, mistake, or incoherence, in his undertakings.”24 He adds, “This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: It is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors.”25 In Hume’s writings, the presence of evil and imperfections in nature suggests an imperfect deity at best.
While this chapter is not intended to focus on the problem of evil, at least one thing can be said about Hume’s objection here. Up until this point in his critique of the design argument, the focus has been on the evidence of design alone, and Hume seems to prefer this limitation. In raising the problem of evil, however, Hume brings counterevidence into the discussion, which should open up the question’s discussion for all relevant evidence. Hence, now that Hume has introduced other evidences, the theist may do the same. Davis seems to agree with this idea: “Suffice it to say that nothing prevents a successful design arguer from trying to argue, on other grounds, that the designer of the world is both all-powerful and perfectly good.”26 With this in mind, the believer is free to develop a theodicy—a positive account of why God might allow evil to be in the world—that answers the objection.27
The Weak-Analogy Objection
Finally, Hume argued that the analogy in Cleanthes’s argument is itself weak because of the dissimilarities of design in the objects in question—nature and human-made things. Hume says, “But surely you will not affirm, that the universe bears such a resemblance to a house, that we can with the same certainty infer a similar cause, or that the analogy is here entire and perfect. The dissimilitude is so striking, that the utmost you can here pretend to is a guess, a conjecture, a presumption concerning a similar cause; and how that pretension will be received in the world, I leave you to consider.”28 According to Hume, it is this dissimilarity that weakens Cleanthes’s analogy. He says, “Wherever you depart, in the least, from the similarity of the cases, you diminish proportionably the evidence; and may at last bring it to a very weak analogy, which is confessedly liable to error and uncertainty.”29
What should we make of this objection? It must be acknowledged that arguments from analogy can be weak, depending on the kinds of differences we find in the objects. But is Hume right that analogies are of no value whatsoever? We suggest that although arguments from analogy never render complete certainty, they may be helpful in identifying the best explanation of the data. In Davis’s mind, “The question is whether there is any other, more plausible explanation of the similar effects. Arguments from analogy are at their strongest where there is some reason to think that this is the case, some reason to think that alternative explanations will not wash.”30
Scientific Objections
The scientific objections to natural theology are far easier to grasp. When Paley published his Natural Theology in 1802, his work became incredibly popular in the major universities of Britain and the United States. Nevertheless, it—and natural theology more generally—received a formidable challenge in the work of Charles Darwin (1809–82). In 1859 Darwin published his famous work titled On the Origin of Species and radically changed the trajectory of science from his day forward. John Polkinghorne explains the significance of Darwinism for natural theology as follows:
The collapse of . . . natural theology was not brought about by philosophical criticism . . . but by a scientific discovery. In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species. It became apparent that there was the possibility of the appearance of design without the need for appeal to the direct action of a Designer. The evolutionary sifting of small differences through natural selection, acting competitively over many generations, was perceived to be capable of producing the observed aptness of living creatures for survival in their environments.31
Neal Gillespie agrees, saying it “has been generally agreed (then and since) that Darwin’s doctrine of natural selection effectively demolished William Paley’s classical design argument for the existence of God.”32 He elaborates: “By showing how blind and gradual adaptation could counterfeit the apparently purposeful design, . . . Darwin deprived their argument of the analogical inference that the evident purpose to be seen in the contrivances by which means and ends were related in nature was necessarily a function of mind.”33 With Darwin, natural theology thus faced a serious scientific objection that seemed to make design arguments and other forms of natural theology obsolete. In the end, theologians were left with no way to empirically validate their claims, and they abandoned the practice of natural theology.
Since Darwin, scientists and philosophers have generally thought that evolution is a defeater for natural theology. Yet scientific discoveries of the past few decades have led to some significant doubt about this. This new doubt about evolution as a defeater for natural theology has come in two general groups of philosophers and scientists. One is the Intelligent Design (ID) movement in the 1990s and early 2000s. Led by scientists like Michael Behe and Michael Denton, ID advocates argued that naturalistic evolutionary accounts fail to explain the development of certain life structures and thus compel us to posit an intelligent designer behind the life structures found within organisms. As Jay Wesley Richards puts it, “For more than a century we have heard that scientific progress has made Christian belief obsolete. Given the cultural prestige of science, this claim has prevented many from considering the Christian faith. If Intelligent Design theory exposes the inadequacy of materialistic explanations in the natural sciences, it will deflate this assertion, and could contribute to a renewal of Christian belief in the twenty-first century.”34 In short, the ID movement directly challenges the explanatory adequacy of Darwinian evolution and points to numerous examples of life structures that seem to require an intelligent cause. In so doing, ID has encouraged advocates of natural theology to reengage the design arguments.
The second scientific development that has encouraged the revival of natural theology has been the accumulation and analysis of fine-tuning data found in countless examples from physics. Interestingly, while this data often sounds very similar to the kind of data offered by the ID movement, proponents of natural theology who use fine-tuning data often take a very different approach than ID advocates. While the ID movement directly attacks the explanatory adequacy of evolution, fine-tuning advocates tend to embrace evolutionary accounts of the physical world and work within that account to show how God must exist as the explanation of the various laws and constants that govern the universe. McGrath is a good example of this. After cataloging a wide variety of fine-tuning examples, he says, “Many would argue that the finely tuned fruitfulness of the world and the intelligibility of the world . . . call for some explanation and understanding which, by its very nature, is likely to go beyond what science itself can provide.”35 McGrath is not alone in this opinion. Fred Hoyle writes, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”36
Conclusion
As this chapter has shown, natural theology has a long history with various advocates and critics, and its place within Christian theology will continue to be debated. We find traces of divine revelation in the physical world and within the human heart. The more we discover about the world we inhabit, the more inclined we are to consider theological answers to the questions about the universe. As such, natural theology continues to be of great importance in the area of religious epistemology.
1. Passages such as Job 12:23; Pss. 47:7–8; 66:7; Isa. 10:5–13; Dan. 2:21; and Acts 17:26 suggest that God reveals himself through the flow of history.
2. C. Stephen Evans, Why Christian Faith Still Makes Sense (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 47.
3. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1.3.1.
4. Calvin, Institutes 1.3.1.
5. Calvin, Institutes 1.3.1.
6. Matthew Levering, Proofs of God: Classical Arguments from Tertullian to Barth (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016).
7. See C. Stephen Evans, “Apologetics in a New Key: Relieving Protestant Anxieties over Natural Theology,” in The Logic of Rational Theism, ed. William Lane Craig and Mark S. McLeod (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1990), 65–75; Gordon J. Spykman, Reformational Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 168–70; Ned Wisnefske, Preparing to Hear the Gospel: A Proposal for Natural Theology (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998), 7–8.
8. Alister E. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 5.
9. James F. Sennett and Douglas Groothuis, “Introduction,” in In Defense of Natural Theology: A Post-Humean Assessment, ed. Sennett and Groothuis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005), 11.
10. See Paul Moser, Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
11. James D. Madden, “Giving the Devil His Due: Teleological Arguments after Hume,” in Sennett and Groothuis, In Defense of Natural Theology, 150.
12. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779; repr., London: Penguin, 1990).
13. Hume, Dialogues, 53.
14. Hume, Dialogues, 65.
15. Stephen Davis, God, Reason and Theistic Proofs (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 101–6. We have worded these objections differently than Davis.
16. Davis, God, Reason and Theistic Proofs, 101.
17. William Lane Craig, “Philosophical and Scientific Pointers to Creation ex Nihilo,” in Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology, ed. R. Douglas Geivett and Brendan Sweetman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
18. J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987), 64.
19. Hume, Dialogues, 95.
20. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 54.
21. Davis, God, Reason and Theistic Proofs, 102.
22. Hume, Dialogues, 76.
23. Hume, Dialogues, 77.
24. Hume, Dialogues, 77.
25. Hume, Dialogues, 79.
26. Davis, God, Reason and Theistic Proofs, 104.
27. For examples of how this has been done recently, see Chad V. Meister and James K. Dew Jr., eds., God and Evil: The Case for God in a World Filled with Pain (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2013); Chad V. Meister and James K. Dew Jr., eds., God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017).
28. Hume, Dialogues, 55.
29. Hume, Dialogues, 54.
30. Davis, God, Reason and Theistic Proofs, 99–100.
31. John Polkinghorne, Science and Theology (London: SPCK, 1998), 70.
32. Neal Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 83.
33. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation, 83–84.
34. Jay Wesley Richards, “Proud Obstacles and a Reasonable Hope: The Apologetic Value of Intelligent Design,” in Signs of Intelligence, ed. William A. Dembski and James M. Kushner (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2001), 59.
35. Alister E. McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 244.
36. Fred Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 20, no. 16 (1982): 16.