The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology
Dr.
Michael Sudduth
Book
Prospectus and Outline
(Revised,
November 2, 2002)
In The Reformed Objection to Natural
Theology I examine the place of natural theology in the Reformed
theological tradition, from its fons et origo in the work of John Calvin
to prominent 20th century representatives of the Calvinistic
tradition. Since the dominant tendency of 20th century theologians
and philosophers has been to regard the Reformed tradition, in principle and in
point of its historical development, as opposed to the project of natural
theology, the current work may be more precisely described as a philosophical
examination of the alleged Reformed case against natural theology.
I argue three main points in this work:
·
Contrary to the views
expressed by a large number of prominent 20th century theologians
and philosophers, the Reformed theological tradition on the whole has not
opposed natural theology. More
precisely, a majority of thinkers representative of the Reformed tradition have
affirmed some natural knowledge of God and endorsed the project of developing
rational arguments for the existence and nature of God. Although some influential Reformed
theologians have criticized natural theology, such criticisms are often
directed toward natural theology construed in a particular sort of way, and
thus their criticisms do not represent a wholesale rejection of natural
theology. Moreover, the more radical
criticisms of natural theology tend to be clustered historically in the
post-Kantian stream of Reformed theology, especially in the Dutch Neo-Calvinist
tradition, and represent an important discontinuity with earlier segments of
the tradition as expressed by 16th and 17th century
Reformed Scholasticism and 18th and 19th century British
and American Calvinism.
·
The historical case
for the Reformed endorsement of natural theology implies a prima facie
Reformed case for natural theology. Reformed theologians who have
supported or defended the project of natural theology typically view natural
theology as a logical implication of three epistemologically relevant facts:
the existence of (i) a general revelation of God in the universe, (ii) a
natural knowledge of God on the basis of (i), and (iii) some natural knowledge
of God being inferential in nature. Theistic arguments, then, are viewed as
either a mode by which some natural knowledge of God is acquired or as at least
representing a way in which the natural knowledge of God may be confirmed,
clarified, or extended by way of reflective inquiry.
·
The prima facie
Reformed case for natural theology is ultimately undefeated by the main
objections to natural theology among Reformed theologians. Of the main
philosophical and theological objections to natural theology found among
Reformed theologians (i.e., immediacy of the natural knowledge of God, logical
objections to theistic arguments, arguments from the noetic effects of sin,
Sola Scriptura, and the impropriety of the apologetic use of theistic
arguments), none provides a sufficient reason to reject natural theology.
These three points allow a thorough philosophical
analysis and a historical examination of natural theology in the Reformed tradition.
What emerges is a historically conscious and philosophically robust defense of
natural theology. The overall conclusion is in many respects a resurrection of
the more favorable estimate of natural theology among many prominent Calvinists
from the 17th to 20th century. Here we have a stream of
Reformed theology that is frequently neglected in contemporary discussions, but
whose insights await rescue and repackaging in the light of contemporary
developments in philosophy.
II. Background to Project
Broadly stated, natural
theology refers to what can be known or rationally believed about God, His
existence and nature, on the basis of human reason or man's natural cognitive
processes. Since the natural process whereby such knowledge is acquired is typically
taken to be inferential in nature, natural theology is ordinarily identified
with arguments for the existence of God. As such, natural theology belongs to a
long tradition of philosophical inquiry beginning with Presocratic reflections
on the origin and ultimate nature of the cosmos. Systematically developed under
the influence of Jewish, Islamic, and Christian thinkers in the medieval
period, natural theology has proven a resilient mode of philosophical inquiry
despite the continual challenges to it by many modern and contemporary
philosophers, religious and non-religious alike.
The more widely known criticisms of natural
theology tend to be distinctly philosophical criticisms originating with
David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and modified at the hands of subsequent agnostic
and atheistic philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, Anthony Flew, J.L. Mackie,
and Quentin Smith. But there are
distinctly religious objections to natural theology as well, objections
that play an important role in thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth.
Moreover, the reemergence of philosophy of religion in Anglo-American academia
in the second half of the twentieth-century has done much to bring both kinds
of objections to natural theology into greater focus. Interestingly enough,
there is a certain confluence of the philosophical and religious objections to
natural theology in the Reformed theological tradition originating with Martin
Luther and John Calvin. Indeed a widely held view in contemporary philosophy of
religion and a prevailing attitude of much 20th century philosophy
and theology is that the Reformed theological tradition has consistently
opposed the project of natural theology.
There have been several important 20th
century contributions to the topic of natural theology in the Reformed
theological tradition that set the context for the present work.
·
Karl Barth not only
rejected natural theology himself but also maintained that such a rejection was
historically rooted in the Protestant Reformation, specifically in the work of
John Calvin. Several prominent Calvin commentators have followed Barth at this
juncture (e.g., T.H.L Parker, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God,
2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959)), though not without
opposition from other scholars (e.g., Edward Dowey, The Knowledge of God in
Calvin’s Theology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952)).
·
John Baillie’s
influential work Our Knowledge of God (London: Oxford University Press,
1939) provides an important 20th century Protestant critique of
natural theology and a corresponding case for construing our natural knowledge
of God as immediate. Ballie regarded all inferential approaches to the
knowledge of God as rooted in Greek philosophy and – from the Biblical point of
view – wrong in principle.
·
In historical
theology, Richard Muller and Rev. John Platt have each provided substantial
evidence that confirms a Reformed commitment to natural theology among Reformed
scholastics in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as
the evolution and nature of this commitment and how it may be distinguished
from natural theology in post-Enlightenment Reformed dogmatics. See Platt, Reformed
Thought and Scholasticism: Arguments for the Existence of God in Dutch
Theology: 1575-1650 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982); Richard Muller, Post-Reformation
Reformed Dogmatics: Vol. 1, Prolegoma to Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1987), and "The Dogmatic Function of
St. Thomas' 'Proofs': A Protestant Appreciation," Fides et Historia,
XXIV:2 (1992), pp. 14-29.
·
Several prominent 20th
century Reformed apologists (e.g., Auguste Lecerf, Cornelius Van Til, Gordon
Clark) have strongly opposed the tradition of natural theology, especially as developed
in the Thomistic tradition. While earlier generations of Reformed apologists
(e.g., B.B. Warfield, Charles Hodge) made free use of theistic arguments as
part of their approach to defending the faith, many Calvinists moved away from
this method in the 20th century and developed new approaches to
apologetics without a dependence on traditional theistic arguments, which they
have found suspect for a variety of reasons. See Lecerf, An Introduction to
Reformed Dogmatics (London: Lutterworth Press, 1949); Van Til, The
Defense of the Faith (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing
Co., 1955); and Clark, Religion, Reason, and Revelation (Jefferson, MD:
The Trinity Foundation, 1986).
·
In the last 20 years
the Reformed epistemology movement, associated with the work of Alvin
Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and William Alston, has brought the alleged
Reformed disapproval of natural theology into yet sharper focus. Nicholas
Wolterstorff has affirmed the Reformed tradition’s “negative attitude toward
natural theology” (“The Reformed Tradition,” in A Companion to Philosophy of
Religion (Blackwells, 1997), p. 165). Alvin Plantinga’s paper “The Reformed
Objection to Natural Theology” (in Proceedings of the American Catholic
Philosophical Association 54, 1980) provided a non-Barthian, philosophical
assessment of the alleged Reformed discontent with natural theology. Plantinga
and other Reformed epistemologists have developed insights found in previous
thinkers (from Calvin to Baillie) and emphasized the immediacy of our natural
knowledge of God, in contrast to both the tradition of Enlightenment
evidentialism and the Thomistic tradition of natural theology, both of which
have emphasized the importance of arguments for God’s existence. Plantinga’s
intricate epistemology of religious belief has been carefully laid out in his
most recent Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford, 2000). Plantinga of
course claims that the basic model of theistic and Christian belief articulated
in this book is rooted in insights found in the Reformed theological tradition,
among theologians such as John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Abraham Kuyper, and
Herman Bavinck.
·
Dewey Hoitenga’s book
Faith and Reason from Plato to Plantinga: An Introduction to Reformed
Epistemology (State University of New York Press, 1991) identified
“vitality” and “immediacy” as the central features of the Reformed view of our
knowledge of God. Hoitenga traces these ideas from Plato to Augustine, to
Calvin to Plantinga, noting the divergence from the Thomistic tradition of
natural theology in several places. Although Hoitenga thinks that the Reformed
tradition may find a proper place for inference and argument (and thus natural
theology) as a way of extending and developing what is known immediately, he
argues that the rational justification of belief in God in no way depends on
either positive arguments or the ability to answer objections to theism. In
this, Hoitenga may be construed even going further than Plantinga.
·
In Rational Faith:
Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, ed. Linda Zagzebski
(University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), several well-known Catholic
philosophers provide a thorough-going critique of the claims of Reformed
epistemology as developed by Plantinga, Wolterstorff, and Alston. This work is
an important one, as it suggests that the place of natural theology in the
Reformed tradition has implications for broader polemical issues in the
interface between Protestant and Catholic theology. According to Zagzebski, the
Catholic contributors, unlike the Reformers, have a high regard for natural
theology and are strongly committed to the efficacy of natural reason in
attaining knowledge of God, as well as the grounding of revealed theology in
natural theology. A similar analysis and criticism of the Reformed tradition is
found in Norman Kretzmann’s discussion on Reformed epistemology in The
Metaphysics of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 9-20.
III.
Dialectical Architecture of Project
The various contours of the 20th century dialogue
leave us with a few crucial questions. To what extent is the 20th
century assessment of the Reformed opposition to natural theology correct? And to the extent to which we find
opposition to natural theology among Reformed theologians, to what exactly are
these thinkers objecting? Are these objections plausible objections to natural
theology? In The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology, I attempt to
answer these questions.
The
dialectical structure of the work involves five stages of argument.
I.
On the basis
of a detailed and comprehensive historical investigation, I argue that there
has been a widespread and consistent endorsement of natural theology in the
Reformed theological tradition.
In
chapters 2 through 4, I aim to rebut the prevalent 20th century view
that the Reformed tradition has on the whole opposed natural theology. I
examine the Reformed commitment to natural knowledge of God and theistic
arguments from the time of the Reformation to the 20th century, with
a special focus on Reformed scholasticism, Puritanism, and 18th and
19th century British and American Reformed theology.
II.
On the basis
of the Historical Argument (in I above), I argue that there is a prima facie Reformed justification for natural
theology grounded in the Reformed commitment to (a) some natural knowledge of
God derived from a natural revelation in the created order, (b) some of this
knowledge being distinctly inferential in character, and (c) the formulation of
theistic arguments as an attempt to (i) extend a basic natural knowledge of God
acquired in a more spontaneous manner, (ii) confirm, clarify, and formalize the
natural cognitive processes utilized in acquiring natural knowledge of God,
(iii) refute the sophistry of atheism and agnosticism, and (iv) provide the Christian
with a way of deepening his understanding of the concept of God and
strengthening his faith.
While
the main line of argument in chapters 2 through 4 is historical, the historical
argument reveals a normative one, a Reformed justification for natural
theology. Suggested in chapters 2 through 4, this case is explicitly
articulated in chapter 5, along with a summary of the main features of theistic
arguments in the Reformed tradition. But the case only purports to establish
the prima facie rational acceptability of natural theology in the
context of the Reformed tradition. Hence the case can be defeated by overriding
reasons for supposing that some aspect of the prima facie case is
mistaken. These objections to be considered in the remainder of the book
constitute just such a set of potential defeaters against the prima facie
case.
III.
I critically
examine two sorts of general philosophical
objections to natural theology that threaten to defeat particular aspects of
the prima facie Reformed case for natural theology.(Chapters 6-9)
A.
EPISTEMOLOGICAL OBJECTION from the innate, intuitive, or immediate knowledge of
God: Some Reformed theologians have argued that the actual grounds of our
natural belief in God show that belief in God is basic, not inferential, and as
basic it can constitute knowledge in the absence of the arguments of natural
theology. Hence, natural theology is epistemically unnecessary. Hence, this
objection attempts to rebut claim II.B (above) in the Reformed case for natural
theology and thereby undermine a crucial tier in the Reformed case for natural
theology. Chapter 6 considers this objection as developed prior to the 20th
century. Chapter 7 considers the objection as developed by contemporary
Reformed epistemology.
1. RESPONSE I (chapter 6): After examining
several classical arguments for immediate knowledge of God (from the Protestant
scholastics to the early 19th century), I argue that these arguments
fail to show that the knowledge of God is exclusively immediate for
several reasons. (a) The argument based on Calvin’s discussion of the sensus
divinitatis is at best inconclusive. (b) Many of the arguments assume an
overly narrow conception of inferential belief. (c) At best the arguments would
establish only the psychological immediacy of theistic belief, not necessarily
its epistemic immediacy. (d) At best the arguments would show only that some
natural knowledge of God is immediate, not that no natural knowledge of God is
inferential. (e) Even if the knowledge of God is wholly immediate, this would
not eliminate a broad range of other functions for theistic arguments, such as
providing a confirmation of the natural processes implicated in acquiring
immediate knowledge of God.
2. RESPONSE II (chapter 7): After examining the
claims of contemporary Reformed epistemology, which provide a more
philosophically sophisticated defense of immediate knowledge of God, I argue
that the central claims of Reformed epistemology are logically consistent with
several important epistemic functions for natural theology in addition to those
considered in relation to the classical arguments. (a) Even if natural theology
is unnecessary for theistic belief to be warranted (“warrant” being the
property that transforms true belief into knowledge), natural theology may be
necessary for showing that theism is true or showing that it is warranted. (b)
Even if theistic belief is warranted in a basic way, an evidential requirement,
satisfied by the arguments of natural theology, may nonetheless be consistently
applied to second-order beliefs about the warranted status of theistic beliefs.
(c) A person’s basic warranted theistic belief may be defeated in certain
circumstances and thus cease to be warranted, at least to a degree sufficient,
along with true belief, for knowledge. Under such defeating circumstances the
arguments of natural theology can play an important role as a
defeater-defeater, thereby restoring the warrant of theistic belief. (d) I
argue that it is likely that our natural knowledge of God draws on multiple
sources, immediate and inferential, especially in the face of defeaters to
theistic belief of various sorts. Natural theology, either as carried out by
the individual or by others in the individual’s epistemic community, can
contribute in an important way to the warrant of theistic beliefs.
B.
LOGICAL OBJECTIONS based on the contentions that (i) theistic arguments are
vitiated by various logical fallacies that affect their soundness and (ii)
theistic arguments do not demonstrate the existence of the true God, the God of
Scripture, but rather the God of philosophers. In this second objection, I
consider two God-of-the-Philosophers objections. According to the first, the
description of the god found in the conclusions of theistic arguments is
inadequate as a description of the God of Scripture. The second
objection is that the description of the god of the theistic arguments is
logically inconsistent with the God of Scripture. The logical objection to natural theology attempts to
rebut II.B and rebut and undercut elements in II.C of the prima facie
case. (Chapters 8 and 9)
1.
RESPONSE I (chapter 8): I argue that, while some of the logical criticisms made
by Reformed theologians are correct, these criticisms at best apply only to
certain forms of natural theology, e.g., Thomistic natural theology. (a) They
do not apply to contemporary probabilistic and cumulative case arguments, both
of which have been endorsed by Reformed theologians since the middle of the 19th
century. (b) They do not apply to the formulation of theistic arguments
construed as arguments for the nature of a God whose existence is antecedently
known in an immediate way. There are thus three primary weakness to the
Reformed logical criticisms of natural theology. (c) Some of the Reformed
objections to theistic arguments borrow philosophically implausible arguments
from Hume and Kant.
2. RESPONSE II (chapter 9): After examining two different God of the Philosopher type objections, I
conclude that none of the arguments examined provides an adequate basis on
which to argue that the being picked out by the term “God” in the conclusion of
theistic arguments does not successfully refer to the God of the Bible,
especially when theistic arguments are taken cumulatively. Neither the
contention that the description of this being underdetermines the God of
Scripture nor the stronger argument that the description of this being is inconsistent
with the God of Scripture is ultimately successful in undermining the claim
that these arguments constitute good arguments for the existence of the God of
the Bible.
IV.
I Critically
examine three essentially theological
objections to natural theology that threaten to defeat particular aspects of the prima facie Reformed case
for natural theology.(Chapters 10-12)
A.
OBJECTION I from the Noetic Effects of Sin, according to which the effects of
sin on the human mind are either inconsistent with (i) any natural knowledge of
God or (ii) any inferential knowledge of God.
The first objection is rooted in prominent interpretations of Calvin;
the second is located in subsequent Reformed thought. (chapters 10-11)
1. RESPONSE I (chapter 10): The alleged denial of
natural knowledge of God in Calvin rests on a basic equivocation on the term
“knowledge” in the Calvin texts. The inability to properly navigate between the
different senses in which Calvin uses this term and its cognates leads to
implausible conclusions concerning Calvin’s stance on the natural knowledge of
God. Although there is an existential and moral sense in which fallen,
unregenerate human persons do not possess a natural knowledge of God, Calvin
does not by this imply that fallen, unregenerate humans lack all propositional
knowledge of God.
2.
RESPONSE II (Chapter 10):
I argue that the objection to inferential knowledge of God based on the noetic
effects of sin should be construed as maintaining that sin undermines the warrant
of inferential theistic beliefs in fallen, unregenerate persons. I call this
noetic effect of sin, “postlapsarian epistemic deficiency” (PED). I consider
two general theories of warrant to test the plausibility of PED, epistemic
internalism and externalism. (a) I argue that under internalist theories of
knowledge, PED poses a serious obstacle to inferential knowledge of God for
fallen, unregenerate persons. (b) I
argue that PED does not pose as serious of a problem for inferential knowledge
(for fallen, unregenerate persons) under some externalist theories.
3. RESPONSE III (Chapter 11): Even if fallen,
unregenerate persons are unable to arrive at knowledge of God by way of
inference due to the noetic effects of sin, this is logically consistent with
their being good theistic arguments and these arguments being of use to the Christian
(who enjoys the noetic benefits of regeneration) in acquiring a degree of
reflective rationality with respect to her theistic beliefs and deepening and
strengthening her faith.
B. OBJECTION II
from the Reformed Doctrine of Sola Scriptura (by Scripture alone), understood
here as entailing that our ideas of God ought to be derived from and shaped
solely by Scripture and not human reason or philosophy. The objection seeks to
undermine element II.C.iv of the prima facie cause. (Chapter 11)
1.
RESPONSE I (chapter
11): This particular interpretation of Sola Scriptura undermines the Reformed
idea of general revelation, according to which God has revealed truth about
Himself in the created order. This implies that knowledge of God is not derived
exclusively from Scripture.
2.
RESPONSE II (chapter
11): Scripture underdetermines many of the elements of the Reformed doctrine of
God (e.g., divine timelessness, logical immutability, necessity). These
elements of the doctrine of God can only justified on the basis of an activity
of reason that seeks to clarify and augment the contents of divine revelation
with the aid of conceptual distinctions and philosophical principles not
contained in Scripture.
3.
RESPONSE III (chapter
11): Scripture can nonetheless play a positive role in guiding philosophical
inquiry.
C. OBJECTION III from
the apologetic impropriety of the use of theistic arguments on the grounds that
all such uses presuppose (i) a stance of unbelief, (ii) the unbeliever does not
already know God, (iii) human autonomy and epistemic neutrality or (iv) the
inadequacy of negative arguments. This objection aims to target element
II.C.iii of the prima facie case. (Chapter 12)
1.
RESPONSE I: Even if
theistic arguments ought not to be used in apologetics, this would still allow
such arguments an intra-faith function articulated in previous chapters.
2.
RESPONSE II: The use
of theistic arguments does not entail a stance of unbelief since nothing is
implied about the grounds of a believer’s faith in the act of providing reasons
for those outside the faith.
3.
RESPONSE III: The use
of theistic arguments in apologetics need not assume that the unbeliever does
not know God already. He knows God in a general way, but theistic arguments may
bring such knowledge to consciousness and also pin down a more specific
understanding of the nature of the God known immediately.
4.
RESPONSE IV: The
presentation of theistic arguments need not presuppose human autonomy, i.e.,
that human cognitive powers would be fully efficacious whether or not God
exists. The crucial point here is to note that in presenting theistic
arguments, the apologist can thematize epistemic neutrality or he can remain
silent on this issue (or alternatively, he can thematize the lack of epistemic
neutrality). I also suggest at this juncture the need to develop distinctly
epistemological arguments for God’s existence that will explicitly articulate
the dependence of epistemic efficacy of human reasoning on the existence of
God.
5.
RESPONSE V: The apologist need not choose between
negative apologetics (answering objections made against the faith) and positive
apologetics (presenting reasons for supposing that Christian theism is true).
Both sorts of approaches are logically consistent, and the apologist is right
to utilize the best arguments of both sorts for the apologetic task.
CONCLUSION:
The standard Reformed objections to natural
theology fail to present an adequate case against natural theology. Moreover,
by clarifying the actual range of epistemic, intra-faith, and apologetic
functions for natural theology, the prima facie case of Part I has been
both defended and refined in important ways. I believe this conclusion
reinforces insights found in the Scholastic tradition and in 18th
and 19th century Reformed theology but which have been
systematically ignored among many Post-Kantian Reformed thinkers. The Reformed
tradition has good reason to revise its more recent critical stance toward
natural theology and modestly embrace that project, as many past generations of
Calvinists have.
IV. The Place of the Present Work in Relation to the Current Literature
Although there are a plethora of books on the market today dealing
with natural theology, and many dealing with so-called Reformed epistemology, none
of these provides a rigorous philosophical and historically sensitive
investigation of natural theology in connection with the Reformed tradition.
The works on Reformed epistemology are typically deeply involved in examining
the immediacy of the knowledge of God or answering objections to Christian
belief, while the works on natural theology aim at defending or critiquing
natural theology from a philosophical perspective, independent of the Reformed
tradition. The present work provides an important bridge between works in
natural theology and those on Reformed epistemology. More importantly, it fills
an important gap in the literature in contemporary philosophy of religion,
while at the same time forging a positive tie between recent historical studies
in Reformed thought and contemporary epistemology.
Alvin
Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Plantinga has done a masterful job at developing a
model according to which theistic and Christian belief can be rational and constitute
knowledge even in the absence of the evidential considerations associated with
natural theology. But as many of his critics have written, what about natural
theology? Indeed, the question is of relevance not merely from the vantage
point of Protestants sympathetic to natural theology and Thomistic Catholics,
but also from the perspective of the Reformed tradition itself. The present
work attempts to take over where Plantinga and other Reformed epistemologists
have left off. This requires clarifying the positive role of natural theology
given the claims of Reformed epistemology, or showing that theistic arguments
can be important, even necessary, contributions to the positive epistemic
status of theistic belief without undermining the central claims of Reformed
epistemology. Such a project will bring
an important balance to the epistemology of religious belief in the Reformed
tradition.
Linda Zagzebski, Rational
Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology (University of Notre
Dame Press, 1993).
This volume contains a very helpful Catholic
perspective on the Reformed epistemology movement. It does not, however,
address natural theology in the Reformed tradition. If anything the
contributions tend to assume the commonly held Reformed opposition to natural
theology. However, many of the insights of the contributors can be implemented
by the Reformed tradition. Hence, in my project there is a clear attempt to
apply some of the suggestions made by contributors to this collection. For
instance, my theory of defeater-based evidentialism represents an attempt to
synthesize Reformed epistemology with observations made by both Philip Quinn
and John Greco on the restricted necessity of evidences for theistic knowledge.
Dewey
Hoitenga, Faith and Reason from Plato to Plantinga: An Introduction to
Reformed Epistemology (State University of New York Press, 1991).
Hoitenga aims to
show that Reformed claims about the immediacy of the natural knowledge of God
are rooted in Augustine and Plato, and thus are not the product of modernity.
Although this work is a valuable one in drawing attention to the ancient and
classical lineage of some of the epistemological insights found in the Reformed
tradition, it does not provide any systematic engagement with the topic of
natural theology in the Reformed tradition. It does not consider the range of
objections to natural theology in the Reformed tradition, nor for that matter
does it consider the positive role of inferential knowledge of God and theistic
arguments originating with the Protestant Scholastic tradition. In fact,
Hoitenga explains in the “Epilogue” to the book that there is still a need for
a further development of a Reformed account of “faith seeking understanding.”
Among other things, the current project aims to contribute to this by examining
the intra-faith function of natural theology.
Richard
Muller, Post-Reformation Dogmatics, Vol. 1: Prolegomena to Theology
(Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1987), and John Platt, Reformed Thought
and Scholasticism: The Arguments for the Existence of God in Dutch Theology,
1575-1650 (Leiden: E.J.
Brill, 1982).
These
works by Muller and Platt provide an important historical examination of
natural theology in the Reformed tradition. Muller devotes a couple of chapters
to the problem of natural theology and the role of philosophy in the
development of Reformed dogmatics. Platt devotes his entire book to tracing the
emergence of theistic arguments in the Protestant Scholastic tradition. Both
works are historical in nature, and confined to an examination of the
Protestant Scholastic tradition. Neither work examines natural theology in a
comprehensive manner, nor do they attempt a philosophical analysis of the
positions they articulate. Consequently important questions in epistemology are
not addressed, and there is no philosophical examination of the objections to
natural theology in the Reformed tradition.
Arvin
Vos, Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought: A Critique of
Protestant Views on the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Grand Rapids: Eeerdmans,
1985).
Vos provides a
fresh look at Protestant misunderstandings of Aquinas on a variety of issues in
the interface between theology and philosophy, natural theology included. The
work is largely devoted to comparing Calvin and Aquinas on faith and reason and
closely allied topics, as well as engaging the early phase of Reformed
epistemology. Although natural theology is discussed in the work, specifically
in relation to Calvin, there is no systematic discussion of natural theology in
relation to the Reformed tradition as a whole.
Chapter 1: The Reformed
Objection to Natural Theology
Chapter 3: Theistic Arguments in the Reformed Tradition
I: 16th and 17th Centuries
Chapter 4: Theistic Arguments in the Reformed Tradition
II: 18th to 20th Century
Chapter 5: Theistic Arguments and the Prima Facie
Case for Natural Theology
Chapter 6: The Innate or Intuitive Knowledge of God
Chapter
7: Contemporary Reformed Epistemology
Chapter 8: Logical Objections to Theistic Arguments
Chapter 9: Logical Objections to Natural Theology: the
God of Theistic Arguments
Chapter 10: Calvin and the
Noetic Effects of Sin
Chapter 11: Noetic Effects of Sin and Sola Scriptura
Chapter 12: Natural Theology and Reformed Apologetics
At
the present time, a final draft of the book is scheduled for completion by
summer 2003.
Current
list of readers includes: Richard Swinburne (University of Oxford), Alvin
Plantinga (University of Notre Dame), William Alston (Syracuse
University), Paul Helm (King’s College London), Dewey Hoitenga (Grand
Valley State University), Nicholas Wolterstoff (Yale University), John
Zeis (Canisius College), Arvin Vos (Western Kentucky University),
and Kelly Clark (Calvin College)