Natural Theology and New T estament

NATURAL THEOLOGY AND THE NEW TESTAMENT

Virgil Warren, PhD

A few comments on Romans 1-2 relate to a natural theology. We can distinguish here what may be true from what Paul is arguing in this passage. Natural theology may be possible, but our conviction is that Paul does not have that in mind in Romans 1. He means that natural revelation is sufficient for making people without excuse for leaving truth already known; getting to that truth via nature is more difficult. The first format makes general revelation primary proof while the second makes a lesser truth claim by saying that it confirms special revelation.  

The question may be raised as to why, under this reconstruction of his thought, Paul would talk later about Gentiles who never had the Law. At this point (2:12-16), Paul is talking ethics/soteriology, not theology proper. Relative to eternal destiny, personal experience can serve as an alternate basis for evaluation because people ought “roughly” to know how to treat other people by how they themselves want to be treated; the Golden Rule ends up being a “rule of thumb” for personal behavior, and it is something that in conjunction with social training imbedded in conscience can serve as a basis for evaluation through self-consistency, which is what conscience measures. (The connection with the Golden Rule is not one Paul brings into the picture as a mechanism for explaining his point.) The experience of conscience (guilt) makes people face up to their moral nature, and they cannot escape that reminder because the pangs of conscience come from within. That leads to the question about divine judgment of the unevangelized, about their need for redemption too, and about the possibility of salvation among them. This last issue relates to the question about the possibility of unevangelized elect. (See comments on Romans 2 in What the Bible Says About Salvation, pp. 20-21 and on the “unevangelized elect” on pp. 20-21, 104-12, and other pages in the topical index.)

 In Acts 17:22-23 Paul’s speech on the Areopagus acknowledges the Athenians’ religious interest. But an interest in something bigger than ourselves does not tell us the nature of it. Natural theology says that from nature we can get true—though partial—knowledge of God; we can infer a transcendent, eternal God, and perhaps a few other things depending on the philosopher involved; but pantheism and panentheism can be put rather cogently too, and those views do not have transcendent deity and do not necessarily put personhood in the highest frame of reference. The problem of evil makes it difficult to conclude for a holy God and even harder to conclude for an omnipotent holy God; perhaps good and evil are in eternal tension. It is difficult from general revelation to reason love into the character of g/God; and yet John says that he is love (1 John 4:16), implying not only personhood but interpersonhood and implying that this characteristic is basic to the difference between the true God and imaginary deities.

Arguing that “God made us in such a way as to provoke us to seek him” (17:26-27) is again non-contentful relative to God’s nature, yet natural theology proposes to give knowledge of God’s nature. Having a sense of dependence (or whatever specifically Paul may have had in mind here) does not prove there is something to depend on or that we can derive from the face of the heavens the nature of What/Who we would depend on.

Finally, approvingly citing a pagan poet about God’s nature need not show that he had an adequate basis in nature for saying what he said. Perhaps this pagan poet happened to say something close enough to the truth that Paul could use it as a point of contact with his audience in preparation for giving the correct view of God.

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