A Dogmatic-Only Use of Natural Theology?
Reformed theological retrieval has simultaneously wanted to reaffirm the legitimacy of natural theology in apologetics and dogmatics, yet often maintains a hard division between the demonstrations of the former and such demonstrations becoming epistemological, or normative, foundations for the latter. The alleged danger may be framed in different ways: e.g., the emergence of a third principium (with God as the principium essendi and Scripture as the principium cognoscendi).
This danger is clearly assumed by K. Scott Oliphint when he considers natural theological arguments forming premises for further theology:
“In that sense, there is a certain temporal priority to the use of reason and our senses that is presupposed in anything else we affirm, know, and believe. But temporal priority does not a principium make. Principia refer, not to the tools that all people have and use in their commitments, but to the content of those commitments.”1
In some cases, an author will maintain natural theology’s “dogmatic use” alone. We must ask what exactly is being assumed.
A “Soft” and “Hard” Dogmatic Use of Natural Theology
In some of the more esteemed retrieval theologians today, there is line of thinking that a “dogmatic use” of natural theology was preferred among the Reformed Orthodox and even by Thomas Aquinas. Now, there are two possible meanings to this. For lack of better terminology, let us call these a “soft” and a “hard” meaning to this use. This will help us gain a clearer picture of how demonstrative natural theological antecedents might be restricted in one’s theological system.
In other words, a theologian may choose one of several options. He may:
(1) deny that any natural theology informs his supernatural theology;
(2) allow that pre-demonstrative natural theology informs his supernatural theology, but deny that demonstrative natural theology does so;
(3) allow that demonstrative natural theology concerning God’s existence informs his supernatural theology, but deny that demonstrative natural theology concerning God’s attributes does so;
(4) allow that demonstrative natural theology concerning both God’s existence and attributes may inform his supernatural theology, but hold that orthodox theologians have typically drawn from scripturally controlled language as antecedents; or
(5) hold that true demonstrative natural theology is harmonious with scripturally controlled language in such a way that theologians ought not fear exploring additional potential antecedents from natural theology.
Clearly, one who holds to (1) would have no interest in a dogmatic use, since, in supernatural theology there can be no such use. A “hard” sense of the dogmatic use would encompass (2) and (3), while a “soft” sense would refer to (4). My own view is represented by (5). In the hard sense, a legitimate dogmatic use of natural theology must never be a demonstration from “common notions” concerning the data of general revelation, to real knowledge about God as the conclusion.
It is further allowed that, in apologetics, one may argue from common notions to God’s existence, yet no further to God’s attributes. A more expansive demonstration, from the natural system into the supernatural system, would allegedly constitute a positive account of theistic truth that is “established” from outside of the system of Christian truth. In a legitimate dogmatic use, this view supposes, what is important is that either Scripture or else Christian doctrine is already assented to, whether it forms the explicit premises of a demonstration or not. This is clearly incompatible with my thesis, as I have maintained that the conclusions to natural theological arguments are not mere signals that God exists, but are expressions of some one or several of His attributes.
On the other hand, there is that “soft” sense of the expression that is only highlighting how this or that theologian has utilized natural theological reasoning in the course of their work on dogmatics. For instance, it may be said that Aquinas or Charnock operated as believing Christian theists, and were either building the faith of those who were also already committed believers, showing the folly of unbelief, or even drawing forth subsequent divine attributes that are also implied by the logic.
This is how I charitably read those like Muller, Fesko, and Richard, who have spoken of this way of Thomas’s five ways or the natural theology of the Reformed orthodox.2 What the relevant premodern theologians were not doing was using rational demonstrations as a “check point” that one needs to pass before believing the rest of Christian truth. While natural theology may have its place in apologetics, this is not specifically what such authors were doing in their dogma. If this is what is meant, then, whether or not it is the whole story, it is a modest enough claim to be compatible with my thesis—that is, (4) above being compatible with (5). I see Muller, Fesko, and Richard as taking view (4).
Examples from Muller’s PRRD Volume 3
Muller cites Trelcatius, Turretin, Pictet, and Leigh as examples of those who embraced a demonstration of the unity of God from the very concept of God. In other words, something like Anselm’s logic was operative here, though Muller is quick to qualify the place of such demonstration “in the locus de Deo,”3 which presumably prevents a natural theology as principial—or “autonomous” to a Van Tillian—over and above the Christian system of doctrine. Muller also stresses the matter of dual sources for one’s premises: Scripture and nature. This becomes a reminder that it is treated within the doctrine of God: e.g.,
“Similarly, for Turretin and Pictet, unity was the primary concept derived, on the one hand, from Scripture and, on the other, from the concept of God: both therefore placed it immediately after their statements of the existence of God.”4
We will want to ask what this shows or safeguards against. Examples of natural theological reasoning from Mastricht and Pictet are described “as a necessary conclusion from his discussion of the divine essence,” “a necessary implication of the biblical language about God,” and “the logical outcome of his inquiry into the doctrine of Scripture.”5
Muller’s appeal to Pictet is instructive, as one larger quotation does indeed bear out his insistence that Pictet sees scriptural authority as the point of departure for consideration of divine unity. However, Pictet adds, under his Point 3,
“Reason itself also teaches this; for whoever has any thought and sense of deity, must acknowledge that only to be deity, than which nothing can be conceived better, more sublime, and more perfect; but of such a nature as this, there can be only one,”6 and so forth.
Muller recognizes this as “a significant adaptation of Anselm’s ontological argument,” yet in the next breath, “it is not here a proof of God’s existence but of his unity. It proves not that there is a God but that the God already know to the mind must be one and unique.”7
Evaluation of the Logic Behind the Historical Analysis
The point is not that Muller’s analysis of the reasoning is wrong, as a matter of history. Rather, we must ask a deeper question. We can pose the question with the example Muller used here.
If something like Anselm’s argument is acceptable to show God’s existence in apologetics, and if something like it is acceptable to move from an idea of God to show God’s attributes (here his unity) in dogmatics, then why exactly is it unacceptable to move from the apologetic inference to show God’s existence to the second step of a dogmatic inference to show God’s attributes? If the first was acceptable in one rational movement, and the second was acceptable as another rational movement, why may they not be combined as a singular demonstrative set of movements?
It is simply assumed that there is something like a wall of separation between fuller demonstrative natural theology (concerning God’s existence) and further demonstrative natural theology (concerning God’s attributes). The recurring fear tends to regard some perceived illegitimacy of rational demonstrations at “the foundations” of our beliefs, or systems of doctrine. I respectfully maintain that such a proposed illegitimacy has never made good on its claims.
To show that this is precisely the problem sensed by Muller, we may note that earlier, he shows two different approaches among the orthodox. Whereas Maccovius, Gomarus, and Walaeus begin from the names of God on to the attributes, Polanus, Turretin, and Mastricht seem to move from the arguments for God’s existence to those attributes. Muller goes as far as to note a Thomistic pattern in the latter, where “demonstration of esse precedes and in a sense permits discussion of essentia.”8
They key word here is to permit. This is what is meant by legitimizing, or, sometimes, establishing. Even if we fully grant such historical readings, it should be noted for the purpose of this study, that demonstrative natural theological antecedents—whether from a posteriori or a priori arguments—neither permit nor forbid the Christian theologian from proceeding rationally in systematizing with God and Scripture as his foundations.
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1. K. Scott Oliphint, Thomas Aquinas (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2017), 31.
2. Richard Muller, “The Dogmatic Function of St. Thomas‘ ’proofs’: A Protestant Appreciation,” Fides et Historia 24 (Sum 1992), 15-29; J. V. Fesko and Guy M. Richard, “Natural Theology and the Westminster Confession of Faith,” in Ligon Duncan, ed., The Westminster Confession into the 21st Century: Volume Three (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2009), 227-230; cf. Fesko, Reforming Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 74-81.
3. Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Volume III: The Divine Essence and Attributes (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 241.
4. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, III:241.
5. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, III:241.
6. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, III:241-42.
7. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, III:242.
8. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, III:231.
