Natural theology

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

— Romans 1:20 (ESV)

Natural theology is the knowledge of God that human beings can gain from reason reflecting on creation, providence, and conscience, apart from the special revelation of Scripture. This knowledge is real: it discloses God’s existence and something of his power and glory clearly enough to leave every person without excuse for unbelief. It is not, however, saving knowledge; it cannot supply what a sinner needs to know of God’s will for salvation, which comes only through Scripture.¹²

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession opens with a chapter that Reformed confessions generally share in substance: the Westminster Confession (1646) and the Savoy Declaration (1658) are “patterned after” the same wording, which the 1689 largely retains.³ Its first paragraph states:

“The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience, although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and his will which is necessary unto salvation.”²

This paragraph makes two claims at once, and both matter. First, “the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence” really do manifest God’s goodness, wisdom, and power, to the point of leaving sinners “inexcusable.” Natural theology is not a legal fiction; it is a genuine, if limited, disclosure of God. Second, that same natural theology falls short of “saving knowledge”: it cannot supply what Scripture alone supplies, the knowledge of God and his will “necessary unto salvation.” The confession’s own structure reflects this ordering by placing this affirmation inside its chapter “Of the Holy Scriptures,” subordinating natural theology to the higher, sufficient, and necessary authority of Scripture rather than treating it as an independent source of doctrine.

Biblical Basis

Paul argues that “what can be known about God is plain” to all people, “because God has shown it to them,” since “his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:19-20). The purpose Paul states for this knowledge is not salvation but accountability: it leaves humanity “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20), and in its corrupted use it is exchanged for idolatry (Rom. 1:21-23). Paul makes a parallel argument about conscience: even those “who do not have the law” show “that the work of the law is written on their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness” (Rom. 2:14-15). The Psalmist makes the same point about creation: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1), a testimony that “goes out through all the earth” without needing spoken “words” (Ps. 19:3-4). In his sermons to Gentile audiences, Paul appeals to this same natural knowledge directly, reminding the Lystrans that God “did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons” (Acts 14:17), and telling the Athenians that God made every nation “that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him,” since “he is actually not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27).

Historical Development

Patristic and medieval synthesis

Medieval scholastic theology distinguished natural revelation, addressed to reason and available to every person, from the supernatural revelation of Scripture, addressed to fallen humanity as sinners. On this view, natural revelation supplied the data for “a scientific natural theology by human reason,” sufficient to reach a real, if incomplete, knowledge of God as the world’s first cause, while the “mysteries” of the faith, the Trinity, the incarnation, and redemption, remained matters of special revelation and could not be demonstrated by reason alone.⁴ Thomas Aquinas held that reason and special revelation could never genuinely conflict; an apparent conflict signaled an error in philosophy, not a defect in either source of truth, even as he denied that reason alone could penetrate revelation’s own mysteries.⁴

Reformation and Reformed orthodoxy

John Calvin affirmed that “it is beyond controversy that there is, in the human mind, by natural instinct, a sense of divinity [sensus divinitatis],” a “seed of religion” (semen religionis) implanted in every person and reinforced by the created order itself, so that “no spot in the universe” fails to display “some sparks of his glory.”¹ Bavinck notes that while “Luther and the Lutheran confessions are very negative on all natural theology, the Reformed confessions and theologians consistently affirmed it.”¹ Later Reformed orthodox theologians developed this into a fuller distinction between a false natural theology, the superstition of pagan idolatry, and a true natural theology: a real but corrupted natural knowledge of God, useful for refuting atheism, demonstrating that God exists, and rendering the ungodly without excuse, but never sufficient on its own for salvation, since saving faith requires the knowledge of Christ himself (John 17:3; Acts 4:12).⁵ Steven Duby argues this Reformed orthodox consensus, drawing on Scripture (Rom. 1:19-20; 2:14-15; Ps. 19), conscience, and the broad consent of the nations, amounted to a “broadly Thomistic conception of natural and supernatural theology” that later generations, reading the Reformed tradition through Karl Barth and Cornelius Van Til, have not readily associated with it.⁶

Rationalism and the modern rejection

The Reformers and their heirs had rejected the medieval “dualism” that let unaided reason construct an independent, scientific system of theology from nature alone, insisting instead that sin had left “the handwriting of God in nature” obscured and human reason too darkened to read it correctly apart from Scripture’s own correction.⁴ Enlightenment Rationalism and Deism reversed that balance, exalting natural revelation and human reason at the expense of Scripture, and Friedrich Schleiermacher went further still, collapsing the distinction between natural and revealed religion into human religious feeling generally.⁷ Karl Barth reacted sharply against that entire trajectory: rather than restoring a place for natural revelation, he denied it altogether, holding that “revelation never exists on any horizontal line, but always comes down perpendicularly from above.”⁷ Craig Carter writes: “Barth rejects natural theology and the idea that one can prove the existence of God by reason or that one can have any knowledge of God through conscience, intuition, or nature.”⁸

Opposing Views

Roman Catholic natural theology

Following Aquinas, Roman Catholic theology holds that unaided reason can attain a genuine, demonstrable knowledge of God’s existence from his effects in creation, functioning as a rational foundation, or praeambula fidei, for the articles of faith that reason alone cannot reach.⁴

Lutheran rejection

Lutheran confessional theology has historically taken a far more negative view of natural theology than the Reformed tradition, treating the knowledge available to fallen reason apart from Scripture as too compromised to build upon.¹

Neo-orthodox rejection

Barth departed from both the Roman Catholic and Reformed traditions on this point. He held that God is known solely through his self-revelation in Jesus Christ and denied that reason, conscience, or nature affords any independent access to him at all, a position Carter argues left Barth without an answer to the Enlightenment’s own challenges to Christian metaphysics.⁸

Objections and Responses

If humanity is totally depraved, how can fallen reason gain any genuine knowledge of God at all? Total depravity describes the extent of sin’s corruption, that no faculty of the human person escapes it, not the destruction of every capacity a faculty once had. Berkhof identifies “the light of God’s revelation” that “shines in nature” as itself one of the means by which common grace operates, restraining sin’s effects and preserving enough of that light to guide “the conscience of the natural man,” even though it saves no one.⁹ This is the same twofold judgment the confession itself makes: natural theology is corrupted but not annihilated, real but not redemptive.

Doesn’t starting from natural theology concede neutral, autonomous common ground to the unbeliever, as though reasoning about God could proceed apart from him? This concern is particularly associated with Van Til and twentieth-century Reformed apologetics, whose wariness of natural theology, along with Barth’s outright rejection of it, has led many contemporary readers to assume the Reformed tradition lacks a natural theology of its own.⁶ The older Reformed orthodox usage, however, never treated natural theology as neutral ground independent of God: it is itself revelation, given by God through the created order, to which fallen reason remains objectively obligated and without excuse (Rom. 1:19-21) whether or not it is acknowledged as such. Mastricht’s own use of it, refuting atheists and demonstrating that God exists, works from inside that revelatory framework rather than from a standpoint neutral between belief and unbelief.⁵

Related Doctrines

References

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 7, “Knowing God”: “This is what we mean by ‘natural theology’: the affirmation that such a natural disposition or capacity for knowing God exists in every created human person… Although Luther and the Lutheran confessions are very negative on all natural theology, the Reformed confessions and theologians consistently affirmed it.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 1, “Of the Holy Scriptures,” para. 1. ↩ ↩²
Micah John McCormick, “Historical Survey,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 68: “The Savoy Declaration (1658) and the London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) are explicit in their affirmation of active obedience. Both are patterned after the WCF and retain the vast majority of the WCF’s wording.” ↩
Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 23. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 1, Prolegomena, trans. Todd M. Rester, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2018), chap. 1, “The Nature of Theology,” 183-85. ↩ ↩²
Steven J. Duby, God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology, Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), chap. 2, “Preparation for the School of Grace,” 95-96: “Through the influence of twentieth-century authors like Karl Barth and Cornelius Van Til, the contemporary student of Reformed theology may not readily associate it with a strong natural theology tradition, but the early Reformed do in fact emphasize that the human race possesses a natural knowledge of God, even if that knowledge has been tragically corrupted by sin.” ↩ ↩²
Berkhof, 25. ↩ ↩²
Craig A. Carter, “Do We Worship the God of the Bible?,” in Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), chap. 9. ↩ ↩²
Berkhof, 425. ↩