Natural theology

“ But, when he speaks of Natural Theology, that higher nature seems to disappear; intellect, volition, and the power of moral causation, slip out of sight, and are blotted from his catalogue of natural facts. Human nature must thus be treated as no part of universal Nature, in order that a needlessly narrow and purely theoretical fence may be drawn round the science of Natural Theology! Natural Theology and Natural Religion are, in truth, terms originally adopted as mere antitheses to Revelation. ”

“ Next, science of religion became natural theology, which proved the existence of God by the nature of thought and by the constitution of reality, and also the immortality of the soul by the concept of the soul and by moral demands, thus constructing natural or rational dogmas and putting these dogmas into more or less friendly relations with traditional Christianity. ”

“ Therefore, theologians usually call it natural knowledge, and in its highest form natural theology, as being limited within the bounds above described. They call that the natural order in which the mind is limited to the explication of that capacity of apprehending God, or of that intuitive idea of God, which constitutes it rational, and is therefore limited to a relation to God corresponding to the mode of apprehending him. ”

“ Theology may be taken objectively as doctrine, or subjectively as knowledge. But it is not every knowledge of Divine doctrine, especially not the mere apprehension of it, that is called Theology. The term is restricted to scientific knowledge; and consequently Theology, in its technical sense, is the scientific exposition of the doctrine concerning God and things Divine.
The knowledge of God which can be obtained by means of Revelation is called Revealed Theology, in contra-distinction to Natural Theology, which depends on human reason alone. ”

“ Divine philosophy, or natural theology, is that knowledge concerning God which may be obtained by the contemplation of His creatures; and in this I note an excess rather than a deficience, because of the extreme prejudice which both religion and philosophy have received by being mixed together, making an heretical religion and a fabulous philosophy. ”

“ To adduce whatever evidence may be contained in general revelation for the immortality of the soul and a future state of rewards and punishments. Natural Natural theology is the systematic exposition of the truths in theology, natural or general revelation. Its data are the facts and laws of nature, as ascertained by physical, mental, and historical science. ”

“ And the very first attempt to answer these spontaneous questions produces the first theory of natural theology, inaugurating the reign of the earliest natural religion.
But the curiosity of the intellect never slumbers, and the problem repeats itself from age to age: What is the magnificent and mysterious power above man and before nature, the primordial Cause of all phenomena? ”

“ But to pursue this last topic as it deserves, would carry us away from the domain of Natural Theology, and into that of Theology true and proper.
Our business has lain with the Natural world, human nature itself included. ”

“ It is needless here to remark the necessarily imperfect and scanty character of Natural Religion; for most persons will allow that, however imperfect may be the knowledge of a Supreme Intelligence which we gather from the contemplation of the natural world, it is still of most essential use and value. And our purpose on this occasion is, not to show that Natural Theology is a perfect and satisfactory scheme, but to bring up our Natural Theology to the point of view in which it may be contemplated by the aid of our Natural Philosophy. ”

“ While, however, carefully distinguishing between Reason and Faith, and Nature and Grace, Theology at the same time insists upon the organic connection and mutual relation between the natural and the supernatural order. Hence it is more than ever important that Catholic doctrines should be set forth in such a way as to bring out their organic union and connection. ”

“ It is, moreover, much to the purpose to take notice, that the very imperfection of the evidences which Natural Theology can produce of the Divine attributes, removes some of the chief stumbling blocks to the belief of a revelation ”

“ All rational natural theology advances by tracing the immediate mechanical steps and particular processes in detail, and the physical causes in which the influences of the Great Moral Cause or Supreme Mind are manifested. ”

“ It is time that we should make up our minds what tone Scripture does take toward Nature, natural science, natural theology. Most of you, I doubt not, have made up your minds already, and in consequence have no fear of natural science, no fear for natural theology. ”

“ The belief that mind exists is essential to the whole argument by which we infer that the Deity exists. This belief ... is the foundation of Natural Theology in all its branches; and upon the scheme of materialism no rational, indeed no intelligible, account can be given of a first cause, or of the creation or government of the universe. ”

“ As days pass by, thought and utterance will bring less to both of us. We shall both have tinctured our lives more deeply with the Divine, or the Not-Divine; we shall both have sealed the secret fountains of our hearts, in readiness for the Grave and its inevitable Futurities.
⁂"Natural Theology attempts to demonstrate the existence of a personal First Cause, supreme Reason, and Will. The relations of mankind towards such a Being, are called natural religion. ”

“ But next, it will be demanded of us that natural theology shall set forth a God whose character is consistent with all the facts of nature, and not only with those which are pleasant and beautiful. That challenge was accepted, and I think victoriously, by Bishop Butler as far as the Christian religion is concerned. ”

“ In fact, this fabulous theology attributed everything to them which might happen not merely to a man, but to the most contemptible of men.17 Let us leave what he calls natural theology, which is the discussion of philosophers concerning the physical nature of the gods, and proceed to the third, which he calls civil, and which is that which the citizens, and especially the priests of human communities, are bound to know and administer. This treats of what gods are to be worshipped, and with what rites and sacrifices. ”

“ But if this be attained, it will go but a little way towards that acquaintance with God, which will set a man "at peace," and to communicate which is the object of the Divine Revelation. A man may be a most learned and complete expounder of the truths of natural theology, and yet be pitiably blind on the all-important subject of a Sinner's justification with God.
Perhaps the best mode of arriving at the true use of the natural sciences, is to examine how they are treated in the Word of God. ”

“ What philosophers call 'natural theology' has been one way of appeasing this craving; that poetry of nature in which our English literature is so rich has been another way. Now, suppose a mind of the latter of our two classes, whose imagination is pent in consequently, and who takes its {41} facts 'hard;' suppose it, moreover, to feel strongly the craving for communion, and yet to realize how desperately difficult it is to construe the scientific order of nature either theologically or poetically,—and what result can there be but inner discord and contradiction? ”

“ God is the creator of the world.]
[Footnote 28: Christ, the Son of God, who is the creator of the world, creates the Church.]
In this formula we have the synthesis of reason and faith, of philosophy and theology, of nature and grace. It is the formula of the natural and supernatural worlds, or rather of the natural universe, elevated into a supernatural order and directed to a supernatural end. In the order of instruction, Ecclesia comes first, as the medium of teaching correct conceptions concerning God, Christ, and the relations in which they stand toward the human race. ”

“ while yet he himself is an example of that which we wish to illustrate, that those who have obtained the furthest insight into nature, have been in all ages firm believers in God. ”

“ For our second conception Natural Religion is viewed simply as the voice of human nature itself, whose faith is to be expressed, whose ideals are to be recorded, whose will and whose needs are to be, above all, consulted and portrayed, since, for this view, the consciousness of those who believe in religious truth is, when once made articulate, its own apology. But, for our third conception, the office of the student of Natural Religion is to deal with the most fundamental metaphysical problems. ”

“ In this way the theologians could not help inclining to what is called natural religion; and, when the discussion was how far the light of nature may suffice to advance us in the knowledge of God and the improving and ennobling of ourselves, they commonly ventured to decide in its favour without much scruple. ”

“ PUTTING aside, then, for the present, supernaturalism and all those views of God which are distinctively Christian, we find a theology in which all men, whether they consider it or not, do actually agree—that which is concerned with God in Nature. I do not here raise the question of causes or laws; let it be allowed that Nature is merely the collective name of a number of coexistences and sequences, and that God has no meaning different from Nature. ”

“ In endeavoring to rise from Nature to a conception of a creating and ruling spirit, different in character from what observation of Nature would lead us to imagine that spirit to be, theology has become involved in endless contradictions. The Christian idea of the Deity would seem to have been developed in the light of the sympathies which have arisen in the domestic and social life of man. ”

“ You believe the direct influence of the Spirit of God upon every individual mind is necessary, to make him a religious being. I cannot but think that the indirect influence, the beautiful and ever-renewed miracle of nature, the observation of God's providence in the care of his creatures, and the study of the adaptation of Christianity to our particular dispositions—not merely by a process of reasoning, but aided by the religious sentiment which seems to me innate and natural to every human being—is more powerful. ”

“ And now he enunciates the great principle or law which governs not only this fact of resurrection, but the whole evolution of God's works: "first that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual." It is this law which we see ruling the history of creation and the history of man. The spiritual is the culminating point towards which all the processes of nature tend. The gradual development of what is spiritual, of will, of love, of moral excellence—this, so far as man can see, is the end towards which all nature constantly and steadily is working. ”

“ Christianity itself is in this aspect not so much a revelation of the supernatural as the highest bond of the great unity of nature. It reveals to us the perfect Man, who is also one with God, and the mission of this Divine Man to restore the harmonies of God and humanity, and consequently also of man with his natural environment in this world, and with his spiritual environment in the higher world of the future. ”

“ The holy scripture, therefore, designing by revealed religion to maintain and improve natural religion, to repair the decays of it, and supply the defects of it, since the fall, for the reviving of the precepts of the law of nature; lays down, at first, this principle of the unclouded light of nature, That this world was, in the beginning of time, created by a Being of infinite wisdom and power, who was himself before all time, and all worlds. ”

“ But, if, on the one hand, the study of Nature be one part of the study of God, is it not true, on the other, that he who believes only in Nature is a theist, and has a theology? Men slide easily from the most momentous controversies into the most contemptible logomachies. If we will look at things, and not merely at words, we shall soon see that the scientific man has a theology and a God, a most impressive theology, a most awful and glorious God. ”

“ In summing up the whole subject, we see that in this field, as in so many others, the triumph of scientific thought has gradually done much to evolve in the world not only a theology but also a religious spirit more and more worthy of the goodness of God and of the destiny of man. ”

“ His Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature—a book for which I entertain the most profound respect—is based on a belief that the God of nature and the God of grace are one; and that therefore, the God who satisfies our conscience ought more or less to satisfy our reason also. ”

“ Theologians there are, who, nourished in certain sects, seek the truth of nature in all her specific natural forms in which they see the eternal essence, the specific substantial perpetuator of the eternal generation and mutation of things, which are called after their founders and [Pg 66] builders and above them all presides the form of forms, [Q] the fountain of light, very truth of very truth, God of gods, through whom all is full of divinity, truth, entity, goodness. ”

“ Here permit us to say that we believe Christianity to be not only of human origin, but of natural origin also; I that is, a natural outgrowth, like other systems, of the religious elements of the human mind—a hypothesis which accounts most beautifully for the numerous human imperfections now visible in nearly every line of its teachings. ”