The Failure of Natural Theology
The Failure of Natural Theology

Author: Jeffrey D Johnson

Publisher: New Studies in Theology Series

Published: 2021-09-15

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9781952599378

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Aristotle's cosmological argument is the foundation of Aquinas's doctrine of God. For Thomas, the cosmological argument not only speaks of God's existence but also of God's nature. By learning that the unmoved mover is behind all moving objects, we learn something true about the essence of God-principally, that God is immobile. But therein lies the problem for Thomas. The Catholic Church had already condemned Aristotle's unmoved mover because, according to Aristotle, the unmoved mover is unable to be the moving cause (i.e., Creator) and governor of the universe-or else he would cease to be immobile. By seeking to baptize Aristotle into the Catholic Church, however, Thomas gave his life to seeking to explain how God can be both immobile and the moving cause of the universe. Thomas even looked to the pantheistic philosophy of Pseudo-Dionysius for help. But even with Dionysius's aid, Thomas failed to reconcile the god of Aristotle with the Trinitarian God of the Bible. If Thomas would have rejected the natural theology of Aristotle by placing the doctrine of the Trinity, which is known only by divine revelation, at the foundation of his knowledge of God, he would have rid himself of the irresolvable tension that permeates his philosophical theology. Thomas could have realized that the Trinity alone allows for God to be the only self-moving being-because the Trinity is the only being not moved by anything outside himself but freely capable of creating and controlling contingent things in motion.

Saving Natural Theology from Thomas Aquinas
Saving Natural Theology from Thomas Aquinas

Author: Jeffrey D. Johnson

Publisher:

Published: 2021-12-17

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 9781952599460

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Is natural theology compatible with presuppositional apologetics? At first glance, it may seem like it's not. Natural theology is closely linked to classical apologetics, and classical apologetics, due to the influence of Thomas Aquinas, is so interwoven with Greek philosophy. And Greek philosophy has no place in presuppositionalism. Yet, a natural theology free of the influence of Greek philosophy is consistent with presuppositionalism. Presuppositionalists do not take issue with natural revelation or with the body of doctrine communicated in natural revelation; they are against pagan philosophers who have suppressed, twisted, and perverted what has been communicated in natural revelation. Greek philosophers did not confess the God of natural revelation. Far from it. They rejected what they knew in their hearts by attempting to formulate their own explanation of God. The god they created was an abstract being that is not the personal Caretaker and Judge of the universe. Such a god is not the God of natural revelation.Thomas Aquinas is the one who ruined natural theology. Not that Thomas was the first to mix Greek philosophy with theology, but he has done the most damage in syncretizing the pantheistic notions flowing out of Athens with the ontologically distinct and self-contained God who personally revealed himself in Jerusalem. Therefore, if natural theology can be saved, it must be saved from Thomas Aquinas.

The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology
The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology

Author: Michael Sudduth

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-24

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1317018079

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Michael Sudduth examines three prominent objections to natural theology that have emerged in the Reformed streams of the Protestant theological tradition: objections from the immediacy of our knowledge of God, the noetic effects of sin, and the logic of theistic arguments. Distinguishing between the project of natural theology and particular models of natural theology, Sudduth argues that none of the main Reformed objections is successful as an objection to the project of natural theology itself. One particular model of natural theology - the dogmatic model - is best suited to handle Reformed concerns over natural theology. According to this model, rational theistic arguments represent the reflective reconstruction of the natural knowledge of God by the Christian in the context of dogmatic theology. Informed by both contemporary religious epistemology and the history of Protestant philosophical theology, Sudduth’'s examination illuminates the complex nature of the project of natural theology and its place in the Reformed tradition.

The Bible, Natural Theology and Natural Law: Conflict Or Compromise?
The Bible, Natural Theology and Natural Law: Conflict Or Compromise?

Author: Robert A. Morey

Publisher: Xulon Press

Published: 2010-05

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 1609571436

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Dr. Robert Morey's study of natural law and natural theology raises important questions that every Bible-believer will want answered. His careful study and explanation of various Bible passages will yield a useful orientation to the classic arguments furnished us by the Reformers and their faithful heirs. Dr. Nelson Kloosterman The present volume presents a devastating critique of natural theology and natural law. Its argument is solidly biblical, and its accumulation of biblical data is overwhelming. I hope that God prospers it so that many will read it and take heed. Dr. John Frame A.W. Tozer said, "the most important thing about any person is what comes into their mind when they think of the word God." If you digest Dr. Morey's book, you will think of 'God' as the glorious One depicted in Holy Scripture." John G. Reisinger, I appreciate Dr. Morey's emphasis on making the Bible alone the theoretical basis for science and the arts. All throughout the book he consistently points to the Scriptures as the basis for sustaining everything else. Dr. Simon Kistemaker

A Theology of Failure
A Theology of Failure

Author: Marika Rose

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0823284085

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Everyone agrees that theology has failed; but the question of how to understand and respond to this failure is complex and contested. Against both the radical orthodox attempt to return to a time before the theology’s failure and the deconstructive theological attempt to open theology up to the hope of a future beyond failure, Rose proposes an account of Christian identity as constituted by, not despite, failure. Understanding failure as central to theology opens up new possibilities for confronting Christianity’s violent and kyriarchal history and abandoning the attempt to discover a pure Christ outside of the grotesque materiality of the church. The Christian mystical tradition begins with Dionysius the Areopagite’s uncomfortable but productive conjunction of Christian theology and Neoplatonism. The tensions generated by this are central to Dionysius’s legacy, visible not only in subsequent theological thought but also in much twentieth century continental philosophy as it seeks to disentangle itself from its Christian ancestry. A Theology of Failure shows how the work of Slavoj Žižek represents an attempt to repeat the original move of Christian mystical theology, bringing together the themes of language, desire, and transcendence not with Neoplatonism but with a materialist account of the world. Tracing these themes through the work of Dionysius and Derrida and through contemporary debates about the gift, violence, and revolution, this book offers a critical theological engagement with Žižek's account of social and political transformation, showing how Žižek's work makes possible a materialist reading of apophatic theology and Christian identity.

God and Evil
God and Evil

Author: Herbert McCabe

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2010-02-26

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1441111565

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Herbert McCabe was one of the most original and creative theologians of recent years. Continuum has published numerous volumes of unpublished typescripts left behind by him following his untimely death in 2001. This book is the sixth to appear. McCabe was deeply immersed in the philosophical theology of St Thomas Aquinas and was responsible in part for the notable revival of interest in the thought of Aquinas in our time. Here he tackles the problem of evil by focusing and commenting on what Aquinas said about it. What should we mean by words such as 'good', 'bad', 'being', 'cause', 'creation', and 'God'? These are McCabe's main questions. In seeking to answer them he demonstrates why it cannot be shown that evil disproves God's existence. He also explains how we can rightly think of evil in a world made by God. McCabe's approach to God and evil is refreshingly unconventional given much that has been said about it of late. Yet it is also very traditional. It will interest and inform anyone seriously interested in the topic.

Reforming Apologetics
Reforming Apologetics

Author: J. V. Fesko

Publisher: Baker Academic

Published: 2019-03-19

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1493411306

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Challenging the dominant Van Tillian approach in Reformed apologetics, this book by a leading expert in contemporary Reformed theology sets forth the principles that undergird a classic Reformed approach. J. V. Fesko's detailed exegetical, theological, and historical argument takes as its starting point the classical Reformed understanding of the "two books" of God's revelation: nature and Scripture. Believers should always rest on the authority of Scripture but also can and should appeal to the book of nature in the apologetic task.

Theology's Epistemological Dilemma
Theology's Epistemological Dilemma

Author: Kevin Diller

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2014-10-24

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 0830896996

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Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga are not thought of as theological allies. Barth is famous for his opposition to philosophy's role in theology, while Plantinga is famous for his emphasis on warranted belief. Kevin Diller argues that they actually offer a unified response to the central epistemological dilemma in theology.

Science and Religion
Science and Religion

Author: Yves Gingras

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2017-06-16

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1509518967

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Today we hear renewed calls for a dialogue between science and religion: why has the old question of the relations between science and religion now returned to the public domain and what is at stake in this debate? To answer these questions, historian and sociologist of science Yves Gingras retraces the long history of the troubled relationship between science and religion, from the condemnation of Galileo for heresy in 1633 until his rehabilitation by John Paul II in 1992. He reconstructs the process of the gradual separation of science from theology and religion, showing how God and natural theology became marginalized in the scientific field in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast to the dominant trend among historians of science, Gingras argues that science and religion are social institutions that give rise to incompatible ways of knowing, rooted in different methodologies and forms of knowledge, and that there never was, and cannot be, a genuine dialogue between them. Wide-ranging and authoritative, this new book on one of the fundamental questions of Western thought will be of great interest to students and scholars of the history of science and of religion as well as to general readers who are intrigued by the new and much-publicized conversations about the alleged links between science and religion.