Those thinkers who illustrate the second line of approach to the religious problems with which we are concerned are not distinguished from those who illustrate the first by their view of the Bible, but by their view of natural science and philosophy.

All those in the second group felt compelled for one reason or another to acknowledge the legitimacy of philosophical reflection and research, which at the time included what we should call scientific study, and they were more or less sensitive to possible charges of dishonesty in the refusal to accept established facts and valid conclusions and in the attempt to bend the meaning of biblical texts to make them consistent with such facts and conclusions. This did not alter the fact that interpretations and reinterpretations of the Bible had to be made, and that there were frequent disagreements between the interpreters, and some changes of mind. The assertions of rational inquiry were and are irreconcilable with the plain meaning of certain biblical texts, not least those concerning the creation of the world and its dissolution and re-creation through the Deluge; and therefore attempts to preserve the plain meaning of the text in the light of new knowledge were doomed to failure from the start, and what was plain to one interpreter was far from plain to another.

At the same time, the only natural theology available to such thinkers was invalid. The rational inquiry and reflection they rightly recognised as legitimate did not offer firm ground for belief in God, any more than it could be reconciled, in the way they wanted, with the assertions of biblical revelation.