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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
“NATURAL theology” is generally used as the name of a study which seeks to “get at religious truth” by the use of man's reasoning powers, and not to expound revelation. But I want to limit its application to part of this field. By natural theology I mean here a study which seeks to “get at religious truth” by an empirical examination of things, and not by “pure reason.” It is a (would–be) “scientific” theology. An example of a natural theologian in this sense would be, I suppose, the author of any one of the Bridgewater Treatises, or Paley, or F. R. Tennant. Perhaps I might have called this kind of theology “empirical theology” (or “empiricist theology”); but I do not want to invent new terms more than I have to.
1 Not by everybody, of course; the distinction is clearly drawn by Tennant, in Philosophical Theology and is adopted by Professor Farmer in his Gifford Lectures Revelation and Religion (London 1954).Google Scholar
page 220 note 1 “If the cause be known only by the effect, we never ought to ascribe to it any qualities, beyond what are precisely requisite to produce the effect.” Hume,Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, SelbyBigge's edition, p. 136.
page 221 note 1 Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Kemp Smith's edition, p. 201. The view that there is “a principle of order” in things is not the same as the naive view that things “just are” ordered. But I have found it convenient to treat them here as if they were the same.
page 221 note 2 Dialogues, p.169.
page 222 note 1 Enquiry xi; Dialogues, Part ii.
page 222 note 2 Enquiry, p. 148.
page 224 note 1 It is, incidentally, unfair to criticize the natural theologian (or the rationalistic theologian) for purporting to prove by argument what he already believes by faith. What is wrong with this? He is not trying to prove God's existence to himself; he is trying to prove it for other people; though it may well be that, as a practical point, such a “proof” is only likely to seem cogent to someone who shares, though it may be in only the vaguest way, his faith. Mention of vagueness prompts me to say that I think the value of the “proofs” lies ultimately in the help they afford to us towards getting clear the idea of God.
