A Theology of Word and Spirit: Authority and Method in Theology (Christian Foundations Christian Foundations) by Donald G. Bloesch

Author:Donald G. Bloesch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-03-24T08:16:00+00:00

Natural Theology Today

We are presently living in a period marked by the resurgence of natural theology, even of nature religion. This can be seen in feminist theology, process theology and the neomystical theology of the New Age and the New Thought movements. Nature is no longer subordinate to Christ but now supersedes Christ as the locus of the sacred.85 God is no longer Lord and Creator of the universe but now the creative power of the universe, the Womb of Being, the Life-Force, the Primal Matrix, or "the sensitive Nature within Nature" (Bernard Meland). Elizabeth Achtemeier gives some compelling reasons for rejecting natural theology:

Because God is not bound up with or revealed through the created world, but is revealed only through his own Word (whose meaning includes his acts), nature's processes and structures are not revelatory of the nature of God. If they were, then we could pretty well conclude that the big gods eat the little gods, that death is as much a part of the divine purpose as is life, and that, judging from the deity's supposed "incarnation" in human beings, God is evil as well as good. The Bible knows better, and so it refuses to identify God with his world. According to the second commandment of the Decalogue, we cannot find him revealed through "anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. "86.

George Hunsinger is also sharply critical of the infatuation of contemporary theologians with natural theology. He sees it as presaging the loss of the prophetic dimension of Christian faith, for if there is no God who stands over and against nature and history, then there is no criterion that can judge nature and history. "The Christ of natural theology is always openly or secretly the relativized Christ of culture. The trajectory of natural theology leads from the Christ who is not supreme to the Christ who is not sufficient and finally to the Christ who is not neces- sary."87

The battle against natural theology in our day will cross all denominational and confessional lines. Sad to say, modern conservative evangelical theology is as much in the grip of natural theology as is the new liberal theology. May we rediscover with Karl Barth that there is no way that leads from nature or history to the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ. There is only God's way to us revealed and fulfilled in Christ. To celebrate God's coming to us as the Sun of righteousness (Mal 4:2) means to let go of confidence in ourselves, in our own powers of perception and conception, and trust only in the light that breaks into our lives from the beyond. We then know only because we are known by God; we then believe only because we are set free to believe by his grace; we then obey only because we are impelled to obey out of the love that is poured into our hearts by Christ Jesus (Rom 5:5).

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