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Reformed Classicalist

Redeeming Natural Theology & the Essence of Reformed Orthodoxy: Part 2

REALISM, NATURAL THEOLOGY, AND AN OBJECTIVE SYSTEM


Now the connection between realism and natural theology can be most clearly perceived in the words of Paul in Romans 1:20. Those “invisible things” of God are both the fulfillment of what was meant by universals as well as the substance of the principium essendi in dogmatic theology. This is a critical point.

Whether we are speaking of a (1) divine attribute or (2) divine idea,1 that universal is itself a genus for both natural theology and dogmatic theology. If not, then we have relativism.

Divine goodness for example must be what it is (A = A) and not something else, whether it is contemplated in the moral argument for God’s existence or in one’s theology proper. How the finite sinner performs at this is quite another matter than the objective truth of the propositions in question.


If one were to claim that two identical propositions about such can be true natural theology for the believer but false natural theology for the pagan, then it is not simply natural theology that falls, but the whole house of theology. This would be to affirm the double truth theory of Averroes. The words of Paul is Romans 1 may be the simplest way of access into this subject. However, Rehnman alludes to an “anachronistic interpretation of natural theology as a theological and not a philosophical discipline,”2 and he has in mind the present scholarship relying too much on the concerns of the theological prolegomena.3


It is not that the theological backdrop is a dead end. However, it is easy to forget that seventeenth century theologians were expertly trained in philosophy as well. It may be that those more philosophical works are better sources for how natural theology functioned, even in relation to dogmatics at points. Rehnman references Vermigli, Keckerman, and Alsted in particular, as sharing the classical view of metaphysics being “after physics” and speaking of the same subject matter as theology.4


In the majority of the works being considered today, those Reformed Scholastics erred on the side of reminding their readers at every turn that while there is a natural theology and that it has profit, it has no advantage for salvation and cannot be foundational for the Reformed system of dogmatics. The first of those points is somewhat uncontroversial, as it was chiefly aimed at the Socinians, who held only to a natural theology that could ascend to saving grace. However it is that second point that will be relevant to the essence of the difference between the true and the false.


If nothing else, it is exceedingly ambiguous to speak of natural theology as a “foundation” to dogmatics, whether for good or for ill. This could mean several different things. Turretin, it should be noted, was more careful to say, “The question is not whether this knowledge is perfect or saving … but only whether any knowledge of God remains in man sufficient to lead him to believe that God exists and must be religiously worshipped.”5


The concept of “foundational natural theology” became more articulate in Kuyper and Bavinck. Natural theology could not simultaneously carve out “a separate theology alongside of special theology”6 and at the same time define articles of faith. If what we mean is that natural theology may not prove anything about the specific God of the Bible from the principles of philosophy, because (1) that would make it foundational to faith, or (2) that would make natural theology its own principium at the beginning of dogmatic theology, then the complaint suffers from basic incoherence. As Rehnman concisely put it: “This notion is confused, since if the principles of natural theology are supernatural, then either it is not natural theology or it is circular.”7


As more evidence of Rehnman’s point about the Reformed reduction of natural theology to covenantal and soteriological categories, John Owen and Thomas Goodwin spent much of their reflection on the nature of Adam’s use of natural theology.8 Junius, Turretin, and Mastricht had treated the same question, but in less detail. The dichotomy between the covenant of works and covenant of grace raised the question of the gifts both lost in man’s original constitution in Adam and regained in Christ by the Holy Spirit.


Aside from all else that was at stake in such discussions, this left natural theology after the fall yet before regeneration in a kind of no man’s land. That it continued was denied by no one among the Reformed. Disagreement emerged over the extent of its usefulness. But here again, the soteriological consideration almost always overshadowed the epistemological questions.


J. V. Fesko and Guy Richard give the most helpful concise summary of a threefold positive employment of natural theology among the early Reformed: “to render man inexcusable, to provide man with general principles of conduct, and to serve an instrumental role in apologetics.”9 Such clarity more sharply focuses the advance that my thesis proposes. Natural theology does more than this because natural theology is more than this. Accordingly, one more seemingly obscure angle on the reduction of natural theology needs to be explored.

Muller (and Fesko following his lead10) understands the significance of the flow of the Summa Theologica, from sacred doctrine (Q.1) to natural theology (Q.2) to represent the subordination of natural theology to dogmatic theology, lest articles of faith have a “rational foundation.”11

One must not lightly take swipes at giants, but this whole language seems very forced. On the one hand, Muller well recognizes, in his words, “the soteriologically reinterpreted discussion of reason and revelation”12 among the Reformed. He is aware that Thomas has been misread in the past generations for reasons that roughly correspond to this recasting of natural theology. But the present scholarship seems only to see that soteriological critique of natural theology to pertain to the question of whether it saves. Typically they do not see how it relates to the “rational foundations” question.


Returning to the beginning of the Summa, there are two basic reasons to consider the Muller-Fesko approach to be a misreading: first, Thomas explicitly bases subsequent truths in his theology proper upon premises from the natural theology section—a case in point being divine simplicity on pure actuality (Q. 3), which Thomas refers back to the impossibility of potentiality in the First Cause already established from Q. 2; second, when Thomas does rest his natural theology upon what Scripture says (e. g. Psa. 14:1; Rom. 1:19-20) the whole point is to maintain what those texts are saying.

And what these biblical texts are saying is, quite simply, that the human mind can infer the existence of God from this or that objective reality in creation. Consequently, those truths in and about nature form perfectly “rational” first premises of such deductions.

It violates no part of the sola Scriptura principle to draw conclusions (even dogmatic conclusions) from extra-biblically formed premises. To suggest otherwise is a product of Van Tillianism and not traditional Reformed theology. Even Rehnman uses this language that has preoccupied the Reformed since at least the turn of the twentieth century. In commenting on how the medievalists and the Reformed all inherited Aristotle’s natural theological categories, he adds: “Aquinas and philosophers within reformed orthodoxy, obviously did not suppose that it served as a rational foundation for revealed theology.”13 Again, this “rational foundation” is a nebulous concept which needs much academic definition. For my own part, I am persuaded that it is an altogether indefensible notion.


DIFFERENTIA I: ARCHETYPAL AND ECTYPAL


One of the first problems Junius attempts to resolve is how different things can be called “theology” when one is infinite and another finite, or one is true and the other is false. He lands on what he calls an “analogical equivocation.” It is not a pure equivocation, as they are all “theologies” in a sense: but all in significantly different senses.14 Does this concept of “analogical equivocation” work? Asselt remarks that Junius’s use of the word “theology,” for both God’s knowledge and human knowledge, is used “univocally.”15


This distinction may draw back on elements of Scotism, but in explicit words it is the unique contribution of Junius. He begins with archetypal theology. This is “the wisdom of God Himself … essential and uncreated,”16 or “the divine wisdom of divine matters.”17 Here again Scotus is seen to loom large: “God is the only true theologian because only theologia in se is theology in the true sense of the word.”18 He moves on to ectypal theology. This is “nonessential and created … as a certain copy and, rather, shadowy image of the formal, divine, and essential theological image.”19 This distinction is absolutely necessary to Junius. It follows from the truth that “God … is above every genus, essence beyond essence.”20 And this is so because of God’s simplicity and infinity: his reason and knowledge of himself being the same as the divine essence.


Interestingly, Turretin and Trelcatius rejected calling God’s knowledge of himself “theology.” Only human knowledge of God should properly be called by that term.21 An implication follows. Junius denies that ectypal is “contained in” the former.22 Rather, using the imagery of a fountain flowing into lakes, the key is in an entirely one-way communication. This he calls a “twofold reason of this wisdom.”23


He next divides ectypal theology into two kinds: absolute and relative. The absolute kind is best understood as in the object itself (in se), whereas the relative kind is best understood as in the subject (in subjecto). The former is still God’s knowledge of himself, but now as it may be communicated, whereas the latter is God’s communication of that.

Here we can see how Junius is applying his concept of “analogical equivocation.” He is comparing the absolute and relative under the genus “theology” knowing that they are not univocal.

Asselt claims that in this division Junius “countered Aquinas’s suggestion of an analogy of being (analogia entis) between God and creature.”24


While the threefold ectypal kinds (union, vision, revelation25) are interesting and profound, a treatment of them exceeds the boundaries of our study. But that last one, that which is revealed to us in this life, brings us to the final division Junius makes within true theology: that between the natural and the supernatural.


There are two elements of natural theology: 1. principles (common notions), whether implanted or acquired;26 and then 2. conclusions. Common notions are defended by Junius.27 This will be important because at no point are we to think that Junius has reservations about natural revelation as such. There is even greater clarity on this point with Mastricht. He lists a fourfold use and threefold abuse of natural theology that are both instructive.28 Further guidelines are given as to when natural theology should be used, and that in his treatment of Scripture.29 As if all of this was not enough, he offers four defenses of natural theology from: (i) Scripture; (ii) conscience; (iii) the consent of nations; (iv) experience.30 So there is no doubt that the two had a positive view toward natural theology in its pure form.


One key difference between the two forms here for Junius is modal: by nature and by grace. Another question of mode regards those two stages of natural theology: principles and inferences.31 Reformed Epistemology’s “objection to natural theology” has to do with theistic belief being properly basic.32 In other words, since it is rational to believe in God apart from any acts of discursive reasoning, natural theology is superfluous and the sensus divinitatis33 at the “principles” level is enough to account for Paul’s language in Romans 1:20. However, this was not the consensus of the Reformed Scholastics.

While the concept was already latent in the duplex cognitio Dei discussed by Calvin and his contemporaries, by the seventeenth century, the distinction between natural and supernatural theology was commonplace.34 This was also the case among the English Puritans.35

Bavinck took issue with the Reformed Scholastics who did this.36 In his mind, both forms were (a) supernatural and (b) of grace, in that God was the author of that revelation in nature as much as that in Scripture. Junius and Mastricht would both agree with that, but it was a matter of emphasis. Mastricht calls these two either “natural or revealed.”37


Why should one’s emphasis matter here? There are at least two potential equivocations that may occur. One is the notion that the natural is not by any kind of grace; and the other is that the latter has no natural connection to objects of the mind as a continuity of reality—e.g. Junius’s lack of clarity on whether natural theology can have any share in the genus of wisdom.38




1. Copleston, Medieval Philosophy, 20.

2. Rehnman, “A Reformed Natural Theology,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 4 no 1 (Spr 2012), 155.

3. Rehnman, “A Reformed Natural Theology,” 155.

4. Rehnman, “A Reformed Natural Theology,” 154.

5. Turretin, Institutes, I.1.iii.3

6. Kuyper, quoted in Sudduth, “Revisiting the ‘Reformed Objection’ to Natural Theology,” 50.

7. Rehnman, “A Reformed Natural Theology,” 151.

8. Joel Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology (Grand Rapids, Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 13-16.

9. J. V. Fesko and Guy M. Richard, “Natural Theology and the Westminster Confession of Faith,” in Ligon Duncan, ed., The Westminster Confession into the 21st Century: Volume Three (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2009), 225.

10. cf. Fesko’s Reforming Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 74-81.

11. Muller, “The Dogmatic Function of St. Thomas’ ‘proofs’: A Protestant Appreciation,” Fides et Historia 24 (1992), 18.

12. Muller, PRRD, I:289.

13. Rehnman, “A Reformed Natural Theology,” 156.

14. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 103.

15. van Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology,” 328.

16. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 104.

17. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 107.

18. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, 124.

19. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 104.

20. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 105.

21. Muller, PRRD, I:232, 233.

22. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 106.

23. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 116.

24. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, 124.

25. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 121-136; cf. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 76-77.

26. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 142, 146.

27. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 94.

28. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 78.

29. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 133.

30. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 83.

31. cf. Turretin, Institutes, I.2.vii; I.3.i-vi.'

32. Suddoth, “Revisiting the ‘Reformed Objection’ to Natural Theology,” 41.

33. Suddoth, “Revisiting the ‘Reformed Objection’ to Natural Theology,” 42.

34. van Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology,” 323; cf. Muller, PRRD, I:293-310.'35.

35. cf. Beeke and Jones, A Puritan Theology, 11-26.'

36. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, I.301-312.

37. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 77.'

38. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 145.

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