Natural theology: antecedent and consequent

Until the latter part of 2004, Professor Antony Flew was amongst the best-known philosophical advocates of atheism. But with a blaze of publicity – especially in some Christian circles – it was announced that the aged advocate of the presumption of atheism had changed his mind and come to accept the existence of a God. Flew was persuaded to change his mind by some arguments of natural theology, particularly those developed by advocates of intelligent design.Footnote ¹ Natural theology is undergoing something of a resurgence at present and one particularly sophisticated defence of it can be found in a series of articles by the American philosopher Michael Sudduth, who argues that natural theology is a proper, even obligatory, project for Christians.Footnote ² It is with this question of the propriety of natural theology that this article is concerned.

What is natural theology? John Macquarrie's definition accurately captures the consensus: there is a knowledge of God ‘accessible to all rational beings without recourse to any special or supposedly supernatural revelation’.Footnote ³ That is, natural theology proposes that we can come to know God by means of our own powers, unaided by revelation. Typically (and therefore in this article, I shall take it that) natural theology seeks to arrive at a knowledge of God by the accumulation of evidence from the natural world and/or rational argument.Footnote ⁴ A classic example of this is Paley's famous version of the argument to God from the design of the world.Footnote ⁵

Natural theology has been put to several different uses in the modern period. The first is its use as what (following Sudduth's helpful typology) can be designated an antecedent rational basis for coming to believe in a God.Footnote ⁶ Professor Richard Swinburne puts the need for this as follows: ‘what has worried ordinary people down the centuries is whether the evidence of human experience shows that the claim [that there is a God] is true or that it is false’.Footnote ⁷ Proponents of the antecedent use of natural theology think that belief in God should be accepted if it is rational and that it is rational only if it has been shown to be true – or, as in Swinburne's case, more probably true than not – by evidence and argument. Since the time of John Locke, philosophers of religion have also frequently argued that beliefs held on the basis of (putatively) divine revelation ought only to be held as such if they are in accordance with reason.Footnote ⁸ Thus, ‘natural theology should not be regarded as a substitute for any particular revelation but as the necessary rational underpinning for the acceptance of any’.Footnote ⁹

Second, Sudduth suggests that natural theology has been used to provide consequent rational warrant for belief in God. In this case the believer wants to show that the belief she already holds by faith is rationally warranted. On many contemporary philosophical readings of their work, this is what Anselm (in his Ontological Argument) and Aquinas (by means of his Five Ways) wanted to achieve.Footnote ¹⁰ Related to this, there is a third and less self-consciously philosophical use of natural theology and that is by Christians, who use its arguments as a means of trying to overcome their doubts and in order to become more confident in their faith. This article argues against the first two uses of natural theology. Since a Christian's confidence in their faith ought not to be grounded in a flawed theological strategy, the third use logically requires that there be no good theological reasons to reject the first two uses. But given that, as we shall see, there are good theological reasons for rejecting the first two uses, the third falls with them.

The language of obligation has been used quite a bit so far. There are two senses in which we might speak of obligation in connection with natural theology. First, there is the sense implied by the antecedent use of natural theology. Humans are, it is held, under an obligation to accept for belief only that which has rational warrant. As W. K. Clifford's frequently quoted dictum has it, ‘it is always wrong, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’.Footnote ¹¹ Thus, non-believers argue that one ought only to believe in God if one has good evidence and argument for the belief; without them Christian belief is irrational. But, they go on, there is neither good evidence nor sound argument for belief in God, therefore (the quest for) belief should be abandoned. This is the challenge to which natural theology rises.

The second sense in which we might speak of an obligation can be illustrated by referring to a conversation with a friend and sparring partner of mine. ‘I can't see why Christians should do natural theology’, I said; he answered bluntly: ‘Because it's biblical’. (A Catholic might have answered by quoting the certo cognosci posse asserted of natural knowledge of God by the First Vatican Council.) If the first sense of obligation has to do with the ethics of belief-in-general, the second is more distinctly theological. There is, the claim goes, not just an external obligation towards unbelievers to do natural theology, there is also an internal theological imperative. Both these will feature in the following discussion.

The God of the gospel and of the call to discipleship

The text most frequently quoted in biblical favour of doing natural theology is Romans 1:18ff. and quite often it is the only one cited from the canon as received by Protestants.Footnote ¹² For example, the leading practitioner of natural theology, Richard Swinburne, admits that the Bible ‘does not contain much in the way of arguments for the existence of God’ (which, he believes, is because most of those for whom it was written already believed in God), but he does refer to this passage.Footnote ¹³ So, to examine the credentials of antecedent natural theology, let's look at Romans 1.

There are a number of points here. First, notice that Paul's thought about the possibility of a natural knowledge of God begins at v. 16 – not at v. 18, as Swinburne and other defenders of natural theology often suppose. If we read from v. 16, it is evident that whatever Paul claims about this possibility is predicated on the basis of what is revealed in the gospel, namely ‘the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith’ (v. 17).Footnote ¹⁴ Likewise, on the basis of the revelation of God's ‘wrath’ (v. 18), in the next verses Paul claims that a knowledge of God is available to human beings. So, even if Paul is reckoned to be arguing here for natural theology, it should be acknowledged that he is doing so on the basis of what he holds to be an antecedent revelation.Footnote ¹⁵ But this immediately puts in question the view that in these verses Paul positively endorses antecedent natural theology. Nor does Paul endorse consequent natural theology: there is no evidence here that he thinks the revealed gospel needs to be shown to be rational by appeal to natural theology, nor again does he put up an informal natural theological argument to bolster a position of intellectual insecurity – real or imagined. On this latter point, he gives the reason himself: ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith’ (v. 16; emphasis added).

The second thing to note is that Paul's point in this section of his argument is that the gospel reveals that all human beings are the objects of God's wrath because ‘by their wickedness [they] suppress the truth’ (v. 18). Humans cannot claim that God's condemnation of them is unjust or plead the excuse that they did not know God. On the contrary, Paul holds that there is an objective knowledge of God's existence in creation and that God has revealed it:

Even Karl Barth, renowned for his rejection of natural theology, admits that ‘[i]t is unquestionable that knowledge of God is here ascribed to man in the cosmos, and knowability is ascribed to God’.Footnote ¹⁶ The problem – and this is crucial against natural theology – is that this knowledge has not been subjectively appropriated in a way that could lead to life rather than to condemnation. That is, Paul holds that on the basis of what is known by revelation to be knowable of God in creation, humanity ‘did not honour [God] as God or give thanks to him’. The gospel reveals the radical misdirection of the sensus divinitatis. It is not merely that a knowledge of God apart from revelation in Christ is salvifically impotent but that striving to attain such a knowledge harms our appropriation of that salvation which is available to us: it leads into self-deception about ourselves and God.Footnote ¹⁷ Rather than being moved to worship God by that knowledge which is ascribed to them, humans ‘exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator’ (v. 25).

Moreover, human beings show, by their suppression of the truth, that they are in opposition to God or, as Paul puts it in Romans 5:10, at enmity with God.Footnote ¹⁸ The consequence of this is not just that our orientation towards God has become warped and twisted so that we do not offer him the worship we should; it is, as he says in v. 21, that human thinking has become ‘futile’ and our ‘senseless minds . . . darkened’.Footnote ¹⁹ Sin has noetic effects; it prevents our faculties of reasoning and cognition from working as God meant them to.

Thus thought John Calvin – supposed by some contemporary philosophers of religion to be a defender of natural theology.Footnote ²⁰

It is curious that those who think that Romans 1 offers a biblical warrant for doing natural theology fail to take into consideration Paul's assertion concerning the noetic effects of sin. Had they done so, they might perhaps have been more cautious in their affirmations about the fruits of natural theology, for there remains the question as to which God the arguments of natural theology lead us. The arguments might give us reason to believe that a God exists, but it follows from Paul's concerns about idolatry that natural theology is an insecure basis on which to attempt to come to a knowledge of, or to be led to worship, the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Take, for example, one of Swinburne's definitions of the God of theism: God is ‘a very powerful non-embodied rational agent’. What's the problem with that? In an important paper on ‘Polytheism’ George Mavrodes has pointed out that, as is not uncommon of natural theologians’ definitions of God, Swinburne's ‘makes no mention of goodness or any similar value or virtue’ and that ‘[a] devil would seem to fit [this] description perfectly well’.Footnote ²¹ This is consistent with what Paul says in Romans 1:20: all that could be known from creation is God's ‘eternal power and divine nature’. Nothing about the specific personal and moral character of the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ follows from that knowledge which Paul thinks is in principle available but which we do not let lead us to worship him as he is.

This point can be illustrated by two examples from those who spend much time in the natural world. The film Touching the Void blends dramatic reconstruction with interviews to tell the true story of the climber Joe Simpson's extraordinary survival of a sequence of accidents on an exceptionally bold and risky mountaineering expedition in the Andes. Simpson says that he was brought up a Catholic but is now an atheist. Nevertheless, speaking of his solitude, pain and suffering as he fought to survive, he acknowledges, ‘You do begin to wonder whether there is some malign force out to get you’. The natural theology there is only implicit, but so far as his thought goes, it is fully consistent with Romans. At the least, an additional premise to the effect that, despite appearances to the contrary, the cosmos is ultimately benign and fit for human flourishing is required if natural theology is validly to conclude to a benevolent deity.

Or take the celebrated mountaineering photographer (and former philosophy student) Gordon Stainforth. In a magazine interview, he was asked, ‘Can you define your relationship with the natural world?’ His reply is interesting: ‘I'll try: an inescapable relationship with an omnipotent intelligence; the nearest thing there is to a “god”, a god of creation and creativity, and intelligent life: life-providing, life-enriching – often harsh, sometimes cruel – but without which, nothing.’Footnote ²² Hume could have agreed. ‘You have no reason, on your theory, for ascribing perfection to the deity’, Philo argues against Cleanthes’ version of the design argument.Footnote ²³

Paul provides no ground for us to suppose that Christians ought to do antecedent natural theology. Not only does he not endorse it, his claims in Romans 1:18ff. imply that Christians should avoid it.Footnote ²⁴ Moreover, although natural theology might lead us to believe that a God exists, since there is no prima facie reason to think that the God to which natural theology leads is the self-revealing, personal, loving God of the gospel, it is not clear that it will lead to a fiduciary relationship with (belief in) that God – which brings us back to Antony Flew. Sophisticated versions of the argument from design have been instrumental in bringing about his ‘conversion’. Yet Flew is entirely consistent with that argument when he describes himself as a Jeffersonian deist. ‘I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian’, he says: ‘there is no room for any supernatural revelation of that God or for any transactions between that God and individual human beings’.Footnote ²⁵

Further anecdotal support for my argument emerges from two collections of essays in intellectual autobiography by leading, believing philosophers. By no means do all of the contributors testify to a clear rejection of antecedent natural theology, but a surprising number do. William Alston thinks that there is a place for consequent natural theology but that nevertheless (and recalling Anselm),

The philosopher of science Frederick Suppe is more sceptical about the relationship between philosophy and faith. He and Bas van Fraassen, a fellow Catholic convert, ‘agree that philosophy, especially philosophical theology, is hazardous to faith’. Of his own conversion, he writes that ‘[p]hilosophy is a terrible way to faith. God called me, and preempted the philosophical/theological issues. I obeyed. I had no choice . . . Philosophy increasingly loomed in my mind as a threat to faith if I allowed faith to be subordinate to it. Finally I said, “This time I buy the whole thing, without reservation or hesitation”’.Footnote ²⁷ These are anecdotes, but, coming from distinguished philosophers, they might give pause to those Christian apologists who think that philosophers will be impressed by – perhaps even converted by – their forays into natural theology.

If the pre-emptive love of God is sufficient for philosophers, perhaps it should be given the benefit of the doubt as being sufficient to bring anyone to knowledge of him. There is an important point here. Use of natural theology in apologetics can reinforce the view that what humans most need is epistemic access to God. But in fact the gospel tells us that God has found access to us and that he has done so by slipping beneath the radar of our defences against him and even in defiance of our apologetic strategies. As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 1:18ff. (a passage that does not receive much attention from defenders of a biblical case for natural theology), the gospel is folly to the world's wisdom but in God's wisdom it has made folly of that wisdom which believes the word of the cross to be utmost folly. God has come to us in humility; humble acceptance of his self-giving in Christ is the way to enter the kingdom.

A. J. Ayer once observed that vanity is the single most needful qualification to be a philosopher. Frederick Suppe likewise acknowledges that ‘to tackle the big issues – full-blown metaphysical and epistemological systems’ seems to require ‘one giant ego to fuel the whole process . . . Yet, “if any man wishes to come after me, he must deny himself” (Lk 9:23; Matt 16:24; Mk 8:34). Is anything less than total obliteration of ego and shedding of personality enough? Philosophy thus remains a constant, profound threat to faith and humility for me’.Footnote ²⁸ Suppe's observation is consistent both with Paul's understanding of the world's estimation of the rational status of the gospel and with Jesus' own words: ‘I thank you, Father, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants’ (Matt. 11:25).

Yet recall the sentence of Roger Trigg's quoted earlier: ‘natural theology should not be regarded as a substitute for any particular revelation but as the necessary rational underpinning for the acceptance of any’.Footnote ²⁹ Natural theology is therefore a necessary condition for the rational acceptance of Jesus' words as revelation. If so, on this view, would a child or a mentally handicapped person be disqualified from accepting the gospel? Not necessarily. They might perhaps be regarded as failing to accept it rationally. In which case, perhaps we should simply regard them as substandard models of discipleship and forget those inconvenient words of Jesus that ‘unless you change and become like a little child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 18:3).Footnote ³⁰

Reflective rationality and the noetic effects of sin

But perhaps, having once entered the kingdom, there is a place for consequent natural theology. This position has been defended in a series of articles by Michael Sudduth. In an early one he proposed that consequent natural theology might be used to counteract the noetic effects of sin and thereby ‘function as a “useful aid” or a “rational confirmation” for what the believer has taken on faith’.Footnote ³¹ He explains the first way in which natural theology might be thus used as follows: ‘The noetic effects of sin, rather than present a reason against . . . natural theology, actually provide a reason for it. What would be evident to the mind unaffected by sin is not always evident to the mind affected by sin. This leaves open the possibility of making it evident (or more evident).’Footnote ³² Although he does not develop this proposal in detail, his claim seems to be that natural theological reasoning helps confirm a believer's faith.Footnote ³³

There are a couple of points that might be raised here. The first concerns his rhetorical strategy: Sudduth seeks the authority of Calvin for his argument – it appears because he wishes to convince those of a Reformed outlook that they ought to be more accommodating to natural theology. Quite apart from the question as to whether Calvin does argue what Sudduth infers, since Sudduth does not offer any scriptural warrant for this use of natural theology, his appeal to Calvin as an authority in defence of its propriety could appear to favour the very traditionalism and scholasticism that the Reformers rejected.

A second and more substantive problem arises from the fact that, from a Pauline point of view, the mind is always affected by sin; human beings do not cease to be liable to suppress the truth and twist what they know to their own (idolatrous) ends after conversion.Footnote ³⁴ Their cognitive apparatus is never so redeemed as to be fully functional in its Edenic state.Footnote ³⁵ In defence of natural theology, Sudduth argues that ‘if it turned out that the faculty of basic theistic belief formation were damaged such that another faculty or set of faculties causally generated or sustained theistic belief, it is likely that God would have adopted these as part of the design plan’ whereby human beings can come to know him. ‘This implies that inferential reasoning can easily be construed as at least part of our post-lapsarian design plan.’Footnote ³⁶

There are two problems with this argument. First, despite the concessive ‘at least’, no attention is given to the way in which God has made himself knowable in Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit. Thus Sudduth ignores the way in which God has met the problems caused by sin's damaging effects on the way in which we form beliefs about him. References to the role of inferential reasoning in the post-lapsarian design plan belong to speculative anthropology. Second, the argument rests on the assumption that our faculties of inferential reasoning are untouched by sin. But why should our inferential reasoning faculties be privileged in this way; humans might be rational beings, but why, and on what theological grounds, should we think that we can be as confident in them as a medium of our knowledge of God as Sudduth's argument requires? And why should we think that they are not, at least to some, perhaps vital, degree, incapacitated by sin? This especially given that Paul thinks that sin taints both our cognitive processes and the outputs of those processes. Since there is nothing in the post-lapsarian human state that is exempt from sin's effects it is not clear that inferential reasoning processes can be relied upon either to generate or to sustain theistic belief.

Nor is it only our cognitive faculties that do not function properly. For Paul the whole creation is disordered – ‘subjected to futility’ is how he puts it; it does not glorify God as it was meant to do.Footnote ³⁷ In other words, what occurs on the input side of the cognitive equation does not function as it should either. The scepticism I am hinting at was succinctly expressed by Pascal in his Pensées:

Pascal's claim seems to be that we can know anything only on the basis of revelation in Christ and scripture's testimony to it.Footnote ³⁹ His is not an absolute scepticism; it is scepticism about what we are able to know ‘[a]part from Jesus Christ’; he does not rule out the view that, aided by revelation, we can know God, ourselves and nature. Although the whole creation and with it human cognitive apparatus has been redeemed in Christ, we still await the consummation of that process. Even then, as now, Christian knowledge of God and of his creation never ceases to be dependent on what he has revealed in Christ and endowed by the Holy Spirit.Footnote ⁴⁰

Thus, with respect to Sudduth's argument in favour of consequent natural theology, we may ask: if both the world and human cognitive apparatus is fallen, can Christians have adequate knowledge of the world for a posteriori inferences of sufficient security to be made from it which would make evident or more evident what they take on faith? To provide an argument that would increase the warrant of Christian belief Sudduth must presume that Christian knowledge of the world is adequate for such an argument to be made. But from the point of view of a reverent, theologically based scepticism, it is unclear how secure this presumption is. Recall the terms in which Sudduth states his case for this use of consequent natural theology: ‘What would be evident to the mind unaffected by sin is not always evident to the mind affected by sin.’ True, but not of mortals.Footnote ⁴¹

But let us grant to Sudduth that a Christian's cognitive faculties are sufficiently redeemed for her to make her faith evident or more evident by means of consequent natural theology. The question then arises as to whether Sudduth's proposal doesn't reflect a prejudice against the view that faith is a cognitively adequate basis for an epistemic relationship with God? This is certainly hinted at when he writes of natural theology being a ‘“useful aid” . . . for what the believer has taken on faith’. But does faith require this kind of assistance in order to be cognitively adequate? The scriptural view seems to be that it does not: ‘we walk by faith, not by sight’ (2 Cor. 5:7). At best ‘we see in a mirror, dimly’ and have but partial knowledge; only at to teleion – ‘the completion’ – will we know fully, and even then, that knowledge will pass away in the fullness of love (1 Cor. 13:9ff.).Footnote ⁴² Paul presents no argument to the effect that we ought to seek to make what is known by faith evident or more evident than it is made by the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those whose relationship with God is founded upon love.Footnote ⁴³ Indeed, if his treatment (in 1 Cor. 1:18–2:16) of the contrast between God's and the world's wisdom is any guide, Christians ought to be cautious lest, in seeking to make their faith more evident to themselves than God has already made it through the weakness and folly of the gospel, they become over-confident in themselves and their own (intellectual) powers and fall into that perilous state described as ‘boasting’.Footnote ⁴⁴ This is not to say that Christians should not expect, and indeed seek, confirmation and strengthening of their faith – they should,Footnote ⁴⁵ but the testimony of scripture is that it comes not by natural theology but as a result of the work of the Spirit and because they heed the Pauline writer's injunction to ‘[s]et your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth’ (Col. 3:2). It seems therefore that Sudduth's first proposal for consequent natural theology is theologically otiose: it rests on a mistaken view of the creation, of human cognitive faculties, and of their output.

The basic problem with Sudduth's argument here, as elsewhere in his discussion of consequent natural theology, is that it is insufficiently informed by and coordinated with the specifically theological view of faith as a positive cognitive state produced in human beings by God. It seems to be coordinated with a generic epistemology that holds that any claim based on faith (in the specifically theological sense of that word) is eo ipso untrustworthy rather than with an epistemology specific to that community in which God is confessed, worshipped and proclaimed – the Church. This impression will be confirmed as we examine his second argument for consequent natural theology.

Sudduth claims that consequent natural theology enables Christians to achieve the goal of what he calls ‘reflective rationality, which consists in coming to have rational beliefs about the epistemic status of one's beliefs’.Footnote ⁴⁶ He summarises his main point as follows: ‘Being [epistemically] justified is not merely a matter of the believing subject being in a certain good cognitive state vis-à-vis some proposition, but of the subject being aware that he actually is in that good cognitive state.’Footnote ⁴⁷ Natural theology comes in here because it enables a believer to show that he is rational in believing what he does. Simply being rational in holding a belief is not enough.Footnote ⁴⁸ Why? Because, since ‘our idea of [epistemic] justification has developed within the social context of answering objections to beliefs, the ability to answer questions about the grounds of our beliefs and their adequacy will become quite important’.Footnote ⁴⁹ Giving evidence and argument for our beliefs, even if we are rational in holding them, is thus a way of showing to those who doubt them that they are indeed rational and of attaining for ourselves the state of being reflectively rational.

An initial concern with this argument has to do with the scope of the demand that Christians be reflectively rational.Footnote ⁵⁰ To whom does it apply; does it include infants, the mentally handicapped, and unreflective believers, for example? Sudduth argues that such people can be said to hold their beliefs rationally but not in a reflectively rational way.Footnote ⁵¹ But this implies the view, which we have already seen to be theologically problematic, that these people's beliefs are in some way substandard or defective. There is a further, related difficulty. If reflective rationality can only be achieved by a few Christians and the majority are dependent for their being reflectively rational on ‘trickle down’ from the labours of the most intellectually gifted, what does this suggest for how we understand the relationship between faith and awareness of being in a good cognitive state? Sudduth does not discuss this relationship. However, it would be unhelpful if the argument for reflective rationality turned out to imply that those who are capable of reflective rationality occupied the position of an elite amongst the faithfulFootnote ⁵² or if, like the argument for antecedent natural theology, it detracted from the simplicity of Jesus' warning that ‘unless you change and become like children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 18:3).

Sudduth tells us that the requirement that we be reflectively rational obtains especially for Christians because theirs is a ‘type of belief which is subject to doubt by large segments of society’.Footnote ⁵³ On this view, Christian beliefs might be rational for Christians, but the normative epistemological demands of the culture in which they are embedded requires that they engage in the disciplines of reflective rationality.

But, we might ask, why should a Christian accept the epistemological demands of those who question or doubt their beliefs? It is one thing to explain patiently the substance of Christian belief and to try thereby to remove misunderstandings about it.Footnote ⁵⁴ But it is another for Christians to accept that faith is epistemologically below par and that they are under an obligation to show that their beliefs are justified in the terms set by the dominant social context. Sudduth seems to be operating with a generic epistemological principle to the effect that members of a community who hold beliefs that are doubted by the majority in society are obliged to be able to present reasons for their beliefs that will pass muster at the bar of the majority view of what constitutes possessing adequate grounds for a belief.Footnote ⁵⁵ But he does not offer any theological reason for thinking that Christians are under an obligation of this kind, and it certainly appears from Paul's argument at the beginning of 1 Corinthians that they need not accept any such obligation. Quite the contrary. Nor does Paul make conspicuous effort to defend the reflective rationality of resurrection belief later in the letterFootnote ⁵⁶ – and this even though the earliest Christians were more oppressed and in a much smaller minority than they are today. I therefore suggest that there is good reason for Christians not to engage in exercises in reflective rationality which arise from a prior concession to the epistemological demands of surrounding culture.

There are also good historical grounds for thinking that the effects in practice of Christians’ acceding to the demands of their culture have not been beneficial for the faith. It is not possible to go into detail here, but the story can be found in the books At the Origins of Modern Atheism and Denying and Disclosing God by Michael Buckley SJ.Footnote ⁵⁷ The burden of both books is summarised in the Preface to the latter:

The form of arguments for God's existence in early modernity provides a good example of the incoherences that arose from believers’ attempts to provide warrant for their beliefs on the basis of the new sciences. Buckley describes this as follows: ‘In their search for proof for divine existence, the theologians [of the seventeenth century who, Buckley holds, were of ‘unquestionable orthodoxy’] had shifted from the god [sic] defined and disclosed in Christ and religious experience to a god disclosed in impersonal nature’.Footnote ⁶⁰ ‘Basically, the warrant for the personal god was the impersonal world: the strongest evidence for the personal god was the design within nature’.Footnote ⁶¹ They obtained their arguments from Cicero rather than Christian theologians. The contradiction Buckley detects in nascent theism between a personal god and an impersonal nature generated an internal incoherence within the Christian faith, for on the new view, ‘[t]he Christian god was to be justified without Christ’.Footnote ⁶² The account of the warrant of Christian belief that was being developed held that the grounds for believing in God were external to Christian belief and practice: ‘One [became] convinced or informed of god “from the outside”’ – that is, from nature and without appeal to christology or religious life.Footnote ⁶³ As a result, Christianity allowed itself to be alienated from itself: ‘theologians bracketed religion in order to defend religion’; ‘Christianity, in order to defend its god, transmuted itself into theism’Footnote ⁶⁴ which dialectically generated modern atheism. This process affected not only the way in which Christians argued for their position, it also and most significantly affected Christian understandings of God: ‘Mersenne's god’, writes Buckley, ‘is the comprehensive, transcendent, and pervasive explanation of all phenomena’.Footnote ⁶⁵ The Christian concept of God had been abstracted from the person of Christ and supplanted by the concept of a God who was the explanation of nature. The parallels with contemporary analytic philosophy of religion are obvious.

Buckley's charge is that Christians relinquished their own intellectual and cultural territory and heritage with the result that, since then, they have felt that it is necessary to make accommodations with or to seek legitimation from secular culture. Since the Enlightenment, Christians have generally accepted unquestioningly that the onus of proof is on them to establish that their views are warranted – that they possess ‘reflectively rationality’ – in the face of the perception that science is the acme of intellectual respectability.Footnote ⁶⁶

Buckley's summary of what happened in the seventeenth century is as true now as it was then. He writes:

Buckley's painstaking and carefully argued historical research confirms Pascal's prophetic insight when, three and a half centuries before Buckley, and when Christians and non-believers were just beginning to take to the lists against each other, Pascal wrote:

Buckley observes that had seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Christians recognised the denial of God as itself a religious rejection of Christian belief then, instead of using philosophical arguments as a putative common ground with atheism, they might have rejected the new movement as the unbelief that it was and returned to the proper tasks of theology.Footnote ⁶⁹

It would be ironic if contemporary Christians were to add a further twist to the dialectical relationship between theism and atheism by using natural theology to achieve that reflective rationality which, it is mistakenly supposed, their needing to legitimise their beliefs requires. We might live in a culture that ridicules, or is indifferent to, Christians’ epistemic claims, but perhaps the best way to win acceptance for them is not to internalise the contradiction between the two and adopt a defensive stance. Perhaps rather it is to have the confidence imparted by properly theological convictions and accept that there is a humanly unbridgeable gulf between belief and unbelief.Footnote ⁷⁰