Ramified Natural Theology in Science and Religion

Moving Forward from Natural Theology

Rodney Holder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000205787
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion & Science

This book offers a rationale for a new 'ramified natural theology' that is in dialogue with both science and historical-critical study of the Bible. Traditionally, knowledge of God has been seen to come from two sources, nature and revelation. However, a rigid separation between these sources cannot be maintained, since what purports to be revelation cannot be accepted without qualification: rational argument is needed to infer both the existence of God from nature and the particular truth claims of the Christian faith from the Bible. Hence the distinction between 'bare natural theology' and 'ramified natural theology.'

The book begins with bare natural theology as background to its main focus on ramified natural theology. Bayesian confirmation theory is utilised to evaluate competing hypotheses in both cases, in a similar manner to that by which competing hypotheses in science can be evaluated on the basis of empirical data. In this way a case is built up for the rationality of a Christian theist worldview.

Addressing issues of science, theology and revelation in a new framework, this book will be of keen interest to scholars working in Religion and Science, Natural Theology, Philosophy of Religion, Biblical Studies, Systematic Theology, and Science and Culture.

1 Theology as a scientific discipline

The place of natural theology and ramified natural theology

Introduction: theological rationality

This book aims to show that religious belief, and in particular Christian belief, is rational in a way similar to that in which science is rational. Traditionally knowledge of God has been seen to come from two sources, nature and revelation. Arguments for the existence of God have come under the domain of ‘natural theology’ and have often utilized evidence from scientific findings about nature. My position is that inferential reasoning from the data towards a divine mind behind nature can be construed in a similar way to that by which scientific hypotheses are evaluated on the basis of empirical data.

Natural theology, however, only gets one so far—to a creator God behind the universe and its laws. To get to the specifically Christian God one needs to go further and to engage in ‘ramified natural theology,’ a term introduced by Richard Swinburne.¹ Ramified natural theology is the providing of arguments for the specific claims of Christianity. For this it is not enough to accept what is claimed as revelation without further ado; one needs to provide reasons for acceptance. In particular one needs to take account of Biblical scholarship. Thus the division between knowledge of God from nature and knowledge of God from revelation is an artificial one, since what is claimed to be revealed also needs evaluation using similar modes of rational argument.

The German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, whom we shall meet again in these pages, makes this very point. Pannenberg is adamant that theology is dealing with truth, but there is a job of work to be done: ‘dogmatics may not presuppose the divine truth which the Christian doctrinal tradition claims. Theology has to present, test, and if possible confirm the claim.’² We shall follow through this programme, utilizing Bayesian confirmation theory to clarify the meaning of the term ‘confirmation.’

The idea that theology is indeed a science is the major theme of Pannenberg’s Theology and the Philosophy of Science.³ Pannenberg is concerned that theology is only eligible for a place in the university if it is a science. This approach contrasts with Friedrich Schleiermacher, who thought it enough for theology to be essential for the education of clergy. This is inadequate; theology must be there for what it is, for its pursuit of truth, and it cannot be immune to criticism.⁴

Importantly Pannenberg emphasizes that truth is universal: ‘My truth cannot be mine alone. If I cannot in principle declare it to be truth for all—though perhaps hardly anyone else sees this—then it pitilessly ceases to be truth for me also.’⁵ Christian thinkers have been concerned from the beginning to demonstrate the truth of Christianity, says Pannenberg. He writes: ‘This same concern, to defend the truth of Christianity by generally accepted criteria, has been present since the thirteenth century in the argument about the scientific status of theology and its right to be included among the sciences taught in a university.’⁶ If theology were to lose its place in the university that would be a problem not just for theology itself, even if the church took over the training of its own ministers. It would be a problem for truth in general, since the collaboration of theology and philosophy is essential for integrating the various scientific disciplines into a united body of truth, as indeed systematic theology unites the sub-disciplines of theology itself.

Thus, for Pannenberg, Christian theology must argue with atheism on the grounds of a shared rationality. Theological truth claims are made on the basis of universal and publicly accessible evidence. For Pannenberg, as in the present work, this evidence is primarily historical. He argues that history, which resembles the natural sciences in some, though not all, respects, can only be understood through Jesus Christ who has revealed the end of history proleptically through his resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus tells us who he is, confirming his divine nature. Importantly this is an objective ‘Christology from below,’ in contrast to that of nineteenth century theologians such as Schleiermacher for whom we merely reflect subjective human experience or feelings of redemption back onto Christ. Whereas older views preceded historical criticism of the Bible, it also needs to be recognized that with the Enlightenment and historical criticism naturalistic assumptions were imported into theology. Thus we need to move forward and reconsider the evidence for Christian claims—and supremely that for the resurrection which in turn tells us who Jesus is—in the light of these factors, and this is what we set out to do in this book.

In the English-speaking world, John Henry Newman had made similar points to Pannenberg in the nineteenth century. Newman espoused the benefits of a multi-disciplinary university, teaching all branches of knowledge. Although the university should not be under church control, Newman saw it necessary to include theology as a subject precisely because it is a branch of knowledge, indeed a branch which ‘to say the least, is as important and as large as any of them.’⁷ He writes:

Is not the being of a God reported to us by testimony, handed down by history, inferred by an inductive process, brought home to us by metaphysical necessity, urged on us by the suggestions of our conscience? It is a truth in the natural order, as well as in the supernatural.⁸

Moreover, theology undergirds every other branch of knowledge:

Admit a God, and you introduce among the subjects of your knowledge, a fact encompassing, closing in upon, absorbing, every other fact conceivable. How can we investigate any part of any order of Knowledge, and stop short of that which enters into every order? All true principles run over with it, all phenomena converge to it; it is truly the First and the Last.⁹

Newman concludes his chapter on theology as a branch of knowledge with these words:

Religious doctrine is knowledge, in as full a sense as Newton’s doctrine is knowledge. University Teaching without Theology is simply unphilosophical. Theology has at least as good a right to claim a place there as Astronomy.¹⁰

Whether this assessment of theology as the pursuit of truth, in like manner to the sciences, is valid will I trust become clearer in what follows in the rest of this book. We return to Pannenberg in particular, for whom history is of supreme importance and resembles natural science, although it can only be understood through Jesus Christ, briefly in Chapter 2 on natural theology, and then more particularly when we consider the concept of ramified natural theology in Chapter 4.

Outline of the book

In the book I begin (Chapter 2) with a survey of natural theology, looking at the historical development of this discipline, from St Thomas Aquinas up to the present day. I look at how natural theology changed from general arguments about the existence and ordered structure of the universe to arguments from the particular in the so-called ‘physico-theology.’ I discuss some of the challenges made to natural theology, notably from David Hume and Immanuel Kant, yet how it continued in the physico-theological form at least up until William Paley. I note how Paley was more subtle than is often realized since he also used more general arguments. Whilst Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is often portrayed as defeating natural theology, I show how figures such as Charles Kingsley and Frederick Temple welcomed evolution, which, to them, enhanced our view of God’s majesty in creation. Natural selection did not negate design but merely shifted the mode in which the design was executed. I bring us up to date with a look at three central figures who have contributed to natural theology today: Alister McGrath, John Polkinghorne, and Richard Swinburne. The last of these has pioneered the use of Bayesian confirmation theory in making arguments both of natural theology and ramified natural theology and I introduce the theory at this point. It should be emphasized that this mathematical framework does no more than codify the judgments we make in our normal modes of rational argument (e.g. certain evidence is more likely to pertain if one hypothesis is true rather than another).

I devote a chapter to modern cosmology (Chapter 3), which has provided a new impetus to natural theology, reviving traditional arguments but expressing them in new ways. An important question is whether we need natural theology to get us off the ground by providing arguments for the existence of God before we proceed to arguments for the particulars of the Christian faith. This is because, if we can show with reasonable probability that God exists, such claims as that Jesus performed miracles or rose from the dead become less improbable a priori.

Modern cosmology raises two significant questions which, at least potentially, lead to arguments of natural theology: does the universe have a beginning, and why is the universe so apparently fine-tuned for life? In a significant paper Mark McCartney and David Glass of the University of Ulster ask whether science can explain away, or at least explain away in part, such features of the universe in cosmology and other sciences which may alternatively invite a theological explanation.¹¹ Theology would then be at best redundant in this area of explanation and appeal to cosmology for justification of belief in God would be nullified. In this chapter I argue that two proposals made by cosmologists fail to explain away the universe’s beginning, and that science is powerless to explain away the more fundamental question as to why there is a universe at all. I argue similarly that scientific, or quasi-scientific, proposals such as the multiverse fail to explain away the fine-tuning. Indeed, I argue that theism is the most rational position to adopt to explain such features.

The arguments here are powerful ones of natural theology, which, as I have indicated, is preliminary to ramified natural theology and lends credence to the latter. The chapter is based on my contribution to a project I was involved in with McCartney and Glass, the results of which were published in a special issue of Theology and Science.¹² Importantly, however, the chapter is supplemented by a Bayesian analysis of each argument at the end. Of course, if the existence of the universe enhances the probability that God exists then the fact that the universe is fine-tuned will enhance it further, so we have the beginnings of a cumulative argument. If we opt for a multiverse then that is even less probable a priori than a single universe, besides which it does not solve the fine-tuning problem. Later chapters on ramified natural theology will also argue that several pieces of evidence can be put together to make an overall strong case for specifically Christian theism. The important point is that this example of natural theology gives powerful evidence for the existence of God and the same methodology can be used in ramified natural theology.

I devote a chapter to answer the specific question of why we need ramified natural theology (Chapter 4). Not only can we not take for granted what revelation tells us, but there are also competing revelations, so the context of religious pluralism becomes important. Thus what is purported to be revelation must be examined utilizing commonly accepted modes of rational discourse. Since there are many competing claims to truth, and they contradict each other, not all of them can be true. I thus now come to the point of directly challenging the notion that natural knowledge and revealed knowledge can be kept rigidly apart. On the one hand, what religions agree about may be seen as strengthening the case for theism: arguments from natural theology may have commonality with other religions. On the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Theology as a scientific discipline: the place of natural theology and ramified natural theology
• 2 Reason and religion: the role of natural theology
• 3 Natural theology and modern cosmology: the cosmological and design arguments
• 4 Moving on from natural theology: why we need ramified natural theology
• 5 Pascal’s Pensées and Butler’s Analogy: foreshadowing ramified natural theology
• 6 The rationality of belief in miracles
• 7 Ramified natural theology and evidence for Christian claims about Christ: Jesus’ miracles
• 8 Jesus and prophecy
• 9 Ramified natural theology in action: outline of the argument for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus
• 10 On the third day he rose again: Bayesian methodologies applied to the resurrection of Jesus
• 11 Towards a fuller picture: the fruits of ramified natural theology
• Bibliography
• Index