The Problem of Criteria and the Necessity of Natural Theology

Most streams of C hristianity have emphasized the unknowability of G od, but they have also asserted that C hrist is the criterion through whom we may have limited access to the depths of G od, and through whose life and death we can formulate the doctrine of G od as Triune. This standpoint, however, leads to certain complications regarding ‘translating’ the C hristian message to adherents of other religious traditions, and in particular the question, ‘Why do you accept C hrist as the criterion?’, is one that C hristian thinkers have attempted to answer in different ways. There are two influential responses to this query in recent C hristian thought: an ‘evidentialist’ approach which gradually moves from a theistic metaphysics to a C hrist‐centred soteriology, and an ‘unapologetic’ standpoint which takes G od's self‐disclosure in C hrist as the perspectival lens through which to view the world. The opposition between these two groups is primarily over the status of ‘natural theology’, that is, whether we may speak of a ‘natural’ reason, which human beings possess even outside the circle of the C hristian revelation, and through which they may arrive at some minimalist understanding of the divine reality. I outline the status of ‘natural theology’ in these strands of contemporary C hristian thought, from B arthian ‘ C hristomonism’ to post‐liberal theology to R eformed epistemology, and suggest certain problems within these standpoints which indicate the need for an appropriately qualified ‘natural theology’. Most of the criticisms leveled against ‘natural theology’, whether from secular philosophers or from C hristian theologians themselves, can be put in two groups: first, the arguments for G od's existence are logically flawed, and, second, even if they succeed they do not point to the T riune G od that C hristians worship. In contrast to such an old‐fashioned ‘natural theology’ which allegedly starts from premises self‐evidently true for all rational agents and leads through an inexorable logic to G od, the qualified version is an attempt to spell out the doctrinal beliefs of C hristianity such as the existence of a personal G od who interacts with human beings in different ways, and outline the reasons offered in defence of such statements. In other words, without denying that C hristian doctrines operate at one level as the grammatical rules which structure the C hristian discourse, such a natural theology insists on the importance of the question of whether these utterances are true, in the sense that they refer to an objective reality which is independent of the C hristian life‐world. Such a ‘natural theology’, as the discussion will emphasize, is not an optional extra but follows in fact from the internal logic of the C hristian position on the universality of G od's salvific reach.