Natural Theology

As a verb it describes the attempt to discover what can be known about God from what can be gleaned by all humans without special revelation.

Natural theology begins with the assumption that all humans have an innate sense that there is a god/God: Paul famously asserts that "what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them, though Paul also asserts that they "suppress the truth by their wickedness" (Rom 1:18-19). While such knowledge is far inadequate for the way of salvation to be understood, some thinkers have sought to develop, as much as such data may be used, as well as from the common moral and religious awareness of humans, to establish some form of theology from them. Secondly, natural theology places great emphasis on the priciple of analogy, i.e., just as the creature reflects something about the Creator, "basic reality must contain within itself every principle observable in the natural world." (The question, of course, is whether nature reflects what we think it does; as Gerald Bray deftly put it, "Man can make a computer, but he can also make a rubbish heap. Which of these reveals his nature?")

Attempts at a natural theolgy is best seen, e.g., in the ontological argument for the existence of God in Anselm as well as in the scholastic views of Thomas Aquinas, who borrowed much from Aristotle. Modern theologians are generally disagreed regarding the place and extent to which natural theology should be given in the theologicl task, and this is particularly so among the Reformers and modern evangelicals who place a strong emphasis on special revelation.