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Thursday, January 07, 2010

The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology

After years of eager anticipation, The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology by Michael Sudduth is finally out. Hot off the presses! You can purchase it either through the publisher or Amazon.

4 comments:

  1. Patrick: Probably its natural counterpart is out, too:

    http://www.wscal.edu/bookstore/store/details.php?id=2592&utm_source=rsclark&utm_medium=rsclark&utm_campaign=wscbooks

    David Van Drunen's "Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms"

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  2. I should be getting about $300 of extra scholarship money in soon, before the semester starts... Dare I buy it?

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  4. Natural law and Natural theology are two distinct subjects.

    Natural law is rightly admitted and admired by Protestants, or ought to be: especially by the Reformed. After all, we have a doctrine of God's inescapable self-disclosure by the Creation (see Rom.1).

    So, men "do by nature" that which is divinely lawful, but incompletely and inexpertly by their picking-up-the-pieces of their own shattered imago dei.

    Behind "Natural theology" is the notion that things other, greater, and more sophisticated than "his eternal power and godhood" may be deduced by man's enfeebled intellect.

    The question is: does the Bible (special revelation) give us any reason to think that philosophers ever speak clearly and truthfully when they elaborate their god-think? I.e., that which comes from their "wisdom"?

    Paul had some more to say about that, in 1Cor.1. There he expressely states that all the "natural theology" in the world has left men almost in utter ignorance of God. "It pleased God that man by his wisdom did NOT know God."

    IOW, the one true and living God refuses to be found out by natural theology.

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