Natural theology

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As Natural Theology (also: natural theology or philosophical or rational theology , partially identical to natural religion ), the test is referred to, from natural sources knowledge of God to win. With "natural sources" are meant here above all human reason and the consideration of creation , in particular the world that can be perceived with the senses. Although God is spoken of, natural theology claims not to be about faith and religion , but about the intellectual penetration of the world context with scientifically responsible and comprehensible methodology. The thinker David Hume used the terms "natural theology" and "natural religion" with the same meaning. In the age of rationalism , Hermann Samuel Reimarus wrote about "The Most Noble Truths of Natural Religion" (1754) in order to establish a belief in reason independent of revelation . Natural theology as a non-revelatory method has been and is particularly used in Judaism , Christianity and Islam .

The roots of natural theology go back to Plato ( idea of ideas or idea of good ); It was then deepened primarily in scholasticism and neo-scholasticism . Mostly more clearly defined in terms of its status, it still has an effect to this day.

Demarcation

Natural theology is distinguished from the theology of revelation , which includes the supernatural revelation of God as the source of knowledge of God.

For the philosophy of religion it is deferred to the effect a rule that religious philosophy as a philosophical can discuss discipline among other principle also such religious issues that theologically back to Revelation and is generally religiously neutral. Many theologians and philosophers nevertheless accentuate both terms in their own way. Understood in Hegelian terms, philosophy of religion relates, for example, to the relationship between the subject and the absolute.

Requirements of Natural Theology

Natural theology presupposes the fundamental possibility of objective knowledge . Furthermore, it mostly claims that the entire world and its relationship to God is determined by the fact that every effect and every contingent being has a cause. More precisely, natural theology argues with the metaphysical causal principle or the principle of sufficient reason .

This prerequisite, for example, is disputed by empiricism , which only assumes causes for realities that can be experienced or rejects everything beyond that. David Hume himself problematized causality, for example by pointing out that knowledge about the laws of nature can never include the future. Even the fideism arises conditions of natural theology contrary: statements about God are therefore provided exclusively by faith, revelation and grace possible God. All three options are criticized by Immanuel Kant . According to Kant, causal relations only apply in the area of ​​the empirical, empiricism rests on unclear assumptions, and humility of people quickly turns into a self-inflicted immaturity , which has to be overcome by enlightenment .

history

Origin of the word

The Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BC) used in his 41 books on the "Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum" (The antiquities of human and divine things) a distinction between three types of theology: the "mythical" , “political” and “natural” theology. The latter ask what the gods are . Varro's answer is a demythologizing reduction from religion to physics: "Gods", that could be numbers, atoms or fire.

Church father Augustine quoted the "Antiquitates" of Varro in his own work De civitate dei (On the State of God) so often that modern philology was able to partially restore the content of the "Antiquitates". Varro used the Greek adjective physikos for the kind of theology he meant , which Augustine translated with the Latin naturalis . The term natural theology has become historically powerful through Augustine. Varro himself relies on stoic sources. It is not known whether he himself coined the term natural theology.

Plato

In fact, Plato is considered to be the oldest known representative of a natural theology, even if this term was not adopted until much later. In his Dialogue on the State ( Politeia ) , “theology” initially means “speaking of God” in a very general way. In the 10th book of his late work The Laws , he explains "the existence of the gods", namely "by providing convincing reasons".

Aristotle

Aristotle argues in his metaphysics for the assumption of a (first) motionless mover. Scholasticism is later based on the Aristotelian argument. On closer inspection, Aristotle's argument for the first immobile mover is less an ontological than a logical argument belonging to the theory of motion: Since in the Aristotelian theory of motion the movement of one body is only supposed to be caused by the movement of another body, this would result an infinite regress, if one does not let the movement emerge from an immobile source, so to speak “at the beginning of everything”; this source is the motionless mover postulated solely for logical reasons. This does not initially coincide with the Christian “ontological” idea of ​​a real existing spirit being called God, who is at the same time the creator of all things.

Patristic

The external historical reason for the emergence of natural theology in today's sense was the encounter between young Christianity and Hellenistic philosophy. Like the Apostle Paul , after him, the Fathers of the Church felt compelled to confront philosophy “in order to refute the errors of the Gentiles, whose opinion they could know because they themselves had been Gentiles or at least lived among Gentiles and therefore in theirs Teachings were taught ”(Thomas Aquinas).

middle Ages

The best known and probably most influential philosopher of the Middle Ages is Thomas Aquinas . His efforts to synthesize philosophy and Christian theology concerned first the epistemological definition of the two disciplines and their responsibilities and then the design of a philosophical theology, for example in the well-known formulation of the "five ways to prove the existence of God" (see below). He has thus contributed significantly to the preparation of the foundations of a natural theology in today's sense. The Catalan philosopher Raimundus Sabundus also takes the position of a philosophical theology in his work Liber creaturarum .

Modern times

In the Renaissance, the idea of ​​a natural theology was promoted by the renewal of Platonic philosophy from the 15th century (especially in Florence by Marsilio Ficino ). Its proponents included Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and Isaac Newton (1643–1727), who also understood natural philosophy as a search for God. In 1713 in the Scholium generale, Isaac Newton declared the existence of God to be a scientifically demonstrable "inescapable fact" for the 2nd edition of his Principia and formulated the sentence that speaking of God is an essential part of the theory of nature.

Newton's philosophy is in many ways connected to scholastic traditions, as the religious-philosophical systems of the Enlightenment of Francisco Suárez , Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz or Christian Freiherr von Wolff show.

Numerous philosophers and theologians later pursued the project of natural theology, often in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the context of neo-scholasticism and Thomism .

The First Vatican Council declared in the dogmatic constitution “ Dei Filius ” in 1870 that God could be safely known from the created world with the help of human reason (“Ecclesia tenet et docet, Deum, ... naturali humanae rationis lumine e rebus creatis certo cognosci posse . "). Anyone who denies this doctrine ("Si quis dixerit ... cognosci non posse ...") is threatened with expulsion from the Catholic Church ( anathema ) ("... anathema sit").

The world catechism of the Roman Catholic Church also considers natural theology to be possible and necessary and refers in particular to an interpretation of Romans understood in this sense (Chapter 1).

Evidence of God in Natural Theology

The five ways of Thomas Aquinas

In his main work Summa theologiae , Thomas Aquinas cited "five ways" (quinque viae) that exist to "prove the existence of God". In doing so, he resorted to lines of thought that can already be found in Plato and Aristotle:

  • A first unmoved mover is deduced from being in motion (kinesiological or cosmological proof of God) ,
  • a first cause ( causa prima ) (causal proof ) from being effected ,
  • an absolutely necessary being from the coincidental so and existence ( proof of contingency ) ,
  • from the more or less perfect being an absolutely perfect being (step proof)
  • and a supreme folder ( teleological proof of God ) from the orderliness of world things .

The five ways of Thomas Aquinas are attempts to prove the existence of God “from experience” ( a posteriori ). The possibility of a proof of God a priori , e.g. B. in the form of the ontological proof of God by Anselm of Canterbury in his Proslogion , was disputed by Thomas Aquinas.

Of the “essence” of God

Originally it is the aim of the proofs of God to show that God is (exists). The fact that God exists does not initially say anything about what God is. In order to prove a certain idea of ​​God (e.g. the idea of ​​a personal God), further arguments are required, e.g. B. Thomas Aquinas in the "sum of theology" (Summa theologiae) or "sum against the heathen" ( Summa contra gentiles ) explains. Following the proofs of God, the doctrine of God is developed in three main ways: the “way of lifting out” (via eminentiae), the way of “ analogy ” and the “way of negation” (via negationis, cf. negative theology ). Basically, it also applies to Thomas that we always know more about God what he is not than what he is.

Proponents of natural theology argue strongly summarized as follows with regard to the nature of God: As "immobile mover" and "first cause", God is immutable and eternal , he is free from any potency , i.e. pure act ( actus purus ) and pure spirit , without material limitations and defects, so perfect. With him being (esse) and being (essentia) coincide. As the perfect source of all being, God must come to whatever there is in the world he created, namely in man, of truth and good: being, life , knowledge , power , personality , love , happiness - only in an incomparably higher way. He is therefore being and life itself, omnipresent , omniscient and omnipotent , absolute personality, infinite love and perfect bliss.

Critique of Natural Theology

Critique of Evidence of God

Immanuel Kant is one of the best-known critics of the evidence of God . In the Critique of Pure Reason (A 620 ff.) He tries to refute the ontological proof of God, but considers - in view of the limitation of the range of human knowledge - even a-posterior proofs of God like that of Thomas Aquinas to be impossible. The conclusiveness of the classical proofs of God, but also the Kantian criticism of them, is controversial among philosophers up to the present day.

Theological criticism of the program of natural theology

From the (revelatory) theological point of view, there are different classifications of natural theology. The spectrum ranges from resolute rejection to clear approval.

Natural theology was subjected to harsh criticism, insofar as it claims to achieve an independent knowledge of God at all. Often no distinction is made between natural theology in the sense explained above and natural religion as a form of the relationship to God, which is not assumed to be justified for its form in revelation dates. Important stages of such criticism are:

  • The philosopher David Hume, who drew attention to the character of natural theologies as an afterthought. Deists had previously postulated that it was a kind of falsified original religion of humanity. According to Hume, instead, polytheistic worship of nature is at the beginning.
  • Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher basically follows Hume and Kant. In contrast to Hume, “positive” (actual historical instead of artificially constructed in thought) religion is given an appreciation, while philosophical theology is historically relativized. As with Kant, God does not belong to the realm of objective knowledge; these only exist in the realm of appearances.
  • Albrecht Ritschl defends himself (1881) against encroachments by natural theology into Christian dogmatics, especially against a moral narrowing through metaphysical foundations. This was supposed to free the faith from metaphysical premises questionable by positivist criticism. The early ecclesiastical reception of ancient philosophy finds his displeasure. As with Harnack , the universal opening made possible by this remains unnoticed even for non-Jews. Melanchthon in particular , who had developed an anthropological foundation, promoted the mixing of “nature” and “grace”. Schleiermacher also wrongly assumed a general public of pious self-confidence instead of the historical Christian faith.
  • Karl Barth , like Ritschl, turns against natural theology (explicitly only around 1930) as a counter-image to a theology of revelation that deserves criticism because it expresses human self-assertion. It could not stand before Barth's radicalized theology of justification. Historical figures of natural theology, however, never intended a contradiction to the God of revelation. Barth's thesis is based on his specific reading of Feuerbach , with Barth taking over the psychological derivation of religion for the non- Christian religions, especially therefore for the “natural religion”. Where natural religion lays claim to generality, Barth “had little more to offer than rhetoric” (Wolfhart Pannenberg).
  • Eberhard Jüngel criticizes any claim to an independent knowledge of God through natural theology.
  • Wolfhart Pannenberg draws a conclusion that is shared by many (Catholic and Protestant) theologians of today: “With the impossibility of a purely rationally based theology, however, the question of the possibility and factuality of a natural knowledge of God in the sense of a human being as such is always inherent , factual knowledge of the God whom the Christian message proclaims has not yet been answered. "

Philosophical Critique of Natural Theology

  • David Hume (1711–1776) deals primarily with natural theology in his “ Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion ” (1779). Here Hume takes the view that there is no "natural" way to prove the existence of a Christian understood God by means of mere reasoning. In his dialogue, Hume gives the last word to the skeptic Philo , who in the end regrets "not having found a more satisfactory solution". If “the whole of natural theology” could be reduced to “a simple, albeit somewhat unclear” sentence: “The cause or causes of order in the universe probably have some distant resemblance to human intelligence” - then even the “most inquisitive, most pensive one could understand and most religious person ”do not refuse his“ clear philosophical approval ”. This sentence is now immediately restricted by Hume by a long chain of four “if” sentences, the restrictions of which remove everything from this philosophical concept of God that would still be of importance for Christian faith. Above all, Hume (Philo) thinks that “this sentence is not accessible to any extension, modification or further explanation”. In addition, the sentence does not allow a conclusion "that touches human life or can become the cause of any act or omission". It should also not be overlooked that Hume asked the question one cause or many causes? in the above-mentioned position.
  • Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) criticizes all religions, based on the assumption of a general “ metaphysical need” of man as “ truth expressed allegorically and mythically and thus made accessible and digestible to humanity on a large scale”. He therefore also describes religion as the “metaphysics of the people”. Schopenhauer's criticism of the rational theology of his time (§ 175) is based on the assumed opposition between belief and knowledge. Schopenhauer writes about a core theme of natural theology, namely the relationship between reason and faith: “Whoever wants to be a rationalist must be a philosopher and as such emancipate himself from all authority, move forward and shake at nothing. But if one wants to be a theologian; so be consistent and do not leave the foundation of the authority, not even if it tells you to believe the incomprehensible. One cannot serve two masters, either reason or writing. (...) Either believe or philosophize! what one chooses is whole. "(§ 181)

See also

literature

Philosophy Bibliography : Natural Theology - Additional Bibliography on the Subject

Introductions

Individual theologians

  • Michael Albrecht: Subject: Christian Wolff's natural theology . Meiner, Hamburg 2011.
  • Martin Lenk: From the knowledge of God. Natural theology in the work of Henri de Lubac . Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-7820-0683-6 .
  • Philip Stewart: Natural Theology Then and Now. An Examination of Protestant Natural Theology, Past and Present . Diss., University of Munich 2013.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Theologia naturalis, sive liber creaturarum, specialiter de homine et natura. Martin Flach, Strasbourg 1501 ( digitized ).
  2. ↑ “It is agreed that the supreme God necessarily exists, and by the same necessity he is always and everywhere. ... This concludes the discussion of God, and to treat of God from phenomena is certainly a part of natural philosophy. … A fewe things could now be added concerning a certain very subtle spirit pervading gross bodies and lying hidden in them; by its force and actions, the particles of bodies attract one another at very small distances and cohere when they become contiguous; and electrical bodies act at greater distances, repelling as well as attracting neighboring corpuscles; ... But these things can not be explained in a few words; furthermore there is not a sufficient number of experiments to determine and demonstrate accurately the laws governing the actions of this spirit ”- Isaac Newton: Philosophical writings , ed. by Andrew Janiak. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 0-521-83122-9 , ISBN 0-521-53848-3 (pbk.), Pp. 91-93.
  3. ↑ Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum Et Declarationum de rebus fidei eit morum, editio XXXIV, edidit Henricus Denzinger et Adolfus Schönmetzer SJ, Herder, Freiburg / Br. No. 3004 and 3026