Preparing to hear the Gospel : a proposal for natural theology

149 Pages·1998·2.377 MB·English

by  Ned Wisnefske

P T ‘ ”
r e p a r in g c
H T G
e a r h e o spe l
A Proposal for Natural Theology
Ned Wisnefske
University Press of Amerioca, Inc.
Lanham • New York • Oxford
Copyright© 1998
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British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wisnefske, Ned.
Preparing to hear the Gospel: a proposal for natural theology /
Ned Wisnefske.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Natural theology—Controversial literature. 2. Theology. I.
Title.
BL182.W58 1998 210—dc21 98-27764 CIP
ISBN 0-7618-1234-2 (cloth: alk. ppr.)
ISBN 0-7618-1235-0 (pbk: alk. ppr.)
© The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48— 1984
MY 06 *99
For Gwen and Jack
whose childhood delighted and improved

CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction
Natural theology and modern thought 1
The context for this proposal 3
What kind of natural theology is this? 5
Suspicion concerning natural theology 7
Preparing to hear the gospel 10
PARTI
Natural Theology Without Religion
Chapter 1. How Our Picture of Religion Distorts Christian
Theology 15
What is not in that picture: our common, 17
natural life
Chapter 2. The Irrelevance of Religion for Our Common, 21
Natural Life
A popular view of religion 24
An academic view of religion 30
v
PART II
Life, Death, and the Predicament of Our Natural Life
Chapter 3. The Middle of Life 37
Drawing the context 3 8
Redrawing the place of the individual 42
Redrawing the reality of God 43
Redrawing our natural knowledge of God 45
Chapter 4. Our Natural Form of Life 49
The aesthetic sphere 51
The ethical sphere 53
Value 59
The theological sphere 65
Is it God who claims the life in us? 68
PART m
Connecting Natural Theology and Christian Theology
Chapter 5. Natural Theology 75
Overview of the demonstration so far 75
What this demonstration means for us 80
What this demonstration shows 87
What this demonstration does not show 90
Chapter 6. Christian Theology 99
From the Tree to the Flood 100
The life, crucifixion, and resurrection 111
of Jesus
Conclusion 119
The hidden god, the thought God, the 120
believed Trinity
Natural theology in Paul's Epistle to 122
the Romans
A thought experiment 132
Index 139
VI
Preface
This essay is a sequel to Our Natural Knowledge of God: A Prospect
for Natural Theology after Kant and Barth (New York: Peter Lang,
1990). In that book I discussed how these two thinkers—one from
philosophy, the other from theology—contributed to the decline of natural
theology in modern thought. I am in agreement with much of their
critiques. I do not think, however, that they altogether destroyed natural
theology, and I believe that it still has a role to play in contemporary
philosophy and theology. Especially now that post-modern thought is
reassessing such descriptors of modernity as 'rational,' 'natural,' and
'secular'—all matters central to modem natural theology—natural theology
is ripe for reconsideration.
This proposal could be considered an attempt to construct a post­
modern or post-liberal natural theology. But it is also important for me to
place it in a tradition extending at least as far back as the Reformers' pre­
modern treatment of natural theology. And, since the topic intrinsically
seeks that which is common and natural to all human life, it shares
concerns typical of modern thought. The proposal, to put it abstractly,
connects elements in pre-modem, modem, and post-modern thought in a
lineage linking such thinkers as Luther, Calvin, Kant, Kierkegaard,
Bonhoeffer, Barth, and Wittgenstein.
Natural theology is the inquiry into what our natural reason and
experience can tell us about God, and it brings to that conversation
philosophers and theologians, believers as well as unbelievers. It answers
questions such as, Is there a sense of the divine? Does it stem from our
natural life? Can we reach a common understanding of what divine
reality is? Developed with an eye toward Christianity, it prepares the way
for the gospel. My earlier book sketched a prospect for a natural
vii
theology which responded to that set of issues, this essay is a proposal for
such a natural theology.
Salem, Virginia N. W.
June 1998
Introduction
Natural theology and modern thought
It is a common and wide-spread observation that the loss of
theology's privileged place in modem thought and life had a profound
effect on the Western world. One feature of the modem secular world
view is that it placed the individual's existence at the epicenter of reality
with all other realities in orbit around it. If there is divine reality (a
vigorously disputed question in the modem world), it principally
augmented or continued my existence, which was the measure of all
other reality. My life centered reality for the modem individual;
everything else—even the reality of God—derived its meaning from it.
As a result, modern theology often appealed to an individual's quest
for meaning and ultimacy in a world where the reality of the divine was
less sure. Theology, which had been the disciplined reflection upon the
Word of God to humanity—perhaps even tire study of the reality of God—
was replaced by personal religious experiences and aspirations
concerning the ultimate meaning and purpose of one's life. But when the
focus was on the meaning of the individual's existence, the place of God
was blurred and shoved out to the periphery of life. With the individual
at life's epicenter, the need for God comes in view only when one's own
capabilities falter, such as times of personal crisis or intellectual impasse.
Consequently, God begins to look more like a guardian angel who
protects the individual in times of danger, or an aide for tire intellect,
rather than the Lord of all life; and the kingdom of God looks like tire
continuation and idealization of an individual's existence, rather than the
transformation of all life. At the extreme, the creator and governor of all
2 Preparing to Hear the Gospel
life and human affairs shrinks to little more than 'the Big Guy upstairs,'
theology reduces to reflection on personal religious experiences, and the
religious life degenerates into the attempt to ensure the individual's
happiness in this life and the next.
The observation that in our secular age we have difficulty
apprehending the reality of God is made both by believers and
unbelievers alike. I agree that our understanding of God is an enfeebled
and diminished one, even among those who consider themselves
religious.1 Much religious reflection today, for example, of both the lay
and academic variety, places God in the service of individual needs or
personal fulfillment—whether that be understood in intellectual or 'down
to earth' terms--and so shares this main feature of the secular world view.
The conclusion I draw from this observation, though, is not that
modem, advanced human beings have outgrown God. Nor do I think
that the only way forward for theology is to accept our secularity and the
absence of God in our world, but then assert that God comes to us only
through some special, Christian revelation. Both of these responses
simply accept the secular world view. Rather, I think that important
features of our common, natural life lead to a theological understanding
of life, but that those characteristics have been overlooked and ignored.
In that same vein, I do not conclude from this observation that we
need to rediscover a 'spiritual' dimension in our secular life. Quests to
find a place for theology in some uncanny, mystical comer of our
existence usually ignore the ordinary and natural components of our life.
When that happens, theology finds itself confined to a narrow 'spiritual'
dimension of life, and so pertains only peripherally to the everyday world
we commonly and normally experience. But natural theology, in my
view, stems from what is natural, elemental, material, and common in our
life, not from the unnatural, unusual, uncommon, immaterial—meanings
we typically associate with the 'spiritual.' I will hold that we have
overlooked or forgotten rudimentary factors and practices in our life
which show that we are indeed surrounded by eternal power and deity. I
believe that we have neglected to look at everyday features of our natural
form of life which impress the reality of eternal power and deity upon us,
and that if we look at key features of our natural life we might see natural
theology in a fresh light.
A second issue which followed from this and which dogged modem
theology, was how we come to such an understanding, or the question of
the knowledge of God. If we maintain that the divine is indeed an
objective reality (and not simply a comforting idea or useful hypothesis),
how can we be sure that we articulate a common, theological
understanding of that reality, and not simply express subjective religious