Natural Theology - Key Proponents

Key Proponents

Besides Zarathushtra's Gathas, Plato gives the earliest surviving account of a "natural theology", around 360 BC, in his dialogue "Timaeus" he states "Now the whole Heaven, or Cosmos, ...we must first investigate concerning it that primary question which has to be investigated at the outset in every case,—namely, whether it has existed always, having no beginning of generation, or whether it has come into existence, having begun from some beginning". He continues in his Laws establishing the existence of the gods by rational argument, stating "...which lead to faith in the gods? ...One is our dogma about the soul...the other is our dogma concerning the ordering of the motion of the stars". Aristotle in his Metaphysics argues for the existence of an "unmoved mover", an argument taken up in medieval scholastics.

From the 8th century, the Mutazilite school of Islam, compelled to defend their principles against the orthodox Islam of their day, looked for support in philosophy, and are among the first to pursue a rational Islamic theology, called Ilm-al-Kalam (scholastic theology). The teleological argument was presented by the early Islamic philosophers, Alkindus and Averroes (founder of Averroism), while Avicenna (founder of the Avicennism school of Islamic philosophy) presented both the cosmological argument and ontological argument in The Book of Healing (1027).

Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274), wrote Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles which both present various versions of the Cosmological argument and Teleological argument, respectively. The Ontological argument is also presented, but rejected in favor of proofs dealing with cause and effect alone.

Thomas Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln wrote Execreitationes aliquot metaphysicae de Deo (1637) and spoke often of natural theology during the reign of Charles II.

John Ray (1627–1705) also known as John Wray, was an English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. He published important works on plants, animals, and natural theology.

William Derham (1657–1735), was a friend and disciple of John Ray. He continued Ray's tradition of natural theology in two of his own works, The Physico-Theology, published in 1713, and the Astro-Theology, 1714. These would later help influence the work of William Paley (see below).

In An Essay on the Principle of Population, the first edition published in 1798, Thomas Malthus ended with two chapters on natural theology and population. Malthus—a devout Christian—argued that revelation would "damp the soaring wings of intellect", and thus never let "the difficulties and doubts of parts of the scripture" interfere with his work.

William Paley gave a well-known rendition of the teleological argument for God. In 1802 he published Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature. In this he described the Watchmaker analogy, for which he is probably best known. Searing criticisms of arguments like Paley's are found in David Hume's posthumous Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

Thomas Paine wrote the definitive book on the natural religion of Deism, The Age of Reason (1794–1807). In it he uses reason to establish a belief in Nature's Designer who man calls God. He also establishes the many instances that Christianity and Judaism require us to give up our God-given reason in order to accept their claims to revelation.

American education reformer and abolitionist, Horace Mann (1796–1859) taught political economy, intellectual and moral philosophy, and natural theology.

Professor of chemistry and natural history, Edward Hitchcock also studied and wrote on natural theology. He attempted to unify and reconcile science and religion, focusing on geology. His major work in this area was The Religion of Geology and its Connected Sciences (1851).

The Gifford Lectures are lectures established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford. They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term—in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported by science and not dependent on the miraculous.