NATURAL THEOLOGY-ETHICS. 



NATURAL THEOLOGY is the scientific 

 statement of such conclusions regarding God 

 as man can reach by reflection upon himself and 

 the universe amidst which he is placed. Its rela- 

 tion to Revealed Theology is not that of a rival, 

 but of an indispensable preliminary. Without 

 entering on the question of the ultimate pos- 

 sibility of a revelation, it seems plain that such 

 revelation is possible only in so far as a natural 

 theology is attainable, and after its principles 

 have been attained. There are two parties to a 

 revelation God, the revealer ; and man, the 

 receiver of the revelation. Before man can re- 

 cognise and receive any communication as ema- 

 nating from God, he must be aware of, or, at all 

 events, believe in, the existence of God ; and he 

 must possess as much knowledge of the divine 

 character as is needed to enable him to say 

 whether the alleged revelation is likely to have 

 proceeded from a divine source. This previous 

 knowledge, of course, is not derivable from the 

 revelation, which is still to be tested, but must 

 come from those investigations into nature's wit- 

 ness for God whose collective result forms natu- 

 ral theology. Revealed theology is thus depend- 

 ent for its reception upon natural theology, and 

 the degree of assent to the principles of the one is 

 conditioned by the credibility established for the 

 conclusions of the other. 



The problems of natural theology are two in 

 number the existence and the nature of God. 

 Is there a God ? And if so, what is He ? With 

 respect to the first question, it undertakes to estab- 

 lish an affirmative, or at least to shew, that the 

 human mind is so powerfully determined in the 

 direction of an affirmative, that it cannot escape 

 taking action upon it without proving false to 

 itself. With respect to the second question, it 

 professes to demonstrate a series of essential attri- 

 butes. To treat these questions separately, in an 

 absolute sense, is impossible. A being and its 

 attributes are inseparable in fact, if not also in 

 thought. Accordingly, in arguing for the being of 

 God, natural theology is simultaneously doing 

 much for that second branch of its aims which 

 embraces the nature and character of God. 



I. THE BEING OF GOD. 



In treating this part of the subject, strict order 

 would demand that an opening be made with a 

 definition of God ; but as that would require an 

 enumeration of the qualities which fall to be 

 investigated under the second division of his 

 subject, the natural theologian usually confines 

 himself to saying that he seeks to make good the 

 existence of an intelligent and moral cause of all 

 else that exists and occurs. The discussion of this 

 position is commonly and not unnaturally intro- 

 duced by a reference to the consensus of mankind 

 as to the existence of some such Supreme Being 

 as has now been generally described. Universally 

 and always, religion and worship have existed, in 

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infinite variety of form, but with unity of essence- 

 It has been objected that Buddhism presents an 

 exception, exemplifying a vast religion without a 

 God. But to this it may be answered, first of all, 

 that it is by no means clear that even in its origin 

 Buddhism was atheistic, at least polemically. If 

 Buddha said nothing about God, he did not argue 

 against him, and there may have been reasons, 

 such as the theological exaggerations of Brah- 

 manism, which temporarily determined him to 

 emphasise the moral rather than the theological 

 view of things. His followers, at all events, have 

 not been able to escape the influence of the re- 

 ligious instinct. Temples, rituals, priesthoods, 

 popular adorations, myths, relics, and super- 

 stitions, diffused all over the extensive regions 

 nominally identified in faith with the Indian 

 reformer, bespeak the ineradicable propensity of 

 human nature to recognise and revere something 

 that lies behind the visible. This universal agree- 

 ment, however, although strong as a presumption, 

 does not amount to a demonstration. Men may 

 be agreed, but they may be agreed in error ; and 

 since in the case before us, while substantially at 

 one that there is something that is divine, they 

 have been endlessly and hopelessly at variance as to 

 what that something is, so that the value of their 

 unanimity is impaired by the extent of their diver- 

 sity, it was necessary to draw out the considera- 

 tions that support the leading conclusion of natural 

 theology in such a form as should sustain the 

 criticism and command the assent of the scientific 

 reason. In performing this part of his task, it is 

 usual for the natural theologian to arrange his 

 materials of argument in four divisions : the Tele- 

 ological, the Cosmological, the Ontological, and 

 the Moral ; the first two being drawn from objec- 

 tive, and the last two from subjective, sources of 

 information. 



i. The Teleological Argument. 



This argument, which derives its name from its 

 grounding itself on an assumed adaptation of 

 means to end (telos) in nature, is that which comes 

 first in the natural order of thought In the his- 

 tory of reflection in the individual mind, interroga- 

 tion of the external precedes introspection. Nature 

 demands to be heard more clamantly than con- 

 sciousness. The first thought of God, therefore, 

 is probably excited by the perception of a sup- 

 posed arrangement in the external universe, and 

 it is from this outward order that natural the- 

 ology draws its oldest and most obvious argu- 

 ment for the existence of God. The argument, 

 put briefly, is, that the universe exhibits traces 

 of design, implying, of course, the presence and 

 activity of a designing mind. In our attempts to 

 interpret the constitution and processes of nature 

 around us, we are constrained to infer causation, 

 intelligence, supremacy, unity of plan, and moral 

 intention. In the movements of the astronomical 

 universe, in the growth of plants and animals, in 

 the activities of the various physical, chemical, and 



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