LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 156

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156

IV. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

God. . . . And what does this mean but that we can know nothing of God?”78
Replacing the rhetorical question with a more emphatic declaration, he bluntly
asserts that “[t]he power of God can be detected neither in the world of nature
nor in the souls of men.”79 Firmly believing this to be the case, Barth could
only describe himself as “an avowed opponent of all natural theology,”80 often
expressing this opposition in the most forceful terms.81
It must be noted, however, that Barth’s forceful rejections of both natural
knowledge and natural theology rest, at least in part, on his own novel definitions of each. Contrary to theologians of the Reformation as well as the Middle
Ages, he refers to natural knowledge, for example, as “a knowledge of which
man as man is the master.”82 More novel still is his definition of natural theology, which he describes as “the doctrine of a union of man with God existing
outside God’s revelation in Jesus Christ.”83 To recognize the novelty of such
conceptions is to recognize that Barth rejects what, in fact, none of his orthodox
predecessors had acknowledged or defended. 84 Barth’s novelty, though,
appears to have gone largely unrecognized, especially among his more recent
Reformed successors. Thus, contemporary Christian objections to natural
theology are most prominently, though by no means exclusively, formulated
and expressed by representatives of the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition.
Theologians and philosophers within this tradition note, for example, that
“[c]haracteristic of the Continental Calvinist tradition has been a revulsion

78
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn Hoskyns (London: Oxford University
Press, 1960), 46–7.
79
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 36. In a heated exchange, Barth’s fellow Swiss theologian
Emil Brunner (1889–1966) appealed to the first two chapters of the very epistle upon which
Barth had commented, insisting that “Barth simply refuses to follow St. Paul here.” Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, Natural Theology: Comprising “Nature and Grace” by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner
and the reply “No!” by Dr. Karl Barth, tr. Peter Fraenkel (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 61. Noting Barth’s professed adherence to Scripture alone, Brunner further remarks that, since Scripture
so consistently asserts that the Creator is known via his creation, “it seems to me a queer kind of
loyalty to Scripture to demand that such a revelation should not be acknowledged” (25).
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against arguments in favor of theism,”85 and that, with reference to natural
theology, “the Reformed attitude has ranged from indifference, through suspicion and hostility, to outright accusations of blasphemy.”86
Though the stated reasons for this “Reformed objection” vary, 87 it has
accurately been noted that the objection itself has become prominent only
in the twentieth century, and especially within the Dutch “neo-Calvinist”
school of Reformed theology. In this light, other Reformed theologians have
been willing to suggest that “the ‘Reformed objection’ to natural theology, as
characterized by twentieth-century philosophers of religion, simply did not
exist before they invented it.”88 Moreover, some unexpected sources contributing to this “invention” have been suggested. Among modern Reformed
critics, “several of them appeal explicitly to Hume and Kant”; indeed, “[t]he
dependence on Hume and Kant is one of the striking features of the criticisms
of the logic of theistic arguments by Reformed thinkers.”89 To the extent that
this is the case, it further indicates that influential strains of Enlightenment
thought were not the culmination of biblical, confessional, and dogmatic affirmations of natural revelation, natural knowledge, and natural theology, but
were rather the origins of their modern rejection.
Such a conclusion should not, however, prompt an embrace of the
“genetic fallacy”—the rejection of an idea or position solely on the basis of
its origins. Though it may indeed be significant that modern rejections of
natural theology and the natural knowledge of God most prominently originate among Enlightenment philosophers and Reformed theologians, far
more significant from a Lutheran perspective is simply that these positions—
whatever their origins—stand in opposition to historical Lutheranism’s
dogmatic, confessional, and exegetical conclusions. This is not, however,
to say that the Enlightenment and Reformed critiques are entirely without
merit. Indeed, a number of the points raised especially in these critiques
deserve thoughtful consideration by all Christians desirous of appealing to
God’s natural revelation and man’s natural reason in evangelistic endeavors.
Following a brief excursus on natural law, then, some of these points will be
addressed below.

Barth, The Knowledge of God and the Service of God, 6.

81
See, e.g., Brunner and Barth, Natural Theology, 75: “[O]ne can bypass so-called natural theology only as one would pass by an abyss into which it is inadvisable to step if one does not want
to fall.” Similarly, in the penultimate sentence of the same work: “Only the theology and the
church of the antichrist can profit from it” (128).
82

Barth, The Knowledge of God and the Service of God, 7. Cf., however, Reformed theologian G.C.
Berkouwer, General Revelation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 61, who rightly acknowledges
that even among Roman Catholic theologians natural theology “does not pretend to be an autonomous theology.”
83
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2/1, ed. G.W. Bromily and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1957), 168; emphasis added.
84
That is, Barth attacks “straw men.” Brunner hints that Barth may be guilty of a further logical fallacy (the genetic fallacy) when he notes that Barth’s rejection of natural theology is also
partially predicated on the charge that it is “Thomistic and Roman Catholic” as well as “derived
from the Enlightenment.” Brunner and Barth, Natural Theology, 21.

85
Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Introduction,” in Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, ed.
Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, (Notre Dame:University of Notre Dame Press,
1983), 7.
86
Alvin Plantinga, “The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology,” Proceedings of the American
Catholic Philosophical Association 54 (1980), 49.
87
See, e.g., the brief summaries in Sudduth, The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology, 5, and
Evans, “Apologetics in a New Key,” 66.
88
Sudduth, The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology, 45; see also 113–18 and the sources there
cited for Sudduth’s demonstration that John Calvin himself cannot be claimed as the source of
modern Reformed objections.
89

Sudduth, The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology, 171 and 204.

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C. Excursus on Natural Law
Though it has not been explicitly addressed in the foregoing, any examination of natural revelation, natural knowledge, and natural theology cannot
ignore the related topic of natural law. This relationship, for example, is at
least implicitly acknowledged even in Luther’s above-noted conception of the
natural knowledge of God being a “legal” knowledge of the divine. Similarly,
but even more explicitly observing the association of natural knowledge and
natural law, the Confessions declare that even the “pagans had something of
a knowledge of God from the law of nature.”90 Thus even modern Lutheran
commentators have rightly suggested that there is “an inseparable connection
which exists between natural theology and Natural Law.”91 It is precisely for
this reason, however, that the patterns of acknowledgement and rejection outlined above repeat themselves in modern Christian discussions of natural law.
Such parallels become immediately evident, for instance, in readings of
that New Testament passage most frequently cited as the clearest biblical
statement on natural law, which, not coincidentally, appears in the context
of St. Paul’s broader elucidation of God’s natural revelation and man’s natural knowledge of him (Romans 1:18–2:16). As with his affirmation of man’s
natural knowledge of God, Paul’s affirmation of the natural law—and man’s
awareness of it—appears unambiguous. He writes:
For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what
the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though
they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law
is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.
(Romans 2:14–15)
Nonetheless, the avoidance of any discussion of natural law in many
studies of New Testament ethics would seem to betray a common belief that
there is no New Testament acknowledgement of natural law.92 More pointedly
expressing this belief are assertions such as the following: “That scholars
should ever have tried to discover the Platonic or Stoic idea of natural law in
the Bible is one of the most amazing facts in the history of theology.”93
Despite such intimations, however, the “plain reading” of Paul on natural law—as with Paul on natural knowledge more generally—has been and
90

FC SD 5.22.

91
Robert Hoeferkamp, “Natural Law and the New Testament,” Concordia Theological Monthly
23 (1952), 648.
92
Matthew Levering, Biblical Natural Law: A Theocentric and Theological Approach (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 24. On the following page Levering also notes Barth’s influence
in this respect, paralleling his influence on questions of natural theology more generally.
93
Otto Piper, “What is Natural Law?” Theology Today 2 (1946), 461. As discussed briefly below,
however, an important distinction must be recognized between any “fact” and “theory” of
natural law. Thus, to say that Scripture contains no particularly “Platonic or Stoic idea of natural law” is not necessarily to say that Scripture refuses to recognize the reality of natural law.

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remains the most common, and most warranted, reading. Moreover, and again
in common with the biblical evidence for a natural knowledge of God, the
clearest and most frequently cited passage is by no means the only biblical evidence to which one might appeal.94 Even in the Old Testament, for example, it
has been observed that “[t]he nations are condemned in Amos 1:3–2:3 because
of their violation of Yahweh’s general revelation or natural law.”95 Similarly,
the divine declaration of Deuteronomy 4:6, that even Israel’s neighbors would
recognize her laws as especially wise and good, is implicitly revealing. As one
commentator notes: “that those who are not people of God can make such a
determination successfully means that the laws are understood to conform to
a standard other than ‘God said so’” in his special revelation.96
On the basis of the biblical witness, the Lutheran Confessions too profess
that “to some extent human reason naturally understands it [i.e., the law]
since reason contains the same judgment divinely written on the mind.”97
Reiterating the Apology of the Augsburg Confession on this point, and again
echoing Romans 2:14–15, the Formula of Concord also confesses that “this law
of God was written into the heart.”98 Similarly, the Formula not only connects
this natural knowledge of the law with the natural knowledge of God by
referring to each together, observing, for instance, that fallen men retain the
“dim spark of knowledge that a god exists (as Romans 1[:19–21, 24, 32] states), or
of the teaching of the law”;99 as noted above, it also binds them much more
intimately by asserting specifically that even pagans have “a knowledge of
God from the law of nature.”100
That some knowledge of the natural law is not only a fact of human
nature, “written on the heart” of all, but that it thus also serves as a basis for
the knowledge of God himself is a point similarly highlighted by Luther.
Thus he, too, can write that man has “a left-handed and a partial knowledge

94
For overviews of the biblical material, see, e.g., Levering, Biblical Natural Law, and David
VanDrunen, A Biblical Case for Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Acton Institute, 2006).
95
Reed Lessing, Amos (St. Louis: Concordia, 2009), 94. As Lessing further explains on the following page: “The prophet appeals to an innate order about human conduct that is—or should
be—evident to all people as good and right,” and “the nations are not denounced for sins that
they could not have been expected to recognize.”
96
Terence E. Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005), 137. It is, however, worth noting here that, while even
Israel’s neighbors can recognize the superiority of her law, that which makes it superior is its
divine origin and special revelation.
97

Ap 4.7.

98
FC Ep 6.2. Roland Ziegler, “Natural Law in the Lutheran Confessions,” in Natural Law: A
Lutheran Reappraisal, ed. Robert C. Baker (St. Louis: Concordia, 2011), 7, notes that the Confessions never explicitly quote Romans 2:14–15, but that such references to the law being “written
on the heart” clearly have this passage in view. See also, e.g., LC 2.67.
99

FC SD 2.9.

100

FC SD 5.22, emphasis added.

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