What's Tony Thinking

More On Theology: Natural and Revealed

I once started a Church Council meeting by suggesting that everyone share a recent experience of God’s presence in their life. Someone cited a beautiful sunset. Another spoke of the birth of a grandchild. Someone mentioned a time of closeness with her father. Another spoke of a tree that they found especially beautiful, even magical.

I was struck at the time by two things: all the experiences were pleasant ones. No one mentioned anything hard nor something that was challenging. Second, no one mentioned Jesus.

In a recent blog I tried to describe the difference between “natural theology” and “revealed theology.” This was prompted by my reading of the theologian Karl Barth, and participation in the webinar “Adventures in Barth.” In that blog I wrote the following:

“It occurs to me that it may be possible to put the essence of Barth this way: so-called “natural theology” begins with me, with us, with things like “the human condition” or “common good” and whatever matters seem most relevant to us at the moment. Barth’s theology rejects all that as the starting point. For Barth the starting point is always Jesus Christ. This sounds simple but the consequences are anything but. My observation is that most all liberal theology is ‘natural theology,’ which has left the church with too little to say about God’s nature and purposes.”

In some responses to this comment it was evident that by “natural theology” people thought I meant a theology inspired by the beauty and wonder of the natural world. I get that. But that isn’t what is meant by “natural theology” in this context.

In retrospect, the experience at the Church Council meeting was a pretty good exercise in “natural theology.” We worked from our own experience (as indeed my question had invited people to do) identifying touching or beautiful things as 0f God. Is that a problem? Barth thought it was, but not because he had anything against sunsets or trees or natural beauty.

Barth’s was a protest against reading God off the surface of nature, culture or in human feelings because he thought we inevitably read ourselves, our causes and aspirations, into everything. Barth’s big worry, in his time, was National Socialism. He was stunned by the way most of the church in Germany easily embraced and endorsed the National Socialist movement baptizing it as God’s will and the Fuhrer as God’s anointed one.

A friend writes, “Unless there is some more ‘objective’ check by revelation in Christ made subjectively luminous by the Spirit, natural theology becomes abstract, idolatrous and deeply rooted in human inwardness (romanticism).

Why does any of this matter? The most obvious answer is the way that conservative and evangelical Christians have embraced Trump. We baptize our causes and aspirations as God’s own. Trump became “God’s Chosen One,” regardless of the fact that his life and values are a complete inversion of Jesus’ Beatitudes.

“Christian Nationalism” is a prime, contemporary example of “natural theology.” It starts with the idea that America and a particular set of values and people identified as “truly American” are God’s unique and special project. Therefore, all good Christians should put the American nation and its priorities at the center of their lives and faith. Christianity is to play a supporting role to “American First.”

That said, Christian Nationalism is not the only example of a theology that starts with our causes and interests. As I suggested in that initial blog, liberal theology has also replaced God’s unique revelation with its own causes and aspirations. More recently, and under the influence of a therapeutic culture, we seem to have identified God with whatever we’re feeling when we’re feeling good or happy or fulfilled. Some have termed this “Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism,” and termed it the dominant ethos of mainline churches.

I have found Barth and his monumental project (the 13 volume Church Dogmatics) to be an enormous challenge to my own drift, as a liberal, toward natural theology. And as I hope I’ve indicated, his work remains relevant to us today.