The Bible, Natural Theology, and Natural Law: Conflict or Compromise?

By Dr. Robert A. Morey

Copyright 2009 Robert A. Morey

Christian Scholars Press

P.O. Box 240,

Millerstown, PA 17062

www.faithdefenders.com

No part of this work is to be reproduced in any medium without written permission from the author and the publisher.

All Scripture citations are either the translation from the original text by Dr. Morey or from the New American Standard Version (© Lockman Foundation, 1974).

Dedicated to Dr. Cornelius Van Til

“We cannot properly set off the Reformed faith against the Roman Catholic Faith unless natural theology be rejected as springing from the autonomous man’s efforts to keep from facing the claims of his Creator Redeemer God. We cannot even set off the Protestant view of faith unless we distinguish God’s clear revelation speaking to us in man and in nature and man’s false response to this clear revelation in his natural theology.”

—Cornelius Van Til

Special thanks to Thomas F. Smith II, Jessica and Omar Garcia, Jon Powell, John Morey, and Stephen Macasil for their help in preparing the manuscript.

Forward

Dr. Vincent Cheung

Natural theology1 arises from man’s attempt to discover reality—God, man, ethics, even salvation—with methods that exclude divine revelation. Such a project requires ultimate confidence in man’s faculties and procedures. It assumes an attitude that says, “If it is there, I will find it. If it is true, I will prove it.” The natural theologian trusts in himself to discover what he needs to know and what there is to know. Since the object of his trust is himself, and since his conclusions are founded on his reliance on his own abilities, his own methods, and his own premises, what this man-oriented enterprise amounts to is self-worship.

When I was asked to write the foreword to Dr. Robert Morey’s new book, I thought that to mention this implication of natural theology is one way to direct the reader’s attention to the grave importance of the subject. Although many of those who contend against natural theology fail to characterize the matter in this manner, I was pleased that Morey indeed stresses this point with remarkable clarity right at the beginning. He writes, “If you begin only with yourself, you will end only with yourself. The only ‘god’ you will find looking into the well of your own soul is a reflection of your own image.” And later he adds, “When a Natural Theologian looks into the well of his mind, he thinks he is seeing God in the reflection at the bottom. But, in reality, he is only looking at his own reflection!”

This is a simple but profound way to illustrate our contention that natural theology and revealed theology are not just two ways of pursuing the same purpose and of attaining the same knowledge. And human speculation or natural theology is not to be seen as the prolegomena to divine revelation or reveal theology. Rather, these represent two divergent ways of discovery that carry their adherents in different ...