William Lane Craig and Natural Revelation

Looking through some of my notes on a Sunday School class entitled: The Immutability of God, I came across this paragraph. This is the first of the three perspectives I list on how Christians approach the attributes of God. ^a

The first obvious perspective is the philosophical one. William Lane Craig (who is a philosopher and natural theologian) says that: …”Someone desiring to learn more about God’s attributes of omniscience would be better advised to read the works of Christian philosophers than of Christian theologians.” ^b What is he saying with this quote? Bill Craig argues that natural theology, that is, philosophy ^c explains God’s attributes better than theology or Biblical revelation. In fact, some theologians today are coming out with books defending natural theology. ^d They are saying that God’s general revelation gives us a better way to understand God’s world, God’s ethics, and God Himself.

It is a stunning reality that the church has substituted the unchangeable character of the ever-living Word, for the likes of unbiblical philosophies. Natural law never leads to Biblical civilizations, but again, these same men who hold to such views, can never fathom a Christian society abiding by the principles of God’s unchanging word. They have succumbed to the other-worldly philosophy, whereby, this present age has nothing to offer the manifestation and sovereignty of God over the nations, except spiritual realities. ^e This, of course, is not always the case, however,  an increasing number of scholars  have abandoned the exhaustive application of the whole Word to the whole world.  What I propose is that natural theology has little to offer in terms of ethics and, furthermore, it offers minimal and insufficient data to understand the nature of God and His salvific work among the nations.

1. I shall return to this topic at another time  (back)
2. Craig, L. William, Time and Eternity, pg. 11.  (back)
3. Philosophy is not used here as negative, rather it is used by Craig as the self-explanatory method of understanding the nature of God. This, I argue, is dangerous  (back)
4. See VanDrunen from Westminster, California who defends natural law from a Reformed perspective  (back)
5. This is a crucial point since Christ transforms time and space in history. We already know of His conquering power in the New Heavens, but history itself is shaped by the same promise that Christ will be all in all  (back)