O QUE É TEOLOGIA NATURAL? | ALISTER MCGRATH

wank natural theology is a very straightforward thing for someone's both the scientists no theologian okay it's basic sense what natural theology is saying is look there's this wonderful world we inhabit might this world point beyond itself might it give us clues it's bit like in Psalm 19 the heavens declare the glory of the Lord is there some way in which the rational transparency and the beauty of this world might in effect the signpost to something greater and obviously people mean different things by natural theology some people would say it's about nature proving there's a God

people like me would say no it's not so much proving it's much more there's a resonance between the Christian way of looking at things in the way the world is but whatever it is it's about saying studying nature is actually a great thing to do because interesting in itself but also because by studying nature as God's creation it's giving you a deeper grasp of the wisdom of God as creator and to me natural theology is wonderful because in effect about saying look the Christian faith has this wonderful ability not simply to make sense of the

world but also talk about coherence what I mean by that is it's not just look there's this little bit we can make sense of when there's that little bit we can make sense of it's actually this is the big picture it holds everything together it weaves the threads together to give a pattern and for me natural theology is a way of bringing to bear this this big picture way of looking at nature which helps you make sense of it but also says hey it's not random is actually there is something genuinely meaningful here so I

find natural theology a very very exciting thing to do it's important to many people your scientists about saying look your scientific research deepened your vision of God it also has real importance apologetically because it's saying that we all want to try and make sense of this world and in one sense what we're doing is we're testing our worldviews against what we see well as an atheist I thought the 8th this way of looking made most sense of things then I discovered the Christian one said this is much better and in many ways natural theology is

about saying look stand inside the Christian way of looking at things and look at the world and ask how much sense does that make it makes a lot and for me that's a very important contribution to debates about the rationality of Christianity flicking the light of the debates at Richard Dawkins and others have sparked off now in theological circles sometimes natural theology has been somewhat suspect people have said for example that Bart showed us that natural theology was dangerous perhaps even a kind of superstition what would you say on that history I think the phrase

natural theology is used in different ways and as I was saying some people would say well look natural theology is about proving God's existence from nature and I don't think that's right and if it were right we'll what's the point of Revelation that's Bart's concern what I'm saying is look revelation comes first it gives us this divinely disclosed big picture and then you say let's use it let's use look at nature we say hey doesn't this make sense so what I'm doing is not saying nature proves God it's much more God gives us this way

of looking at things I started using it and when I see look at nature I see it in much sharper focus than I otherwise would it's about giving me a lens which allows me to see more crisply more clearly than for example my atheist lens they used in the past you