A Review of Natural Theology by Geerhardus Vos
Even before attending Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, I encountered its governing theological ideology. Central to this strain of Reformed thought were the biblical theology of Geerhardus Vos and the apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, which found their synthesis in the radically non-speculative theology of John Murray and his successors.
Though Vos had refused J. Gresham Machen’s offer to leave Princeton Seminary with him, Westminster claimed Vos’s biblical theology as the intellectual foundation of Van Til’s presuppositionalist apologetic and their radically non-speculative theology.
It comes, then, as a shock to discover that Vos did not teach an incipiently presuppositional apologetic, but rather embraced the classical apologetic method and natural theology.
Vos’s lectures on Natural Theology are available for the first time after being discovered in the archives of Calvin University by James Baird1. Translated by Albert Gootjes under the auspices of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society, it is published by Reformation Heritage Books.
The text of Vos’s Natural Theology is preceded by a foreword by Richard Muller, and an introduction, nearly as long as the lectures themselves, by J. V. Fesko. This turns the publication into a polemical contribution to recent debates over the place of natural theology in Reformed thought.
In his introduction, Fesko claims that Vos’s lectures undermine the Vosian case for Van Til’s apologetics2. Defending and demonstrating the acceptance of natural theology in the Reformed tradition, Fesko argues that Vos fits perfectly into the mainstream of Reformed thought.
In particular, Vos was a student of Old Princeton. At Princeton, the classical Christian acceptance of natural theology was maintained with unique Scottish Enlightenment influence. Common sense realism replaced traditional Aristotelianism as the realist philosophy du jour. But otherwise, Old Princeton maintains the Reformed tradition’s acceptance of natural theology.
Vos’s lectures are indebted to those of Francis L. Patton, from whom Vos took a course “on the relationship of philosophy and science to Christianity.”3 Patton had also lectured on natural theology, and Vos’s notes show a great debt to Patton’s, sometimes paraphrasing directly. Accordingly, Fesko argues that Vos’s outlook was similar to that of Warfield, Hodge, and Patton, classical in its apologetics and engaged with contemporary science and philosophy.
Fesko closes his introduction with a survey of Van Til’s claims, showing how they conflict with Vos’s own classical apologetic methodology. He concludes that the publication of Natural Theology undermines the Reformed rejection of natural theology.
But whether Fesko is correct depends on the content of Vos’s lectures.
As the text of the lectures begins, Vos defends the value of natural theology. Following the Reformed and Christian mainstream, Vos argues that, though natural revelation “is sufficiently clear to hold people accountable before God,” it is “insufficient” for salvation.4
Vos also notes the place of natural theology in theological curriculum: “Natural theology owes its position in science to its use in apologetics, for refuting those who have rejected the supernatural revelation of God.”5 To deny natural theology is to refuse the apologetic aim.
Vos proceeds to historical theology. On the Middle Ages, Vos holds a balanced view; he does not lump all Medieval theologians together as theological rationalists.
Regarding the Reformation, Vos thinks that the Reformation was not “favorable to the development of natural theology,” because of its emphasis on Scripture alone and rejection of semi-Pelagianism.6 (Though Fesko thinks this generalization inaccurate.7) However, Vos does not claim that the Reformation rejected natural theology. He notes its inclusion in various catechisms, as well as the greater friendliness to natural theology of the Reformed than the Lutheran tradition.
Of Calvin, Vos says he held an “unusual position”: “He seems to think that it is only when nature is connected to our innate idea of God that it gives us an intelligible testimony.”8 According to Calvin, the internal sensus divinitatis plays a necessary role in illuminating for us the grandeur of God in external nature.
Though Vos thinks the Reformation was not especially friendly to natural theology, he argues that Johann Alsted “ameliorated” the situation. Alsted found natural theology to have both a subjective and an objective source: “An internal book of nature (the conscience, etc.) and an external book of nature (the objective testimony of creation),” though Vos laments that the latter came to disappear from view in the modern philosophical rationalism of Descartes and later thinkers.9
In Descartes’ rationalist philosophy, God was known a priori and, in fact, this knowledge of God was the foundation of the reliability of a posteriori sense perception. But the increasing modern preference for rationalistic argument led to ignoring the contribution of nature itself, observed empirically.
In this and succeeding sections, Vos is sensitive to the philosophical difference between rationalist and empiricist epistemologies. This difference is often downplayed in discourse opposed to natural theology, which lambasts all use of human epistemic powers apart from Scripture as “rationalism.”
Vos’s discussion of modern philosophy and apologetics rests on the significance of this epistemological contrast. Ancient and Medieval natural theology was avowedly empiricist, depending on the objective testimony of nature, perceived by the senses. But modern philosophy and apologetics came to retreat inward, resting more on internal sources, like reason and conscience. This culminates in Kant’s critique of the theistic arguments, the purpose of which is to leave belief in God resting on the faculty of practical reason or conscience. Vos diagnoses the transition from Christian empiricism to Christian rationalism as a retreat from the objective testimony of nature.
Next, Vos treats the theistic arguments, giving us a sense of his own sympathies. Vos shows a preference for empiricist, a posteriori arguments over rationalist, a priori ones. But he indicates that he shares Calvin’s “unusual view,” mentioned above, on which natural knowledge of God depends on the convergence of our innate idea of God with external evidence from the world.10
Since he opposes rationalism, Vos disputes Anselm’s a priori, ontological argument. His critique echoes Kant’s “Existence is not a predicate”: “A concept does not become richer or poorer depending on whether I assign or deny it existence.”11
However, Vos takes this moral from the failure of the ontological argument:
In the ontological argument we still find the expression of the idea innate in us that a necessary, absolute being exists, and how it must be thought. The ontological argument errs in that it seeks to prove what we should be accepting simply on the basis of the testimony of the idea.12
Vos argues that the ontological argument reveals the presence in us of an innate idea of God, the idea of “a necessary, absolute being,” even though it alone does not prove His existence
In the succeeding treatment of the cosmological argument, Vos offers his support but insists that the innate idea of God plays a role in its justification. A key juncture in the cosmological argument is the judgment that an infinite regress of causes is impossible. However, Vos apparently denies that this can be demonstrated philosophically. In reply to the question, “Why can we not extend the series of causes and effects into infinity?” Vos answers:
The reason for this does not lie in the concept of causality itself, which only demands that every effect must have a cause, but does not in any way demand the presence of an absolute cause behind all effects and causes. But the reason is rather to be found in the innate idea of something absolute which has the ground of its existence within itself and on which this world in its accidental nature rests.13
In Vos’s telling, philosophical reasoning concerning causality (“the concept of causality”) does not suffice to deduce the idea or the existence of “an absolute cause.” Such reasoning would still leave us asking for the cause of the “first cause.”
Rather, the reason the cosmological argument gets us to a first cause is that we already possess, prior to observation of finite causes, the “innate idea of something absolute.” James Baird rightly concludes: “Vos holds that the cosmological argument fails in the face of the possibility of an infinite series of causality unless one accepts the innate idea of God that he has placed within man.”14
In a section on intuition, Vos summarizes this position:
The idea of God can be considered an immediate testimony which God has given in us of His own existence. It is thus an innate idea and is produced by the Holy Spirit, specifically by the common grace of the Holy Spirit. It should, however, be emphasized that this idea is only (a principle) of knowledge of God requiring contact with the outer world and all kinds of inference in order to develop to actual knowledge of God.15
Vos’s position is that knowledge of God requires the convergence of a priori ideas with a posteriori evidence. This distinguishes Vos from philosophical rationalists, who attempt to deduce God without adverting to the senses.
But it also distinguishes Vos’s position from the empiricism of Aquinas, as Baird, discoverer of Vos’s lectures and author of a reply to Fesko, rightly notes.16 Vos is neither an Aristotelian empiricist nor a modern rationalist. He holds that reason and sense must work together to give us knowledge of God.
Is Vos, then, a poor precursor to Van Til?
Baird argues not. Vos’s account, he argues, is incipiently presuppositionalist: “Rather than derive the existence of the divine from religiously neutral assumptions, Vos’s understanding of the ontological argument relies on God’s immediate revelation of himself within the consciousness of man as an explicit premise.”17 Baird challenges the triumphal tone of Fesko’s introduction.18
But Vos is not adopting a religious presupposition, but appealing to the internal book of nature. If all human beings are equipped with an innate idea of God, then appeal to this idea does not introduce any religiously-loaded assumptions. It appeals only to epistemic common ground.
After all, natural theology does not begin from atheistic anthropology, according to which man does not possess an innate idea of God. Natural theology begins from the common epistemic faculties of human beings and the evidence of the external world. Together, Vos argues, these provide all people, whatever their ideological presuppositions, with testimony of God.
Many other features of Vos’s lectures deserve attention and study, but these suffice to demonstrate the contemporary interest of Vos’s Natural Theology. I must concur with Fesko, as he concludes:
The recovery of Vos’s lectures on natural theology inherently raises the question of whether the Reformed natural-theology project ought to be reopened. Despite the noisy din of their objections, the Barthian and Van Tillian dismissals of Reformed natural theology should be set aside.19
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