The Biblical Precedent for Natural Theology

“Natural theology” is characterized by the attempt to articulate the religious dimension of common human experience independently of special revelation and to relate this experience to the received tradition. This approach to theology has often been contrasted with a “biblical” theology which relies on the authority of special revelation. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the Jewish wisdom literature as a specimen of natural theology within the biblical corpus which deserves greater attention than it has received from both “biblical” and “natural” theologians. The relevance of wisdom for the theological enterprise is illustrated by four theses: 1. Wisdom is an integral part of the biblical tradition. This has been disputed by many biblical scholars, most recently H. D. Preuss. Both critics (e.g., Preuss) and defenders (Zimmerli, Gese, von Rad) have tended to assume that wisdom must be legitimated in terms of some specifically Israelite doctrines, which distinguish it from gentile wisdom. However, it is precisely in the failure of wisdom to appeal to specifically Israelite traditions that we find a fundamental trait of natural theology: the attempt to give an autonomous account of the common human experience independently of special revelation. 2. Wisdom articulates the religious dimension of universal human experience. Since wisdom attaches little importance to visionary experiences or prophetic revelations it has often been characterized as secular. Yet wisdom is consistently presented as a revelation, which is beyond human control and is experienced as a gift. Revelation in this sense does not necessarily imply the intervention of a personal God or the disruption of the normal processes of nature. The religious character of wisdom must be appreciated in universal experiential categories. Significantly, the key concepts of limit and transcendent order stressed by von Rad are widely recognized as fundamental to the phenomenon of religion. 3. Wisdom attempts a correlation with the specific traditions of Israel. This correlation is found in Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon. The Israelite traditions are treated as focal instances of universal phenomena, such as justice. 4. Analogies with wisdom suggest that elements of natural theology can also be found in other parts of the Bible. Alleged instances of “wisdom influences” on historical and prophetic books are significant chiefly for the phenomenological similarities they reveal, irrespective of historical influence. While these similarities may only show the common basis of all this literature in human experience, they support the view that even explicitly “supernaturalist” theologies have assumptions and implications which derive in fact from natural theology.

Appeal · Epistemology · Natural (archaeology) · Natural theology · Political science · Relevance (law) · Revelation · Theology · History · Karl Barth and Christian Theology · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

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