NATURAL THEOLOGY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Natural theology

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/nˈætʃərəl θiˈɑlədʒi/ Listen

Natural theology

noun

A theology that holds that knowledge of God can be acquired by human reason without the aid of divine revelation.

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Etymology of 'Natural theology'

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"Natural theology" Quotes from Famous Books

... argument in natural theology proceeds upon the ground that the inference for a final cause of the structure of the hand and of the valves in the veins is just as valid now, in individuals produced through natural generation, as it would have been in the case of the first ...

— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... were held to belong to "natural theology" which the philosophers gathered from their study of the world and taught in the schools: while the other, relating to the worship of men, was said to belong to "mythical theology" which was wont to be represented on the stage according ...

— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... eminently in Christian literature we find the noblest, soundest, and fullest advocacy of moral Theism, as having its evidence in the heart of man within and nature without, independently of any postulates concerning the Bible. I certainly grew up for thirty years in that belief. Treatises on Natural Theology, which (with whatever success) endeavoured to trace—not only a constructive God in the outer world, but also a good God when that world is viewed in connexion with man; were among the text-books of our clergy and of our universities, and were ...

— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... what I understand then by a first philosophy, my answer will be such as I suppose you already prepared to receive. I understand by a first philosophy, that which deserves the first place on account of the dignity and importance of its objects, natural theology or theism, and natural religion or ethics. If we consider the order of the sciences in their rise and progress, the first place belongs to natural philosophy, the mother of them all, or the trunk, the tree of knowledge, out of which, and in proportion ...

— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... understand Providence. Providence likes to be tempted. Thats the secret of the successful man. Read Browning. Natural theology on an island, eh? Caliban was afraid to tempt Providence: that was why he was never able to get even with Prospero. What did Prospero do? Prospero didnt even tempt Providence: he was Providence. Thats one of Tarleton's ideas; and dont you ...

— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw