Natural Theology

It is hard to think of an area of Christian theology that provides more scope for interdisciplinary conversation than the doctrine of creation. This doctrine not only invites reflection on an intellectual concept: it calls for contemplation of the endlessly complex, dynamic, and fascinating world that human being inhabit. But the possibilities for wide-ranging discussion are such that scholars sometimes end up talking past one another. Productive conversation requires mutual understanding of insights across disciplinary boundaries. Knowing Creation offers an essential resource for helping scholars from a range of fields to appreciate one another's concerns and perspectives. In so doing, it offers an important step forward in establishing a mutually-enriching dialogue that addresses, amongst others, the following key questions:

- Who is the God who creates?
- Why does God create?
- What is "creation"?
- What does it mean to recognize that a theology of creation speaks of a natural world that is subject to the observation of the natural sciences? What does it mean to talk about both a "natural" order and a "created" order?
- What are the major tensions that have arisen between the natural sciences and Christian thinking historically, and why? How can we move beyond such tensions to a positive and constructive conversation, while also avoiding facile notions such as a "god of the gaps"?
- Is it feasible for a natural scientist to maintain a belief in God's continuing creative activity?
- In what ways might a naturalistic understanding of the natural world be said to be limited?
- How can biblical studies, theology, philosophy, history, and science talk better together about these questions?

At a time when the doctrine of creation - and even a mention of "creation" - has been disparaged due to its supposed associations with anti-scientific dogma, and theological offerings sometimes risk appearing a little more than reactionary exercises in naive apologetics, ill-informed by science or distinctly wary of engagement with it, it is more important than ever to offer a cross-disciplinary resource that can voice a positive account of a Christian theology of creation, and do so as a genuinely broad-ranging conversation about science and faith.

This paper will argue that the seventeenth century soteriological critique of natural theology, under the influence of the ​via moderna,​ undermined an otherwise healthy appropriation of Scholastic metaphysics in the maintaining of Reformed Orthodoxy. This will be shown with the test cases of Franciscus Junius and Petrus van Mastricht, but also with relevant references to Francis Turretin.

The purpose of this research is to publish a manuscript of the treatise Sefer Habri’a (The Book of Creation), written in 1670 by Rabbi Avraham Binyamin Nathan ben Elisha Chaim Halevi Askhenazy, also known as Nathan Ghazzati or Rabbi Nathan of Gaza. It has been copied into several manuscripts, which ended up scattered around the world, until they were ultimately collected by professor Chaim Wirszubski Z.L. of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 1930s and 1940s. Wirszubski set out on a project of conducting a scientific edition of the treatise, and even published a small part of it.  However, misfortune has prevented him from finishing his great work, and he was called upon to teach in the Great Yeshiva in heavens. Now, the reader is presented with a full edition, accompanied by a comprehensive and methodical research. The research is separated from the original text, to allow the reader to focus on the text itself, if they so wish. Those who would seek to also delve into the analysis, can easily do so.
It is not everyday that a person is awarded the great privilege of returning a lost book to the collective Jewish library. Even more so when it is a book written by one of the greatest rabbis in recent generations, least of all a halakhic figure of the magnitude of Rabbi Nathan. We are faced with an unparalleled text in Rabbinic messianic and Hebrew literature. It is the central text of the Sabbatean movement after Sabbatai Zevi’s conversion to Islam. Sefer Habri’a was written by the progenitor of the movement, Rabbi Nathan of Gaza. Rabbi Nathan was famously considered a prophet by the spiritual leaders of the Jewish world in his time, and was one of those who declared Sabbatai Zevi to be a messiah. He was the one who explained the profound meaning of Zevi’s conversion, and the one who tried to prevent the masses from converting along with him.
If we wish to be certain that we can indeed declare “thou art our brother” to Nathan, we must look at this renewed text from every possible perspective. The text’s uniqueness, it’s complexity, length and meaning introduce many challenges, both on the technical-philological level and on that of semantic analysis. We should also pay heed to how socially problematic the Sabbatean movement is, following the heated debates that arose several generations after Zevi’s conversion. On that subject, we can view Sefer Habri’a as a treatise which ascribes profound meaning to Zevi’s ‘foreign acts’, through the Ha’ari’s hyper-nomic system. That is, the Lurianic Kabbalah, which unequivocally accepts the Jewish Halakha as sacred, is the treatise’s main method of discourse. It seems that the survival and continuity of Jewish tradition after the crisis was Rabbi Nathan’s main motivation in writing this immense work. That is, the desire to give a profound kabbalic meaning to the commandments of halakha, in the face of a shifting historical reality is at the heart of the text.
Sabbateanism is a grave subject in Jewish history. Therefore, whenever a new Sabbatean document is published, we must ask ourselves how its publication will affect the existing knowledge we have. When people read new material that contradicts what they perceive to be true, they often develop a ‘resistance front’, assuming that every new claim must be proved out of the existing body of knowledge, as if the unknown can be explored from the confines of the known. The problem here is evident - new information cannot be added in this way, and true learning cannot be achieved. All that can happen is that we pour old knowledge into a slightly different mould, at best. That said, there are times when a newly published document is so important that it demands of us to re-examine all of our previous held knowledge. More often than not, those who are tasked with preserving knowledge are not enthusiastic by the appearance of a new research which undermines the well known system to which they adhere. Therefore, if we wish the new knowledge to be properly accepted by people in that position, upon publishing such a document we must present in detail what we retain, and what we reconsider. It is possible that Sefer Habri’a would lead us into rethinking the Sabbatean movement in its entirety. It is, after all, a fundamental text written by the movement’s progenitor, immediately after the conversion. We will soon see that Sefer Habri’a would lead any observant reader to a clear understanding that it is a Kabbalah book that follows directly the writings of the Ha’ari. It is a direct continuation, and some would even say the highlight, of the Lurianic corpus. In this manner we can also see that Torat Israel, the Jewish halakha and the well-being of the nation at a time of crisis were undoubtedly on the mind of the author, Rabbi Nathan of Gaza, and that he was a loyal grand sage of Israel.

This course is a critical introduction to the philosophical study of religion, based on classical and contemporary analytical readings of such issues as the basis of religious claims, the meaning of religious discourse, the relationship between faith and reason, the nature and existence of God, the nature of religious worship and of religious experience, the problems of evil and human destiny.

The prevailing consensus among historians is that natural theology within Protestantism was born in the eighteenth century as a byproduct of the Enlightenment and had a sharply diminished if not nonexistent role within Puritanism.

Based on an exhaustive study of the writings of nearly seventy English and American Puritans spanning from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century, this book demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Puritan theologians not only embraced natural theology on a theoretical level but employed it in a surprising variety of pastoral, apologetic , and evangelical contexts, including their missionary activities to the Indians of New England. Some Puritans even asserted that people who had never heard about Christianity could be saved through the knowledge afforded them by natural theology. This conclusion reshapes our understanding of the history of apologetics and sheds fresh light on the origins of the Enlightenment itself.

Puritanism and Natural Theology also examines the crises of doubt experienced by several prominent Puritan theologians, advances our understanding of the o-debated issue of the role of reason within Puritanism, and sets the Puritans' enthusiasm for natural science within the broader context of their beliefs about natural theology.

El problema del conocimiento teórico de Dios ha ocupado a los filósofos desde los orígenes de la Filosofía. El giro copernicano que Kant imprimió al planteamiento metafísico por excelencia -Dios- no hizo sino agudizar el asunto. Las múltiples tradiciones filosóficas contemporáneas también manifiestan un interés por la posibilidad o imposibilidad de tal empresa. Aunque la propuesta filosófica de Leonardo Polo no se inserta directamente en alguna de esas tradiciones, se aprovecha de muchas de sus nociones y argumentaciones, sobre todo de las tradiciones aristotélica, tomista y fenomenológica. Según el filósofo madrileño la inteligencia, también en su vertiente teórica, es capax Dei. El siguiente artículo pretende hacerse cargo de manera global de en qué consiste para Leonardo Polo ese aserto.

Palabras clave: Dios, inteligencia, método, límite, hábito, objeto, término, operación intelectual.

Abstract: The inquiry about the existence and essence of God has been a philosophical question since the origins of Philosophy. Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft gave a Copernican Turn to this issue; according to him, we cannot demonstrate the existence of God by means of the theoretical reason. In contemporary philosophy this question about God has been, by different traditions, revisited. The philosophical proposal of L. Polo -especially his contribution in theory of knowledge-could help to reconsider this topic with new tools and arguments. According to Polo the human intellect (inteligencia) in his theoretical dimension is essentially capax Dei. This article tries to summarize the arguments of Polo in order to support his thesis about the possibility of theoretical knowledge of God.

Resumo: O artigo investiga o problema da teologia na filosofia crítica da Kant. Para tal, parte-se de uma determinação geral desse problema tal como recebido pela própria disciplina teológica para então se desenvolver as críticas kantianas às diferentes formas de saber teológico, da ontoteologia à ético-teologia. Nesse contexto, especial atenção é dada à ontoteologia devido à sua centralidade na argumentação de Kant. Por fim, reflete-se sobre o conceito, as determinações e os impasses da teologia (e conseguintemente da metafísica) em um ambiente filosófico pós-crítico. Palavras-chave: teologia; filosofia crítica; provas da existência de Deus; prova ontológica; fideísmo.

Orthodox Christianity has, unfortunately, a tumultuous relationship with natural theology. Some theologians, such as Vladamir Lossky and John Zizoulas, have appraised the philosophical projects of Medieval Scholasticism and its progeny with hesitant skepticism at best, and outright condemnation at worst. Others, like Richard Swinburne and David Bradshaw, not only have a positive view of natural theology, they have incorporated its methodology into their own philosophical and theological writings. In this paper, I will argue that natural theology plays an integral role in the development of orthodox spirituality by inspiring within persons a feeling of natural wonder. This feeling, over time, renders the individual more open to the full content of the Orthodox faith. First, I will define Natural Theology and explain why some are resistant to its methodology and conclusions and make a case for its historical existence within Orthodoxy. Next, I will offer an account of "natural wonder" and explain how natural theology generates this emotion in persons. Finally, I will explain how natural theology can assist in the development of Orthodox Spirituality through the use of natural wonder.

Intellectual history abounds with writers who were celebrated figures in their own time but who are scarcely remembered today; whereas others emerge from obscurity to become canonical figures in their disciplines. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) does not quite fit either model: he was a respected scholar in his own lifetime and, as other contributors to this issue demonstrate, he was certainly not forgotten. But his posthumous reputation, whether as innovator or infidel, has often been narrowly conceived, focused as it was on (literally) fragments of his work.1 In this article I shall attempt to do three things: (1) contextualise the renewed interest in Reimarus for eighteenth-century intellectual history; (2) foreground the robust natural theology he promoted in his lifetime; and (3) show the continuities between that positive programme, and some of Reimarus’s more famous writings attacking Christianity.

Abstract
To what extent can a natural theology be derived from general revelation? Discuss the implications of your answer for the fate of the ‘unevangelised’.
This essay answers the question of what we can know about God through general revelation, and in particular what that means for those people who have not had the opportunity to ever hear the gospel message.  The essay begins by looking at the different knowledge that a person can attain about God through general revelation, but before delving into the different arguments it starts by outlining a case against the argument that there is no general revelation of God.  From this the essay delves into what can be known about God through what is revealed in history, what can be known by considering the origins of the universe, what knowledge of God can be seen by the evidence of intelligent design of the world, and also what our own moral conscience tells us about God.  The essay argues that although significant knowledge about God may be determined through His general revelation, the knowledge of who He is or a more intimate knowledge of Him cannot be attained apart from special revelation.  It shows how without the special revelation of God through Jesus, salvation is not possible, then it cites various different Biblical examples to show how, regardless of whether people have been “evangelised” or not, they are still able to receive God’s special revelation that leads unto salvation.  The conclusion of the essay is that general revelation is what gives a person faith to believe that God exists, and therefore pursue Him further, but that a special revelation of Jesus is needed through scriptures, visions, messengers, angels etc., for them to be saved.

Conference draft of the article: "Intellectual Elitism and the Need for Faith in Maimonides and Aquinas," forthcoming: Anuario Filosófico, Vol. 48, no. 1, "Aquinas and the Abrahamic Traditions" (2015).

Copyright © 2013-15 Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo.
All rights reserved.

Abstract: In his Commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate 3.1, Aquinas cites Maimonides as giving five reasons for why faith is necessary for mankind.  Yet when one turns to The Guide for the Perplexed 1.34, one immediately sees that Maimonides is actually giving five reasons for why the study of metaphysics, which he considers to be the ultimate path to human perfection, must be restricted to the learned and must be hidden from the unlearned masses.  Interpreters tend to see Aquinas as therefore misappropriating Maimonides' thought, or in the words of one scholar, as "standing Maimonides on his head": his use of Maimonides is seen as a reversal (albeit a "benign reversal") of Maimonides' own thought.  In this paper, however, I place Maimonides' text on the five reasons for concealing metaphysics within the context of his rational mysticism and compare it to Aquinas' own Christian mystical thought in an attempt to show that in his own mind Aquinas is not misquoting, reversing, or doing violence to Maimonides' text; rather, Aquinas is completing Maimonides' natural, rational mysticism with what he understands to be the supernatural perfection of the theological virtue of faith.

W literaturze podkreśla się fakt, że Darwin sprzeciwiał się poglądom głoszącym nagłe stworzenie niezmiennych gatunków przez Boga. Wykazuję, że tworząc swoją teorię, odrzucał nie tylko koncepcję bezpośredniej Boskiej ingerencji, ale także wszelkie – oprócz deistycznego – teleologiczne wyjaśnienia procesów ewolucyjnych. Jako powody zmiany przez Darwina stanowiska dotyczącego rozwoju życia na Ziemi wskazuję zarówno przytaczane przez niego argumenty naukowe jak i jego filozoficzno-światopoglądwą ewolucję.

Dzięki sukcesowi teorii Darwina przyjmowany przez niego naturalizm metodologiczny stał się fundamentem współczesnej nauki. Postulat naturalizmu zakazuje wyjaśnień odwołujących się do łamiących porządek przyrodniczy bytów nadprzyrodzonych i do procesów celowościowych. Uwzględnienie czynników naukowych oraz światopoglądowych wpływających na Darwina daje pełniejszy obraz motywów, które przyczyniły się do utrwalenia wizji współczesnej nauki jako bazującej na naturalizmie.

Augustine is considered a leading figure in the history of the book of nature. But what exactly did he say about it? This article examines all the metaphors with which Augustine refers, or seems to refer, to the visible world as a divine book. It is found that four of the often-cited passages have a different meaning, but two of them refer to the material creation as a book. The article further explores how the idea of God’s two books—nature and Scripture—influences Augustine’s literal interpretation of Genesis and his Trinitarian theology. Finally, it argues that the ultimate foundation for the Augustinian book of nature should be sought in his theology of the Word.

Fine-tuning arguments are a type of design argument that try to persuade non-theists that there is a supernatural designer of the Universe. After mentioning a problem with the derivation of the tiny probabilities sometimes invoked in such arguments, I consider the meaning of the term “Anthropic Principle”. This prepares the ground for a more radical critique concerning thought experiments, possible worlds and multiverses. I conclude by suggesting that fine-tuning arguments carry too much naturalistic baggage to be effective tools in an apologetic for monotheistic faith.

Az alábbi tanulmány azon kérdést feszegeti, hogy mi szükség lehet egy hívő ember életében a természeti teológiára és az istenérvekre. Első lépésben röviden bemutatja a természeti teológia koncepcióját, annak tágabb és szűkebb értelmét. Ezek után a dolgozat konkrét kérdésére felelve kitér a felvilágosodás során felmerült empirista kritikára, mely szerint egy meggyőződést csak akkor racionális elfogadni, ha azt megfelelő bizonyítékok támasztják alá. Az ezen kritikára adott teista, illetve keresztény megközelítések közül az angolszász vallásfilozófia két kiemelkedő alakjának, Richard Swinburne-nek és Alvin Plantingának a válaszát mutatja be. A két megközelítés episztemológiai szempontból részben fedi egymást, viszont más tekintetben gyökeresen eltérnek, közös viszont bennük, hogy mindkettő segítheti a keresztény embereket abban, hogy identitásuk, az Isten létébe vetett meggyőződésük megerősödjön és növekedjen.

It was common for Medieval thinkers to bring forth divers arguments, or "ways", for the existence of God-from motion, from efficient, formal and final causality, as well as eminence, truth and-and conclude each distinct "way" with a rather unsatisfying (for some) "and this everyone calls God." Scotus does not attempt to show that God exists by a series of arguments that can be used in a cumulative case, but by a single argument that contains several steps, each concluding to something that some might have added the tag, "and this we call God."1 Scotus does something a little different, pressing into service an argument from metaphysical (rather than physical) efficient causality as he begins his single (and rather long) proof for the actual existence of an infinite being. In the Lectura, Scotus explains why he intends to take the metaphysical route. Now efficiency can be considered either as a metaphysical or as a physical property. The metaphysical property is more extensive than the physical for "to give existence to another" is of broader scope than "to give existence by way of movement or change." And even if all existence were given in the latter fashion, the notion of the one is still not that of the other. It is not efficiency as a physical attribute, however, but efficiency as the metaphysician considers it that provides a more effective way of proving God's existence, for there are more attributes in metaphysics than in physics whereby the existence of God can be established. It can be shown, for example, from "composition and simplicity," from "act and potency," from "one and many," from those features which are properties of being. Wherefore, if you find one extreme of the disjunction imperfectly realized in a creature, you conclude that the alternate, the perfect extreme exists in God. Averroës, therefore, in attacking Avicenna at the end of Bk. I of the Physics, 14 is incorrect when he claims that to prove that God exists is the job of the physicist alone, because this can be established only by way of motion, and in no other way-as if metaphysics began with a conclusion which was not evident in itself, but needed to be proved in physics (For Averroës asserts this falsehood at the end of the first book of the Physics). In point of fact, however, [God's existence] can be shown more truly and in a greater variety of ways by means of those. As Wolter says in his discussion about Scotus' Triple Primacy argument: What is interesting to note is that Scotus, unlike Henry of Ghent, or for that matter St. Thomas, does not pause here to tell us that this first cause, or this ultimate end, or this supreme nature is God. In fact, he almost seems loath to use this term until he believes he has established the existence of a being so different and unique among existing things that we can attribute this name to it in a meaningful fashion.

This book examines literary representations of human and non-human animality in British Romanticism, a period in which scientific, political, and industrial revolutions radically transformed the status of the human and redefined the concept of species. Its novel approach lies in its focus on the role that aesthetic taste played in the Romantic understanding of the animal. Concentrating on the discourses of the sublime, the beautiful, and the ugly, Heymans argues that the Romantics’ aesthetic views of animality influenced and were influenced by their moral, scientific, political, and theological judgment. He shows how feelings of environmental alienation and disgust played a positive moral role in animal rights poetry, why ugliness presented such a major problem for Romantic-period scientists and theologians, and how in political writings the violent yet awe-inspiring power of exotic species came to symbolize the beauty and terror of the French Revolution. Linking the works of Wordsworth, Blake, Coleridge, Byron, the Shelleys, Erasmus Darwin, and William Paley to the theories of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke, this book reveals the importance of animality in the Romantic imagination as well as the crucial role of the aesthetic in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century conceptions of species. Its wide-ranging investigation of the problematic relationship between beauty, truth, morality, and biology brings an original and fascinating perspective to the fields of ecocriticism, animal studies, and literature and science studies.

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415507301/


CONTENTS


Introduction: The Aesthetics of Species


Part 1

1. The Environmental Ethics of Alienation: The Ecological Sublime
2. Green Masochism: Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
3. Hunting for Pleasure: Wordsworth’s Ecofeminism


Part 2

4. Humans and Other Moving Things: Wordsworth Visits London (with Deleuze and Guattari)
5. The Cute and the Cruel: Taste, Animality and Sexual Violence in Burke and Blake
6. A Problem of Waste Management: Frankenstein and the Visual Order of Things


Part 3

7. Revelation, Reason, Ridicule: The Scientific Sublime
8. A Taste of God: Natural Theology and the Aesthetics of Intelligent Design
9. Beauty with a Past: Evolutionary Aesthetics in Erasmus Darwin’s The Temple of Nature""

A következő tanulmány célja, hogy tematikusan ismertesse a teista természeti teológia irányába érkezett legfontosabb, XX-XXI. századi filozófiai kritikákat és az azokra adott válaszokat. A filozófiai kritikák közül először Ayer nyelvfilozófiai megközelítésével, azon keresztül a verifikációs kritikával, majd a falszifikációs kritikával, azon belül is Anthony Flew megközelítésével foglalkozom. Ezek után bemutatom azokat a megközelítéseket, amik nem hagynak logikai teret a természeti teológiának (Phillips, Nielsen), majd azokat, amelyeken keresztül egyesek a teizmust kvázi-tudományos hipotézisként láttatják (Dawkins, Narveson). A dolgozatom második felében a fenti kritikákat elemzem, illetve az azokra adott lehetséges válaszokat mutatom be.

The purpose of this research is to publish a manuscript of the treatise Sefer Habri’a (The Book of Creation), written in 1670 by Rabbi Avraham Binyamin Nathan ben Elisha Chaim Halevi Askhenazy, also known as Nathan Ghazzati or Rabbi Nathan of Gaza. It has been copied into several manuscripts, which ended up scattered around the world, until they were ultimately collected by professor Chaim Wirszubski Z.L. of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 1930s and 1940s. Wirszubski set out on a project of conducting a scientific edition of the treatise, and even published a small part of it.  However, misfortune has prevented him from finishing his great work, and he was called upon to teach in the Great Yeshiva in heavens. Now, the reader is presented with a full edition, accompanied by a comprehensive and methodical research. The research is separated from the original text, to allow the reader to focus on the text itself, if they so wish. Those who would seek to also delve into the analysis, can easily do so.
It is not everyday that a person is awarded the great privilege of returning a lost book to the collective Jewish library. Even more so when it is a book written by one of the greatest rabbis in recent generations, least of all a halakhic figure of the magnitude of Rabbi Nathan. We are faced with an unparalleled text in Rabbinic messianic and Hebrew literature. It is the central text of the Sabbatean movement after Sabbatai Zevi’s conversion to Islam. Sefer Habri’a was written by the progenitor of the movement, Rabbi Nathan of Gaza. Rabbi Nathan was famously considered a prophet by the spiritual leaders of the Jewish world in his time, and was one of those who declared Sabbatai Zevi to be a messiah. He was the one who explained the profound meaning of Zevi’s conversion, and the one who tried to prevent the masses from converting along with him.
If we wish to be certain that we can indeed declare “thou art our brother” to Nathan, we must look at this renewed text from every possible perspective. The text’s uniqueness, it’s complexity, length and meaning introduce many challenges, both on the technical-philological level and on that of semantic analysis. We should also pay heed to how socially problematic the Sabbatean movement is, following the heated debates that arose several generations after Zevi’s conversion. On that subject, we can view Sefer Habri’a as a treatise which ascribes profound meaning to Zevi’s ‘foreign acts’, through the Ha’ari’s hyper-nomic system. That is, the Lurianic Kabbalah, which unequivocally accepts the Jewish Halakha as sacred, is the treatise’s main method of discourse. It seems that the survival and continuity of Jewish tradition after the crisis was Rabbi Nathan’s main motivation in writing this immense work. That is, the desire to give a profound kabbalic meaning to the commandments of halakha, in the face of a shifting historical reality is at the heart of the text.
Sabbateanism is a grave subject in Jewish history. Therefore, whenever a new Sabbatean document is published, we must ask ourselves how its publication will affect the existing knowledge we have. When people read new material that contradicts what they perceive to be true, they often develop a ‘resistance front’, assuming that every new claim must be proved out of the existing body of knowledge, as if the unknown can be explored from the confines of the known. The problem here is evident - new information cannot be added in this way, and true learning cannot be achieved. All that can happen is that we pour old knowledge into a slightly different mould, at best. That said, there are times when a newly published document is so important that it demands of us to re-examine all of our previous held knowledge. More often than not, those who are tasked with preserving knowledge are not enthusiastic by the appearance of a new research which undermines the well known system to which they adhere. Therefore, if we wish the new knowledge to be properly accepted by people in that position, upon publishing such a document we must present in detail what we retain, and what we reconsider. It is possible that Sefer Habri’a would lead us into rethinking the Sabbatean movement in its entirety. It is, after all, a fundamental text written by the movement’s progenitor, immediately after the conversion. We will soon see that Sefer Habri’a would lead any observant reader to a clear understanding that it is a Kabbalah book that follows directly the writings of the Ha’ari. It is a direct continuation, and some would even say the highlight, of the Lurianic corpus. In this manner we can also see that Torat Israel, the Jewish halakha and the well-being of the nation at a time of crisis were undoubtedly on the mind of the author, Rabbi Nathan of Gaza, and that he was a loyal grand sage of Israel.

In leading academic publications, Oxford theologian Andrew Moore has systematically developed new objections to natural theology based on Karl Barth's methodological arguments, historical considerations as well as theological considerations related to Scriptural passages such as Romans 1:18ff, the noetic effects of sin, whether natural theology leads to the God who has revealed himself in Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit, and attitudes such as humility and self-denial. I demonstrate the inadequacy of his methodological and historical arguments and show that the numerous Scriptural passages cited by Moore do not really support his objections, and that Moore neglects other passages (e.g. Acts 14:15-17, 17:22-31) which contradict his arguments. I defend the value of natural theology as the first of a two-step approach which (1) shows that there is a Creator God (2) shows that this God has revealed himself in Christ.

I argue that the existence of a necessary concrete being can be derived from an exceedingly weak causal principle coupled with two contingent truths one of which falls out of very popular positions in contemporary analytic metaphysics. I then show that the argument resists a great many objections commonly lodged against natural theological arguments of the cosmological variety.

This was an experimental paper from 2002.  It is an interpretation of a piece of organ music by the French composer Olivier Messiaen.  The main argument is that Messiaen's piece is a model of a certain kind of theology.  The incorporation of elements that are non-Christian (birdsong, rhythms from Hindu music) into a 'Christian' artifact reveals how porous and blurred the edges of a tradition are, at least when something truly beautiful is being fashioned.