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.

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

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