This post continues from part 2, which is here. The following are more excerpts from Roger E. Olson’s The Essentials of Christian Thought.
For [Emil] Brunner, and for me, natural theology means only (1) that the biblical-Christian worldview better answers life’s ultimate questions than its competitors and alternatives, and (2) that eyes of faith for whom the Bible “absorbs the world” see the natural world as God’s good creation—”charged with the grandeur of God”—even if eyes of unbelief cannot see it as such. p.75
For biblical-Christian thought, in contrast with Greek philosophy, souls are created by God, they are not emanations, offshoots, of God’s own substance. p.81
Nearly all extra-biblical philosophies struggle with the [biblical] idea of a personal, related, vulnerable ultimate reality capable of being influences by what creatures do. p.84
Brunner believed God is revealed in nature and in the human spirit generally (general revelation). p.92
First, … nature and universal human experience, general revelation, yield only a “thatness” of God but not God’s “whoness,” personhood, and will. What humanity needs is to know God personally, not just God’s nature as ultimate reality. Second, according to Brunner, in complete agreement with most classical Protestant theology (and the Bible in Romans 1!), reason, or the use of reason, has been spoiled in humanity by sin. p.93
The reason the human person cannot use his own reason to arrive at a satisfying life philosophy or vision or reality is his own natural tendency to minimize evil—especially in himself. p.93
Brunner argued that “everyone who philosophizes does so from a definite starting point, upon which he, as this particular man, stands. The Christian philosophizes from that point at which God’s revelation sets him.” p.94
For Brunner, the God of biblical revelation is supernatural and personal but not human. p.95
God is both ontologically beyond and personally present. p.98
The point of this entire chapter is that there is a biblical, narrative-based metaphysic that contrasts with other metaphysical visions of ultimate reality, is not irrational, lies at the foundation of Christianity itself, and is being retrieved by Jewish and Christian scholars who are also separating it from extrabiblical philosophies that conflict with it. p. 99
Many scholars tend to define the difference between philosophy and theology as revelation—theology uses it and philosophy does not. There are, however, exceptions. “natural theology” is the rational exploration of the evidence of God in nature and universal human experience. “Philosophical theology” is philosophy that explores reasons for belief in God …. p.100
Brunner coined the term eristics for his own belief that, when set alongside alternative worldviews, Christian philosophy is superior. p.106
… the biblical narrative requires belief that God’s existence precedes the world’s not only temporally but ontologically. That is, the world is dependent on God, not vice versa. p.119
[Plantinga’s] conclusion, therefore, is that there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic belief, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism. p.122
Humanism is simply any belief in the dignity and creativity of human persons, that human beings are unique and above nature, in some sense transcendent, capable of great culture achievements as well as terrible destruction. It places special value on humanity. … the real humanism is Christian humanism because of the biblical-Christian emphasis on humans as created in the image and likeness of God. p.123
… functional naturalism—belief that although God exists and is person, he does not intervene in history or human lives, which are ruled by natural laws and explainable by science. p. 125
Classical Christian theism, born in the cauldron of philosophized Christianity in the second and third centuries in the Roman Empire, reached its zenith in Anselm and Aquinas. p.132
Gradually, Christian began to envision ultimate reality, God, along the lines of Platonic metaphysics—including the idea that God, being metaphysically complete and perfect in every way imaginable, cannot suffer or be affect by temporal events or creatures. The word for this was and is impassibility. p. 136.
The next post in this series is here.