IN DEFENSE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY: A POST-HUMEAN

ASSESSMENT. Edited by James F. Sennett and Douglas Groothuis.

Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005. 352 pp. Paper, , $26.00,

ISBN 0-8308-2767-6.

This collection aims to defend the project of natural theology, understood

as “the attempt to provide rational justification for theism using only those

sources of information accessible to all inquirers, namely, the data of

empirical experience and the dictates of human reason” (p. 10). Its

primary target is not just Hume’s critique of natural theology, but “Hume’s

legacy”—the general Humean stance that characterizes contemporary

critiques of natural theology up to Dawkins and his ilk. The editors

overreach when they claim the volume is evidence that “natural theology is

alive and well in contemporary philosophy” and that natural theology has

experienced a “revival.” This is true only within a narrow orbit of

evangelical philosophers still committed to evidentialism and interested in

natural theology because of its political implications for grounding natural

law. The notions of reason and evidence that undergird the project of

natural theology have been roundly criticized—in particular by other

Christian philosophers such as Plantinga, Wolterstorff, and others who

have articulated a non-foundationalist “Reformed epistemology.” While

the editors claim that the book does not target Reformed epistemology,

neither does the book take seriously this critique of natural theology

internal to the Christian tradition. Nonetheless, the book is an important

contribution and one that both friends and critics of natural theology must

work through.

James K.A. Smith

Calvin College