A typical discussion about philosophy in theological circles often sounds something like this:

“Philosophy precedes theology!”

“No … manmade philosophies should be discarded, and we should follow the Scriptures only!”

“No! Natural law is our foundation. What we can learn from nature inevitably leads us to God!”

The relationship between philosophy, theology, and natural law has been a constant source of heartache and discussion long before I took my first seminary class. How can—or should—we relate these things?

I will warn you up that my answer may not be “the perfect answer.” While I can jar your thinking, I cannot think for you. Nonetheless, bear with me for a bit, and let’s see where this goes.

Natural Law

Let’s start with what a person can know without the Scriptures—essentially what natural law can teach us without any access or reference to the Scriptures. Looking at nature, specifically at what has allowed man and nature to flourish, we can learn at least three things.

First, nature and natural law teach me about the nature of reality and our relationship to reality. Nature teaches us reality exists “out there,” apart from “me,” regardless of whether I think it exists. This “other existing reality” has attributes and characteristics regardless of whether we can access or understand reality.

Philosophically, this brings us to a view called realism. Reality exists.

Second, nature and natural law teach us we have sufficient warrant (using Plantinga’s terms) to say meaningful and truthful things about reality. We know our senses are not perfect. We sometimes hallucinate. We think a painted board on the side of the road is a barn, and a broken clock might coincidentally tell the right time (Gettier problems are real).

We know our senses can be fooled. Fill three buckets with water: one hot, one lukewarm, and one cold. Place one hand in the hot water and the other in cold and hold them there for a minute or two. Move both hands to the lukewarm water. The hand from the cold bucket will feel hot, and the hand from the hot water will feel cold. Or, even better, find a sensory isolation tank and see how long you can stand it. Our senses are not perfect.

But natural law and a well-formed epistemology teach us that when our senses operate within their designed bounds, and are not intentionally fooled, they give us access to truth about the real world (I am deeply indebted to Plantinga here).

Natural law, via what it teaches us about the nature of reality and our access to reality (epistemology), also refutes nominalism. Words are not just “shorthand for mental models.” While the meaning of a word shifts over time, and each word has a semantic range, words describe real things in the real world. Words are not just shortcuts to communicate some mental model of the world—they describe the world as it exists.

• Natural law can lead me to hold that we can be warranted in knowing things about the real world—the real world exists, we can know things about reality, and we can use language to describe the things we know about reality.
• Natural law’s utility does not end with our view of reality and epistemology. We can also ask nature: “What kinds of relationships lead to flourishing for individuals and communities?”

Third, looking out in the real world of all relationships, we find communities flourish when each member follows a basic set of rules, shares information, and adapts itself and its actions to others inside and outside the community. Bee communities flourish because flower communities supply nectar. Flower communities flourish because bee communities pollinate flowers.

Flourishing in the real world requires service to others.

Considering human relationships, natural law teaches us flourishing requires placing “the other” ahead of ourselves. Marriages flourish when the wife cares more for the husband than herself, and the husband cares more for the wife than himself.

Another way to put this is that relationships flourish when each person focuses on, or gives themselves, to “the other.” Selfishness and self-centeredness destroy relationships. This is strongly connected to the concept of dignity, but dignity is beyond the scope of this particular dispatch.

Reading Scriptures

These things—the existence of reality, we can have warrant in our beliefs about reality, the reality of the meaning of words, and the way to build flourishing relationships—provide a foundation for reading the Scriptures. Because of these:

I can read the Scriptures believing they describe reality using words with meaning.

In other words, I can trust the Scriptures.

Given there is a God, my primary orientation toward God should be to discover how to have a relationship with God. Natural law tells me what questions I can ask and gives me an attitude I should take towards creating, maintaining, and deepening my relationship with God.

I should read the Scriptures with a view towards learning what God wants to say about himself, his purposes, and reality. I should read the Scriptures to understand and form a relationship with God.

Reading the Scriptures to learn about God first is what I call the virtue hermeneutic.

I should also treat the Scriptures as a description of the real world—even above and beyond what I can see with my senses and through my mind.

So I can count on the natural law to precede or even judge my understanding of the Scriptures, right? In other words, does the natural law stand “above” the Scriptures? No!

You can also begin by presupposing the accuracy of the Scriptures. For the thinker who wants some assurance, however, natural law can provide a “starting warrant” or a “a seed of warrant” convincing us the Scriptures are worth taking seriously. The careful reader should find an echo of the Scriptures in the natural law. For instance:

• The logical consequence of atheism is all relationships are transactional. Each person in the relationship uses the other person towards some end outside the relationship rather than treating the other person as an end in themselves.
• The logical consequence of Islam is all relationships are about power. Each person in the relationship is either more or less powerful than the other person. The less powerful person serves the needs and desires of the more powerful.
• The logical consequence of Christianity is each person in a relationship gives themselves to the other. There may be functional or positional differences, but each person is a dignified end in themselves who serves the other in some way.

Which of these religious beliefs allow humans and societies to flourish in the real world? The religious system that resonates with flourishing in the real world—with what natural law teaches us—is the true one. The Scriptures and natural law, then, being written by the same author, reinforce one another. The Scriptures can stand without natural law even though the natural law can support our reading and understanding of the Scriptures.

The Role of Philosophy

What of starting our reading of the Scriptures with philosophy? Does philosophy undergird, or even control, our reading of the Scriptures? It is better to say philosophy informs and is informed by the Scriptures. Let’s take a trivial (and stupid) example.

Suppose I make the metaphysical commitment that God is an egg yolk. It’s strange, I know, but I’ve heard stranger metaphysical commitments, so let’s just run with it to see where it goes. Can I find a proof verse to support my contention? Yes.

For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
the LORD bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
Psalm 84:11

The sun is round and yellow, just like an egg yolk—so I can claim this passage is an oblique reference to God’s actual shape. David saw this shape and related it to a sun, but it was an egg yolk.

What about passages describing God as spirit?

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
John 4:24

I can simply declare John 4:24 an analogy or an accommodation within a narrative (it does occur in the conversation between the Samaritan woman and Jesus at the well). I can also Psalm 84:11 didactic—it is a direct statement about the nature of God by David, who should know. If I declare didactic passages always win over narrative passages, I have solved my problem.

Is it really this simple to prove something as silly as: “God is an egg yolk?” What defenses do we have against this kind of silliness?

Philosophy. Specifically:

• Philosophy refines the idea of hermeneutics, which is a branch of epistemology, or rather, how we know what we know
• Philosophy helps us create a well-defined view of God (a metaphysical theology or theology proper)
• Philosophy defines coherence

How can injecting philosophy into the argument help here?

First, “God is an egg yolk” is a metaphysical statement (or rather, a metaphysical theological assertion). We can judge the idea independent of the Scriptures within the larger context of metaphysics by asking questions like:

• Can an egg yolk act on the real world? In what way can it do so?
• How does an egg yolk interact with time?
• How does an egg yolk act as a kinsman redeemer for humans?

Philosophy gives us a framework of questions, argument forms, and validity, helping us think about these kinds of propositions. In other words, philosophical thought puts meat on the bones of logical coherence.

Second, theology helps us create a well-defined view of God. Philosophy helps us query and understand relationships between God and other beings, God and the world, etc. A well-defined view can be compared to the Scriptures, creation, and other beings (humans, for instance) to discover inconsistencies.

Third, philosophy refines and formalizes our understanding of how we know what we know, including hermeneutics. The virtue hermeneutic is one of the various ways readers can approach a text.

In all three senses, everyone reads and understands the Scriptures philosophically. Everyone “does” philosophy—they either “do” philosophy well or poorly.

Using these tools allows us to characterize God from the whole of the Scriptures in more precise terms, evaluating various claims about God against a logical, coherent, and scripturally consistent set of ideas.

It is not enough to support “God is an egg yolk” from a single passage of the Scriptures and declare all the other passages contradicting this assertion “accommodations, allegories, etc.” We must have some reason, within the text itself, to declare a passage something other than literal, and we must have a way to support philosophical coherence across our entire view of God—attributes, the problem of evil, sovereignty, interaction with time, etc.

Finally, philosophy teaches us about virtue and how to achieve virtue. We are trying to read the scriptures to learn about and develop a relationship with a being—God—so we should be strongly influenced by virtue and virtuous reading.

Putting it Together

Natural law gives us a handle or tail from which to read the Scriptures in a way that coheres with the world as we find it. Philosophy works from the other direction, giving us a framework of logical thinking, a refined view of what reality is and how we understand it (epistemology and hermeneutics), and a framework by which we understand coherence.

Combining these puts a foundation under the way we read the Scriptures and “guardrails” around the way we read the Scriptures. The Scriptures can stand without these things, but our reading of the Scriptures is enhanced and hardened because of them.

God is a being with whom we have a relationship. Building a relationship with God requires knowing something about God. God’s primary self-revelation is the Scriptures. We should read the Scriptures with virtue, seeking to know the other—God. Our first goal in reading the Scriptures should be learning about God and his plan, rather than about our salvation, ourselves, etc.

These three should build one another up and cohere to create a “fully rounded” view of God, who God is, and how God acts in the world.