Journal: Journal of the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies
Volume: JIRBS 08:1 (NA 2023)
Article: Thomistic Natural Theology And Its Implications: A Review Article Of Jeffrey Johnson’s "The Failure Of Natural Theology"
Author: David VanDrunen

JIRBS 8 (2023) p. 109

Thomistic Natural Theology And Its Implications: A Review Article Of Jeffrey Johnson’s The Failure Of Natural Theology

David VanDrunen*

*David VanDrunen is Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California and author of several books.

Through most of the twentieth century, Protestants of various stripes generally took a very low view of Thomas Aquinas. In their eyes, Thomas was the foremost practitioner of the widely despised “scholasticism.” They especially judged his views of natural theology, natural law, and the relationship of nature and grace to betray an overly lofty view of human reason and concluded that he illegitimately tried to synthesize Christianity with Aristotelian philosophy. Over the past few decades, however, a number of Reformed scholars have reexamined scholasticism by reading many long-neglected scholastic texts and examining their contexts. They have argued that the predominant twentieth-century view of scholasticism was seriously flawed.1 Although their work has focused primarily on the Protestant scholasticism of the sixteenth-through-eighteenth centuries, their research has also prompted them to reexamine Thomas’s work and how early Protestant theologians received and evaluated it. Many of these scholars have thus concluded that the predominant twentieth-century view of Thomas propounded serious caricatures and that

JIRBS 8 (2023) p. 110

early Reformed theologians made both critical and appreciative use of Thomas’s work.2

Jeffrey Johnson’s The Failure of Natural Theology implicitly attacks this recent scholarship.3 I say “implicitly” because Johnson only cites a few of the relevant works and offers almost no interaction with their evidence and arguments. Nevertheless, he states that he is “troubled” and “deeply disturbed” by a “revival of Thomism” in Protestant circles (3–4). He focuses especially on Thomas’s natural theology and what he believes are its pernicious implications for his doctrine of God.

This review article cannot address all of Johnson’s claims. I will first describe what I understand to be his main line of argument as it advances from chapter to chapter and then offer a number of evaluative comments. I conclude that Johnson’s presentation and critique of Thomas suffers from serious flaws and does not provide compelling evidence to reject the far more nuanced and careful claims of recent scholarship—which does not, it should be added, constitute a revival of “Thomism.”