— by Michael A. Graham
Is “Natural Theology” Fallen Theology? Recovering God’s “Natural” in Light of the Resurrection
This essay began forming in my mind during study and research for a sermon on Romans 14:5–12. As I studied and prayed through that text, themes of the resurrection life of Christ and living before the Lord—in the context of cultural and theological differences in the church about observing one day over another and food preferences— the difference between what God calls “natural” and what man calls “natural” began stirring up a deeper reflection.
Around the same time, I came across a brief but striking comment from Kevin DeYoung:
“Natural theology has been affirmed by the best minds in the church for two thousand years.”
That sentence stuck with me—not only because it reflects a growing interest among Reformed scholars in retrieving Natural Theology, but because it captured a broader trend I’ve been noticing: a renewed confidence in metaphysical reasoning and moral order as foundations for theological clarity.
For many, this retrieval offers a sense of stability in uncertain times, a way to reassert coherence against cultural fragmentation, and even a defensive posture against moral relativism or progressive theological drift. These concerns are real and often rightly motivated—but they have also made me wonder whether we have paused long enough to ask how these foundations are being shaped, and whether they are being built in active dependence on the risen Christ.
DeYoung’s quote also provoked a deeper line of questioning in my own mind. What exactly do we mean when we say “Natural” in “Natural Theology”? And most importantly, what does God call “Natural” and what is God’s “Natural Theology”?
This is not a scholarly critique or a doctrinal manifesto. I am still trying to think through this to understand it myself. As someone whose thinking tends to be more circuitous than linear, writing helps me see questions and answers more clearly. When I think others may have some interest in these questions, I pass along my writing to ask for helpful input and feedback—thus this essay.
I’m not aiming to critique individuals like Kevin DeYoung or institutions like First Things (for instance)—I do not know enough to do that responsibly. But I do want to ask questions of critique about this retrieval of “Natural Theology” (I will not keep on italizing natural from here) in the light of what God has revealed in Jesus Christ, the risen Lord?
When I speak of Natural Theology in this essay, I am not referring to the Reformed acknowledgment of general revelation or natural law in its proper place. I am referring to theological efforts to construct a knowledge of God apart from the gospel—that tries to build a vision of God from nature, reason, or moral intuition without the regenerating light of Christ and His Word.
This essay is an attempt to pursue that insight more theologically: to ask whether our talk of Natural Theology might receive help from being re-rooted in redemptive history and the Risen Christ, rather than in philosophical realism or historical continuity.
What if the categories of general and special revelation, natural and supernatural, common and saving grace, need to be reframed through the lens of resurrection? What if the problem with Natural Theology is not simply its limits, but its presumptions in a world where every thought is either held captive to Christ or exalts itself against Him (2 Cor. 10:5)?
I should also say here that I am not an expert in Aquinas, Aristotelian categories, natural theology, or the nuanced debates around Van Til, Clark, or Schaeffer. I have read some of these figures more than others—I have even stood in the room in Orvieto where Aquinas is believed to have written much of his Summa contra Gentiles—and I’ve directly engaged Aquinas’s Summa Theologica and more-so through the lens of the Reformers.
But this essay does not come from academic mastery. It flows out of years of pastoral ministry, study of Scripture, and over three decades of wrestling with the gospel, shaped by my study of Jack Miller—particularly the in-depth study of Jack Miller’s interactions with Norman Shepherd and other Westminster faculty in the context of The Justification Controversy at Westminster Seminary from 1974 to 1982.
That is what drives this reflection—not a desire to weigh in on scholarly debates, but to ask what happens when the gospel becomes backgrounded or assumed in the methods we use to talk about God.
1. Today’s Reformed Emphasis on Natural Theology: A New Cultural Apologetic?
In the current resurgence of interest in classical theism and natural law, many in the Reformed world have looked to retrieve the metaphysical categories of Aquinas and Aristotle as a way of shoring up orthodoxy, moral clarity, and cultural engagement. This has often taken the form of a renewed commitment to Natural Theology—presented not merely as a historic doctrine, but as a necessary pillar for theological stability and apologetic credibility in a secular age.
There are noble impulses here: a desire to defend the goodness of creation, to affirm the intelligibility of moral order, to engage culture with philosophical clarity, and to reassert the coherence of Christian doctrine in the face of relativism.
And yet, this retrieval effort often drifts toward a sanctification-loaded epistemology—an approach to theology that centers formation, virtue, and metaphysical logic as gateways to knowing God.
Even when these efforts are explicitly confessional and carefully qualified, they are often received by others as an invitation to shift the center of theological gravity away from the scandal and simplicity of justification by faith alone.
In this way, the retrieval of Natural Theology can begin to function not just as a tool, but as a lens that subtly reorients the Christian imagination around virtue, order, and reason rather than grace, judgment, and resurrection.
This shift also carries ecclesial consequences. It risks creating a new class of theological specialists—those trained in metaphysics, classical languages, and natural law theory—who are seen as the new cultural apologists or guardians of orthodoxy.
This is not to say that thinkers like Kevin DeYoung or contributors to First Things and other similar organizations are promoting such elitism. But the movement they participate in may, if not carefully watched, encourage it among followers who grow increasingly confident in philosophical systems and less rooted in the liberating message of Christ’s righteousness freely given. Such an emphasis may also discourage Christians in the pews by requiring a new form of some special theological-cultural knowledge.
We have seen this temptation before. In the late 20th century, the New Perspective on Paul and Norman Shepherd’s novel insights introduced views of justification, emphasizing obedience and covenant faithfulness as conditions or continuations of right standing before God.
Though different in method and aim, both perspectives tried to reread Paul’s doctrine of justification in a first-century historical context, suggesting that the Reformers misread the apostle and misstated justification by faith alone as it has been memorialized in the best Reformed confessions and creeds.
Today’s emphasis on virtue-centered epistemology and classical metaphysics, even when framed within a Reformed context, runs the risk of reintroducing similar confusions.
2. Van Til’s Critique of Natural Theology and Evidential Apologetics
This is where the work of Cornelius Van Til must be reengaged—not merely in academic apologetics, but in our ecclesial and theological instincts. Van Til critiqued Natural Theology precisely because it presumed too much from fallen reason. In his view, reason unaided by Scripture and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit is not neutral, but rebellious.
Van Til opposed both Roman Catholic and Arminian versions of natural theology, which he saw as trying to build a ladder from man to God using general revelation as its rungs. In contrast, Van Til insisted that all true knowledge of God begins with God’s self-revelation, and that presuppositional apologetics begins by affirming the absolute authority of Scripture and the lordship of Christ over all reasoning.
This does not mean that Van Til dismissed general revelation. He affirmed its reality and clarity. But he insisted that general revelation, like all revelation, must be interpreted through the lens of redemptive history and within the framework of special revelation.
He was particularly cautious about forms of evidential apologetics that argued for God’s existence or the truth of Christianity from shared, neutral facts. Facts are never neutral. They are always interpreted within a worldview. And apart from regeneration, the fallen mind always suppresses the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18).
Interestingly, Van Til’s tensions with Francis Schaeffer on these matters reveal more of a spectrum than a binary. Though Van Til was concerned that Schaeffer leaned too far toward evidentialist instincts, he appreciated Schaeffer’s effort to engage culture presuppositionally. The disagreement may have been amplified by Van Til’s bruises from earlier debates with Gordon Clark, but the shared theological foundation—a deep confidence in the total depravity of man’s reasoning apart from grace—remains instructive.
Though Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic was sometimes criticized as dense or hard to follow, at its core, it rested on a simple and radical conviction: “You can take God at His Word.” That clarity surfaced again and again in his public witness, as he annually charged graduating students to preach Christ not just in pulpits, but on the streets—most memorably with Jack Miller and Bruce Hunt on Wall Street and throughout Philadelphia. Van Til, believed that if we truly submit all our reasoning to Christ, it will lead not to detachment or abstraction, but to bold, humble proclamation of the gospel—just as he modeled in the classroom and on the streets.
3. Jack Miller and the Recovery of Justification by Faith Alone
In many ways, Jack Miller stood on this same foundation. While Jack was deeply relational and accessible, he never abandoned the idea that the heart of man is not only broken but self-justifying—and that the only solution is not better reasoning or cultural consensus but the radical grace of justification by faith alone.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Jack Miller found himself at the center of a theological battle at Westminster Theological Seminary over the doctrine of justification. His two essays, “Justification by Faith in the Twentieth Century” and “Continuance in Justification,” were not academic footnotes. They were pastoral interventions. They were written with tears in his eyes and urgency in his voice.
Jack saw the creeping danger of a justification that was merely initial but not continuing, would necessarily be assumed, or obscured by sanctification and obedience. He sounded the alarm not only against Rome, but against a quiet drift within Reformed circles that threatened to bury justification under moral effort and covenantal ambiguity. He saw how doctrines could be affirmed in theory but denied in practice.
In his essay on “Justification by Faith in the Twentieth Century,” Jack recovers the Reformation’s robust understanding of justification as the definitive verdict of God, applied through faith alone, based on the imputed righteousness of Christ. But he does not isolate justification from the broader framework. Jack firmly roots justification in union with Christ. Union with Christ is the whole. Justification by faith alone is the foundation—the guarantee that faith alone means, and always ensures, Christ alone.
In “Continuance in Justification,” Jack addresses Norman Shepherd’s view, which blurred the line between justification and sanctification by introducing the language of obedience and covenant faithfulness as necessary for continuance in justification. Jack responds by insisting that justifying faith does not share its instrumentality with works, no matter how non-meritorious those works may be. Faith alone means Christ alone.
Jack was not rejecting sanctification, obedience, discipleship, or the law. He was defending the only foundation upon which those realities can be truly and freely lived out: the unchanging verdict of justified, pronounced by God, received by faith, and never revoked.
Jack’s writing and preaching were deeply Reformed and robustly Calvinistic. But they were also missional, pastoral, and shot through with the love of Christ. He did not treat justification as the entirety of the Christian faith, but neither did he bury it under assumptions. He presented it as the central message upon which we maintain our Spiritual freedom and power and that keeps the church alive to God and His will, and the message that the church must keep returning to again and again.
Jack’s theology of justification pulsed with this same missionary and pastoral heartbeat. Drawing from the Heidelberg Catechism, he described justification as the believer’s confidence that “God, because of Christ’s atonement, will never hold against me any of my sins nor my sinful nature … but grants me the righteousness of Christ to free me forever from judgment.”
For Jack, this wasn’t just a doctrinal stance—it was the lived center of Christian identity, courage, and joy. He believed that when the law and gospel are rightly distinguished, and the righteousness of Christ rightly proclaimed, believers are not led by the Spirit of Christ into some passivity but into assurance, freedom, and mission. His theological clarity never stood apart from pastoral urgency.
In this way, Jack’s defense of justification by faith alone stood not only in continuity with Reformation theology, but also firmly on the ground of Van Til’s redemptive epistemology—centered on grace, grounded in Christ, and fueled by the Spirit for bold, ordinary faithfulness.
And for the same reasons Jack saw the need for a recovery of justification by faith alone in the 20th century—rather than its diminishing or obscuring under the burdens of moral performance, covenantal overreach, or intellectual abstraction—we still need that same recovery today.
It’s important to recognize that Jack Miller was not only a pastor and theologian but also a serious scholar and cultural critic. He earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of the Pacific, with a dissertation examining themes of social decay in the works of James Fenimore Cooper. His academic career included teaching practical theology where he engaged deeply with both theological and cultural issues.
Jack’s intellectual rigor allowed him to take part meaningfully in complex philosophical and theological debates. Yet, despite his scholarly achievements, he consistently emphasized the transformative power of the gospel, particularly the doctrine of justification by faith alone. His life exemplifies that robust intellectual engagement and unwavering commitment to the gospel can and should coexist.
As contemporary Reformed theology increasingly engages classical philosophy, cultural apologetics, and metaphysical retrievals, the danger remains: that the gospel of free grace might be assumed, or quietly displaced, by natural categories that cannot carry its weight. Jack’s voice continues to call us back—not to novelty, but to the liberating power of Christ’s righteousness for the weak, the weary, and the world.
That call has not diminished. In the 21st century, we need a fresh recovery of Reformed theology’s justification by faith alone in its fullness—not as a slogan, but as the living power of the gospel for real sinners in real churches.
What I’m exploring here is not a rejection of the Reformed tradition. It’s a call to keep our theology tethered to its redemptive center: Christ crucified, risen, and reigning—and the Spirit’s application of His righteousness to real sinners, in real time.
4. Redefining the Natural: God’s View vs. Ours
As I was thinking through questions about Natural Theology, I realized I first need to ask a more foundational question: What does God call “natural”? Our instinct is to define “natural” as what’s common or intuitive—what people experience as normal. But Scripture doesn’t let us settle with a definition of man’s natural without considering what is God’s natural. Does God have a Natural Theology, and if so, what is it?
In the creation narrative, God’s definition of natural is clear. Natural meant life with God—walking with Him, depending on Him, delighting in Him. Natural meant listening to His Word, reflecting His glory, and living in freedom under His rule. That was not a distant ideal; it was Adam and Eve’s lived reality. Communion with God was not an add-on. It was human nature in full.
But after the fall, everything changed. Humanity didn’t just become guilty—we became spiritually dead to God disoriented to ourselves, to one another, to the world, and to God. We lost our bearings. We lost what it meant to be truly human. In time, we began calling things “natural” that God calls destructive: self-protection, pride, suspicion, blame, isolation, even death itself is naturalized as part of human life. These things feel normal to us now, but they are deeply unnatural in God’s world.
This shift hit me especially hard while preparing to preach Romans 14. Paul insists that we belong to the Lord (Rom. 14:8) and live to the Lord—but more often that not we live to ourselves. That contrast—between living as if we belong to ourselves and living in communion with God—exposes just how far we’ve come from God’s definition of natural.
I think this has major implications for how we approach Natural Theology. If we start with fallen assumptions about what is “natural,” we risk building an entire theological structure on a foundation God calls foreign and unnatural and abnormal. We normalize alienation. We sanctify self-reliance. We theologize what God came to redeem.
And so I am wondering here: Could part of the problem with modern appeals to Natural Theology lie in this unexamined assumption—that fallen human perception is a reliable guide to what is “natural”? What if instead of helping us see clearly, our natural instincts are shaped by millennia of distortion?
The fall didn’t eliminate God’s image in us. But it did fracture it. We are not blank slates, nor are we neutral observers. Our instincts about God, truth, justice, and goodness are deeply shaped by our blinding sinfulness—and unless those instincts are confronted and reshaped by the Spirit through the gospel, they will mislead us.
This is why, as I try to wrestle through questions of Natural Theology, I keep coming back to this central insight: We cannot know what is natural without first knowing what God has called good; what God calls natural. And that goodness is fully revealed not in our intuitions or logic, but in God’s Word that reveals to us Jesus Christ—the one true human, the image of the invisible God.
5. Natural Theology and the Suppression of Truth
And this is where another layer of contrast between man’s natural and God’s natural presses itself forward. One of the most unsettling things I’ve realized is that what fallen man now calls “natural” is not simply different from God’s natural—it is, in fact, less than natural, less than human, even sub-human. We are not what we are supposed to be and we know, whether we admit it or not, that we are not okay, we are not natural.
We are not just morally compromised; we are ontologically diminished. As Chesterton put it, we are not merely animals—we are broken statues. This means that our so-called “natural” instincts—especially those shaped by our human bell-curves of consensus, statistical norms, or psychological affirmations—are often reflections of something less than human, not more.
In a world where our quest for identity is derived from inner feelings, longings, or desires, what is considered “natural” shifts not only between individuals, but also across generations and cultures. What felt unnatural fifty years ago is now seen as essential to self-expression, and what is rejected today may be celebrated tomorrow.
This volatility affects the very concept of Natural Theology. If the “natural” starting point is grounded in fallen man-centered human consensus about social, psychological, philosophical, cultural, and political foundations and movements, then natural theology will always drift between more conservative and more progressive emphases, shaped by the sub-human norms of our cultural moment. In this light, natural theology untethered from redemption becomes not a bridge to God, but a mirror reflecting our instability. That’s why the question cannot be “What feels natural to man?” but rather, “What has God revealed about what is truly human in Christ?”
Romans 1:18–32 makes clear that the problem with humanity is not the absence of divine revelation, but the suppression of it. What can be known about God is plain—His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. But the result is not worship. It is idolatry.
As I have read and re-read Romans 1 in light of current conversations around Natural Theology, I’ve become more aware of how easily we miss Paul’s emphasis. Paul doesn’t present general revelation as a neutral or constructive theological tool; he presents it as the arena where our rebellion is most vividly on display. This has made me pause. I have long appreciated the beauty of creation and the possibility of reasoning toward truths about God. But Paul’s words are a stark reminder: apart from grace, what we perceive—even rightly—is bent away from the truth.
Van Til made this point repeatedly: natural theology, as a constructive project by unregenerate man, is doomed to failure not because nature is unclear, but because fallen man is unwilling and unable to rightly interpret it. As he once put it, natural revelation is objective and sufficient to condemn, but natural theology is a fallen, distorted response to that revelation—“not a ladder to God, but a mirror of our rebellion.”
Van Til reframes how we think about the human response to beauty, order, and reason in the world. What if our most sincere philosophical efforts—even our religious ones—are not neutral inquiries, but fallen strategies to avoid the God who has already made Himself known?
This doesn’t mean that general revelation is useless. Reformed theology has always affirmed that general revelation truly speaks. The heavens still declare the glory of God. But only grace enables us to hear that declaration rightly—and only the Spirit of Christ gives us eyes to see what God has revealed in the things that have been made.
But it does mean that theology built from general revelation—apart from the illumination of the Spirit and the framework of redemptive history—cannot arrive at the gospel. None of this is to say that the heavens no longer declare the glory of God. They do. But apart from Christ and the Spirit, we no longer see clearly what they are declaring.
If our epistemology does not pass through the cross and resurrection, it will always bend back toward self-justification. Any theology that begins with or relies on fallen reason instead of God’s revealed Word will ultimately end in some unnatural form of autonomy or idolatry.
6. Christ as the True Revelation of God and Man
This means that we cannot really talk about what is natural—either in theology or humanity—without turning our eyes to God’s natural revealed in the Person and work of Jesus Christ. In fact, this whole essay might be boiled down to one conviction I keep returning to: Christ alone reveals what God calls natural.
That may sound like a simple claim, but I have begun to see just how much it pushes back against the assumptions I often bring to theology. I have sometimes approached Scripture or theological questions with a sense that human nature—what feels intuitive or reasonable to me—can help set the terms. But the longer I meditate on Christ, the more I’m learning that He does not conform to our man-centered definitions of natural. He redefines them.
Jesus Christ is not just an exemplary human. He is the true Image of God (Col. 1:15), the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of His nature (Heb. 1:3). In His life, death, and resurrection, we don’t just find the fulfillment of Scripture—we find the restoration of humanity. He is not a window into something higher. He is the very standard by which humanity must be measured.
In the incarnation, the Son of God took on real human flesh—not in theory or appearance, but in fullness. He experienced weakness, hunger, sorrow, temptation, fatigue, grief, misunderstanding, and betrayal. Yet in all of this, He never ceased to live in perfect fellowship with the Father and full submission to the Spirit. He lived the life we were meant to live—entirely dependent, entirely obedient, entirely joyful in His Father’s will.
But the most astonishing thing is not just that Jesus lived such a life, but that He now shares that life with us. As the risen and glorified One, He imparts to us His Spirit—not merely to guide us morally, but to unite us to Himself, body and soul. The New Testament calls Him “a life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45). That’s not a metaphor. It is the declaration that the very life He lived before the Father is now poured out into us.
Of course, we do not become divine. The Creator/creature distinction remains firm. But in union with Christ, we truly participate in the life of God—not by nature, but by grace. This means that Christ is not simply the fulfillment of special revelation or the endpoint of redemptive history. He is also the interpretive key to general revelation.
In other words, we cannot understand the created world—or what it means to be human—apart from Him. He alone brings clarity to nature. He alone reveals what creation was made for.
So when we speak of Natural Theology, the starting point cannot be unaided reason looking out at the world. The starting point must be Christ—crucified, risen, and reigning. From Him we learn not only who God is, but also who we are. From Him we learn what obedience looks like, what love looks like, what justice looks like, what flourishing looks like, what holiness, humility, and hope look like. From Him we receive the Spirit, through whom we begin to see truly and love rightly.
This is what Chesterton helped me begin to see when he writes in The Everlasting Man, “It is not the study of man that explains Christ. It is the study of Christ that explains man.”
That insight realigns everything. It tells me that theology is not about rising through nature toward God, but about receiving the life of God in the Son, who descended to us, lived for us, died for us, and now lives in us.
The resurrection, then, is not simply a miracle to affirm. It is the beginning of a new order of reality—what Paul calls “the new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). And Jesus is the firstborn of that creation (Col. 1:18). His resurrection body, scarred and glorified, is not a departure from what is natural, but its perfection. His life in the Spirit is not an exception to human nature—it is its restoration. He is the new and last Adam, and only in union with Him can we begin to speak of what is natural in the truest sense.
This is why any attempt to understand God, creation, or humanity apart from Christ—even if well-intentioned—will ultimately mislead. Because the fullness of God dwells in Him bodily (Col. 2:9), and we are filled in Him (v. 10). He is not only the capstone of our theology. He is the cornerstone (Eph. 2:20), the foundation upon which all truth—natural and revealed—must be built. Metaphysical categories and classical language may help us articulate certain truths. But they must remain subordinate to the risen Christ, not foundational apart from Him.
I’m not rejecting the tools of classical theology—I’m just asking what happens when those tools begin shaping the foundation, rather than serving it. Even good categories can mislead us if they’re not crucified and raised with Christ. If Natural Theology is to have a future contribution to Reformed theology, it must be reborn in light of Christ. It must begin not with the world as we see it, but with the Word made flesh, risen and reigning, who alone can open our eyes to see the world rightly.
This is what I am learning—not just in study, but in worship. We do not ascend to God through insight. We fall at His feet in faith. This isn’t a mystical or emotional detour—it’s the heart of Reformed theology. Union with Christ is not a slogan but the structure of our salvation. It’s the point at which doctrine becomes life, and life becomes worship. And there, in the face of Jesus Christ, we begin to see the glory of God and the truth about ourselves at the same time.
7. General Revelation Is Not Neutral Ground
This leads me to another reflection. One of the appeals of Natural Theology has been its ability to create common ground—to provide a bridge for dialogue between believer and unbeliever. But Scripture paints a much starker picture of our intellectual and moral starting points.
There is no autonomous or neutral ground. Every thought is either held captive to Christ or lifts itself against Him (2 Cor. 10:5). The mind set on the flesh is hostile to God (Rom. 8:7). The wisdom of the world is foolishness in God’s sight (1 Cor. 1:20–25).
These verses have challenged me. I have often wanted a space where we can “reason together” with the world. And in one sense, we must—we are called to give a defense of the hope within us (1 Pet. 3:15). But I have come to see that the bridge between the world and the gospel is not reason alone; it is the cross. It is the foolishness of God that proves wiser than the wisdom of man.
Common grace is real. It allows for communication, for cultural engagement, for neighborly love. But common grace does not mean common neutrality. It does not flatten the noetic effects of sin or create a neutral epistemological starting point. The gospel is still an offense—not just morally, but intellectually. And that offense is necessary, because it is only when we are confronted with the risen Christ that our reasoning is reshaped and our knowledge made new and conforms to God’s natural.
These reflections have not led me to dismiss the value of reason or engagement. But they have deepened my conviction that all true theology must begin not in common starting points, but in the scandal of the cross, the resurrection life of Christ poured out at Pentecost—and the grace that gives us new eyes to see.
8. Recovering God’s Natural: Resurrection as the New Norm
In the beginning, God’s original created order defined what was “natural” for humanity: a life of communion with God. In Eden, Adam and Eve enjoyed the zoe life—the vibrant life of God—in a creaturely measure, walking in fellowship with their Maker. This life with God was simply called life.
By contrast, after the fall, our sense of “natural” became tragically twisted. Cut off from the Creator’s fellowship, fallen humanity came to accept spiritual death and alienation as normal. What we now call human nature—a life curved in on self, marked by pride, fear, and futility—is in truth a distortion of the Creator’s original design.
We must clearly grasp this: the selfishness and estrangement that feel so normal to us now are unnatural in God’s world. Sin has blinded us, making us treat the life we were made for as strange and “supernatural,” when in reality it was meant to be God’s “natural” state for us. In Eden, life with God was normative; after the fall, life apart from God became the norm for fallen man’s thinking.
This is why fallen man’s so-called “natural theology”—his attempt to know God by his own natural reason and experience—is fundamentally “fallen theology,” arising from a disordered nature that no longer sees clearly. Apart from grace, we “suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18) and exchange God’s glory for idols, even in our thinking about Him. What we now call “natural,” God calls “broken” and “lost.” We needed nothing less than a new creation to restore what was lost to God’s natural.
God’s new resurrection norm has come in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God has inaugurated a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), a humanity entirely different from the fallen Adamic race. Jesus came as the Last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), the true Man, to redeem and recreate us. By His perfect obedience and sacrificial death, He dealt with our sin and guilt; by His resurrection, He ushered in the resurrection life of Christ into His now fallen world. The risen Christ is “the firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1:18), the first man of the new creation, and the human being we were always meant to become. In Him we see what God calls “natural” for humanity—not mere biological existence or “survival of the fittest,” but communion with God in righteousness and love.
Indeed, Jesus is not an exception or aberration in humanity’s story; He is the very definition of true humanity. Crucially, the life Christ now lives is the life He gives to us. The New Testament calls Jesus “a life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45), for the risen Christ breathes out the Spirit of life upon His people (John 20:22).
When we are united to Christ by faith, we are united to His life. This means that the eternal zoe life that flows within the Triune God—the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—becomes ours as a gracious gift. Jesus declared, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19). Just as the first Adam imparted to us an earthly life (and tragically, the curse of death), the last Adam imparts to us the Heavenly life of fellowship with God.
This resurrection life in Christ is not merely a future hope; it is a present reality and normative for all who belong to Him. When Jesus rose and ascended, He did not leave us to stumble about until the last day—He poured out His Spirit so that we might live now in His risen power. On Pentecost, the ascended Lord “clothed [the disciples] with power from on high” (Luke 24:49) by sending the Holy Spirit.
As Jack Miller puts it, Pentecost is not a past relic or “divine museum” piece, but the moment when “the resurrection life of Jesus Christ was imparted to the church by the Father as permanent and ongoing.” That does not mean that every event in the book of Acts is repeated, but it does mean that the Spirit was given once for all to Christ’s body, so that the very resurrection life of Jesus would animate His people permanently and continually.
Ever since that day, we have lived in the age of the Spirit, the age of new creation. The same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead is now “at work in us who believe” (Eph. 1:19–20). Pentecost opened a fountain of new life that will never run dry, because Christ’s Spirit now abides in His people forever (John 14:16–17).
Yet even as we live in the age of the Spirit, it’s vital to remember that the righteous have always lived by faith. From Genesis to Habakkuk to Romans to Revelation, the gospel logic holds steady: “The righteous shall live by faith,” and “the righteous by faith shall live.” This has always been God’s way. Old Testament saints were not saved by law or sacrifice but by faith in the promises of God—promises that find their Yes and Amen in Christ. The difference now is not in the nature of salvation but in the fullness of its revelation and the outpouring of the Spirit, who unites us to the risen Christ.
Even so, we must be careful not to overstate what resurrection life now looks like. It is already real, but not yet complete. We bear in our bodies both the death of Christ and the life of Christ (2 Cor. 4:10). Jesus rose bodily, and His resurrection body still bears scars. His glorified humanity includes the visible wounds of redemption—not erased, but transformed. So too, our future resurrection bodies will carry forward the deep beautify and continuity of who we are as persons created and redeemed by God in Christ—not just perfected, but redeemed in the full sense, including our sufferings, our weaknesses, and even our scars. For the scars that once shamed us will testify to the grace that saved us.
Jesus is the only man who has ever loved God with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loved His neighbor arguably more than Himself. He is not just a better version of us—He is the true Man, the Last Adam, the embodiment of perfect love and perfect obedience. As we walk in the Spirit now, we do not rise above our humanness; rather, we enter into our humanness, our true humanity for the first time, even as we groan with creation for the full unveiling of the sons of God (Rom. 8:23).
9. Conclusion: Glorying in God’s Natural in the New Creation
God’s work in Christ has not authored a new definition of “natural.” It has restored what was lost, revealed what was hidden, and reasserted what He always called life. What we call natural is not natural at all—it is sub-natural, less-than-natural, distorted, and false. The problem is not that God redefined the categories, but that we did. In our fallenness, we inverted the whole order—calling sin freedom, calling death natural, and calling the life of communion with God a supernatural oddity. But God’s “natural” has always been the same: life with Himself, through His Son, in the joy of the Spirit.
And this life—now revealed in the risen Christ and imparted to us by the Spirit—is the life we were made for.
This is why any Natural Theology constructed apart from Christ is indeed “fallen theology.” Left to ourselves, we would forever be, as Chesterton said, “shattered statues”—worshiping the fragments of our own reasoning and experience.
Apart from God’s omnipotent grace, our natural knowledge of God, ourselves, and the world is darkened and misdirected (Eph. 4:18; Rom. 1:21), inevitably exchanging the glory of the living God for the lie of self-made religion.
But thanks be to God, He has not left us in that darkness. What we could never discover or recover on our own, God has revealed in His Son. “For God, who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).
True theology—true knowledge of God—is now found in the face of Christ. By grace, we have been brought from the distorted “natural” of the old Adam into the glorious “natural” of the Last Adam. We have been effectually called out of darkness into God’s marvelous light, united to the very Son of God. In Jesus, the Wisdom of God, we behold the Father clearly (John 14:9) and are filled with His Spirit.
Central to this vision is the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Justification ensures that our relationship with God is built on Christ alone from start to finish. By faith—not by any works or native goodness—we receive the righteousness of Jesus credited to us.
This gracious verdict of justification by faith alone is the very foundation of the resurrection life we have described. It secures our life in Christ now—and it is by continuing to rest on this same foundation that we maintain our spiritual power and freedom in Him.
Therefore, when we read Romans 14:8, it is not a threat but a welcome. It is a gift, not a burden—the very reason we draw near to God and know that He is near to us: “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
And at the final judgment, that same verdict will be brought forward again and confirmed before all creation. When we are finally called to stand before the judgment seat of God—each one giving an account of himself or herself, as every knee bows and every tongue confesses to God (Rom. 14:10–12)—the righteousness of Jesus Christ will be brought forward as our righteousness on that Day. It is the only righteousness heaven has ever accepted. God’s justice will be fully vindicated in justifying the ungodly by the finished work of His Son (Rom. 3:26).
Every accusation of the enemy will be silenced by the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 12:10–11). Even our good works—real as they are, born of the Spirit—will serve not as the ground of our justification, but as the public vindication of God’s grace, proving that His gospel truly makes new creatures.
On that day, not a single complaint will be raised against the Judge of all the earth. He will be shown to be both just and the justifier of the one who have faith in Jesus. This is the new creation natural: a life of communion with the Triune God, grounded in justification, animated by the Spirit, shaped by the cross, and carried by grace from election to glorification.
In this life, It is not flashy. It is not triumphalistic. But it is real—real enough to carry the righteous in Christ who live by faith and by their faith shall live—through death and judgment into everlasting joy. Real enough to endure weakness, wounds, and even scars, because it rests on the resurrected and still-scarred body of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
In union with Him, we now live coram Deo—before the face of God—as we were always meant to live. And when Christ, who is our life, appears, we also will appear with Him in glory (Col. 3:4), fully glorified in soul and body—fully and truly human at last, basking in the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit forever.
