The general credibility of theology was once widely held by theologians to depend on a successful natural theology. Today things are different. There are certainly some contemporary advocates of natural theology—and a few of these are even theologians; but it is presently fashionable to reject natural theology in the name of theology itself. But are there cogent, theological reasons for dismissing natural theology? I shall suggest that the best known modern defences of an affirmative reply are unacceptable.

According to the natural theologian, ‘God exists’ is a respectable philosophical assertion which can be rationally sustained without recourse to the prior acceptance either of God’s existence or of any special revelation. Typically, he insists that ‘God exists’ is rational, provable, justifiable or demonstrable. Bearing these points in mind, what is the nature of the theological opposition to natural theology?

We can begin to answer this question by noting the view that the nature of theism renders irrelevant the notion of arguing or reasoning or making inferences about God. Some observe that this is the position of the Bible. Biblical writers, it is argued, “did not think of God as an inferred entity, but as an experienced reality”. Others explain that proofs must result in abstraction, “a pale shadow of the living God who is the putative object of biblical faith”. In this connection we might note some remarks of Alasdair MacIntyre. In Metaphysical Beliefs MacIntyre points to the enormous importance of faith where religious belief is concerned. He thus argues that natural theology, considered in its familiar guise as the presentation of supposedly demonstrative argument, is out of place in religion.

The God of the Psalmists and the prophets was not in nature, He transcended nature—and transcended, likewise, the realm of mythopoetic thought. It would seem that the Hebrews, no less than the Greeks, broke with the mode of speculation which had prevailed up to their time.

At least until the advent of counter-cultural occultism, we of the post-medieval West, whether we regard ourselves as heirs of the secular Greeks or of the pious Hebrews, have liked to think that our own speculation has broken completely with mythopoetic thought. As successors to the rationalists and empiricists, many of today’s philosophers have attempted to find ultimate knowledge through “scientific” investigation, and, failing, have settled for an understanding, not of the Ultimate but of mere phenomena. Nor have we lacked our “prophets” who, in the footsteps of Luther, have eschewed human reason, seeking ultimate knowledge directly from God’s mouth. Yet both our prophets and our philosophers have tended, at least until very recently, to shun the whole ambiguous realm of mythopoetic thought and expression. To the philosopher, mythopoetry is imprecise, an unscientific and indirect way of dealing with reality. To the prophet, it is unworthy of the transcendent God who has taken the trouble of bypassing myth by revealing himself directly. So the philosopher looks below, to man’s own wits, to find, if not clear and distinct Cartesian ideas then clear and distinct descriptions of phenomena, and the prophet looks above, to God, for his clear and distinct word.

Those of R. S. Thomas’ poems which can be called—if somewhat loosely—religious, are frequently variations of a dichotomy one term of which appears to have the poet’s qualified approval. And our confidence in the integrity of Thomas’ response to the complexity of his experience is sustained because, as we constantly discover, the preferred term in one variation of the dichotomy becomes the less favoured term in another. Sometimes, indeed, the less favoured term may even be identified with the overtly religious position. Nor are we required to share Thomas’ faith; he is neither insistent nor didactic and consequently there is no problem of distinguishing between the poet and the believer. Indeed, R.S.Thomas is not only immune to the virus of apologetic religiosity but he sustains a dialogue in which faith and unfaith are held in unresolved tension. If his world clearly differs from the one we are familiar with in Larkin’s Church Going it does so, not because it is fundamentally different, but because it is approached from a less familiar direction.

Curiously pehaps, since both are Anglicans, R.S.Thomas’ poetry is quite unlike Betjeman’s, and this is not simply a matter of technique, but has to do with attitudes, and especially their very different ideas about the importance of social artefacts. However much Betjeman deplores Slough’s bogus Tudor bars he delights in the bricky beauty of small towns—the area formerly castigated by Hopkins as ‘Oxford’s base and brickish skirt’ and in this—as in a good deal else, R.S.Thomas is closer to Hopkins. The mere physical threat is seen as having important spiritual implications, although for Thomas the pain is less acute, less fraught, and less creatively tuned to transmit the fleeting energy of living movement.

Statement of the Problem . . . Latin America In Latin America and specifically in Chile the most dynamic (socially concerned) clergy have experienced the phenomenon of secularisation in a way that is perhaps different from the clergy in Europe or the United States. In these countries the strongest impact has probably been made by the scientific and technical discoveries of recent years. On the other hand, in Latin America the impact is felt especially through the experience of the power of mass movements to produce cultural transformations which pastoral action has never been able to bring about. These mass movements have become a reality, thanks to leaders, generally non-Christian, who understood and could make use of socio-economic and sociopolitical laws which allowed radical changes in structures of exploitation. Seeing the effectiveness of these mass movements and technical expertise of their leaders, some of the clergy became increasingly conscious of the contrast with the more or less total failure of large scale ecclesiastical pastoral action such as Catholic Action, Y.C.W, Y.C.S, the Christian Family Movement... etc. I believe that this feeling of frustration built up within the clergy a sense of inferiority and ineffectiveness which today appears as their major problem. What social changes had the Church been able to achieve in Latin America, bearing in mind that 99% of the people are baptized, that is to say are people who might be expected to respond to the directives of the ecclesiastical leaders? It is this uncomfortable feeling that has pushed the progressive clergy to look for new forms of theological understanding that will promote really effective Christian thinking on the radical transformation of the structures of exploitation. This is where we find the psychological roots of action and indeed the theological roots too, for the breath of the Spirit can surely be felt there.