Natural Theology and the Qur’an

Natural theology is reading the book of nature, not the book of revelation, for knowledge of God. Natural theology, as a category employed by practitioners, originated within the history of Christianity, as passages from the New Testament such as Romans 1:20 raised the possibility of knowledge about God without revelation. The best-known work of natural theology is William Paley’s (d. 1805 AD) Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the existence and attributes of the Deity, collected from the appearances of nature. Previous to this, Thomas Aquinas (d. 1275 AD) had made arguments that were in the spirit of natural theology and Robert Boyle (d. 1691 AD) was interested in the subject. The Qur’an, likewise, refers to the wonders of nature in the course of its arguments for God’s existence and power. The Qur’an’s discussion of humans’ fiṭra and ḥunafāʾ (s. ḥanīf), along with its evocation of the wonders of creation as evidence of God’s existence and power, meant that at least some of the Qur’an’s themes might be apprehended without revelation and that it is worth exploring the theme of natural theology in Islamic thought. But the general importance of revealed law in Islam and the specific doctrine of naskh are a reminder that the particulars of a revealed text matter. The fact that nature contains some things that are ḥarām suggests that the book of nature would not be on a par with al-sharʿ (‘revelation’).