Volume 5, Issue 2, Fall 2008
Patrick J. Fletcher
Pages 26-42
Newman and Natural Theology
Although the second and third University Discourses in Newman’s Idea of a University are well known for according theology a place in a university education by showing the relationship of theology to the other sciences, this essay points out that Newman was also arguing against the “natural theology” of British thinkers like William Paley, Lord Brougham, Sir Robert Peel, and Bishop Edward Maltby, who maintained that the study of the natural sciences would necessarily lead to religion; Newman objected that this kind of “natural theology” could easily lead to deism or pantheism.