When we speak of “the natural knowledge of God,” we are not speaking of “natural man’s” notions of God. That was a popular misunderstanding of this subject that cropped up in the Reformed churches of the twentieth century because of the influences of Barth and Van Til. On the contrary, this natural knowledge is any true knowledge about God on the basis of God’s revelation in the creation. This revelation has alternatively been called “general revelation” and “natural revelation,” having as its Scriptural basis texts like Psalm 19:1-3 and Romans 1:19-20. 

For Charnock, the natural knowledge of God became a treasury of pastoral help for the person who was gravitating toward a “practical atheism.” In other words, the demonstrative form of natural theology—i.e., arguments for God’s existence—and the pastoral response to such a person were not two alien worlds. This is how we should understand the first two discourses in Charnock’s classic work.

What is Practical Atheism?

Charnock divides atheism under three heads: “There is a threefold denial of God. (1) Quoad existentiam [‘with respect to God’s existence’]—this is absolute atheism. (2) Quoad providentiam [‘with respect to his providence’], or his inspection into or care of the things of the world, bounding him in the heavens. (3) Quoad naturam [‘with respect to his nature’], in regard of one or other of the perfections due to his nature.”1 We might wonder how he would reply to the objection that (2) is not atheism at all? He anticipates the objection, and one can discern two justifications in his answer:

“Those that deny the providence of God do in effect deny the being of a God, for they strip him of that wisdom, goodness, tenderness, mercy, justice, and righteousness that are the glory of the Deity. And that principle of a greedy desire to be uncontrolled in their lusts—which induces men to a denial of providence, that thereby they might stifle those seeds of fear that infect and embitter their sinful pleasures—may as well lead them to deny that there is any such being as a God.”2

In other words, both by logical implication and by psychological inevitability, the denial of God in His ongoing works necessitates that more total denial. Charnock speaks of a “secret atheism,” by which he does not mean a “closet atheism,” which is afraid to publish openly those views which one consciously holds in private, though that may be an effect in many. Rather, he was addressing the practical atheism which occupied so much Puritan reflection. This is captured in the words of Psalm 10: 

“In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God’” … “He says in his heart, ‘God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it’” (vv. 4, 11).

He says that this secret atheism is “not an utter disowning of the being of a God but a denial or doubting of some of the rights of his nature.”3 He also calls it a “partial atheism.”4 In short, this is someone who has reserved some portion of this thought life and outward actions as if God did not exist. Such a one may even fool himself into denying that he is denying God. He may check the “theist” box even while he heads down the atheist path. All of this implied a spiritual war for those like Charnock. He says,

“It is necessary to depress that secret atheism that is in the heart of every man by nature ... He would persuade himself there is no God and stifle the seeds of it in his reason and conscience, that he might have the greatest liberty to entertain the allurements of the flesh. It is necessary to excite men to daily and actual considerations of God and his nature.”5

It is interesting that he begins with the same text as Anselm did in his Proslogion, that is, Psalm 14:1. He says “every atheist is a grand fool. If he were not a fool, he would not imagine a thing so contrary to the stream of the universal reason in the world, contrary to the rational dictates of his own soul, and contrary to the testimony of every creature and link in the chain of creation. If he were not a fool, he would not strip himself of humanity and degrade himself lower than the most despicable brute.”6 But how does Charnock understand this foolishness? Again, one must refer to practical atheism—not that the rationalist who publishes his soul-poisoning words is not foolish for fitting his own neck for the millstone that Jesus warned about. It is that this atheism is more universal. 

Some exegesis is helpful here. He argues that, in spite of interpretations of the passage that restrict this condition to the Gentiles, he points to Paul’s interpretation which is suggested by how the Apostle quotes from the same Psalm in Romans 3:10-12. Added to those quotations is verse 9, which places both Jews and Gentiles under the same condition. Consequently, there is a sense in which atheism is a “deplorable corruption by nature of every son of Adam.”7

Drawing back on the teaching of Romans 1, all had a grasp of natural knowledge of God and became this fool by that knowledge diffusing. After showing how both Scripture, in the Hebrew use of “fool” (נָבָל), and even among the pagan’s description of the fool as a “vicious” person, Charnock infers that this fool is “one who has lost his wisdom and right notion of God in divine things, which were communicated to man by creation.”8 In other words, Charnock perceives this blameworthy dissolution of natural theology not as something that occurred merely in the transition from prelapsarian to postlapsarian knowledge, but something recapitulated, or at least in the makeup of, each and every child of Adam.

The Justification and Inevitability of Natural Theology

It may be asked—given our first section on practical atheism being the main issue and our last section on universal consent—why demonstrations? Why natural theology at all? Charnock frames the question a little differently: “But does the growth of atheism among us render this necessary?”9 The answer he gives is affirmative, though he does not reduce its purpose to apologetics in the modern sense of that activity. 

In orienting ourselves to his discussion of natural theology, we need a bit of grammar. The natural knowledge of God is typically divided between that knowledge which is innate and and that which is acquired. Charnock held to both. Among the Reformed, the former has hardly needed justification, while the latter has fallen on hard times in the past century. Nevertheless, even the innate knowledge is made problematic by what Paul says in Romans 1 about suppression and idolatry. How then does he characterize what happens to a light so clear? He wrote,

“The engraved characters of the law of nature remain, though they daub them with their muddy lusts to make them illegible, so that since the inconsideration of a deity is the cause of all the wickedness and extravagancies of men.”10

That said, he calls this innate knowledge “a restless instinct”11 and “impression of deity”12 all are born with. He compares it to a “fire under ashes, which sparkles as soon as ever the heap of ashes is open—a notion sealed up in the soul of every man.”13

As to that additional knowledge that comes by discursive reason, Charnock wrote that, “The demonstrations reason furnishes us with for the existence of God will be evidences of the atheist’s folly.”14 While it is not his main focus, this does have an advantage in apologetics: “Men who will not listen to Scripture, as having no counterpart of it in their souls, cannot easily deny natural reason, which rises up on all sides for the justification of this truth.”15 This does not demand that the demonstrations will seize the unbeliever and make him a believer. Often times the effect may be simply to silence (cf. Titus 1:11).

How does he relate faith and reason as to the objects of knowing God? 

“God, in regard of his existence, is the discovery not only of faith but of reason ... Faith supposes natural knowledge, as grace supposes nature. Faith indeed is properly of things above reason, purely depending upon revelation. What can be demonstrated by natural light is not so properly the object of faith, though in regard of the addition of a certainty by revelation it is so.”16

Very much to the contrary of the notion of “warranted belief” promoted by Alvin Plantinga in our day, Charnock says,

“It is fit that we should know why we believe, that our belief of a God may appear to be upon undeniable evidence, and that we may give a better reason for his existence than that we have heard our parents and teachers tell us so and our acquaintance think so. It is as much to say that there is no God when we know not why we believe there is and would not consider the arguments for his existence.”17 

Especially challenging to modern fideistic sentiments that pervade the whole house of the Reformed of the twentieth century, Charnock could even speak of natural theology in “foundationalist” terms—that is, as the natural knowledge of God forming antecedent truths that we draw upon in virtually all areas of theology. He put it in this way:

“The existence of God is the foundation of all religion. The whole building totters if the foundation be out of course. If we have not deliberate and right notions of it, we shall perform no worship, no service, and yield no affections to him. If there be not a God, it is impossible that there can be one, for eternity is essential to the notion of a God. So all religion would be vain and unreasonable, to pay homage to that which is not in being, nor can ever be. We must first believe that he is, and that he is what he declares himself to be, before we can seek him, adore him, and devote our affection to him (Heb. 11:6). We cannot pay God a due and regular homage unless we understand him in his perfections, what he is; and we can pay him no homage at all, unless we believe that he is.”18

The natural knowledge of God is also divided by theologians between principles and conclusions. This is also true of natural law. We see this function in Charnock’s explanation of the argument from the consent of the nations. When the objection arises that the nations have not known one God but many, his answer is simple; yet one must have a firm grasp on this principle-conclusion distinction and the relationship between them. He says, “The difference is in the manner and immediate object of worship, The worship sprang from a true principle, though it was not applied to a right object: while they were rational creatures, they could not deface the notion.”19

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1. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:41.

2. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:41.

3. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:42.

4. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:43.

5. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:45.

6. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:43

7. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:39.

8. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:40.

9. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:44.

10. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:44.

11. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:57.

12. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:58.

13. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:58.

14. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:44.

15. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:46.

16. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:46.

17. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:45.

18. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:44-45.

19. The Existence and Attributes of God, I:51.