WHAT IS NATURAL THEOLOGY? (AND SHOULD WE DISPENSE WITH IT?) with Bethany Sollereder, "Introduction to Essays in Honor of Alister McGrath"; Peter Harrison, "What is Natural Theology? (And Should We Dispense with It?)"; John Hedley Brooke, "Revisiting William Paley"; Helen De Cruz, "A Taste for the Infinite: What Philosophy of Biology Can Tell Us about Religious Belief"; Michael Ruse, "The Dawkins Challenge"; Donovan O. Schaefer, "The Territories of Thinking and Feeling: Rethinking Religion, Science, and Reason with Alister McGrath"; Andrew Pinsent, "Alister McGrath and Education in Science and Religion"; Andrew Davison, "Science and Specificity: Interdisciplinary Teaching between Theology, Religion, and the Natural Sciences"; Victoria Lorrimar, "Does an Inkling Belong in Science and Religion? Human Consciousness, Epistemology, and the Imagination"; and Alister E. McGrath, "Response: Science and Religion-The State of the Art."

In a series of impressive works, Alister McGrath has made a major contribution to contemporary natural theology. The natural theology he has in mind is not the "established" variety, which seeks to provide rational support for religious beliefs from nonreligious premises. Rather, it is an explicitly Christian natural theology that involves "seeing" the world through the lens of Christian revelation. Nevertheless, McGrath seems to hold that a sufficiently capacious understanding of natural theology can encompass both the established version and the broader vision that constitutes his own project. This article suggests that there is a significant tension between these two conceptions of natural theology. It argues that the supposedly "established" version of natural theology was never really established within the Christian tradition to any significant degree, but was instead belatedly projected onto it for various reasons. The historical tradition comports with McGrath's project, but not with his generous comprehension of the established conception within a genuinely Christian natural theology.