was designed, I believe, in order to obviate the possibility that scripture might contain evidence for natural theology' (Barr 1994:136). Van Niekerk's (1984) research on Barth accords fully with such thinking. Barr (1994:190) enquires whether Barth had not developed his personal credo to an impressive dogmatic paradigm. Veldsman (2007:1344) expresses similar thoughts when he writes that: 'You first have to believe in Barth, then in God. He thus fell prey to precisely that psychological subjectivism which he sought to escape.'In his recent groundbreaking work, Imitating Christ, Richard A Burridge (2007:365382) points out that apartheid theology superimposed an external doctrine on the Bible. Deist (1979:57) asserts that the Word of God has always been contingent to, rather than constantly referred to in, theology. He bases such a finding on G.E. Lessing's conclusion that the Christian faith itself has never been based on the entire Bible, or on the Bible alone, as external doctrines have always been involved in such faith. Barr (1994:6) correctly, therefore, alleges that Barth and Brunner are birds of a feather. Both invoke revelatory theology and their exegesis is equally recognisable by the assumptions that it makes. Burridge (2007:366) points out that those theologians who supported apartheid consistently invoked the revelation of God. The Dutch Reformed Church also states pertinently that the concept of 'Scriptural principle' should be treated circumspectly, although the Bible offers 'fundamental data and principles' (NGK 1974:8).6In conclusion, the exegesis of an apartheid theology was dictated by an external doctrine, probably being influenced by Social Darwinism,7 but, owing to the particularity of its limited ramifications, it could not be typified as being purely a natural theology. The features of a purely natural theology, which are typically those of, among others, rationality and universality (Barr 1994:112), are almost completely missing in such a theology. Moreover, the classical Sitz im Leben of natural theology, which is intended to prove the existence of God, is also missing in such a theology. Barr (1994:115) might rightly ask whether theology is not, in any case, both 'natural' and 'revealed'. On the basis of his analysis of Athanasius's (1993) On the Incarnation, Torrance (2001:7677) also concludes that knowledge of God and of the world have the same basis, namely the Logos, being the rationality of God the Creator. No real difference exists between natural and supernatural knowledge, since both forms of knowledge are vested in Christ's incarnation. A THEOLOGY OF NATUREThe different epistemological perspectives, consisting of an implicit empiricism, rationalism, idealism and realism, that have been discussed so far approximate McGrath's (2008:60) categorisation of the four approaches taken in a natural theology: ascending from nature to the transcendent, in terms of which nature is seen as the launch pad to attainment of the Ultimate; seeing through nature to the transcendent, in terms of which nature serves merely as a portal to the transcendent beyond; withdrawing from nature into the human interior, in terms of which the point of departure is of a psychological nature and truth is vested in humans themselves; and discerning in nature that which is transcendent, in terms of which