‘Natural theology’ involves speaking about God without reference to revelation, tradition, or sources of authority. Negative theology is concerned with the way in which our reason, thinking, and speaking might run out, without this necessarily being an ending. The combination of the two terms (‘negative’ and ‘natural’) serves as an ice-breaker, a provocation, setting up a sort of dissonance within which discussion can occur.Our lives are, more-or-less and to different degrees, beset by limits, compartmentalizations, tensions, conflicts, fragmentation, and disintegration. When there is a desire for a type of wholeness, or, at least, a partial integration, this can bring about a range of affects and reactions, including conflict, tension, anxiety, yearning and despair.Some thinkers, when engaging with such limits and tensions, lean into the concept of God, or the divine, and others do not.At other times, thinkers orient themselves around a conceptual space that has some divine features, although the concept of the divine is not explicitly employed, or, even, is explicitly rejected.The panel will curate a conversation around what might be at stake in employing – explicitly or implicitly – the concept of the divine, or not doing so? What role do existential tensions play in shaping natural theology? What is the future of natural theology?Chair: Matthew Crawford (Australian Catholic University)Speakers:Matthew Crawford (Australian Catholic University)Christopher Insole (Durham University) Karen Kilby (Durham University)Benjamin DeSpain (Australian Catholic University)Lexi Eikelboom (Australian Catholic University) Akeel Bilgrami (Columbia University)