(also called Philosophical Theology).— The division of metaphysics that studies God, His attributes (or “names”), and His causal activity, insofar as all of these can be known by reason alone.  Sometimes “natural theology” is also referred to as “theodicy,” although the latter term technically refers to the philosophical study of the problem of evil in relation to belief in God.  Although the term “theology” was used in the classical world for referring to metaphysics itself, in the wake of rationalist metaphysics, the term “theodicy” (and also “natural theology”) came to refer to a kind of “special” division of metaphysics, separate from “ontology.” For St. Thomas Aquinas and many scholastics, it is wrong to separate natural theology in this way.