According to Thomas Aquinas, natural theology is mediate knowledge because it comes to us through the medium of God's creation. Natural theology is the study of the creator through his creation. This very idea has me oscillating between excitement to study more nature and frustration in the obvious loss of translation. In college one of my calculus teachers spent a considerable amount of time drilling into our heads the amount of information that is lost when we move dimensions. For example, if a cubic function is three dimensional, a quadratic is two, and so on, then how hard is it to predict a fourth or fifth dimension equation from its two-dimensional shadow. This is what we are doing when we study God through the medium of creation. We are seeking to learn about a perfect infinite creator through an imperfect finite creation. We see through a glass dimly because our vision is blocked by our own limitations. While the study of mathematics is not an immediate knowledge of God, it is more immediate than creation. In natural theology, we study round rocks to learn about circles and the God that made them. While in mathematics, we study the perfect representation of the round rock (sphere) in order to learn about the God who made various spherical objects. Mathematics and the study of the ideal shape brings us one step closer to special revelation and the God who made us.