Knowledge of God

• Robert Boyle - *The Scriptual Chymist*


  • References the natural, scientific world and the Bible as he believes that God created both
  • "God has two books" that broaden our understanding of him
• Bonaventure - *Journey Into the Mind of God*


  • analogy of the eye: describes 3 ways of knowing God's existence.

  1. Eye of the Flesh: empiricism, can gain knowledge from outside world
  2. Eye of Reason: ability to decipher mathematical and philosophical truths
  3. Eye of Contemplation: come to knowledge of God through faith, beyond sense and reason
• John Polkinghorne *Exploring Reality*


  • Agreed with Bonaventure's analogy of the Eye
  • Scientist and Priest
  • "binocular vision" - we look through 2 eyes, spiritual in one and science through another. Need both eyes for a complete picture
  • It's foolish to discount science and religion
• Holy Bible

  • Revelation through beauty of world: Psalm 19 - "The Heavens proclaim the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands"
  • Through events of history: gain an understanding of what pleases God. "You brought your people Israel out of Egypt with signs and wonders ... they did not do what you commanded them to do. So you brought all this disaster on them" - Jeremiah 32, people of Israel ignored God and brought punishment on themselves
  • Traditional wisdom: "In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight" Proverbs 3
  • Justifies religious experiences: "I am the Lord ... I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying" Genesis 28
  • Natural laws and design: "For sure the creation of the world God's invisible qualities ... have already been seen" Romans 1
  • Jesus as God's wisdom: "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us" John 1
• God's grace

  • Fuller knowledge of God gained through Holy Spirit - has wisdom, gives faith, brings salvation
  • God revealed his unconditional giving to humanity
• Emile Brunner - *Nature and Grace*


  • points of contact = glimpses of God, full knowledge as faith in Jesus
  • 'points of contact ' between God and humans give a basic understanding of God and fallen nature of humanity - can have understanding through Jesus, redemption through revelation
  • we're fallen, but God's creation so can still have a relationship with him
  • "The possibility of speaking of God and of proclaiming his Word at all, is the fact that God made us in his image..."
• Karl Barth *Nein!*

  • Augustinian view on human nature
  • Only authoritative knowledge is God's revelation
  • Rejects all of natural theology and doesn't believe in a point of contact between God and humanity
  • Only know God through revelation as the Fall has made a relationship with God possible through his grace
  • If someone sees beauty in nature, they've experienced revelation
  • "Jesus does not give recipes ... He is himself the way"
• Richard Swinburne *Is There a God?*


  • Anthropic principle describes that proof of God is developed trough a human-friendly world
  • "There is an even deeper cause for that order"
  • There's a God behind the beauty, design qua purpose and order of creation
• John Calvin - *Institutes on Christian Religion*


  • world is a "mirror" of God that displays "divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power"- God and world are separate
  • "sensus divinitatus" - humans have an innate sense of the divine, we are universally aware of him so there's no excuse to not worship him
  • God is at an epistemic distance, but made it impossible to ignore him
  • "There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of the divine"
  • "semen religionis" - seed of religion = we have an innate desire to engage in religious rituals
  • The Fall created a gap between God and humans - humans weren't always able to access the innate sense until now
  • Biblically backed: Romans 1: "The wrath of God is being revealed from Heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people"
• C.S Lewis *Mere Christianity*


  • We have an 'inner voice' that talks to us when we've done something wrong - this is God
  • God provides universal law
  • Conscience points to a "supernatural lawgiver"
• Cicero - *De Re Republica*


  "For what can be cleaner and more obvious...than that there exists some divine power of exalted intelligence by which those are met?"
• William Paley - *Natural Theology*


  • Teleological Watch Analogy demonstrates intelligent design so hasn't occurred as a coincidence
  • "To deny the existence of God is to deny the existence of all around us"
• Thomas Aquinas - *Summa Theologica*


  • Humans will never fully understand God's nature but we can gain a lesser knowledge of it:
  • God's existence: cosmology and teleology
  • Existence of Natural Law through moral law
  • analogies of attribution and proportion
  • relied on a posteriori reasoning
  • acknowledging God's goodness brings us closer to his divine nature
• Bishop Butler - *Fifteen Sermons*


  • Agrees with Lewis on existence of an inner voice
  • Nature is a moral system to which humans have developed via conscience
  • "everything is what is, and not another thing"
• John Henry Newman - *Grammar of Assent*


  • Agrees with Lewis and Butler, God's inner voice is within us
  • Natural theology is an example of incomplete revelation
  • Knowledge of God is reason aided by grace
• What is natural theology?

  natural knowledge of God's existence through a sense of the divine and seen in the order of creation (natural world)
• What is revealed theology?

  Knowledge of God's existence gained through God's grace and revealed knowledge in Jesus Christ
• Plato *The Republic*


  • The Theory of Forms states that true knowledge is gained by the soul that is beyond this physical world (realm of appearances)
  • We already have the knowledge needed from birth. We think we're gaining new knowledge, but we're recognising things from the realm of forms
  • Thus, natural theology is not fully rejected, but the aspect of the divine was not necessarily important to Plato as we don't learn, we recognise.
  • "A certain portion of mankind do not believe at all in the existence of the gods."
• Aristotle *Nicomachean Ethics*


  • empiricist ( a posteriori reasoning reliant)
  • anything meaningful is gained through science
  • Prime mover - uncaused being that is already everything it must be. It was the first of all substances, eternal, perfectly good, transcendent and immaterial
  • "that which moved without being moved"
• Strengths of Calvin's argument

  • Allows God's grace after Genesis 3 (The Fall)
  • Humans are imagio dei so a personal relationship is allowed as we "mirror" God (upheld by Swinburne)
  • Can be seen throughout history - Christianity is an old religion and its principles have been historically upheld. For instance, the teachings of Augustine are still respected by the Catholic Church
• Weaknesses of Calvin's argument

  • Society has a growth in secularism - 2022 census and "no religion" was the second largest response
  • Contradictory - why did God give us sensus divinitatus if he didn't want to us to access our innate sense?
  • Nature is always changing - Basing knowledge of God off of imagio dei is subjective as no two humans are ultimately similar