Knowledge of God's existence

• The Mind’s Road to God 

  • Written by a Franciscan Monk called Bonaventura 
  • Three ways of knowing 
  • ‘Eye of flesh’ - sense of perception 
  • ‘Eye of reason’ - allows us to work out mathematical and philosophical truths  
  • ‘Eye of contemplation’ - allows us to go beyond sense and reason to obtain knowledge of God through faith 
• John Polkinghorne  

  • Anglican priest and Cambridge physicist  
  • Talks about binocular vision 
  • One eye shows the physical world and processes  
  • The other sees the spiritual significance of creation and God’s work 
  • He believed both eyes must work together to give a complete picture of the world around us 
  • Scientists and religious fundamentalists have one eye closed 
• Revealed theology: God revealing himself to humans. E.g. religious experiences, in the person of Jesus, through scripture. 

  • A revealing that has occurred specifically to someone who has become a Christian 
  • Mediated by God through for e.g. reading the Christian Bible (esp. New Testament), witnessing a miracle and/or having an immediate religious experience of Christ (etc.) 
  • Requires extra supernatural intervention in addition to what human beings already have 
• Natural theology: Gaining a knowledge of God through reason and experience. E.g. cosmological and teleological arguments. 

  • Available to everyone whether or not they have encountered the Christian message  
  • Knowledge of God is mediated (transmitted, passed on) by the beauty of nature, a sense of the divine, a feeling of dependence and/or reasoning that everyone can carry out (etc.) 
  • May lead to belief that ‘there is a God’ without it being Chrisitan 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY

  “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself” - Catechism of the Catholic Church 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY

  • Some Christians argue that as we are made by God and made in the image of God, we have an innate sense of the divine. What this means is we have a feeling or sense of God in-built within us that can feel and respond to God. 
  • Some thinkers would point to the anthropological evidence that all human societies have formulated ideas of spiritual and divine worlds beyond this one as evidence of this sense. 
  • The catholic church believes desire for God is written on our hearts. This is linked to Aquinas’ idea of our final telos being a worship of and a relationship with God. 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - CRITICISM

  Friedrich Nietzsche 

  • Humanity has killed God because as we matured and evolved, God is no longer needed. 
  • There is no innate sense of God – it is simply a concept that was used to explain the unexplainable. 
  • This is a good thing however, humanity is still clinging onto this idea of God but in the future, we will not need God.  
• “God is dead” - Friedrich Nietzsche 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY

  Ancient religious practices? 

  Some people argue that when you look back at the oldest human artefacts that survive there is evidence of possible belief in things that transcend the material world. Burial practices provide reasonable evidence for beliefs about life after death. Ritual artefacts point to the belief in spirits or divinities. Some argue that this shows that a sense of the spiritual is fundamental to all human beings. We all feel a need to be part of something bigger than ourselves. 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY

  John Calvin (1509 – 1564) 

  • French theologian, pastor and reformer 
  • Principal figure in the development of the system of Chrisian theology later call Calvinism, including its doctrine of predestination and of God’s absolute sovereignty in the salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation 
  • Calvinism doctrines were influenced by and elaborated upon the Augustinian and other Chrisitan traditions  
  • Various congregational, reformed and Presbyterian churches, which look to Calvin as the chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world 
• “There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy... God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty” - John Calvin
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - John Calvin

  • Calvin argued that we have a divine sense that makes it possible for everyone to know God. 
  • He also spoke of the semen religionis (the seed of religion) that is found within all people. 
  • We have no excuse not to worship God. 
  • It is not dependent upon intelligence. 
  • The world is a ‘mirror’ for God – this world is God’s theatre where his glory is always on display just as “day and night pour forth speech” 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - John Calvin

  • Not everyone can see this clearly, so they worship other Gods or none. 
  • The lack of clarity comes from human sin
  • Human sin has created the 'epistemic distance' which makes God's existence unclear
• “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” - Romans 1:18 – 20 
• "Since the perfection of blessedness consists in the knowledge of God, he has been pleased, in order that none might be excluded from the means of obtaining felicity, not only to deposit in our minds that seed of religion of which we have already spoken, but so to manifest his perfections in the whole structure of the universe, and daily place himself in our view, that we cannot open our eyes without being compelled to behold him." - John Calvin 
• "His essence, indeed, is incomprehensible, utterly transcending all human thought; but on each of his works his glory is engrave in characters so bright, so distinct, and so illustrious, that none, however dull and illiterate, can plead ignorance as their excuse." - John Calvin 
• 'His immensity surely ought to deter us from measuring him by our sense, while his spiritual nature forbids us to indulge in carnal or earthly speculation concerning him. With the same view he frequently represents heaven as his dwelling-place. It is true, indeed, that as he is incomprehensible, he fills the earth also, but knowing that our minds are heavy and grovel on the earth, he raises us above the worlds that he may shake off our sluggishness and inactivity.’ - Calvin on the Principle of Accomodation
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - John Calvin

  Principle of Accommodation

  Again, we see that human knowledge is simply incapable of the most specific and truest understanding, and so God voluntarily lowers Himself not as he really is but “as we conceive of him.”. This means despite God being unknowable, he has communicated in ways humans understand.

   

  Calvin identifies three ways humans experience the sensus divinitas – each has been developed further by other thinkers... 

  • Conscience 
  • Aesthetics  
  • Intellectual ability 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - John Calvin

  Conscience 

  Calvin argued that we feel good or bad when we do good or bad things. He argues that the voice or feeling we experience is evidence of an innate sense of the divine. Even the fact that we can identify right from wrong shows that humans are different from animals. This points to the fact that we have some sense of the divine and levels of reality beyond the material world. 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - John Calvin

  C.S. Lewis’ Moral Argument  

  C.S. Lewis claimed we felt shame when we did wrong, even when there is no chance of being seen or caught. He attributed this to an innate sense of God or morality. 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - John Calvin

  Aesthetic argument  

  Humans are aware of beauty, and this helps us understand God’s existence. We were given an ability to look at the beauty of nature and understand the creation of God and the character of God. 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - John Calvin

  Tennant  

  Tennant pointed out the existence of beauty as evidence for there being something more than blind chance and brute evolution. This is known as the aesthetic principle. 

  Tennant says because the beauty of music, art and nature provides no survival instincts, there must have been designed by God. 
• “Nature is not just beautiful in places; it is saturated with beauty – on the telescopic and microscopic scale. Our scientific knowledge brings us no nearer to understanding the beauty of music. From an intelligibility point of view, beauty seems to be superfluous and to have little survival value” - Tennant
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - John Calvin

  Intellectual ability 

  The fact that we have the ability to reason suggests that we are different from other animals. This is linked to the idea we have covered before, that humans were made in the image of God. For Aquinas, he saw reason as being a gift from God. 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - Other Theories

  C.S. Lewis 

  The argument from desire is an argument for God, which moves from human experience to the conclusion that God best explains it. C.S. Lewis slightly adapts this argument as follows: 

  1. All innate human desires have objects that exist 
  2. There is a desire for “we know not what” whose object cannot be identified 
  3. If the object of this desire does not exist in this world, it must exist in another  
• “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for this desire exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world” - C.S. Lewis
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - Other Theories

  Order and Purpose 

  The design and cosmological arguments we covered previously are example of natural theology. The strengths and weaknesses of these also apply to this topic (particularly the objections by Hume). 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - Other Theories

  Dialectical Theism 

  Following on from Calvin’s Principle of Accommodation, Macquarrie developed dialectical theism. According to Macquarrie, classical theism has over-emphasized certain attributes of God, resulting in a less-than satisfactory concept of divinity from both a philosophical and religious point of view. For instance, he contends that it has over-emphasized divine transcendence, resulting in a “monarchial” picture of a God who is removed and aloof from creation... 
• “The intellect demands a more dialectical concept of God, while the religious consciousness, too, seeks a God with whom more affinity can be felt, without diminution of his otherness.”  - Macquarrie
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - Other Theories

  Dialectical Theism

  This is not an unfamiliar criticism, but instead of simply swinging to the other extreme and positing an “immanent” God, Macquarrie argues that an adequate concept of God requires holding certain seemingly opposed attributes in a “dialectical” tension. Hence, “dialectical theism”. 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - Other Theories

  Dialectical Theism

  Knowability and incomprehensibility: Because God expresses himself in creation, God is knowable, “intuited in the world as a presence or as its unity”. But this knowledge is indirect, mediate by symbols, and the inexhaustible being of God transcends what we can know about him. 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - Other Theories

  Dialectical Theism

  Transcendence and immanence: God is independent of the world in the sense that the world depends on God for its existence. But God is also deeply involved in the world, intimately present to the processes that make it up. Images of “making” and “emanation” provide complementary ways of picturing the act of divine creation. 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - Other Theories

  Barth Vs Brunner

  • Barth draws the following conclusions using the doctrine of sola gratia and the Bible as ultimate sources of truth: 
  • Because man can only be saved through God’s grace, man cannot know God through their reason and image. 
  • “No point of contact” and “God is radically other” 
  • Observed rise of Nazi party – no one can know God and commit those atrocities - context clouds judgement  
  • So, humans can only know God through the Bible and Jesus (revealed theology) but warns against bibliolatry... 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - Other Theories

  Barth Vs Brunner

  • Brunner replies: 
  • Natural theology can provoke the conversation that points towards the existence of God.  
  • “He leaves the imprint of his nature upon what he does” 
  • It does not give us all the answers but for many it is the key starting point. 
  • The fall damages people on some levels but on the spiritual level we are still capable of a connection with God. 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - Other Theories

  Alvin Plantinga  

  • Revealed theology is reasonable and so Chrisitan beliefs are ‘warranted’ or justified but natural theology can never offer sufficient reason to believe in God, certainly a loving and forgiving one. 
  • This argument against Calvin is referred to as reformed epistemology (knowledge of God is ‘properly basic belief’).  
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - Other Theories

  Alvin Plantinga

  • He also believed that... 
  • God is ‘basic knowledge’ or a belief that is held true because it just is so. 
  • Humans have a sensus divinitatis or God-given faculty which enables humans to know God 
  • Original sin distorts sensus divinitatis which is why some people do not know God. 
  • Belief in God is no less rational than a non-belief in God (also referred as Plantinga responding to the atheological objector) 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - STRENGTHS

  Awe and wonder 

  • Many material experiences invoke non-material reactions 
  • When you view a landscape, you do not simply take in an appreciation of the physical forces that have shaped it.  
  • You feel a sense of awe and wonder, it moves you in ways that are not just intellectual 
  • Supporters of natural theology would say that it is reasonable to say you can access an immaterial God through material evidence 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - STRENGTHS

  Tradition 

  • The arguments for natural theology can be traced back to the Bible 
  • It is also very old within the Christian tradition 
  • It is not a product of scientific rationalism as some assert, it is valid part of the Christian tradition, not addition or interpolation 
  • “The heavens declared the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge” - Psalm 19 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - STRENGTHS

  Innate  

  • Natural law fits with the way humans gain a huge wealth of our knowledge 
  • We observe and draw conclusions  
  • We work this way through science, observing effects and drawing conclusions about causes. 
  • It also works when gaining less concrete knowledge 
  • It is normal for humans to reason in this way and it often, with the right process to arrive at real knowledge  
  • Supporters of natural theology would argue the same is true for knowledge of God, natural theology is a reliable way to obtain knowledge 
• NATURAL THEOLOGY - STRENGTHS

  Extent  

  • Many different traditions have emerged in many different eras in many different geographical locations 
  • Some argue it is reasonable to assume that there is a point of contact between humans and the divine  
  • Faith in something higher is a key feature of the vast majority of human civilizations 
  • It is also reasonable to assume a personal God, would give his creation the ability to connect and have a relationship with Him