Knowledge of God

• The topic is about how we gain knowledge of God
• Ways people believe we can gain knowledge of God

  • Reason
  • Senses
  • Soul
  • Faith
  • Scripture
• Analogy of the eye

  • Eye of flesh (empiricism)
  • Eye of reason (logic)
• Polkinghorne's analogy


  Binocular vision of science and spirituality
• Bonaventure's third eye


  Eye of contemplation (faith)
• Natural theology


  • Uses empiricism and reason to understand God
  • Linked to the teleological argument and the beauty of the world
• Thinkers on natural theology

  • St Paul
  • Aquinas
  • Swinburne
• Born with a sense of God


  Idea that we are just born with a sense that there is something else out there, could be made in God's image
• Aesthetic argument


  We appreciate things like beauty, art, music - this could be a recognition of God
• Epistemic distance


  The distance God gives us to use our free will properly, after the fall from grace
• Innate sense of morality


  Something inside us that tells us what is right and wrong, could be from God
• Revealed theology


  Direct experience of God through scripture, visions, feelings - confirms natural theology
• Immediate revelation


  Direct one-to-one communication with God

  • e.g- moses and burning bush
• Mediate revelation


  Hearing about God's communication secondhand

  • e.g - moses to people
• Faith


  A leap beyond reason and empiricism, bridging the gap between what is known and unknown

  • faith is something that is uncertain compared to scientist
• God's grace


  God's love and sustenance through the Holy Spirit, giving us the right words, wisdom, strength, and the opportunity for salvation
• God's grace


  God's love shining upon you
• God's grace


  A gift that you have to be chosen for by God
• God's grace sustained through the Holy Spirit


  1. Gives us the right words for scripture

  2. Gives us wisdom

  3. Helps us live a Christian life

  4. Gives strength to the church

  5. Gives us the confidence of faith
• God's grace is revealed through the Holy Spirit by the things that we experience
• Acts 17


  Believed to be written by Luke, about St. Paul's journey to Athens
• St. Paul's actions in Athens

  1. Listened to educated academics

  2. Debated with them

  3. Told them their worship was not right
• St. Paul's message in Acts 17

  "You should not live in temples built by human hands", as God cannot be experienced in the work of humans
• Acts 17 combines natural and revealed theology
• Natural theology


  Knowing God through what can be seen in the world, not through human-made objects
• Revealed theology


  Knowledge gained through scripture and authority figures
• Many thinkers try to combine natural and revealed theology


  To get to the eternal law and the mind of God
• Some critics, like Coleridge, argue that using reason alone through natural theology is worshipping the wrong thing</b>
• Dawkins criticizes the use of faith, saying it is illogical

  • compared God to a teapot orbiting space, the tooth fairy
  • no logic in it whatsoever.
• natural law 


  = natural theology
• Divine Law 


  = revealed theology
• Barth

  you should use reason alone is not enough and that you need to go to scripture, and those things beyond.

  • NT = worshipping the wrong thing
  • Argues God us revealed through christ
  • Christ and God's grace = yes
  • not using your own empiricism , your own reason