Knowledge of God Flashcards
Aquinas
Aquinas accepted that human reason could never know or understand God’s infinite divine nature. However, he argued that human reason can gain lesser knowledge of God, including:
God’s existence: through the teleological (design) and cosmological arguments.
God’s moral law through natural law theory – innate sense
God’s nature by analogy, through the analogies of attribution and proportion.
- Aquinas thought that reason could not provide an absolute proof that God existed, since that would make faith and revelation useless.
- creation leads to us reflecting on God’s wisdom, admiring his power, having reverence for God in our hearts and love for God’s goodness in our souls. The beauty of creation hieghtens this
Natural Theology
Natural theology is the theory that knowledge of God can be gained by the power of the human mind. It has two main forms:
Natural theology through reasoning about the natural world. God’s revelation is present in his creation and human reason has the ability to discover it. This resulting in knowledge of God based on reason. This is typically a catholic view.
Natural theology through sensing God is defended by some, including protestant theologians who are sceptical of the power of reason to know God.
John paul 11
Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth” – Pope John Paul I
Bible support of natural theology
*Psalm 8:3-9: the writer looks up at the night sky and sees evidence of the existence of God. The wonders of the world are presented as evidence, humanity just has to look to the natural world in order to see the power of God.
‘When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars’
*Romans 1:18-21: Paul in his letter argues that human experience and human reason easily lead to knowledge of God. God is angry with humanity because we have ignored the fact of God’s existence.
Barth Criticim of Natural Theology
1)Karl Barth was influenced by Augustine, who claimed that after the Fall our ability to reason become corrupted by original sin.
- Barth claims that reason has ‘no capacity’, i.e., zero ability, to know anything whatsoever of God
“the finite has no capacity for the infinite
– whatever humans discover through reason is not divine, so to think it is divine is idolatry – putting earthly things on the level of God. Idolatry can lead to worship of nations and even to movements like the Nazis
2)Romans 1;20 doesnt support natural theology
Barth points to Romans 1:25 where St Paul warned, regarding the Gentiles (a non-jew), that “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator”.
- Barth claims that Paul is showing that natural theology leads to idolatry – the worshiping of fake idols
3) Aquinas’ natural theology undermines faith by making revelation pointless
- If natural theology was valid then humans would be able to know God’s existence or God’s morality through their own efforts.
-Thus need of revelation/jesus would be unneccesary
Grenz and Olson
Any attempt to ground the truth of God’s Word in human reasoning, however devout and sincere, inevitably leads to theology being subverted by human, historical modes of thought and thus to ‘anthropocentric theology’. The evil against which Barth fought so hard.”
Aquinas’ defense
1)Aquinas defends his natural theology from original sin. Aquinas claims that pre-fall human nature contained three ‘goods’:
the properties of a human soul, e.g. rationality.
An inclination towards the good (telos) as a result of being rational.
Original justice/righteousness; perfect rational control over the soul.
—Original sin completely destroyed original justice, which caused us to lose perfect rational control over our desires. Nonetheless, Aquinas argues that our rationality and its accompanying inclination towards the good was not destroyed by original sin.
TIllichs defense
Even a weak or misled conscience is still a conscience, namely, the silent voice of man’s own essential nature, judging his actual being” – Tillich.
- To deny that our conscience can discover the natural law is to claim that there is a gap between what we currently are and what we could be.
- Yet, to have an awareness of that gap is to have a conscience that is aware of its fallen state. So it is contradictory to deny the natural law
Conclusion - Sometimes, with God’s grace, our reason can discover knowledge of God’s existence and natural moral law. So, natural theology is valid.
Bonaventura
*Used the analogy of the eye to represent different ways we ‘see’
The mind as the road to god
1.The eye of the flesh: which is the way of knowing that incorporates sense perception: the empiricism of science. This ‘eye’ is the means by which we gain knowledge about the physical world
Eg) Paley and how we observe order (paleys watch)
2.The eye of reason: which is the way of knowing that lets us work out mathematical and philosophical truths through the use of logic
3.The eye of contemplation: way of knowing which allows us to come to a knowledge of God by going beyond the scope of both sense experience and reason and gaining knowledge of God through faith
-See the minds road to god – we see god in diffeent ways
Paley
william paley‘s argument from deign has become widely known as an argument for god’s existence. it rests on the analogy of a watch, which when we see it we will assume has a creator because it is designed and purposeful. in a similar way we observe the world and see it is designed and purposeful and assume a world-maker, or god, who is infinitely powerful.
Polkinghrone
Binocular vision
- sees science as one eye, which shows the physical world and the laws and processes behind it
-The other eye understands the spiritual truths; which shows his purposefulness and the world in the context of the creation of God.
Both eyes need to work together to give a complete picture in all its dimensions.
He thinks it is foolish of religious people to ignore the discoveries of science and equally foolish of some scientists to close one eye and refuse to engage with the possibilities of God.
Swinburne
Tenant – looks to order of anthropic principl, observe in world alll we need to live /survive.
Eval- Evolution?
Swinburne:
human reason and powers of observation provide us with solid grounds for supporting the probability that there is a God
Ie) fine tuning argument
Temporal order (regularities of succession) refers to the orderliness of a thing’s behaviour over time due to physical laws.
E.g., the element of hydrogen has the same properties everywhere in the un
Temporal order is maintained by natural laws – the laws discovered by physics/ in the universe since it first existed
Strong – cannot be explained by evolution or Humes arguments of chance
Boyle
a metaphor for understanding how God can be known as the metaphor of ‘God’s two books’
*The two great books= The natural world and the Bible which were both created by the same author.
*The words of the Bible and the discoveries of science were seen as complementary, each enhancing the other as means by which people could deepen their understanding and knowledge of God.
Cicero
in all cultures and all times in history people have had a sense that there is an infinite being who is in control o the universe.
Cultures which cannot possibly have known anything about each other’s existence but develop religious beliefs which are similar, points to the idea that we are all born with a sense of God.
Calvin - Sensus Dvinitas
3 examples of how humans experience the sensus divinitas:
1.The conscience: the feeling of guilt that we have inside us when we do something wrong, proves that God exists. Conscience is the capacity given by God and is part of the human response to God.
2.Humans are also aware of beauty and the CC states that this appreciation of aesthetics helps people to understand God’s existence.
3.Our intellectual ability- our powers of reason. This reason helps us to reflect on what we see around us, such as the nature of objects, natural laws to recognise God’s existence.
Calvin - NT
Epistemic Distance - for Calvin this distance between God and us is created by ourselves, God has made it impossible to ignore him, so it our own fault if we cannot see him.
Natural Theology as arising from the order of Creation
*We naturally recognize and understand that beauty of the world is clear evidence of the existence of God
*Calvin: the natural beauty of the universe as a sort of mirror of God. The creation reflects the nature of God in its beauty and orderliness.
World a stage to which shows gods nature
Acts 17
St Paul visits Athens
Have a shrine to an ‘unknwon god’
States how he is the god hes come to preach
Everyone has the capacity to believe in God- inclined to blief
Uses natural theology to show similarity of Jesus and the messiah
How we naturally encounter god in experience
All people exist because God is sustaining their existence, their life comes from God everything they do is only possible because of God
People are living in God whether they realize it or not
Grace
Christianity emphasises faith as a means to have knowledge of God, and it does so in the context of the grace of God
*People are able to have knowledge of God through faith because of God’s grace; God gives them the gift of faith, and also sustains his faith and strengthens it through the Holy Spirit.
*God can be understood as the Trinity
*People can only have true/full knowledge of God when God graciously chooses to give it
Holy spirit
*Give the prophets of the Old Testament the right words to say at the right time
*Guide the writers of scripture so that they produce the word of God
*Give people wisdom by which to understand what has been revealed
*Give people faith with which to believe the Christian message
*Give people the confidence to share the Christian faith
– Bring salvation
Calvin- RT
We know God, not when we merely understand that there is a God but when we understand … what is conducive to his glory”
Due to sin This means natural theology can only reveal the truth of God’s existence, but not the full revelation of God.
means we only truly know God when we know how to glorify God through worship and following God’s moral commands.
Calvin argued that people should see their mind as nothing more than a passive reception of the revelation of the Bible.
Plantinga -reformed epistemology.
Sees Sensus divinities as basic knowledge
- basic knowledge is a belief which is held to be true because it just is so and makes sense of so many other experiences.
no separate natural theology for the knowledge of god but a general religious sense which makes it reasonable to make christian claims.
is only available to christians because only christ can remove the sin which distorts the sensus divintatis and the holy spirit comes to help the believer like a pair of glasses for bad eyes
Believe in god equally as rational as non. As enquires us to postit theories eg) free will defense.
Plantinga’s response is that although there can be no incorrigible proof of one’s belief, there can be good reasons enough to maintain it
Augustine
Idea cannot reason to know God
-Look to akrasia – we have a weakness in the will.
-Led by concupiscence, cannot reason of gods good
-product of the fall
. For example, Augustine told a story about how, as a child, he stole a pear from a garden, not because he was hungry but just for the pleasure of sinning.
Pelagius
Pelagius: Augustine’s observations reflect his society, not human nature. Pelagius goes further than Aquinas and Brunner however and completely denies the Augustinian doctrine of original sin.
“The long habit of doing wrong which has infected us from childhood and corrupted us
We are thoroughly corrupted we are by our upbringing, which Pelagius refers to as being “educated in evil”.
Moral Progress
Luther King
“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.
Steve Pinker
attributes to the power of human reason that violence has decreased, even considering the 20th century. The average human life seems more secure than at any prior point in history.
-Human behavour has improved
Brunner
Brunner claimed the fall destroyed the material imago dei (Adam and Eve’s relationship with God)
but not the formal imago dei, which is what separates us from animals and gives us language, reason and moral responsibility.
Logical - Psalm 8 which states humans are lower than the angels but higher than the animals.
Preserving grace
God continues to be active in maintaining creation, shielding it from the effects of sin
This can be known through the order in the universe; that the world is still spinning, and humans still existing reveals God’s gracious preservation of us.
Brunner still thinks however that natural theology alone will always, due to our sinful state, result in a distorted knowledge of God. We need the special revelation of Christ to achieve full knowledge.
John Paul 11 - Fiedeism critique
-Becomes merley blind faith
- Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio also affirms that God’s existence is in fact demonstrable by reason, and that attempts to reason otherwise are the results of sin.
“a resurgence of fideism, which fails to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for the understanding of faith, indeed for the very possibility of belief in God”.
-negates our rationality/autonomy
Bonhoffer
encounter god in nature through suffering. All natural as God became man entering into world in incarnation. God reveled to man to be witness of word, part of human experience.
‘word became flesh’ - Jesus acted in natural world, allows man to know god.
Is not as clear as two categories
Eg) Religious experience/ person of Jesus act as unique ways God shows us. To many a religious experience is part of nature. Otto – the numinous, awe inspiring holiness where god reveals himself.
More nuanced as we form a personal relationship through many factors.
Natural and revealed the same?
They are similar because the points of contact in natural theology are there since God has decided they should be there: on some level, God has revealed it.
The Bible is a type of revelation but reason is required to find the authentic message within it
Some Christian beliefs cannot be understood through natural theology- need revelation too.
The difference is the process of gaining information
Bible doesn’t make distinction
