Knowledge of God's Existence Flashcards
What did Bonaventura say about knowing God?
He wrote in his book “The Mind’s Road to God” that we have “three eyes” with which we process information
Eye of Flesh - knowing through sense perception
Eye of Reason - our use of reason
Eye of Contemplation - our understanding of God through faith
What did John Polkinghorne say about knowing God?
He believed we need to use “binocular vision”
Science in one eye
Spiritual truths in the other eye
Both eyes need to work together to get a complete understanding, it is equally foolish to ignore either eye
What is Natural Theology?
Our attempts to discover truths about the existence and nature of God using human reason and observation
Proven by: beauty in our world
order in our world (Richard Swinburne)
St Paul wrote of how humans have made God angry by ignoring the obvious signs of his existence
What is the argument of the innate human sense of the divine?
A Natural theological argument:
Born with a sense - all throughout time humans have had a sense of a higher being
Epistemic distance - God is deliberately distant from us to allow us true free will
Innate sense of morality - Newman believed that God was our conscience, which we have and build upon from birth
What is Revealed Theology?
Information God chooses to reveal to humans directly
This knowledge could not have been worked out by human reason alone
Faith not intellect
Comes from the Greek “revelatio” (unveiling, uncovering)
What is immediate revelation?
When God makes himself directly known to people, e.g. talking to Adam and Eve in genesis
What is mediate revelation?
People learning about god through someone else
e.g. reading the Bible, where those who had immediate revelations wrote it down for others
What is revelation through faith?
Faith is a belief where there is limited evidence, or it goes against evidence
Bridge the gap that senses cannot reach
Aquinas says you cannot have faith and science on the same thing, as science occurs when there is proof, and faith is when there is no proof
Catholic church teaches that faith and reason should work together as they are both gifts from God
What is revelation through God’s grace?
Giving full knowledge of himself through the holy spirit
God as the HS is believed to have given:
Prophets in OT the right words
People wisdom to understand revelation
Faith to believe in the Christian message
What does Acts 17 tell us about knowledge of God?
Through reason Paul hoped his listeners would gain knowledge of God (Natural theology) and recognise that God cannot be captured by humans in statues through God’s grace (Revealed theology)
NT - “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.”
RT - “now he commands all people everywhere to repent.”
What did Karl Barth believe about knowledge of God’s existence?
Argued that natural theology was idolatry
People are incapable (due to issues with our reasoning) of working out right and wrong by ourselves and require the commandments in the Bible to do so
God is revealed in Christ (so no truth in other religions)
What did Dawkins say concerning Theology?
“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.”
What did Hume say concerning Theology?
“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”
