Knowledge Of God's Existence

Question 1

The 2 ways we can know God

Answer 1

• Natural theology

- Special revelation

Question 2

The 2 ways we can know God through natural theology (general revelation)

Answer 2

• innate sense of God (a priori)

- creation (a posteriori)

Question 3

The 2 ways we can know God through special revelation

Answer 3

• Through faith and grace

- Jesus

Question 4

Who believed we have knowledge of God through creation

Answer 4

• Aquinas and Paley because of the cosmological and teleological arguments

Question 5

What did John Hick and Peter Vardy believe

Answer 5

• God can’t fully reveal himself through Natural theology because it would eliminate our free will because we would have to worship him (king and pauper girl) because he is omnipotent
• needs to be an epistemic distance so we have free will

Question 6

Who would criticise knowing God through natural theology

Answer 6

• David Hume
• Richard Dawkins=science
• J.S Mill=nature is red in tooth and claw
• J.L Mackie and Epicurus=the problem of evil

Question 7

John Calvin partially agrees with general revelation

Answer 7

• God is the divine creator so must be revealed in the world

- It cannot reveal meaningful things about God because of the damage done by the fall

Question 8

John Calvin and his innate sense of God

Answer 8

• ‘Sensus divinitas’ (sense of God we have within us)
• Semen religionis (seed of religion)
  Can be seen through

Question 9

Who is against Calvin and his innate sense of God

Answer 9

• Freud=he is just looking for a father figure to make us feel good
• Dawkins=God is just a meme passed down to help society run smoothly (survival instinct)
• Hume=There are patterns in society so we have learnt this idea, we assume patterns so assume there is an innate sense of God (statistical conjunction)

Question 10

John Calvin’s analogies

Answer 10

• Creation is God’s mirror=It seems reasonable that a work of art reflects something of it’s creator
• the world is a theatre of Gods action=God is known through his actions through the things he does

Question 11

Calvin’s mirror strengths and weaknesses

Answer 11

• William Paley=watch
• Irenaeus=grow to be like God
• Rowe=evidential problem of evil
• Dawkins=evolution and digger wasps

Question 12

Calvin’s theatre strengths and weaknesses

Answer 12

• conversion and corporate experiences
• Schleiermacher and self authenticating
• Otto and C.S Lewis
• William James
• Swinburne=testimony and credulity
• Bertrand Russell=fasting
• Hobbs=dreaming
• Hume
• Freud
• Dawkins
• Hawkins
• Flu=leaky buckets

Question 13

John Calvin and the importance of the fall (how it damaged our ability to know God through natural theology

Answer 13

• Suffering enters the world. The world is no longer as God had planned it. It no longer reflects the omnipotence and omnibenevolenve of God
• Human nature is damaged. Natural theology is done using reason, we can still do it but there are likely to be errors in our judgement

Question 14

Aquinas and his innate sense of God

Answer 14

• eternal law=what goes on it God’s mind (laws that govern creation and the reflections in nature)
• Divine law=the word of God (what God reveals to us through the bible and Jesus
• Natural law=innate sense of good (reason and human nature)
• Human law=our laws (the way we apply God’s laws and thoughts
• But because of the fall we need special revelation to reveal God

Question 15

Calvin-faith and God’s grace

Answer 15

• Duplex cognito domini=the 2 ways we can know God
• the creator
• the redeemer
• “if Adam had remained upright (si integer stetisset Adam)”
• “in this ruin of mankind no one now experiences God either as father or as author of salvation…until Christ the mediator comes forward to reconcile him to us”
  Jesus is the salvation

Question 16

Calvin-conscience

Answer 16

• Conscience is our God given faculty as creatures made in the image of God
• Part of our moral choice making process which responds to God’s will of what is right and wrong
• Joint knowledge between ourselves and God (it is God’s presence which gives us our sense of moral judgement

Question 17

Bonaventura- natural and revealed theology

Answer 17

• eye of flesh (empiricism)
• eye of reason (rational and philosophical truths)
• eye of contemplation (goes beyond empiricism and rationality=thinking deeply)
• We have these eyes and to understand God we would use these things properly
• if you are not seeing God then you aren’t using your eyes correctly

Question 18

Polkinghorne- binocular vision

Answer 18

• he sees science through one ‘eye’ and understands spiritual truths by looking through the other ‘eye’
• foolish for some religious people to ignore scientific discoveries but equally foolish for scientists to refuse to engage with the possibility of God

Question 19

How is knowledge of God revealed through faith

Answer 19

• Calvin and Aquinas believe it is a gift from God in the sense of election and predestination

Question 20

Can the existence of God be known through reason alone???

- Richard Dawkins

Answer 20

• faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence
• lack of evidence

Question 21

Knowledge of God through Jesus

Answer 21

• Jesus is the messiah

- “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one gets to the father except through me”