natural theology Flashcards
who is involved?
brunner
kant: “the starry heavens above, and the moral law within me”
(critique of practical reason)
paley: watchmaker analogy
aquinas: teleological argument
calvin: sensus divinitatus
cicero: universal consent
the bible: Romans 1:20 “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his external power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse”.
cicero- universal consent
all humans, whether uncivillised or not, have a natural instinct to believe in god; and people know more about god by using their reason. similarly, believe in the immortality of the soul is universally agreed.
This is backed up by the anthropological study: the religion of tribal people remote from civilisation actually shows that they believe in magical spirits of animals and ancestors.
how can you argue against universal consent to justify natural theology?
However, this does not give us knowledge about the god of classical theism let alone point to the christian god. Moreover, the discrepancies in gods in the anthropological study implies it may not be a unified sense of the divine, but rather other factors like cultural conditioning, fear of the unknown, WISH FULFILMENT, human disposition to ascribe meaning to something and etc.
CALVINS sensus divinitatus
all humans have the sense of the divine, and he also discusses SEMEN RELIGIONIS, although it is found within all people, some are unaware, and fall into sin.
so when arguing why humans fall into sin. if we have a sense of the divine, Plantinga defends the sensus divinitatis from the argument that not everyone has such a sense. He argues that sin has a noetic quality, meaning it changes someone’s ability to have knowledge and insight, which could block the sense of God.
why does sensus divinitatus fail to explain the absense of the sense in some?
BUT would an omnibenevolent god only provide some people with the faculties to know him? there are many atheists who are good people. For a noetic quality of sin to explain why atheists lack a sense of God, atheists would have to sin more than Christians but that doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, the opposite is true.
does conscience suggest sensus divinatus?
calvin argues yes, tue internal feeling of guilt that a person has when doing something wrong is evidence of an innate sense of morality and our understanding of god’s goodness.
however, freud explains the conscience and guilt- the mind is tripartite, divided between the id, ego and superego. Guilt comes from when we internalise our own dissaproval of others; the superego punishes the ego for succumbing to desires of the id.
furthermore, conscience is not universal; what about psychopaths?
teleological argument for natural theology
aquinas: we observe all things drawn to their telos, as a seed flourishes into an oak tree and as a child flourishes into an adult.
everything has a purpose, as far as we can observe. things like this must be directed, and the ‘director’ we can deduce, is god
paleys watchmaker analogy for natural theology
Paley explains how the intricacy and complexity of a watch implies the existence of an intelligent Creator .It also makes sense to assume that this Creator must be good because they are creating something with intention and purpose. Paley goes on to suggest since the universe has an even greater complexity and order than a watch, therefore it must have been created by a designer with an even greater intelligence.
imago dei in the bible: genesis 1: 26-7
This can be further argued through the notion of imago dei, the idea the universe was made in the image of god and therefore we can gain knowledge of him through observations of the natural world. In Genesis 1:26-7 this is suggested, ‘let us make mankind in our image; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea…’
st paul: romans 1:20
“Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his external power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse”.
calvin interpreted it like this; the word ‘understood’ implies reasoning, rather than just sensing. the verse suggests that God’s qualities and nature can be understood – not just his existence, so it seems to go further than the sensus divinitatis in that regard also.
