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Knowledge of God's Existence Summary for A-Level Christian Thought
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Knowledge of God’s existenceFaith Voluntary commitment to a belief without the need of complete evidence to
support it
Empiricism A way of knowing that depends on the five sense
Natural theology Drawing conclusions about the nature and activity of God by using reason and
observing the world
Protestantism A form of Christianity which rejects the authority of the Catholic Church and
places a greater emphasis on the Bible and personal faith
Revelation ‘uncovering’; how God shows himself
Immediate revelation Where someone is given direct knowledge of God
Mediate revelation Where someone gains knowledge of God in a secondary, non-direct way
Grace of God God’s unconditional and undeserved gifts
Wisdom literature A genre of writing from the ancient world, teaching about wisdom and virtue. In
the Bible, books such as Proverbs and Job are classified as wisdom literature.
How can God be known according to Christianity?
In many world religions, God is understood to be unavailable to the five senses because God is not
physical. For people who believe that the only real knowledge is that which can be discovered through
empirical evidence, this means that God cannot be known at all, perhaps he does not even exist at all, and
questions about God can be seen as meaningless. If people believe that knowledge can be gained through
reason, this too could mean that God cannot be known at all, as he is said to be beyond the rational realm
and beyond the capabilities of the human mind.
Bonaventura, a Franciscan monk from the thirteenth century, believed that the human mind has at least
three different ways of knowing, to which he referred to using an analogy of an eye:
1. The eye of flesh, which is the way of knowing that incorporates sense perception
2. The eye of reason, which is the way of knowing that lets us work out mathematical and
philosophical truths through the use of reason
3. The eye of contemplation, which is the way of knowing that allows us to come to knowledge of God
by going beyond the scope of both sense experience and reason and gaining knowledge of God
through faith.
For religious believers, God can be known not only in the way that we know facts, but also known in the
way that we know other people. ‘Knowing’ that the prime minister exists is different from ‘knowing’ them
personally; religious believers argue that God can be known personally too.
Natural theology is about gaining knowledge of God through the powers of human reason and observation,
while revealed theology is about God choosing to reveal himself to humans directly, through religious
experiences and scripture for example. There are some who argue that revealed theology is the only way
we can reliably know about God and that natural theology should be rejected.
Natural theology
Natural theology is the name given to attempts to discover truths about the existence and the nature of God
by using human experience and human reason. Looking at the beauty of the world leads many to the
conclusion that there must be a creator God, such as Paley. In the Book of Psalms, the writer looks up to
the night sky and sees clear evidence of the existence of God and of God’s relationship with humanity.
“When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
, and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.”
Humanity simply has to look to the natural world in order to realise the power and the unfathomable wisdom
of God and to see that people have a responsibility to God to take care and rule over other species. Paul
argues that people have made God angry because they have ignored the obvious fact of God’s existence
and instead lead Godless lives of immorality.
“since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since
the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly
seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
Aquinas was keen to show that Christianity was not in opposition to reasonable common sense, but that
reason and observation could be employed in support of Christian belief. For example, from seeing that the
world is in a constant state of change, due to cause and effect, we can work out that there must be an
Uncaused Causer and from observing that everything in the world depends on something else for its
existence, we can work out that there must be something that depends on nothing at all but which exists
necessarily.
Swinburne argues that, for example, we have good reason to think that the world shows signs of order,
regularity, and purpose; reason therefore leads us to conclude that there is probably an intelligent being
who is the author of the universe, which we call God.
Natural theology as arising from an innate human sense of the divine
Some thinkers argue that a sense of the divine is an intrinsic part of human nature. One common argument
for the probability of God’s existence, made by the Roman philosopher Cicero and many others since,
notes that in all cultures, and all times in history, people have had a sense that there is an infinite being
who is in control of the universe. Cultures which cannot possibly know about each other nevertheless often
develop religious beliefs which are remarkably similar, looking to an invisible, powerful spiritual being which
they worship. Perhaps, then we are born with an innate sense of God.
In the account of the creation story, God makes humanity in his own image, and breathes life into Adam,
suggesting that there might be a ‘spark’ of divinity within each human.
John Calvin claimed that we all have a ‘sensus divinitatis’ which could be translated as a seed of divinity or
an innate sense of God. He therefore argued that people have no excuse if they fail to worship God and
dedicate their lives to his service. Anyone can reflect on the natural world, its beauty and order, and should
be able to understand the existence and character of God. Calvin writes that knowledge of God through this
inbuilt sense of the divine is not just available to the intelligent and educated.
Calvin also argued that the created world is a ‘mirror’ or ‘theatre’ for God, who sometimes increases the
human capacity for awareness of his presence so that no one can have any excuse for pretending that they
are unaware of God’s existence. Any lack of clarity in the natural world comes about because of human sin,
which clouds people’s understanding of God and prevents us from having a full awareness of his nature
and purposes.
Other writers talk about the ‘epistemic distance’ between people and God, by which they mean the distance
in knowledge and our inability to grasp and comprehend the full nature of God. Usually, this epistemic
distance is attributed to God himself, deliberately making himself obscure to people in order to preserve
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