knowledge of god Flashcards
Augustine & Karl Barth on Original Sin vs Aquinas’ Natural Theology
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
Karl Barth was influenced by Augustine, who claimed that after the Fall our ability to reason become corrupted by original sin
Barth is a Swiss Reformed minister who rejected liberal Protestanism and instead developed what has been called neo-orthodoxy - a rejection of natural theology, a revival or Reformed theology
“the finite has no capacity for the infinite”
reason is not divine, so to think it is divine is idolatry – putting earthly things on the level of God
Kierkegaard - Emphasises the subjective, individual experience of God through a leap of faith, prioritising personal revelation and inwardness over empirical or rational evidence.
Aquinas argues that our rationality and its accompanying inclination towards the good was not destroyed by original sin.
Our reason therefore still inclines us, through synderesis, towards goodness
Barth still seems correct that being corrupted by original sin makes our reasoning about God’s existence and morality also corrupted. Even if there is a natural law, we are unable to discover it reliably.
“Si integer stetisset Adam” - “if Adam had remained upright” then everyone would have known God perfectly
the Fall (in Calvin’s teaching of it) had distorted human nature so much that there was no point of contact between God and humans.
Karl Barth: 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.
Barth argues that would make revelation unnecessary. Yet, God clearly thought revelation was necessary as he sent Jesus. It follows that natural theology cannot be valid.
No one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14.6)
natural theology does not undermine faith but instead supports it. Aquinas’ arguments for God’s existence are only intended to show the reasonableness of belief in God. They at most show that there is evidence for some kind of God
NO POINTS OF CONTACT - he argued that neither nature, conscience nor guilt provide any points of contact with God, as conscience and guilt are only experience after a person has experienced God’s grace, not before or independently of it. Brunner is mistaken in his claim that these are natural points of contact, as they are simply the result of God’s mercy and grace
If reason only has this goal of supporting faith, then it cannot make revealed theology unnecessary.
only God can choose and decide to reveal himself to sinful mankind . This is through the gift of faith, through the Holy Spirit, and cruicially through Jesus Christ. Belief in God requires the necessity of revelation - an action from God (there is a holy otherness of God so he is completely unknowable to us)
protestants - the Holy Spirit is what gives humans faith in God, and therefore acquiring faith is another act of grace that we have done nothing to deserve/merit.
Calvin: “’till the Spirit has become our instructor, all that we know is folly and ignorance”.
Surely God can be known by reason alone - if he couldn’t knowledge of God would be exclusionary and to those whom God chooses to reveal himself to
- this is not omnibenevolent or just
- but sensus divinitatis
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”.
They are willfully ignoring the obvious - has made it plain to human reasoning and that to decide otherwise is to suppress the truth we know by nature
Boyle - Used metaphor of ‘God’s two books’- the
natural world and the Bible - Both created by same ‘author’ + lead to deeper understanding
barth - accepts that the passage shows that creation does indeed allow knowledge of God, but argues humans are too sinful to manage that
although we can see order in creation, it is not the basis for salvation or morality. God’s moral commands in the Bible are completely different from any natural laws which humans believe they can see.
Once again we only see order in creation after it has been revealed to us through faith and in the Bible. Barth thinks that Brunner gives too much importance to human reason and undermines the uniqueness of faith.
Who is capable of knowing God through his creation, if not us? The bible claims that knowledge is possible, so presumably there must be some being who can manage it
PSALM 8:3-4
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
- Our appreciation of God’s majesty, wisdom, and power grows deeper if we take time during a night to look up and scan the heavens
- give us further evidence that we ought to worship Him.
Calvin’s Sensus Divinitatis
all humans have an innate sense of the divine
Paul Act 17 - unknown god
We all intuitively sense the existence of God and feel a longing for connection to God.
The phrase ‘semen religionis’ means the ‘seed
of religion’ – the idea that humans are naturally
inclined to pray or engage in religious rituals
and practices
Calvin thought there was no rational way to be an atheist because of this sense
Calvin’s idea that God’s ‘sparks of glory’ in nature provided a point of contact with God, which enable humans to have a vague knowledge of God’s existence
through conscience or sensus divinitatis (seed of religion - when God created man he left a mark of his creation within him) - intellect is imperative
Anthropological study of the religion of tribal people remote from civilisation actually shows that they believe in magical spirits of animals and ancestors
The extent of the spread of atheism in the 21st century suggests that this sense of God doesn’t exist
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.
Cicero argued that so many people believe in gods of different sorts that the desire to believe in gods must be innate to the human condition
The Catechism – religious practices are ‘so universal that one may well call man a religious being’
‘the two-fold knowledge of God’ - duplex cognitio Domini
God as Creator and God as Redeemer
Emil Brunner
Brunner is a Swiss Reformed minister who was influenced by Aquinas’ teaching that God can be partially known through the creation
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
- enabled human to become aware of God’s commands and their sinful state.
Intellect and brain also points to this conclusion, as why would God create humans with such a complex intellectual and reasoning mind if he didn’t want them to use them.
Psalm 8 which states humans are lower than the angels but higher than the animals
preserving grace – that God continues to be active in maintaining creation, shielding it from the effects of sin
Brunner still thinks however that natural theology alone will always, due to our sinful state, result in a distorted knowledge of God.
However, this isn’t enough to achieve redemption - this is revealed in the person of Jesus. Natural theology has a limited purpose - to offer ‘the possibility of a discussion pointing towards such evidence of the existence of God as we have’.
Though regardless, as the Christian God interacts, engages and connects with the people in the world it would make sense for the world around us to create an opportunity for people to understand and know God
GENERAL REVELATION - owing to sin humans are almost incapable of receiving God’s communication of grace through nature - all they can know is that God exists, but natural theology is limited by the Fall
TRUE KNOWLEDGE - true knowledge of God is only available to someone who has faith in Christ (through grace and renewal of the material self). Brunner **argues that the revelation of Christs ‘far surpasses’ general knowledge of God’s revelation through nature
conc
No scholar mentioned so far would argue that natural theology alone can allow us to know God, owing to the effects of the Fall, the ‘otherness’ of God (creator vs creature) and God choosing to place himself at an ‘epistemic distance’ (Hick’s ) from us to preserve human freedom.
Whilst we can concede that natural theology is necessary in some case, it still remains a supplementary tool to check that what we believe to be revelations from God are genuine, rather than illusions or hallucination. It wouldn’t mean that we can know God through reason alone
- natural theology is necessary to distinguish between irrational faith and rational faith
- Reason is needed to distinguish between epistemically justified faith, and epistemically unjustified faith (justified with knowledge)
the two are inseperable - Natural knowledge of God just means that which God reveals to
our rational faculties. Humans may find God through observing God’s creation, but only because God elects to reveal himself in this way and because the Holy Spirit guides us towards God’s self-revelation through his creation.
