knowledge of God's existence

Question 1

Natural theology.

Answer 1

Considers that God can be known through reason and observation of the natural world.

Question 2

Revealed theology.

Answer 2

Considers that God can only be known when he lets himself be known.

Question 3

Incorrigible facts.

Answer 3

Facts which are unshakebley or unalterably the case.

Question 4

Knowledge as understood in the ancient world.

Answer 4

“Wisdom” which came from true knoweldge of oneself.

Question 5

Point of contact.

Answer 5

God’s revelation in the world which provides humans with the first step to knowing him as redeemer.

Question 6

Calvin in ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’.

Answer 6

“Without knowledge of the self there is no knowledge of God.”

Question 7

Sensus divinitatis.

Answer 7

‘Sense of God/the divine’.

Question 8

The unknown God speech from Paul to Athenians.

Answer 8

Paul convinces the Greeks that the ‘unknown God’ they have been worshipping is actually the true Christian God.

Question 9

Universal consent argument.

Answer 9

Cicreo point out that so many people belief in a God that there most be some form of divine being.

Question 10

Catechism on human nature.

Answer 10

“Openness to truth and anxiety.”

Question 11

Duplex cognitio Domini.

Answer 11

‘The two-fold knowledge of God’, knowing God as a creator and a redeemer.

Question 12

Psalm 19:1.

Answer 12

“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”

Question 13

Principle of accomodation.

Answer 13

Principle that God manifests himself through creation in ways that human finite minds can best understand.

Question 14

Calvin on God and the principle of accomodation.

Answer 14

God reveals part of his apperance, but his essense, in forms that our brains can comprehend.

Question 15

Process theology.

Answer 15

Theology based on the idea that God and the universe act, develop and evolve in tandem to maximise greatest potential in each moment.

Question 16

Si integer stetisset Adam.

Answer 16

‘If Adam had remained upright’, refers to the Fall.

Question 17

Catholic view of the Fall.

Answer 17

Did not stop people knowing God but distracted their desire for them.

Question 18

Catechism on revealed knowledge of God.

Answer 18

“There is another order of knowledge, which man cannot possibly arrive at his own powers: the order of divine Revelation.”

Question 19

Unformed faith.

Answer 19

Faith which finds intellectual reasons for the belief but doesnt accept it.

Question 20

Formed faith.

Answer 20

Faith which wills to accept what it can believe through intellect.

Question 21

Calvin’s teachings on faith.

Answer 21

It is firm and certain knowledge, given to those willing to believe.

Question 22

What does faith require according to catholic and Calvinist belief.

Answer 22

God’s grace through the holy Spirit.

Question 23

Trinitarian view of God.

Answer 23

God is one but reveals himself through three faucets.

Question 24

Where does Calvin claim knowledge of God the Redeemer is.

Answer 24

In Jesus Christ.

Question 25

Karl Barth.

Answer 25

Swiss Reformed minister and theologian, rejected natural theology and embraced revelation theology.

Question 26

Emil Brunner.

Answer 26

Swiss Reformed minister and theologian, rejected revelation theology and embraced natural theology.

Question 27

Brunner's proposal.

Answer 27

God's general revelation allows humans to become aware of their Fallen state but the person of Jesus Christ is what allows our redemption.

Question 28

Imago Dei.

Answer 28

Image of God in humans after the Fall has been destroyed at a material level.

Question 29

Brunner on general revelation.

Answer 29

God communicates through nature, but sin blinds humans so all we can have is a communication point with God but no more.

Question 30

Brunner on true knowledge.

Answer 30

Only avaliable through faith in Christ.

Question 31

Barth's criticisms of Brunner.

Answer 31

- The Fall corrupted humans material self to where our formal self cannot inform our material self of it. - We have no points of contact with God. - Whilst we can percieve order in nature it is not the basis for morality as we see this order only after it has been revealed.

Question 32

Suggestion for Barth's critical analysis of Calvin.

Answer 32

Suspicion of ideology which rose human reason to a God-like status due to rise in Nazism.

Question 33

Reformed epistemology.

Answer 33

View held by modern theologians in Reformed or Calvinist traditions.

Question 34

Plantinga on basic knowledge.

Answer 34

Some Christian revealed beliefs are basic and irreducible.

Question 35

Plantinga on Sensus Divinitatis.

Answer 35

No separate independent natural theology for the knowledge of God but there is a general religious sense which makes it reasonable for Christians to make basic claims; if there was no God there would be no claims to God.

Question 36

Atheological objector.

Answer 36

Platinga's term for those who reject theological claims.

Question 37

Platinga on arguing God's existence.

Answer 37

That arguing a belief in God is no more or less rational than an atheists non-belief.

Question 38

Criticisms of Platinga.

Answer 38

- Claim that many people over many years having a sense of God indicates one is weak as these people could just be mistaken. - Appealing to faith and the Bible, with the predisposition belief in God is unconvincing for most. - Argument that any firmly held beliefs by believers are basic could be used for any belief.

Question 39

Fideism.

Answer 39

Requirement that revelation is essential for the human mind to know anything about God's existence with certainty.

Question 40

'Dogmatic Constitution of Faith'.

Answer 40

Outlawed fideism in favour of a midpoint between natural theology and revealed theology (rationalism and faith).

Question 41

Strength of natural theology.

Answer 41

Knowledge of God is reasonable and compatible with non-Christian belief systems and scientific viewpoints.

Question 42

Challenge to natural theology.

Answer 42

Whether it justifies Christian claims like Christs divinity,the resurrection, eschatological claims, etc as natural theology reduces these claims to human rationality level.

Question 43

Douglas Hedley defending natural theology.

Answer 43

Reason has place in philosophy, but imagination does equally as it is intentional and conscious.