Knowledge of God's existence

Overview

Recall questions on natural and revealed knowledge of God, the image of God, beauty, goodness and the order of nature, faith and grace, Jesus Christ, the Bible and the Church, whether God can be known by reason alone, the effect of the Fall, and why some Christians distrust arguments for God.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is the difference between natural and revealed knowledge of God?

   Model answer

   Natural knowledge is what human beings can come to about God using their own faculties - reason reflecting on the world, and an inbuilt sense that there is something beyond it. Revealed knowledge is what God discloses and human beings could not have worked out, given through faith and grace and, Christians hold, supremely in the person of Christ, with the Bible and the life of the Church as its ongoing means.

2. 2

   How do Christians use the idea that human beings are made in the image of God to explain natural knowledge of him?

   Model answer

   They argue that if humanity is made to resemble God, then something in the human make-up must be oriented towards him. That shows up as a built-in capacity and longing to know God - a restlessness that created things do not satisfy - and it explains why the impulse to worship appears in virtually every culture. On this account, awareness of God is not an achievement bolted on from outside but part of the equipment we come with.

3. 3

   How is human responsiveness to beauty and to goodness treated as a route to knowledge of God?

   Model answer

   The argument is that when people are struck by beauty or drawn by goodness they are responding to qualities that point beyond the particular thing in front of them. Christians who take this line hold that beauty and goodness are aspects of God's own nature, so the experience of being moved by a landscape, a piece of music or an act of self-sacrifice is a genuine if partial contact with him rather than mere feeling.

4. 4

   What role does intellectual reflection play in natural knowledge of God?

   Model answer

   Christians in this tradition hold that the mind is capable of reasoning from the world to its source: noticing that things exist without having to, that the universe is ordered and intelligible, and that these facts call for explanation. Reflection of this sort does not deliver a personal encounter, but it is claimed to establish that there is a God, and to show that religious belief is a reasonable position rather than a leap in the dark.

5. 5

   Explain the claim that something of God is visible in the order and purpose of the natural world.

   Model answer

   The claim is that nature shows the marks of intelligence: regular laws, structures suited to their function, and conditions finely balanced enough for life. Christians argue that these features are what one would expect if the world were the work of a mind, so anyone attending honestly to nature has some access to its maker. Critics answer that evolutionary and physical explanations account for apparent design without a designer, and that the argument at best suggests a designer rather than the God of Christian worship.

6. 6

   Why do many Christians say that natural knowledge of God is not enough?

   Model answer

   For two reasons. Human minds are finite, so an infinite God exceeds what they can grasp; and human beings are sinful, so their reasoning about God is distorted by self-interest and pride as well as limited by capacity. What natural reflection might deliver is a general sense that there is a God and something of his power and wisdom. What it cannot deliver, on this view, is knowledge of God as forgiving, or as personally trustworthy.

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