 The question of how we know about God has been at the centre of human inquiry almost since time immemorial, certainly as long as people have been writing about ideas, about beliefs, about what we came to call philosophy or theology. That question, is there a God and if so, how do we know and what might we reasonably say about such a being? That's been going on for a long time. One of the key ways in which people have written and taught about how we know about God has been through what is called natural theology. That's a complicated phrase, and some years ago I was asked to do the Gifford Lectures in Aberdeen University, which are now published under this title, History and Eschatology, and this course is actually a way of coming at the same questions and coming through some of that material, though not entirely in the same order, because we want to make it in easy and bite-sized chunks to get hold of the key issues. So anyway, I was asked to do the Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology. That was great, and my mother, who was 94 at the time, got to hear about this. So I was visiting her in her care home, bless her, and she died within a year of this conversation, and she said, Tom, you're doing these lectures on natural theology. What is natural theology? And I said, well, mum, some people have sometimes thought that by studying the natural world, the trees and the plants and the animals and the stars and the human mind and heart, then we can argue our way up to God that if these things are so, then there must be a God and God must be like this. Some people have thought you could do that. Equally, some people have thought that's not a very good way of going about it, and you'll end with a very fuzzy God and you should start somewhere else entirely, particularly that you should perhaps start with what you know about Jesus. And so that debate has been going on, and my idea is to put Jesus himself back into the middle of this debate in a way that has normally been ruled out. And my hope in doing this, this is still what I said to my mother, my hope in doing this is that we might find out something, not just about God, but about the nature of knowledge itself. So I said my say, that was my mini version of the lectures, my mother thought for a minute, and then she said very firmly, I'm glad I don't have to listen to those lectures. And I thought, thanks, Mum, you've just given me my opening line for the lectures and indeed for this course. But those are the key issues. How do we know about God? Can we simply look around ourselves at the world as we know it and say, well, in that case, there must be God? After all, doesn't one of the most famous psalms in the whole book of the Psalter say something like that? Psalm 19 begins, the heavens are telling the glory of God. The firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day, pause forth speech. Night to night, declares knowledge. There is no speech, there are no words, their voice is not heard yet. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the ends of the world. And then the psalm goes on to talk about the sun and uses the sun and the way its heat penetrates everything as a vivid illustration of the way in which God's law then comes to penetrate the human heart and life. And it's very interesting that St. Paul in Romans chapter 10 verse 18 quotes verse 4 of this psalm. Their sound goes out through all the earth and their words to the ends of the earth. It's as though he's saying, yes, that psalm is right and so in principle everyone all over the place knows about God. And after all Paul says in the beginning of the letter to the Romans he says something rather similar that what can be known about God is plain to people because God has shown it to them. This is Romans chapter 1 verse 19 and following ever since the creation of the world God's eternal power and divine nature even though they're invisible have been understood and seen through the things that he's made. So Paul is affirming that there is what you might call a natural knowledge of God. Of course he quickly goes on to say that what the human race does with this knowledge is get it inside out and upside down and instead of knowing the true God they commit idolatry. They worship the bits and pieces of creation as if they were God instead. That doesn't stop Paul referring to similar arguments when he's speaking in Athens in Acts chapter 17. He's put up on the stump in the Areopagus the highest court in the land because they're suspicious that he's a teacher of foreign divinities and they don't like foreign divinities they wonder that this is going to pervert their local Athenian customs. So Paul says among other things this is Acts 17 verse 24 The God who made the world and everything in it the one who is Lord of heaven and earth doesn't live in temples made by human hands he made from one stock every race of humans to live on the whole face of the earth and the aim was that they would search for God and perhaps reach out for him and find him. Indeed he is actually not far from each one of us for in him we live and move and exist as some of your own poets have put it for we are his offspring. So Paul is saying there is a natural knowledge of God and the point of that is that God has given people the chance to reach out after him and find him and then Paul goes on as he does in Romans to say so what's all these stupid idols doing what are all these false objects of worship because actually the true God commands all people everywhere to repent. So it's not just as easy as saying well there is a natural knowledge of God so we can leave it at that. Paul wants to say from a very Jewish point of view that yes God is the Creator yes he does want all people everywhere to reach out after him and find him but there seems to be a major problem and Paul having gone round plenty of parts of the ancient pagan world he knew perfectly well that the natural knowledge might be there but it wasn't leading people to be devout to be holy etc. So what was to be done how was that to work out? These biblical passages and others like them have led many nevertheless to say that that is the basis on which we do have some knowledge of God indeed some people have seen Jesus parables as pointing in the same direction that Jesus told people to consider the lilies of the field or look at the birds of the air and infer from the way that they are how God wants us to be he is constantly using images from the natural world seed time and harvest and so on as pointers to the larger truths of God's kingdom coming on earth as in heaven and through the early parts of the modern period in western culture through the 16th, 17th and 18th century many people drew on images like this from the Bible in order to say often in a very positive and even cheerful way this is the basis of everything one of the hymns which expresses this written by Joseph Addison in the early 18th century says it very dramatically building on Psalm 19 but doing so with resonances of the philosophy of the time it's the hymn which begins the spacious firmament on high with all the blue ethereal sky and spangled heavens a shining frame their great original proclaim in other words look at the stars and that's telling you about the ultimate source of light God himself the unwirried son from day to day does his creators power display and publishes to every land the works of an almighty hand this is pretty well straight out of Psalm 19 but then there's an interesting note that's what though in solemn silence all move round the dark terrestrial ball in other words the stars going round the earth or they seem to of course what though nor real voice nor sound amid their radiant orbs be found this is Psalm 19 now here's the very much the 18th century bit in reasons ear they all rejoice and utter forth a glorious voice forever singing as they shine the hand that made us is divine that's the key in reasons ear humans have reason and when we think about the stars and then let our human reason work on them what's going on here then we might infer that God has made them one of my favourite examples of this comes from a man who is very famous in my part of the world the northeast of England about 200 years ago Thomas Buick Buick was a great naturalist from early boyhood he had loved the world of nature the seed time and the harvest which obviously he knew was resonating with Jesus teaching and so on but he loved the animals he loved the birds he loved the insects he loved the fish in the river time by which he lived and he became a great artist and produced a huge number of woodcuts a very detailed and accurate depictions of all the birds that there were I've got it come down to me through my family the edition of his history of British birds in two volumes published in 1832 not long after his death he's an interesting man for this reason that he is still expressing about a hundred years after Joseph Addison that same theology that you look at the world of nature and you infer God this is what he says in the preface to this book if only kind to be could be prevailed upon to read a few lessons from the great book of nature so amply spread out before them of course he's hinting why not buy my book and you'll see it's all here they would clearly see the hand of Providence in every page and would they consider the faculty of reason here it is again as with Addison's him as the distinguishing gift to the human race and use it as the guide of their lives they would find their reward in a cheerful resignation of mind in peace and happiness under the conscious persuasion that a good naturalist cannot be a bad man wow there's a statement I'm sure we could all think of plenty of counter examples but Buick seems to have been a kind of devout deist there is a creator he has ordered how life should be he's shown humans how they should behave and so on and if we study the world of nature and particularly the animals and especially the birds which I think were pretty obviously Buick's favorites then we will have a way open to us to see what life is really all about to understand the will of the creator for his world as a whole and for us in particular going back to the 18th century the great theologian again in the north of England at the time was Joseph Butler who ended up his career as Bishop of Durham and who when he was a younger man had written the analogy of religion responding to the deist critique of Christianity namely how can you read a Bible which is so full of dark and mysterious and violent things and Butler said actually that is the way the whole world is look at the world of nature and you'll see we have the same puzzles and then we see what God has done and is doing about them so all of that was a way of saying yes we can be secure there is this thing which is a natural knowledge of God and we can follow it through and that is typical of the natural theology which was popular in the early 18th century and as we've seen with Buick continued well on into the 19th century and is still to be found in many places and in many ways but the tide was turning in other directions and in Europe and America at the time there were many who were saying actually we can't be sure actually we can't believe the Bible we're not sure about who Jesus really was and we're not actually sure even if there was a God is a God could be a God there was a rejection particularly of the perceived privilege of Christianity often fueled by resentment against the church for its power its wealth and so on and there was skepticism about the official teaching many people wanted to know how can we be sure how can we really know and they were fed up particularly with the wars of religion that had gone on since the 16th century often tragically different branches of the Christian faith embraced by different countries or regions that were then fighting one another and using religion as they would call it as an excuse for what they were doing and so they were saying we've got to forget all that we've been taught by the church and we've got to see if actually there are other ways of knowing God and it was in that context that some people were saying well natural theology is the answer the problem is though that it's not that easy it's not going to be that easy because all sorts of things come back at us to say well when we look at the natural world what we see is precisely nature red in tooth and claw we see disasters we see all sorts of crazy stuff going on as well as the stars circling the world and as well as the birds and the animals and the fish and so on so the 18th century was a very turbulent time a time of great uncertainty a time when the traditions were being reaffirmed but then all sorts of things were happening that made it much harder for people to go on and embrace this and as we have seen over the last 200 years since that time as a very complex confluence of thought in Europe and America in particular which have resulted in all sorts of new questions which have come up and natural theology has sometimes been rubbish by people who've said well we've tried that and it doesn't work sometimes by Christians who've said well we may try it but it will only lead us to idolatry and sometimes by non-Christians who as we'll see have said well the world is actually a darker and much more mysterious place so what we're going to do in subsequent sessions is to look at some of those movements of thought which have radically shaped the way in which we have got to where we've got in our culture, in our subcultures in the western world of Europe and America. I'm very much aware that there may be plenty of people watching courses like this who don't belong to those particular subcultures absolutely fine unfortunately, more fortunately the sorts of theology and philosophy which we're dealing with which have shaped the way that many people think and teach without even realizing they're being shaped by it have come from Europe and America. There are many other traditions in other parts of say Latin America or particularly the great Asian continent and certainly Africa and so on. Those traditions need their place at the table. Sadly I am not qualified to discuss them in any detail at all I hope that in this next generation and beyond we will see new movements of thought that will bring together insights from different parts of the world. So my apologies if this seems to be to some of you rather parochial we're looking at a particular line of thought which has come up as I say through the cultures of Europe and America and not least in my own country that is in Britain and as well as the tide of skepticism which was going on through quite a bit of the 18th and then the 19th and 20th centuries there have of course been great Christian movements. People often look back at the 18th century and they see skepticism rampant and more and more people denying the Christian faith and denying even the possibility of a natural theology let alone a biblical theology but at the same time there were great Christian movements John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield the originators of Methodism in the 18th century doing an amazing work of preaching not least preaching to people who the churches seemed to have forgotten the working classes in Britain and many in other parts of the world as well and there were great church revivals and revivals of faith in my own church the Anglican church in the 19th century and many other things as well so it's not all one way traffic it's not all a slide down to skepticism and atheism that's going on but simultaneously there are other movements as well life is always more complicated than any one simple summary could make out but in particular we were in the 20th century enormously affected by the First World War because as we shall see the sense of the world getting to be a better and better place which had been going on in some people's minds in the 19th century was then cruelly dashed in the early years of the 20th and we in the 21st century still inherit the long echoes of those extraordinary and sometimes horrific events and in the middle of them all people are saying was that where it was all going? was that what it was all about? and it was after the First World War particularly that one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century Carl Bart said a plague on all your ideas of progress a plague on any sense that you could look at the natural world and talk sensibly about God we need a fresh word of God from outside from above to speak into our world not so that we can climb up to God but so that God will reveal himself to us so the questions of how do we know about God have been on the table in European American culture for a long time and they remain as contested as ever and this course is going to try to walk through some of those issues from some particular points of view and to try to put back together what has often been separated because and this is really what for many natural theology is all about the attempt of natural theology has often been and this was what the Gifford Lectures were actually supposed to be about to see if you could say this is how we know about God while bracketing out Jesus and the Bible because they were special revelation so they didn't count they were kind of cheating they brought in Jesus it was as though you'd put your elbow in the scales to say well we know about God because of Jesus end of conversation so the quest was on to leave Jesus out of it and then see what might happen and I'm going to suggest in this course as I did in my Gifford Lectures that actually that doesn't make sense and that when we understand better the world of Jesus day then we will see ways of bringing that larger picture together that is back where he belongs in the middle of it all