“What is the God of the philosopher? Can the philosopher, that is to say, can human reason, unenlightened by the revealed word, come to a true and secure understanding of ‘He-Who-Is’? Is it possible for mere man, without the impact of a personal experience, intimate and intuitive, to arrive by means of an objective demonstration at an absolute affirmation that the Being we call God exists, or that He is Pure Act, Existence Itself, because without him the world of our experience is unintelligible, a complete contradiction? “And even if we admit, as all Christian philosophers must, that unaided reason is able by its own power to reach an objectively true and secure assent that God exists, is there any evidence, in the recorded history of our world, that man, without the directive knowledge of revelation, ever did secure by a metaphysical effort this absolute truth that the Ipsum Esse exists? Whatever be the answer to this difficult problem—and we do not pretend to know it—it is obvious that Father Holloway, in composing his philosophical approach to God, allowed himself to be guided by the knowledge of faith. Indeed, he must have prayed often for the enlightenment which the supernatural motion of divine grace brings even to the limited and imperfect intellect of a philosopher.” —From the Foreword by Henri Renard, S.J.

Natural theology, in the view of many, is in crisis. In this long-awaited book, Alister McGrath sets out a new vision for natural theology, re-establishing its legitimacy and utility. A timely and innovative resource on natural theology: the exploration of knowledge of God as it is observed through nature Written by internationally regarded theologian and author of numerous bestselling books, Alister McGrath Develops an intellectually rigorous vision of natural theology as a point of convergence between the Christian faith, the arts and literature, and the natural sciences, opening up important possibilities for dialogue and cross-fertilization Treats natural theology as a cultural phenomenon, broader than Christianity itself yet always possessing a distinctively Christian embodiment Explores topics including beauty, goodness, truth, and the theological imagination; how investigating nature gives rise to both theological and scientific theories; the idea of a distinctively Christian approach to nature; and how natural theology can function as a bridge between Christianity and other faiths

An examination of the cognitive foundations of intuitions about the existence and attributes of God. Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality.

William Paley set out to prove the existence of God from the evidence of the beauty and order of the natural world. This edition sets his work in the context of the theological, philosophical, and scientific debates of the nineteenth century.

Katherine Calloway explores the relationship between science and religion through a wide-ranging selection of early modern English poets.