Chapter 7: Knowledge of God: Natural and Revealed
7
Knowledge of God
Natural and Revealed
In 2011, a six-year-old girl wrote a letter to God, asking “how he got invented.” Her father sent a copy to the archbishop of Canterbury, the noted theologian Rowan Williams (born 1950), asking him if he would like to comment. Williams replied as follows:
Dear Lulu – Nobody invented me – but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadn't expected. Then they invented ideas about me – some of them sensible and some of them not very sensible. From time to time I sent them some hints – especially in the life of Jesus – to help them get closer to what I'm really like.
This charming response from Williams to Lulu opens up the question of revelation. How can God be known? For some, God is to be sought out within the complexities and ambiguities of the world; for others, through experiences that seem to point beyond themselves; for others, in the person of Jesus Christ.
The issue being debated is fundamentally that of revelation – the Christian notion that God chooses to be known and makes this possible through self-disclosure in nature and human history. The great Scottish theologian Hugh Ross Mackintosh (1870–1936) once summarized the questions centering on revelation as follows: “A religious knowledge of God, wherever existing, comes by revelation; otherwise we should be committed to the incredible position that a man can know God without His willing to be known.”
The discussion of the nature and necessity of revelation within the Christian tradition has been both interesting and important, and will be addressed in this chapter. It raises some important questions, such as whether human nature is limited in its abilities and is unable to discern the existence or nature of God in this way. Humanity needs to be told what God is like. The Christian tradition is rich in imagery – such as that of “clouds” or “veils” – which hints at a natural human inability to see God fully.
One of the most significant aspects of this debate concerns the way in which a “natural” knowledge of God – acquired through reflection on the natural order – relates to a “revealed” knowledge of God. We shall consider this point in the second part of the chapter; our attention is first claimed by the question of what the term “revelation” might be understood to mean.