ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the thesis of a well-known theologian, Principal John Baillie, in his book, Our Knowledge of God. In all religion there is an element of revelation. But the term revelation usually means what is better called special revelation: this refers to the Holy Books and sometimes by extension to the dictates of the Church. The proof and the inference and the open question Dr Baillie has in mind are those mainly of the proofs and inferences and questions of natural theology. Explicit propositional statements in religion claim literal truth, though they are never adequate to their subject-matter. If one followed Baillie, this basic conviction would indeed be a kind of religious proof, or, possibly, a self-evident truth. There is a dark pit into which the religious believer must descend before he can be said truly to possess his belief. Systematic thinking about God is profitless if it does not draw constantly upon the propositions of religious conviction.
