ABSTRACT
A notable passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans declares that ‘ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made’.1 The idea seems to be that we can all infer God’s existence from observable features of the natural world. And not just that we can do so, but that that we ought to – for Paul goes on to declare that those who fail to recognize the divine authorship of the world and in consequence fail to give God thanks are ‘inexcusable’.2 Following this lead, there is a long tradition in Christian philosophical thought that maintains that natural inferential knowledge of God is readily available to humans. Aquinas’ approach in the Five Ways provides a conspicuous example. And the First Vatican Council reaffirmed this tradition in 1870, when, explicitly invoking the passage from Paul, it laid it down that ‘God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known, from created things, by the light of natural human reason’.3
