6
is the ultimate reason for or explanation of all that is, and also (c) that God remains active and everywhere present
(,,immanent) in his creation, sustaining it in being, answering prayers, causing miracles on special occasions, and
revealing himself and his purposes to mankind both in special revelations (e.g. through Abraham or Jesus or
Mahomet) and in the general human experience of the divine." Thus Christian theism believed that "(a) and (b) were
reasonable beliefs because they are supported by the arguments and evidence set out in natural religion."
22
J. C. A.
Gaskin maintains that the two most popular of these arguments throughout the history of Christianity for the proof
of the existence of God have been the arguments from design and cosmology. The argument from design postulates
that the natural order and purposes found in the universe are the result of a vast intelligent being. The argument from
cosmology, which is actually a number of different arguments, developed from the idea of the formal cause.
Inherent within the cosmological argument are the notions that ",,the causal sequences of the universe must have a
first cause, or ,,the contingent things which are the universe must be held in being by an entity which necessarily
exists and so on."
23
David Hume, in his writings on religion in the eighteenth century, however, effectually disputed
the validity of either of these arguments to prove the existence of God.
24
Why, then, does Polkinghorne revive the
cosmological argument?
Polkinghorne justifies his starting point from cosmology by noting that
in relation to total accounts of reality, there are fundamentally just two options for the choice of an
explanatory starting point: either the ,,brute fact of the physical world itself, including its natural
laws (the solution advocated by Hume), or the ,,brute fact" of the will of a divine Agent (the
solution of theism). What has given rise to the revival of natural theology is the insight that the
laws of nature possess certain characteristics that have resulted in their being seen not to be
sufficiently intellectually satisfying and complete in themselves alone. Instead, their form raises
questions going beyond sciences power to answer, so that they are felt to point beyond science to
the need for a deeper and more comprehensive understanding. This feeling is induced by two
insistent metaquestions . . . : ,,Why is the physical world so intelligible to us? and ,,Why are its
laws so finely tuned to the possibility of a fruitful history? Putting it more briefly, ,,Why is
22
J. C. A. Gaskin, ed., "Introduction," in Principal Writings on Religion including Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion, David Hume (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), x.
23
Ibid. xi.
24
David Hume, Principal Writings on Religion including Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The
Natural History of Religion, ed. and intro. J. C. A. Gaskin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).