“…that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse… when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful… their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools…”
Rom. 1:19-22
“The fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt…”
Ps. 14:1
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Order of Contents
On Atheism 5+
Against Atheism 2
On Atheists 5+
History 1
How can it be said ‘If God does not Exist’
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On Atheism.
Articles
Voet, Gisbert – Select Theological Disputations, vol. 1, pt. 1 tr. by AI by Onku (Utrecht: Johannes a Waesberg, 1648) Latin
On Atheism, pt. 1 125
. pt. 2 141
. pt. 3 153
. pt. 4 167-219
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Latin
Voet, Gisbert
2. Of Atheism & Atheists in Syllabus of Theological Problems (Utrecht, 1643), pt. 1, section 2, tract 4 Abbr.
Select Theological Disputations (Utrecht: Waesberg, 1648 / 1667)
vol. 1
9. ‘Of Atheism’, pp. 114-135
10. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 2, pp. 135-49
11. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 3, pp. 149-66
12. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 4, pp. 166-226
vol. 4
‘Of its [worship’s] opposites in defect: irreligiousness, impiety, profanity & atheism’ in 50. ‘A Syllabus of Questions on the Decalogue’, ‘On the 1st Commandment’, p. 778
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Against Atheism
Article
Turretin, Francis – 1. ‘Can the Existence of God be irrefutably demonstrated against atheists? We affirm.’ in Institutes of Elenctic Theology, tr. George M. Giger, ed. James Dennison Jr. (1679–1685; P&R, 1992), vol. 1, 3rd Topic, pp. 169-77
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Books
1800’s
Buchanan, James –
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2000’s
Feser, Edward – The Last Superstition: a Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008) 310 pp. ToC
Feser is a Romanist, Analytical Thomist.
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On Atheists
Order of
Articles
Quote
Latin
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Articles
1500’s
Vermigli, Peter Martyr – 2. ‘Of the Natural Knowledge of God by his Creatures, and whereunto this knowledge tends; & whether there be any that know not God’ in The Common Places… (d. 1562; London: Henrie Denham et al., 1583), pt. 1, pp. 10-17
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1600’s
Turretin, Francis – 2. ‘Are there any atheists properly so called? We deny.’ in Institutes of Elenctic Theology, tr. George M. Giger, ed. James Dennison Jr. (1679–1685; P&R, 1992), vol. 1, 3rd Topic, pp. 177-81
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1700’s
Venema, Herman – pp. 13-15 in Translation of Hermann Venema’s inedited Institutes of Theology tr. Alexander W. Brown (d. 1787; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1850), ch. 1, Of Reason
Venema (1697-1787) was a professor at Franeker. Venema “maintained the fundamental line of confessional orthodoxy without drawing heavily on any of the newer philosophies… and maintained a fairly centrist Reformed position. Venema… evidence[s] the inroads of a rationalistic model…” – Richard Muller
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Quote
1700’s
Jean-Alphonse Turretin
Dissertations on Natural Theology tr. William Crawford (d. 1737; Belfast: Magee, 1777), Theses concerning Natural Theology in General
p. 8
“But whilst we assert that the knowledge of God is natural to the mind, we do not mean that such knowledge may not be obscured, nay extinguished in the understanding of bad men. The sense of the words of the psalmist [Ps. 10:4; 14:1; 53:2] is this, that there were some impious persons in his day who, that they might indulge their vices with greater freedom, utterly extinguished within themselves all reflections and all knowledge of the supreme being, and behaved in such a manner as if there were indeed no God–On account of their being guilty of such a gross violation of reason and the dictates of nature, they are called fools by the prophet.”
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p. 10
“…we again repeat it, that the blindness and perverse obstinacy of these who shut their eyes against self-evident truths, by no means invalidate their reality and the force of natural reason.”
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pp. 18-20
“When we say that God has communicated the knowledge of Himself to mankind by the light of nature, we are not to be understood, which was observed before, as if we could attain to that knowledge, without any pains or industry of our own, and let us conduct ourselves in whatsoever manner we please. We only designed to say that the supreme Being has so formed us and arranged his works in such a beatiful order, that if we make a proper use of our reason, and contemplate the astonishing works of Deity with due attention, we must necessarily be led to the knowledge of our Creator, and learn the duties we owe to Him.
But if we will be perfectly inattentive and careless in tracing out and investigating the evidences of our divine original, we must be altogether in the dark and ignorant with repsect to them. Thus, althought God has placed the glorious luminary the sun in the firmament to enlighten mankind, those who indulge themselves in sleep, who shut their eyes, or cover them with a veil, can reap no advantage from this blessing of nature.
And indeed such was the unhappiness, I should rather say, the negligence, the stupidity, the corruption of mankind, that the sentiments of the Deity deducible from the light of nature, even from the remotest ages, were obscured to an astonishing degree in almost every nation. Some few glimmerings of them remained, but nothing more. In the place of one true God the Creator of Heaven and earth, they formed to themsevles imaginary divinities incredible in number…
It is said that some among them altogether denied the existence of the supreme Being, which Tully affirms was the case with respect to Diagoras, Melius and Theodorus of Cyrene.”
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Latin Articles
1600’s
Voet, Gisbert – 2. Of Atheism & Atheists in Syllabus of Theological Problems (Utrecht, 1643), pt. 1, section 2, tract 4 Abbr.
Maccovius, Johannes – Appendix on Atheists in Johannes Maccovius Revived, or Manuscripts of his… ed. Nicolaas Arnoldi (Amsterdam, 1659), pp. 930-35
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On the History of Atheism & Atheists
On the Post-Reformation
Henry, John – 4. ‘Natural Philosophy & Atheism’, pp. 615-18 in ch. 40, ‘Early Modern Theology & Science’ in ed. Lehner, Muller, Roeber, The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600-1800 (Oxford, 2020)
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If God’s Being is Necessary, how can it be said or thought, “If God does not Exist”?
Quotes
1000’s
Anselm
Proslogium, or ‘Discourse’ on the Existence of God in St. Anselm: Proslogium; Monologium; an Appendix in behalf of the Fool by Gaunilon… tr. Sidney N. Deane (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co., 1903), ch. 4, p.
“…there is more than one way in which a thing is said in the heart or conceived. For, in one sense, an object is conceived, when the word signifying it is conceived; and in another, when the very entity, which the object is, is understood.
In the former sense, then, God can be conceived not to exist; but in the latter, not at all. For no one who understands what fire and water are can conceived fire to be water, in accordance with the nature of the facts themselves, although this is possible according to the words.
So then, no one who understands what God is can conceive that God does not exist; although he says these words in his heart, either without any or with some foreign signification. For, God is that than which a greater cannot be conceived. And he who thoroughly understands this, assuredly understands that this being so truly exists, that not even in concept can it be non-existent. Therefore, he who understans that God so exists, cannot conceive that he does not exist.
I thank thee, gracious Lord, I thank thee; because what I formerly believed by thy bounty, I now so understand by thine illumination, that if I were unwilling to believe that thou does exist, I should not be able not to understand this to be true.”
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1200’s
Thomas Aquinas
Summa Contra Gentiles, bk. 1, ch. 11
“For the possibility of thinking that He does not exist is not on account of the imperfection of his being, or the uncertainty of it—since in itself his being is supremely manifest—but is the result of the weakness of our mind, which is able to see Him only in his effects and not in Himself, so that it is led by reasoning to know that He is.”
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