A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
Clarke's 1704 Boyle Lectures — the deductive natural-theological demonstration
Tradition: Newtonian natural theology / English rationalism / Latitudinarian Anglicanism
Clarke's 1704 Boyle Lectures — quasi-geometric demonstration of God's existence and attributes, more eorum mathematicorum
Delivered as the Boyle Lectures for 1704 at St Paul's Cathedral, London, and published in 1705, 'A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, More Particularly in Answer to Mr Hobbes, Spinoza, and their Followers' is Clarke's quasi-geometric, twelve-proposition demonstration of the existence and attributes of God. The Boyle Lectures had been founded in 1692 by Robert Boyle's will, with the explicit purpose of defending Christianity against 'notorious infidels' — the lectures became the principal eighteenth-century vehicle for natural-theological argument; Clarke's 1704-05 lectures (he gave the second series too, in 1705, on 'The Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion') were the most philosophically influential of the series. The 1704 lectures' twelve propositions move in tight argumentative sequence: (I) Something has existed from all eternity; (II) Some one unchangeable and independent Being has existed from eternity; (III) That unchangeable and independent Being which has existed from eternity must of necessity be self-existent; (IV) What the substance of that Being is, we have no idea of; (V) Some attributes of this being we can demonstrate; (VI-XII) the demonstrations of eternity, infinity, intelligence, freedom, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, justice, goodness, and truth. The arguments draw on the principle of sufficient reason, the rejection of an actual infinite regress of contingent beings, and a Newtonian-rationalist framework Clarke had developed in close association with Newton (Clarke was Newton's principal philosophical-theological interpreter and the writer of the Latin notes to the second edition of the Principia). The book is the high-water mark of English rationalist natural theology.
Author
Editions cited
- A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, More Particularly in Answer to Mr Hobbes, Spinoza, and their Followers (Will. Botham for James Knapton, London, 1705; 2nd ed. 1706; 3rd ed. 1711; 4th ed. 1716; 5th ed. 1719)
- In Samuel Clarke, Works (London, 1738, 4 vols), vol. 2
- Modern edition: Samuel Clarke, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God and Other Writings, ed. Ezio Vailati (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, 1998)
- Critical context: Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science (Cambridge, 1992); James E. Force, William Whiston (Cambridge, 1985)
School Embodiments
Defining English-rationalist natural-theological treatise.
"Something has existed from all eternity." (Demonstration, Proposition I)
Quasi-geometric, propositional argumentative method.
"After the manner of geometers." (Demonstration, preface)
Latitudinarian-Anglican framework.
"The reasonableness of religion needs no other defence." (Demonstration, preface)
Newtonian natural-theological framework — absolute space and time as divine attributes.
"Space and duration are immediate consequences of God's existence." (Demonstration, Proposition III)
Realism about necessary being, attributes, and the structure of natural theology.
"The argument proceeds from the real, not the merely conceivable." (Demonstration, preface)
Scholastic-systematic argumentation in modern dress.
"The proper order of theological argument is propositional and demonstrative." (Demonstration, organisation)
Internal Tensions
The defining English-rationalist natural-theological treatise; the cosmological-argument tradition's classic eighteenth-century statement. Continuously read in eighteenth-century philosophy of religion; the principal target of Hume's attack in the 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' (1779, posthumous); revived in twentieth-century analytic philosophy of religion (Plantinga, Swinburne) as a serious philosophical-argumentative resource.
I. Time
1704 lectures; 1705 publication. Clarke was 29 at the lectures, having taken his BD at Cambridge in 1701 and having served as Chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich.
Attributes
II. Space
St Paul's Cathedral, London (Boyle-Lecture venue) — the central institutional location of early-eighteenth-century English natural theology. The Boyle-Lecture series ran from 1692 to 1714 with annual lecturers chosen for their philosophical-apologetic capability.
Attributes
III. Matter
Single Boyle-Lecture treatise (~280 pages in the original). Form is twelve-proposition demonstrative argument 'after the manner of geometers' (more geometrico).
Attributes
IV. Observer
Early Clarke. The observer is the rising philosophical-theological apologist who would shortly become Newton's principal philosophical interpreter (Clarke wrote the Latin notes to the 1713 second edition of the Principia and corresponded with Leibniz on Newton's behalf in 1715-16).
Attributes
V. Energy
Boyle-Lecture-style demonstrative energies. The twelve-proposition format was intended to convey rational-demonstrative force.
Attributes
VI. Information
Twelve-proposition treatise. Each proposition is rigorously defended with extensive sub-arguments; the cumulative structure mimics the geometric-demonstrative form Newton had used in the Principia.
Attributes
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The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God resolves each dilemma
48 resolved positions across 4 dimensions · 9 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.