Gifford Lectures
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The Gifford Lectures were established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford (d. 1887). They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term— in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported by science and not dependent on the miraculous. The lectures are given at the Scottish universities: University of St Andrews, University of Glasgow, University of Aberdeen and University of Edinburgh.
A Gifford lectures appointment is one of the most prestigious honors in the field of the humanities. They are normally presented as a series over an academic year and given with the intent that the edited content be published in book form. A number of these works have become classics in the fields of theology or philosophy and their relationship to science.
Notable lectures
Aberdeen
- 1936–38 Karl Barth The Knowledge of God and the Service of God according to the Teaching of the Reformation
- 1951–52 Michael Polanyi Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, ISBN 0226672883
- 1952–54 Paul Tillich Systematic Theology (3 vols.): ISBN 0226803376, ISBN 0226803384, ISBN 0226803392
- 1982–84 Richard Swinburne The Evolution of the Soul, ISBN 0198236980
- 1984–85 Freeman Dyson Infinite In All Directions, ISBN 0060728892
- 1989–91 Ian Barbour Religion in an Age of Science, ISBN 0060603836
- 1992–93 Jaroslav Pelikan Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter With Hellenism, ISBN 0300062559
Edinburgh
- 1891 George Gabriel Stokes Natural Theology
- 1900–02 William James The Varieties of Religious Experience, ISBN 0679640118 (several editions in print)
- 1913–14 Henri Bergson The Problem of Personality
- 1926–27 Arthur Eddington The Nature of the Physical World, ISBN 0472060155
- 1927–28 Alfred North Whitehead Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, ISBN 0029345707
- 1928–29 John Dewey The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action, ISBN 1417908459
- 1934–35 Albert Schweitzer The Problem of Natural Theology and Natural Ethics (unpublished)
- 1938–40 Reinhold Niebuhr The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation , (2 vol set): ISBN 0664257097
- 1947–49 Christopher Dawson part 1:Religion and Culture ISBN 0404604986 part 2: Religion and the Rise of Western Culture ISBN 0385421109
- 1949–50 Niels Bohr Causality and Complementarity: Epistemological Lessons of Studies in Atomic Physics, ISBN 1881987140
- 1952–53 Arnold J. Toynbee An Historian's Approach to Religion, ISBN 0192152602
- 1954–55 Rudolf Bultmann History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity, ISBN 0837181232
- 1973–74 Owen Chadwick The Secularisation of the European Mind in the 19th Century, ISBN 0521398290
- 1974–76 Stanley Jaki The Road of Science and the Ways to God, ISBN 0226391450
- 1978–79 Sir John Eccles The Human Mystery, The Human Psyche, ISBN 0387099549
- 1979–80 Ninian Smart "The Varieties of Religious Identity", published as Beyond Ideology: Religion and the Future of Western Civilisation, ISBN 0060674024
- 1980–81 Seyyed Hossein Nasr Knowledge and the Sacred, ISBN 0791401774
- 1981–82 Iris Murdoch Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, ISBN 0140172327
- 1984–85 Jurgen Moltmann God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God, ISBN 0800628233
- 1986–87 John Hick An Interpretation of Religion, (2nd ed.): ISBN 0300106688
- 1993–94 John Polkinghorne Science and Christian Belief: Theological Reflections of a Bottom-up Thinker, ISBN 0281047146
- 1997–98 Holmes Rolston III Genes, Genesis and God, ISBN 052164674X
- 2002–03 Michael Ignatieff The Lesser Evil - Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, ISBN 0691117519
- 2004–05 Dame Margaret Anstey, Stephen Toulmin, and Noam Chomsky, delivering a series of lectures dedicated to Edward Said who was scheduled to give the 2004–05 series before his death in 2003.
Glasgow
- 1888–92 Friedrich Max Müller Anthropological Religion, Natural Religion vol.1&2, Theosophy or Psychological Religion Physical Religion
- 1892–96 John Caird The Fundemental Ideas of Christianity Vol.1&2
- 1896–98 Alexander Balmain Bruce The Moral Order of the World, The Providential Order of the World
- 1927–28 JBS Haldane The Sciences and Philosophy, ISBN 040460479X
- 1932–34 William Temple Nature, Man and God
- 1953 John Macmurray The Self as Agent
- 1959 Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker The Relevance of Science
- 1970 Richard William Southern The Rise and Fall of the Medieval System of Religious Thought
- 1985 Carl Sagan The Search for Who We Are
- 1988 Don Cupitt Nature and Culture
- 1988 Richard Dawkins Worlds in Microcosm
- 1992 Mary Warnock Imagination and Understanding, published as Imagination and Time, ISBN 0631190198
- 1993–94 Keith Ward Religion and Revelation ISBN 0-19-826375-9 (ISBN13: 978-0-19-826375-3)
St Andrews
- 1955–56 Werner Heisenberg Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, ISBN 1573926949
- 1972–73 Alfred Ayer The Central Questions of Philosophy, ISBN 0030131162
- 2001–02 Stanley Hauerwas With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology, ISBN 1587430169
External links
- [Gifford Lectures Online] presents full text of lectures no longer in copyright.
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