Gabriel Marcel delivered two series of ten lectures on the ‘mystery of being’, comprised of ordered reflections on nature and the goal of philosophy from an existentialist standpoint. In the first volume, Reflection and Mystery, he explains that rather than proceeding by expounding a system, his philosophy proceeds in a fashion more akin to a journey. First, he examines the need for philosophy as arising from a certain exigence or disquiet in the seeker, through lived situations, expectations and truth. The lectures go on to explore the distinction between truth and universal validity alongside the relation of a sense of the ego to feeling and to situations in what he describes as our broken world. Volume I concludes with a discussion of the quality of mystery, which not only prompts philosophical enquiry but also coincides with the depths it reaches. Volume II takes the significance of mystery as its starting point, and Faith and Reality as its title. In the first four lectures, Marcel presents an existentialist response to metaphysics, outlining his understanding of existence and being and the value and purpose of ontology. He then distinguishes opinion and faith, characterising faith as ‘believing in’ rather than ‘believing that’. This leads neatly to his existentialist interpretation of Christian themes such as prayer and humility, freedom and grace, and then testimony, death and hope. He concludes by showing the boundaries of philosophy as he sees it, past which the ‘fires of revelation’ can take over.

John Wisdom’s lectures were never published and though his papers are held at Trinity College Library, Cambridge (Wisdom/WSDM), the archive is, for the most part, a series of fragments. While there are some incomplete manuscripts, nothing resembling the Gifford Lectures could be found. That said, discussions of the lectures can be found in Renford Bambrough, Truth and God (London: Methuen, 1969); and Stephen E. Toumlin, The Uses of Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).

As the first half of a two-year series, these lectures concern the Christian cultural history of Europe with a level of detail which the lectures on 'Religion and Culture' (1947) could not accommodate. They focus on the Roman adoption of Christianity and the influence of these developments on northern European culture during the early medieval period. As the second half of a two-year lecture series, these lectures focus on the middle and late medieval periods. Contrary to their common handle, the 'dark ages' of European history constitute a verdant period of religious culture. They focus on the institutions of European society for which Christianity is largely responsible, including civic organization, universities, and professional guilds.

In Christianity and Civilization, First Part: Foundations, Brunner attempts to work out something like a Christian philosophy of civilization dealing with some basic principles which underlie all civilization. The author approaches his task systematically, beginning with the ‘problem of being’, and then, having established God as creator the world and thus the primary reality and the world as a secondary dependent being, he turns to and builds on civilization’s relation to truth, time, meaning, man’s place in the universe and so forth.

According to the obituary written by E.R. Dodds and Henry Chadwick published in The Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 53, Parts 1 and 2 (1963), 168–9, "Nock was dissatisfied with these lectures: his opinions on many questions were changing, and except for the study of Posidonius, printed in JRS XLIX (1959), he withheld them from publication.

In The Primacy of Faith, Kroner tries to show that natural theology cannot be prohibited by dogmatics but also that a merely rational faith, as provided by Kant, is not tenable. According to the author, reason needs the supplement of revealed religion. As such, faith and reason do not contradict but rather complement each other. In this relationship, faith has the primacy. It surpasses the power of reason and completes its undertaking. Kroner calls this standpoint a modern conservatism. It does not inaugurate a new orthodoxy, but it shows the legitimate right of supernatural and even super-rational faith—of that faith which was and is and he trusts will ever be the basis and the source of our life. He further asserts that the tendency towards the humanization of religion is passing; it led finally to the dehumanization of humankind, and thus it refuted itself. For Kroner, faith should neither be orthodox nor heterodox; it should not be dogmatic at all. It should be universal and individual at the same time, preserving the ancient message but also reconciling it with the thinking mind of today.

The Nature and Destiny of Man has as its major theme the need for a synthesis of Renaissance and Reformation insights dealing with the possibilities and limits of human existence, in light of the Christian understanding of grace and forgiveness.

‘Theism and Cosmology’ is the first course of Gifford Lectures offered by John Laird, the second being his 1939–1940 ‘Mind and Deity’. In his 1938–1939 course, Laird explores the general subject of metaphysics and theism, with a particular interest in the relationship between the Divine and the created order.

In setting out on his study of Man on His Nature, Sherrington establishes that his purpose is assessing the advances of the natural sciences as a frame for the development of natural theology. In establishing this as his intention, it makes sense that he should orientate his work around a study of the sixteenth-century physician Jean Fernel. Beginning with Fernel’s own philosophical penetrations into the understanding of the nature of man and then drawing on a variety of philosophical theories, Sherrington uses the study as a point of reference for his own physiologically enlightened study of the body and the mind and their place in the universe. Ultimately, Sherrington argues that science has cleared away a superstitious and dependent universe. This leaves humanity with ultimate responsibility, recognition of which he hopes will lead to altruism.

William E. Hocking’s Gifford Lectures, titled ‘Fact and Destiny’, were originally scheduled for the 1936-1937 academic year, but according to the minutes of the University Senate (dated 21 January 1937 and 18 March 1937) were actually delivered to the University of Glasgow between 20 April and 20 May 1938 and in January 1939. 

Delivered in Glasgow from 1935–1937, Dixon’s course of Gifford Lectures, entitled The Human Situation, explores the life of the human soul and contrasts a rationalist/scientific understanding of the world with Dixon’s own poetic/spiritualist understanding. Alongside Plotinus and Leibniz, he asserts that all nature is animate with endless congeries of monads that are ever in pursuit of becoming.

In his twelve-lecture series, Ross explores several debates regarding the core issues in moral theory. Moral life, he observes, has been regarded as either obedience to laws or as a striving after goods. Moral theories have been further subdivided into reaction and causal theories regarding the meaning of ethical terms. The third distinction he examines separates moral theories into the naturalistic and non-naturalistic. The notion of right is given primacy over the good in the order of discussion, and examined in light of various accounts of it. The nature of obligation is examined in relation to the concept of right, and the accounts of the rightness of an action are raised following from this. Questions of knowledge and motive arise in relation to what the concept of right is. Indeterminacy and determinism are assessed as to their bearing on moral philosophy, forming an interlude before the nature of goodness is examined. A notion of ‘goodness’ is essential in the study of ethics, and Ross explores its nature as a predicate, its meaning and the sort of property it is. The final lecture builds upon this to present an account of moral goodness: the types of things that constitute the class of the morally good. Though goodness and rightness are independent, a completely good act must be a right act.

Symbolism and Belief and Holy Images, based on Bevan’s Gifford Lectures, examines the relationship of symbolical conceptions to unseen Reality or Divine Being, explaining how religious beliefs have been interpreted literally or/and symbolically. He reviews the different approaches to religious symbols from the ancient Greek philosophy through the medieval period to contemporary world religions. Symbolism is well balanced in the sense that it analyzes concrete symbols like height, time, light, spirit and the wrath of God, while discussing general theories of religious symbols and concluding that belief in God can be justified not by reason but by faith alone. Holy Images deals with idolatry and image-worship in ancient paganism and in Christianity.

Symbolism and Belief and Holy Images, based on Bevan’s Gifford Lectures, examines the relationship of symbolical conceptions to unseen Reality or Divine Being, explaining how religious beliefs have been interpreted literally or/and symbolically. He reviews the different approaches to religious symbols from the ancient Greek philosophy through the medieval period to contemporary world religions. Symbolism is well balanced in the sense that it analyzes concrete symbols like height, time, light, spirit and the wrath of God, while discussing general theories of religious symbols and concluding that belief in God can be justified not by reason but by faith alone. Holy Images deals with idolatry and image-worship in ancient paganism and in Christianity.

In Sacraments of Simple Folk, Marett explores sacraments anthropologically and defines them ‘as any rite which by way of sanction or positive blessing invests a natural function with a supernatural authority of its own’. He further says that by ‘ritual’, an anthropologist understands an organized technique, approved by the society concerned, for dealing with the incalculable element in any critical situation of human life. Having situated his text within an anthropological framework, in the remainder of his work, Marett examines particular natural rituals—eating, fighting, mating, educating, ruling, judging, covenanting, healing and dying—and argues for their religious significance.

The central thesis of Etienne Gilson’s Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy is that, contrary to the commonly held view, the Middle Ages did indeed have a distinctive philosophy of its own and that philosophy was the distinctively Christian one. Through comparisons with Plato and Aristotle, he principally examines Aquinas, Augustine, Duns Scotus and St Bonaventure. He is concerned with the relation of faith to reason in light of the very concept of a Christian philosophy, and shows how the mediævals drew upon but radically recast Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics of being, necessity and contingency in light of the spirit of Christianity. Through accounts of nature and beings as created by being itself, Gilson demonstrates that the mediævals’ accounts of providence, liberty and morality are rational yet distinctively Christian in inspiration. Though the spirit of mediæval philosophy floundered, Gilson suggests that that is where we should look in order to resurrect a Christian philosophy.

In The Philosophy of the Good Life, Gore examines the concept of the good life as it is entertained by the famous moral leaders of humankind—Zarathustra, the Buddha, Confucius, Muhammad, Socrates, Plato and the Stoics, the Jewish prophets and, finally, Jesus Christ. Gore also considers the function of faith in all knowledge and the special function of faith in the moral life. In the end, the author argues for Jesus’ claim on faith and the spirit of intellectual humility.

First published in 1929, Whitehead’s Process and Reality was his magnum opus and the product of his Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1927-1928. The work itself is a kind of speculative metaphysics which attempts to set forward “a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted” (p. 3). On Whitehead’s account, however, attending to the reality of the world entails that there can be no position above or outside of the process of becoming.

Chapters 1–11 of these lectures expound recent advances in physics in non-technical language, while chapters 12–15 discuss their philosophical implications. Eddington believes that physical theories are about relating numerically measurable quantities, and that their structure reflects the structure of human thought itself. He further argues that the substratum of everything is mental in character.

In volume one of The Faith of a Moralist, Taylor examines whether ethics is a wholly autonomous science, neither requiring support or completion from religion nor affording any grounds for religious and theological convictions. For Taylor, the question at stake is whether the moral life presents us with functions which demand the “other world” as an environment, i.e., whether the “good” is such that it cannot be obtained “in this life”. If the moral life is marked by the tension between the temporal and the eternal, there must be an element of otherworldliness in practical moral living, and Taylor insists that we have to ask what kind of otherworldliness is morally legitimate. For him, otherworldliness is either the death of all morality or the vital breath of moral life. In the end, according to the author, we only come to a right understanding of this world by incorporation of patterns originally felt to belong to the “other” and “unfamiliar”, such as loving rightly and contemplation.

In this edited series of lectures, von Hügel examines the inter-connectedness between finite aspects of human existence (reason) and the reality of the existence of God. Von Hügel aims to offer an analysis of this tension as examined by different historical philosophers and theologians, addressing the issue from different angles, namely epistemology, ethics, and institutional religion.  The lectures, intended for a religious audience, do not attempt to prove the existence of God; much rather, they seek to reveal the link between belief in God and patterns of the mind.

Mitchell gave two courses of Gifford Lectures, the first examining ‘The Place of Minds in the World’, and the second offering a treatise on their power. The published volume, however, incorporates material from the second course into the first. He begins his enquiry into the place of minds by noting their three places and the tension between them. Minds are in the world around us, and they are in the ‘cavity of the skull. They are also in a third place that is neither of these: the mind’s own place. There are gulfs between thoughts in the head and minds, between phenomena and nature and between knowledge and its objects. Mitchell examines such gulfs, their hold over us and how they might be overcome. The evolution of mental life, he concludes, advances nature to a world of objects and their power. Yet nature does not simply exist in the mind; rather, he ends with the thought that a growing thing is known from what it grows to.

W. P. Paterson’s The Nature of Religion assesses the place and importance of religion—its diversity and sometimes seeming incoherence—in human history and experience. Beginning from the history of religions, Paterson argues toward the practical efficacy and truthfulness of theism. In a manner faithful to his role and stature as a Scottish divine, his apologetic issues with particular regard for the Christian faith but also with noted interest in the other theistic religions of the world. He recognizes the complexity of religion in its relation to the immense variety of human personality, temperament, experience and individual and social motivations.

Following the warm and enthusiastic reception of his first course of Gifford Lectures, Balfour was asked to give a second course some nine years later, following the end of the First World War, entitled Theism and Thought. The lectures which make up the majority of the volume Theism and Thought complete the project begun in his first course (published in the volume Theism and Humanism in 1914), by buttressing his initial argument with a thorough defence of common sense philosophy and the reliability of sense perception.