While in his academic life Simon Sommerville Laurie refrained from subscribing to any neo-Hegelian schools of thinking, his Gifford Lectures are nonetheless steeped in a Hegelian interpretation of history and spirituality. In his ‘dialectic’ view of humanity’s progression through the ages, Laurie argues that the ultimate goal of human life is to unite our spirits with God—that is, with the ‘Absolute’ or ‘Unconditioned One’. Yet, unlike some of his predecessors, Laurie does not focus his Gifford Lectures on the sinful or fallen nature of human life. Rather, he argues that God preordained all aspects of life. The evils inherent in it are also a part of Divine life. It is true that while life is at times brutal and evil, it is not in vain, he concludes. Life is a constant struggle, but a struggle with an ‘end’. Each struggle we overcome, each ‘evil’ we avoid, is a progression toward a greater knowledge of God and therefore a reunification with him. In the meantime, we can know God empirically through our perceptions of the natural world, which includes human nature. By better understanding our ethical motivations, for example, we can come to know that part of God that is resident within ourselves. Life is a hunt for the eternal in the world of the finite, and while the ‘eternal’ will never be fully clear to us during our lifetimes, the mystery of God gives us the hope to go on living.

While in his academic life Simon Somerville Laurie refrained from subscribing to any neo-Hegelian schools of thinking, his Gifford Lectures are nonetheless steeped in a Hegelian interpretation of history and spirituality. In his ‘dialectic’ view of humanity’s progression through the ages, Laurie argues that the ultimate goal of human life is to unite our spirits with God—that is, with the ‘Absolute’ or ‘Unconditioned One’. Yet, unlike some of his predecessors, Laurie does not focus his Gifford Lectures on the sinful or fallen nature of human life. Rather, he argues that God preordained all aspects of life. The evils inherent in it are also a part of Divine life. It is true that while life is at times brutal and evil, it is not in vain, he concludes. Life is a constant struggle, but a struggle with an ‘end’. Each struggle we overcome, each ‘evil’ we avoid, is a progression toward a greater knowledge of God and therefore a reunification with him. In the meantime, we can know God empirically through our perceptions of the natural world, which includes human nature. By better understanding our ethical motivations, for example, we can come to know that part of God that is resident within ourselves. Life is a hunt for the eternal in the world of the finite, and while the ‘eternal’ will never be fully clear to us during our lifetimes, the mystery of God gives us the hope to go on living.

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.

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.

The Concept of Nature is an expanded version of John Habgood’s Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Aberdeen in 2000. The book explores the concept of ‘nature’ under a broad range of considerations. Attention is given to questions concerning the multiple meanings of the concept of ‘nature’, the use of the concept in the natural sciences, the concept in relation to the question of environmentalism and the concept with regard to its meaning in the field of morality. These considerations are brought together and considered in relation to the traditional beliefs about God. Nature is ultimately analysed as ‘a means through which the grace of God can be discerned and received’.