The Gifford Lectures are an annual series of lectures which were established in 1887 by the will of Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford at the four ancient universities of Scotland: St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. Their purpose is to "promote and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of the term – in other words, the knowledge of God." A Gifford lectures appointment is one of the most prestigious honours in Scottish academia.[1] [2] [3]
University calendars record that at the four Scottish universities, the Gifford Lectures are to be "public and popular, open not only to students of the university, but the whole community (for a tuition fee[4]) without matriculation. Besides a general audience, the Lecturer may form a special class of students for the study of the subject, which will be conducted in the usual way, and tested by examination and thesis, written and oral".[5] The lectures 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 the relationship between religion and science.
In 1889, those attending the Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews were described as "mixed" and included women as well as male undergraduates.[6] The first woman appointed was Hannah Arendt who presented in Aberdeen between 1972 and 1974.[7]
A comparable lecture series is the John Locke Lectures, which are delivered annually at the University of Oxford.
| - | Year | Speaker(s) | Lecture(s)[8] | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1889–91 | E.B. Tylor | The Natural History of Religion | ||
| 1892–94 | Andrew Martin Fairbairn | The Philosophy of the Christian Religion | ||
| 1896–98 | James Ward | Naturalism and Agnosticism | ||
| 1898–00 | Josiah Royce | The World and the Individual | ||
| 1904–06 | The Religious Teachers of Greece | |||
| 1907–08 | Hans Driesch | The Science and Philosophy of the Organism | ||
| 1911–13 | Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison | The Idea of God in the light of Recent Philosophy | ||
| 1914–15 | William Ritchie Sorley | Moral Values and the Idea of God | ||
| 1930–32 | The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy | |||
| 1936–38 | The Knowledge of God and the Service of God according to the Teaching of the Reformation | |||
| 1939–40 | Arthur Darby Nock | Hellenistic Religion - The Two Phases | ||
| 1949–50 | Gabriel Marcel | The Mystery of Being and Faith and Reality | ||
| 1951–52 | Michael Polanyi | Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy | ||
| 1953–54 | Paul Tillich | Systematic Theology (3 vols.) | ||
| 1963–65 | The Living Stream and The Divine Flame | |||
| 1965–67 | Raymond Aron | La Conscience historique dans la pensée et dans l'action | ||
| 1970–72 | Arend Theordore van Leeuwen | The Critique of Heaven and Earth | ||
| 1972–74 | Hannah Arendt | Life of the Mind | ||
| 1982–84 | The Evolution of the Soul | |||
| 1984–85 | Infinite In All Directions | |||
| 1989–91 | Ian Barbour | Religion in an Age of Science | ||
| 1992–93 | Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter With Hellenism | |||
| 1994–95 | John W. Rogerson | Faith and Criticism in the Work of William Robertson Smith, 1846-1894 | ||
| M. A. Stewart | New Light and Enlightenment | |||
| Peter Jones | Science and Religion before and after Hume | |||
| James H. Burns | The Order of Nature | |||
| Alexander Broadie | The Shadow of Scotus | |||
| 1997–98 | The God Experiment | |||
| 2000–01 | The Concept of Nature | |||
| 2003 | Wandering in the Darkness | |||
| 2003–04 | Mind, Soul and Deity | |||
| 2007 | Seeing Things: Deepening Relations with Visual Artefacts | |||
| 2009 | Alister McGrath | A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology | ||
| 2012 | Sacrifice Regained: Evolution, Cooperation and God | |||
| 2014 | David N. Livingstone | Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution | ||
| 2016 | Mona Siddiqui | Struggle, Suffering and Hope: Explorations in Islamic and Christian Traditions | ||
| 2017 | David Novak | Athens and Jerusalem: God, Humans, and Nature | ||
| 2018 | N. T. Wright | Discerning the Dawn: History, Eschatology and New Creation, published as History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology, 2019 | ||
| 2022 | A Brief History of Form | |||
| Religion and Ancient Mediterranean Thought | ||||
| Lisa Sideris | Unnatural Theology in the Anthropocene | |||
| Robert McCauley | Religions and their Cognitive Kin | |||
| John Witte Jr. | A New Calvinist Reformation of Rights | |||
| 2024 | Miri Rubin | The Feminine and the Religious Imagination | ||
| 2025 | Miroslav Volf | TBC | ||
| 2026 | Jeremy Begbie | TBC | ||
| TBD | Catherine Pickstock | TBC | ||
| - | Year | Speaker(s) | Lecture(s)[9] | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1889–90 | James Hutchison Stirling | Philosophy and Theology | ||
| 1891 | George Gabriel Stokes | Natural Theology | ||
| 1892–94 | Otto Pfleiderer | Philosophy and Development of Religion | ||
| 1896–98 | Cornelis Tiele | On the Elements of the Science of Religion | ||
| 1900–02 | William James | The Varieties of Religious Experience | ||
| 1909–10 | William Warde Fowler | The Religious Experience of the Roman People | ||
| 1911–12 | Bernard Bosanquet | The Principle of Individuality and Value | ||
| 1913–14 | Henri Bergson | The Problem of Personality | ||
| 1915–16 | Asianic Elements in Greek Civilization | |||
| 1919–21 | Mind and Matter pub. 1931 | |||
| 1921–23 | Studies in the Philosophy of Religion | |||
| 1923–35 | James George Frazer | The Worship of Nature | ||
| 1926–27 | The Nature of the Physical World | |||
| 1927–28 | Alfred North Whitehead | Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology | ||
| 1928–29 | The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action | |||
| 1934–35 | The Problem of Natural Theology and Natural Ethics (unpublished) | |||
| 1937–38 | Charles Sherrington | Man on His Nature | ||
| 1938–40 | Reinhold Niebuhr | The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation | ||
| 1947–49 | Vol. 1 Religion and Culture Vol. 2 Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950) | |||
| 1949–50 | Causality and Complementarity: Epistemological Lessons of Studies in Atomic Physics | |||
| 1950–52 | Natural Religion and Christian Theology | |||
| 1952–53 | Arnold J. Toynbee | An Historian's Approach to Religion | ||
| 1954–55 | Rudolf Bultmann | History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity | ||
| 1961–62 | The Sense of the Presence of God | |||
| 1970–71 | The Openness of Being | |||
| 1973–74 | Owen Chadwick | The Secularisation of the European Mind in the 19th Century | ||
| 1974–76 | The Road of Science and the Ways to God | |||
| 1978–79 | The Human Mystery and The Human Psyche | |||
| 1979–80 | The Varieties of Religious Identity, published as Beyond Ideology: Religion and the Future of Western Civilisation | |||
| 1980–81 | Knowledge and the Sacred | |||
| 1981–82 | Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals | |||
| 1983–84 | God and the Poets | |||
| 1984–85 | Jurgen Moltmann | God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God | ||
| 1985–86 | Oneself as another | |||
| 1986–87 | An Interpretation of Religion | |||
| 1987–88 | Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry | |||
| 1988–89 | Raimon Panikkar | Trinity and Theism | ||
| 1989–90 | Mary Douglas | Claims on God: published (much revised) as In the Wilderness | ||
| 1991–92 | Annemarie Schimmel | Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam | ||
| 1992–93 | Martha C. Nussbaum | Upheavals of Thought: A Theory of the Emotions | ||
| 1993–94 | John Polkinghorne | Science and Christian Belief: Theological Reflections of a Bottom-up Thinker | ||
| 1995–96 | G. A. Cohen | If you're an Egalitarian, how come you're so Rich? | ||
| 1996–97 | Richard Sorabji | Emotions and How to Cope with Them, published as Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation | ||
| 1997–98 | Genes, Genesis and God | |||
| 1998–99 | Charles Taylor | Living in a Secular Age, published as A Secular Age | ||
| 1999–00 | This side of God | |||
| 2000–01 | Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics | |||
| 2001–02 | Inaugurating a Critique of Islamic Reason | |||
| 2002–03 | Michael Ignatieff | |||
| 2003–04 | J. Wentzel van Huyssteen | Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology | ||
| 2004–05 | Margaret Anstee Stephen Toulmin Noam Chomsky | Delivered a series of lectures dedicated to Edward Said who was scheduled to give the 2004 - 05 series before his death in 2003 | ||
| 2005–06 | Sovereign God, Sovereign State, Sovereign Self | |||
| 2006–07 | Simon Conway Morris | Darwin 's Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation | ||
| Jonathan Riley-Smith | The Crusades and Christianity | |||
| 2007–08 | Alexander Nehamas | "Because it was he, because it was I": Friendship and Its Place in Life | ||
| 2008 | Robert M. Veatch | Hipprocratic, Religious and Secular Medical Ethics: The Point of Conflict | ||
| 2008–09 | The Age of Pluralism [April–May 2009] | |||
| 2009–10 | Michael Gazzaniga | Mental Life [October 2009] | ||
| Terry Eagleton | The God Debate [March 2010] | |||
| 2010–11 | Science, Religion and the Modern World, published as The Territories of Science and Religion | |||
| Gordon Brown | The Future of Jobs and Justice | |||
| 2011–12 | David Hume and Civil Society | |||
| Diarmaid MacCulloch | Silence in Christian History: the witness of Holmes' Dog | |||
| Jim Al-Khalili | Alan Turing: Legacy of a Code Breaker – one-off joint lecture between the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the School of Informatics | |||
| 2012–13 | Bruno Latour | "Once Out of Nature" - Natural Religion as a Pleonasm | ||
| Steven Pinker | The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity[10] | |||
| 2013–14 | Onora O'Neill | From Toleration to Freedom of Expression | ||
| Rowan Williams | Making representations: religious faith and the habits of language | |||
| Catherine O'Regan | "What is Caesar's?" Adjudicating faith in modern constitutional democracies | |||
| 2014–15 | Jeremy Waldron | One Another's Equals: The Basis of Human Equality | ||
| Helga Nowotny | Beyond Innovation. Temporalities. Re-use. Emergence. | |||
| 2015–16 | Kathryn Tanner | Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism | ||
| 2016–17 | Nationalism, Terrorism and Religion | |||
| Jeffrey Stout | Religion Unbound: Ideals and Powers from Cicero to King | |||
| 2017–18 | Agustín Fuentes | Why We Believe: evolution, making meaning, and the development of human natures | ||
| Elaine Howard Ecklund | Science and Religion in Global Public Life | |||
| 2018–19 | Mary Beard | The Ancient World and Us: From Fear and Loathing to Enlightenment and Ethics | ||
| 2019–20 | Michael Welker | In God's Image: Anthropology | ||
| 2020–21 | David Hempton | Networks, Nodes, and Nuclei in the History of Christianity, c. 1500-2020 | ||
| 2021–22 | Susan Neiman | Heroism for a Time of Victims | ||
| 2022–23 | John Dupré | A Process Perspective on Human Life | ||
| 2023–24 | Cornel West | A Jazz-soaked Philosophy for our Catastrophic Times: From Socrates to Coltrane | ||
| 2024–25 | Alexandra Walsham | TBC | ||
| 2025–26 | Paula Fredriksen | TBC | ||
| - | Year | Speaker(s) | Lecture(s)[11] | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1888–92 | Friedrich Max Müller | 1888: Natural Religion Vol. 1 & 2; 1890: Physical Religion; 1891: Anthropological Religion: 1892: Theosophy or Psychological Religion | ||
| 1892–96 | John Caird | The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity Vol. 1 & 2 | ||
| 1896–98 | Alexander Balmain Bruce | The Moral Order of the World and The Providential Order of the World | ||
| 1900–02 | Edward Caird | The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers | ||
| 1914 | Arthur Balfour | Theism and Humanism | ||
| 1916–18 | Space, Time, and Deity | |||
| 1922 | Arthur Balfour | Theism and Thought | ||
| 1927–28 | J. S. Haldane | The Sciences and Philosophy | ||
| 1932–34 | William Temple | Nature, Man and God | ||
| 1952–54 | John Macmurray | The Form of the Personal Vol.1 & 2: The Self as Agent and Persons in Relation | ||
| 1959 | Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker | The Relevance of Science | ||
| 1965 | Herbert Butterfield | Historical Writing and Christian Beliefs and Human Beliefs and the Development of Historical Writing[12] | ||
| 1970 | Richard William Southern | The Rise and Fall of the Medieval System of Religious Thought | ||
| 1974-76 | Basil Mitchell | Morality, Religious and Secular | ||
| 1981 | From Athens to Jerusalem | |||
| 1985 | The Search for Who We Are | |||
| 1986 | Donald M. MacKay | Behind the Eye[13] | ||
| 1988 | Don Cupitt | Nature and Culture | ||
| Richard Dawkins | Worlds in Microcosm | |||
| 1992 | Imagination and Understanding, published as Imagination and Time | |||
| 1993–94 | Religion and Revelation | |||
| 1995–96 | Geoffrey Cantor John Hedley Brooke | Reconstructing Nature | ||
| 1997–98 | R. J. Berry | Gods, Genes, Greens and Everything | ||
| 1999–00 | Ralph McInerny | Characters in Search of Their Author | ||
| 2001 | Lynne Baker Brian Hebblethwaite Philip Johnson-Laird George Lakoff Michael Ruse | The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding | ||
| 2003–04 | Reason's Empire | |||
| 2005 | Lenn Goodman Abdulaziz Sachedina John E. Hare | Thou Shall Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself | ||
| 2007–08 | David Fergusson | Religion and Its Recent Critics published as Faith and Its Critics: A Conversation | ||
| 2008–09 | Charles Taylor | The Necessity of Secularist Regimes | ||
| 2009–10 | The End of Reality | |||
| 2012 | Vilayanur Ramachandran | Body and Mind: Insights from Neuroscience | ||
| 2014 | Givenness and Revelation | |||
| 2015 | Perry Schmidt-Leukel | Interreligious Theology: The Future Shape of Theology | ||
| 2016 | Sean M. Carroll | The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself | ||
| 2018 | Judith Butler | My Life, Your Life: Equality and the Philosophy of Non-Violence | ||
| 2019 | Kevin Hart | Philosophia and Religions | ||
| Mark Pagel | Wired for Culture: The Origins of the Human Social Mind, or Why Humans Occupied the World | |||
| 2020 | T.J. Clark | Heaven on Earth: Painting and the Life to Come | ||
| 2022 | Manthia Diawara Terri Geis | Towards a New Sacred | ||
| Jack Halberstam | Collapse, Demolition, and the Queer Geographies and Unworlding: An Aesthetics of Collapse | |||
| 2023 | Mark Williams | The Japanese Religious Melting Pot and the Significance of Christianity | ||
| Jean-Luc Marion Kevin Hart | Revelation and Contemplation | |||
| - | Year | Speaker(s) | Lecture(s)[14] | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1889–90 | The Making of Religion[15] | |||
| 1890–92 | The Evolution of Religion | |||
| 1894–96 | Lewis Campbell | Religion in Greek Literature | ||
| 1899–01 | Rodolfo Lanciani | New Tales of Old Rome | ||
| 1902–04 | Richard Haldane | The Pathway to Reality | ||
| 1907–09 | James Ward | The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism | ||
| 1911–13 | James George Frazer | The Belief in Immortality | ||
| 1914–16 | J. A. Thomson | The System of Animate Nature | ||
| 1917–19 | The Philosophy of Plotinus | |||
| 1919–20 | Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality | |||
| 1921–22 | Emergent Evolution (1923) and Life, Mind, and Spirit (1925) | |||
| 1924–25 | The Attributes of God | |||
| 1926–28 | The faith of a moralist, The Theological Implications of Morality; Natural Theology and the Positive Religions (1930) | |||
| 1929–30 | The Philosophy of the Good Life (1930) | |||
| 1930–32 | Faith, Hope & Charity in Primitive Religion | |||
| 1935–36 | Christian Morality | |||
| 1936–37 | The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (1936) | |||
| 1937–38 | From Morality to Religion | |||
| 1938 | Plato and the Orient | |||
| 1939–40 | The Primacy of Faith | |||
| 1946–48 | Christianity and Civilisation | |||
| 1949–50 | The Modern Predicament | |||
| 1951–53 | Reason, Belief and Goodness | |||
| 1953–55 | C. A. Campbell | On Selfhood and Godhood | ||
| 1955–56 | Werner Heisenberg | Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science | ||
| 1959–60 | Norm and Action (1963)[16] and The Varieties of Goodness (1963)[17] | |||
| 1962–64 | Authority in the Early Church | |||
| 1964–66 | John Findlay | The Discipline of the Cave (1966), and The Transcendence of the Cave (1967) | ||
| 1967–69 | Concordant Discord. The Interdependence of Faiths. | |||
| 1969–71 | Animal Nature and Human Nature | |||
| 1972–73 | Alfred Ayer | The Central Questions of Philosophy | ||
| 1975–77 | Fact, Faith and Fiction in the Development of Science | |||
| 1977–78 | Myth, Magic and Denial | |||
| 1979–80 | Religion and the One: Philosophies East and West | |||
| 1980–81 | Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher | |||
| 1982–83 | New Images of the Natural, 1750-1800 | |||
| 1983–84 | In Search of Deity | |||
| 1984–85 | Psychoanalytic Theory and Science | |||
| 1986–87 | The Logic of Mortality | |||
| 1988–89 | Tracks of Biology and the Creation of Sense | |||
| 1990–91 | Renewing Philosophy | |||
| 1992–93 | Nature, God and Humanity | |||
| The Question of Physical Reality | ||||
| 1995 | Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology | |||
| 1996–97 | Thought and Reality | |||
| 1998–99 | God and Being | |||
| Marilyn McCord Adams | The Coherence of Christology | |||
| 2000–01 | Stanley Hauerwas | With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology | ||
| 2002 | Peter van Inwagen | The Problem of Evil | ||
| 2004–05 | Science and Religion: Conflict or Concord | |||
| 2007 | 21st Century Science: Cosmic Perspective and Terrestrial Challenges | |||
| 2010 | The Face of God | |||
| 2012 | Denis Alexander | Genes, Determinism and God | ||
| 2015 | Exemplarist Virtue Theory published as Exemplarist Moral Theory | |||
| 2017 | Though the Darkness Hide Thee: Seeking the Face of the Invisible God | |||
| 2019 | Ontotheology as Antidote for Idolatry | |||
| 2021 | Oliver O'Donovan | The Disappearance of Ethics[18] | ||
| 2024 | Clare Carlisle | Transcendence for Beginners: Life Writing and Philosophy | ||
Established at the behest of John Templeton, the Gifford Lectures website was designed to increase the strategic impact of the Gifford program. Developed and managed by Templeton Press through May 2021, the website is now managed through a grant from Templeton Religion Trust.