The aim of this paper is to clarify how the terms ‘nature’, ‘normativity’, and ‘God’ are to be understood and related, to give you a sense of some familiar positions in the literature, and to introduce you to the rather less familiar position that I have sought to defend in my book God, Value, and Nature. The concepts and distinctions at issue here are unclear and porous, and not so readily amenable to the dissecting tools of the analytic philosopher. There are knife edges where one wouldn’t expect them, and one of the themes of my book is that there is a very significant knife edge between the secular moral realist and a certain kind of theist. I begin with the position of John Cottingham (a theistic moral realist) and engage with the question of what the difference is between our two positions. My position is a form of naturalism, albeit a form of naturalism which is theistic
