Abstract
Inheritors of the Calvinist Reformed tradition have long disagreed about whether knowledge of God’s nature and existence can be or need be acquired inferentially by means of the standard arguments of natural theology. Nonetheless, they have traditionally coalesced around the thought that some sense or awareness of God is naturally implanted or innate in human beings. A root of this orientation can be found in John Calvin’s discussion of the sensus divinitatis in the first book of The Institutes of the Christian Religion. This paper outlines a pedagogical strategy for organizing and evaluating Calvin’s treatment of the sensus divinitatis, chiefly by putting it in tension with John Locke’s polemic against innatism in Book I of An Essay concerning Human Understanding. I begin by reconstructing Calvin’s depiction of the sensus divinitatis, as well as his case for thinking that it is innate. I then explain how Locke’s critique of innatism offers a fairly direct response to Calvin and, hence, a useful framework for exploring the limits of Calvin’s treatment of the sensus divinitatis.
Highlights
Suppose there is such a person as God
The unease that many inheritors of the Calvinist Reformed tradition have expressed in attending to these sorts of questions is epitomized in some ways in the bitter punch-up between Karl Barth and
While a continuous thread of Reformed thinkers has endorsed some form of natural theology since as far back as the early sixteenth century ([2], pp. 9–40), Nicholas Wolterstorff has claimed recently that a revulsion against theistic arguments has been “characteristic of the Continental Calvinist tradition” ([3], p. 7)
Summary
Suppose there is such a person as God. Should we assume that we could come to know about this God without recourse to something like scriptural revelation or direct revelatory experiences?. I explain how Locke’s critique of innatism offers a fairly direct way of engaging with Calvin’s ideas and, a helpful way of motivating students’ interest in either thinker’s views (§4) This way of setting things up should not be taken to imply that Locke took himself to be responding directly to Calvin. My contention is that reading Calvin in tension with Locke helps shed light on both thinkers, as it provides a useful framework for undergraduates to explore the limits of Calvin’s treatment of the sensus divinitatis, as well as the limits of Locke’s rejection of innatism (§5).
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