sensus divinitatis

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

A number of thoughts/speculations collided for me on the way to work the other day. It’s probably interesting to pick up the shards here. Well, maybe…

It started with reading about Calvin’s concept of sensus divinitatis. That is

That there exists in the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead…

Alternatively described by Alvin Plantinga as

a disposition or set of dispositions to form theistic beliefs in various circumstances, in response to the sorts of conditions or stimuli that trigger the working of this sense of divinity.

(Both quotes taken from Naming the Elephant by James W. Sire.)

How about we push this in a slightly different direction? What if we put forward, not an intellectual/conceptual sensus divinitatis, but a relational and perceptual one? So, some sort of sixth sense (‘I perceive divine people’ ;-) . We could suggest that we have an in-built sense of God, but that this is deadened in our fallen state. So, to some degree or other, we have inclinations towards theistic beliefs, as Plantinga puts it. But, these inclinations are due to an underlying sense that almost-but-not-quite functions. In this view Calvin’s & Plantinga’s sensus is a secondary effect — the intellectual derviative of the underlying (fuzzy) perception.

This fits interestingly with Tom Wright’s analogy for Jesus’ quality of relationship with his Father. Wright suggests that Jesus is like someone who has perfect pitch surrounded by tone-deaf people. Or could we say that, for Jesus, the sense is in working order?

Perhaps this also gives us a link to the apologetic issue ‘Why doesn’t God make himself more obvious?’ Maybe we can say that the fault is with us. The lack of obviousness isn’t due to God hiding, but due to us having degraded senses. Not a very good apologetic answer, perhaps.

Anyway, speculative post ends here… Normal service will be resumed shortly (when we’ve figure out what that is ;-)

Permalink | March 17th, 2007

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