Calvin & the Sensus Divinitatis or How I Learned to Stop Leaning on Natural Law Theology & Love the Mediator
a reflection on the first few chapters of the Institutes
As we are nearing the end the section in the Institutes devoted to the divine sense implanted in each of us, I thought it would be worth taking a bit of time to expound on this issue in a more personal way. What follows is a reflection broadly based on Calvin with a tip of the hat to John Milton and Matthew Arnold.
What can we know about God through observation of the world? What sort of internal, built-in awareness do we possess of divinity? This question demands an answer. Yet, it also resists simple answers. When I was younger, I possessed great hope for natural law theology. I thought, with a high view of the sensus divinitatis in each of us, that through simple reason, unaided by any sort of theology or explicit Christian faith, human beings could reach a logical consensus. I wrote my graduate thesis on Milton’s evolving concept of the natural law. That document—most certainly not worth digging up except to chortle at my younger self—charts a trajectory in the poet’s belief in the efficacy of the natural law. From the heyday of the Puritan revolution (the English Civil War to the Cavaliers in the crowd) and his work in the propaganda office of Cromwell’s parliamentary interregnum to the devastating renewal of the monarchy (to any Roundheads reading), Milton’s life experience and national crises forced him to rescind much of his earlier hopefulness. For goodness’ sake, you don’t write a poem called Paradise Lost from a position of optimism.
Now, I know natural law and natural theology are different categories. I am not necessarily theologically literate enough to trace the lineaments of their differences, but I do know they exist! However, the 27-year-old version of me who was working in the library stacks in the Milton section with occasional forays to the early modern history and Calvinism section, did not know there was a meaningful difference. Mea culpa. I thought that the divine sense each of us possessed could lead us to a natural law theology that would have sufficient power to unite humanity. Reading Milton taught me that I was wrong.
That Calvin begins the Institutes with a discussion of natural revelation is notable. He could conceivably have started anywhere, but as Scott Oliphint argues, he starts “covenantally”: “[Calvin’s] primary and initial concern is to establish that all men are related to the God who created them, and that this relationship has everything to do with the way that we all think and act.[1]” He calls this starting position—in our createdness—a jumping off point for a Reformed apologetic.
The two forms of knowledge that begin the Institutes—knowledge of God and knowledge of man—“are inextricably linked because man is ineradicably and eternally image of God.[2]” Our imagedness keeps us grounded. We are not self-created, like Satan’s ludicrous claim in Paradise Lost. We are creatures created for a specific telos that we defy to our own diminishment.
Which leads us to the question of what can be known about this God who created us and in whose image we have been formed. The primary Biblical ur-text for natural revelation is Romans 1. In verses 19-21, Paul lays out his basic contention: “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” The message seems clear: we each inherently know God through observation of the created world. We cannot plead ignorance, acting as if this knowledge were somehow hidden.
However, this knowledge has no power. Paul continues: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Our idol-factory of a heart, one of Calvin’s famous images, insists on following our own ways. Rather than adhering to this knowledge within our consciousness, we choose instead the nonsense of false worship. The image of endarkening that Paul uses is particularly startling. If we are benighted, what sense of divinity can remain? And, if any sense remains at all, to what end can it be placed?
Calvin’s main argument is that the sensus divinitatis is only strong enough to leave us damnable. We see a flicker of the reality of God and refuse to act accordingly. We see enough to acknowledge a creator but still act as if we are self-created. We see design and purpose and replace it with randomness and entropy. We sense a God capable of creating the entire cosmos and worship instead things we create with our hands.
We need grace to move from these dim recognitions to truth about God. We cannot get there on our own. As Calvin writes early in the book, “In this ruin of mankind no one now experiences God either as Father or as Author of salvation, or favorable in any way, until Christ the Mediator comes forward, to reconcile him to us.[3]”
This seems basically correct. Whatever sense of divinity we possess, it does not seem to bear a lot of weight. Whatever bit of eternity is written upon our hearts does not seem efficacious for any agreement or inspiring of much love of God. It is just as likely to puff us up with pride at our insight and connection to nature as it is to draw us to reverence and devotion. As such, it is a sort of dead gift, if I can say that with reverence for it. There is no chance that a comprehensive philosophical system can be built upon some obscure impulse. We are thrust back upon Christ.
I wonder if my earlier enthusiasm for natural theology emanated from a desire to cut Christ out of the equation. If there is a natural sense of God’s divinity, we can work across the aisle through persuasion and logic to convince people of political or cultural positions and leave the Holy Spirit and conviction over sin out of the matter. I acted as if Christ were the divisive figure in the equation and that an end-run around explicit theology could achieve harmony.
How foolish. Christ, the Mediator, is the only one capable of reconciling us to God. Without his intervention and the gift of grace, we are helpless. As Matthew Arnold has it, in a world absent of divinity we are here “as on a darkling plain/ Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/ Where ignorant armies clash by night.[4]” Any hope for a cohesive social identity absent the atoning, uniting, reconciling work of Christ is doomed to failure. We can work towards unity and mutual goodwill, but it must be acknowledged that these alone do not save. Our sense of the divine does more to damn than to save.
[1] K. Scott Oliphint, “A Primal and Simple Knowledge,” in A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2008), 21.
[2] Ibid, 24.
[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
[4] Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”