Calvin, planting a, and the Natural Knowledge of God: A response to beversluis

Faith and Philosophy

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 92-103

  Sudduth, Michael Czapkay ^a  

^a CALVIN COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84880558442     PISSN: 07397046     EISSN: 21533393     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/faithphil19981518     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. Alvin Plantinga, "Reason and Belief in God," in Faith and Rationality, ed. Plantinga and Wolterstorff (University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, 1983), pp. 65-67.
2. Alvin Plantinga, 'The Prospects for Natural Theology'' in Philosophical Perspectives, 5, 1991, pp. 303-310. See also his forthcoming Warranted Christian Belief, chapter 8.
3. Calvin's distinctive use of "knowledge" is developed by Edward Dowey (who calls it an existential knowledge), Gerald Postema (who contrasts knowledge as commitment and knowledge as merely propositional), William Bouwsma (who distinguishes between affective and frigid knowledge), and Dewey Hoitenga (who distinguishes between a propositional and moral component to knowledge of God). See Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin's Theology, 3rd Edition (Eerdman's Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, ML, 1994; reprint, 1952), pp. 24-31
4. Postema, "Calvin's Alleged Rejection of Natural Theology," in Calvin and Calvinism, vol. 7, ed. Richard C. Gamble (Garland Publishing, Inc.: New York, 1992), pp. 140-141
5. Bouwsma, "Calvin and the Renaissance Crisis of Learning," in Calvin and Calvinism, vol. 7, p. 241
6. Hoitenga, "Faith and Reason in Calvin's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God," in Calvin and Calvinism, vol. 7, p. 309.
7. Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans in Calvins Commentaries, trans. John Owen, vol. 19 of 22 vols., ed. Henry Beveridge (Baker Book House: Grand Rapids, ML, 1979; reprint), Romans 1:20 (p. 70).
8. Calvin, Commentary Upon the Acts of the Apostles in Calvin's Commentaries, trans. Christopher Fetherstone, vol. 19 of 22 vols., Acts 14:17 (p. 19).
9. This is readily recognized by many of the leading commentators on Calvin. B.B. Warfield, Calvin and Augustine (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Philadelphia, 1956), pp. 33-48
10. Edward Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin's Theology (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1994; reprint, 1954), chapter 3
11. Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (Blackwell Publishers: Oxford, 1987), pp. 56-57
12. Dewey Hoitenga, From Plato to Plantinga: An Introduction to Reformed Epistemology (State University of New York Press: New York, 1991), pp.153-157,164.
13. 7 but a genuine awareness of Deity. Further, it is possessed not [only] by Adam in the Garden of Eden, but by fallen, sinful, historic children of Adam" ("Natural Theology in the Thought of John Calvin" in Calvin and Calvinism, p. 152). Only Barthians seem to be bewildered by this standard interpretation of Calvin.
14. This is the traditional Barthian interpretation which stresses the subjective impossibility of a natural knowledge of God in the fallen state (though allowing its objective possibility "if Adam had not sinned" (Institutes 1.2.1)) and locates human inexcusability solely in the fact that there is a revelation of God in nature. See Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, Natural Theology, trans. Peter Fraenkel (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946), pp. 106-9.
15. For historical background to Calvin's treatment of this passage and a fairly accurate exposition of Calvin's interpretation, see David Steinmetz, "Calvin and the Natural Knowledge of God," in Via Augustini: Augustine in the Later Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, ed. H.A. Oberman (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991), pp. 142-56, reprinted in Steinmetz, Calvin in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 23-39.