Theological glossary · FaithLogic

Sensus divinitatis

Calvin's term for the innate, ineradicable awareness of God present in every person — a 'sense of deity' that idolatry and atheism suppress and distort but cannot erase.

Latin, 'sense of divinity'; Calvin also uses semen religionis, 'seed of religion'.

Romans 1:19–21 ('what can be known about God is plain to them … although they knew God'); Ecclesiastes 3:11; Acts 17:27–28.

Calvin, Institutes I.3–4; anticipated by Tertullian's 'the soul is by nature Christian'. Retrieved in contemporary philosophy of religion by Alvin Plantinga's 'Reformed epistemology': belief in God can be 'properly basic', produced by a truth-aimed cognitive faculty (the sensus divinitatis) that the fall has damaged but not destroyed — so theistic belief needs no argumentative proof to be warranted.

It explains both the universality of religion and idolatry (the sense is real but suppressed and misdirected) and the culpability of unbelief (the knowledge is there to be suppressed).

Whether it yields knowledge of the true God or only a religious impulse; how badly the fall has damaged it; its epistemological status (Plantinga's account vs. classical evidentialism).

Open in the glossary for related terms and the doctrines this concept appears in.