Calvin on the Natural Knowledge of God

What John Calvin believed about the natural knowledge of God must be primarily sought in the first five chapters of Book I in the Institutes. One may also consult his commentaries on the most relevant passages, such as Psalm 19:1-6, Romans 1:19-20, 2:14-15, and Acts 17:16-34. However, this opening portion of the Institutes treats the matter in a most deliberate way.

We call this “natural knowledge” after the objective order of nature. This has been badly misunderstood by modern theologians. Because of the modern divide between naturalists (or materialists) and fideists (or mystics), the concept of “nature” has been reduced to either the realm of physical phenomena (thanks to naturalism) or else the subjective performances of fallen, sinful, or “natural” man (thanks to fideism).

The idea of objective nature—that is, the “nature of things” or “way things are,” independent of our minds—became virtually lost within the Reformed tradition of the past hundred years. Yet the biblical texts on general, or natural, revelation first treat the subject matter of our natural knowledge as objective speech from God.

At this point, someone in the line of Cornelius Van Til’s thinking will jump in and say, “Ah, but there is a difference between natural revelation and natural theology.” Indeed there is. Now, aside from the rather condescending presumption that this needs to be pointed out every time this subject comes up, the Van Tillian is still only encountering the problem at an inch deep.

Yes, what God communicates and what man cogitates are two distinct things. However, if one can speak of “knowledge” about this revelation, then one can only be speaking of true natural theology rather than false natural theology. After all, a proposition that is false cannot represent “knowledge,” but rather only error or ignorance.

On the other side of the equation, if there is any true knowledge of God, then such objects as are known—i.e., such objects as represent that truth—must be of truths independent of all finite minds. They cannot have a shifting truth value. Such truths (e.g., a, b, c, etc.) are true in themselves, and cannot be rendered false at the same time and in the same relationship simply because an unregenerate mind assents to them, or represents them in propositional form.

When Calvin was writing the Institutes, he was not writing a treatise on philosophical theology. He wanted to get right to knowledge of the true God versus what is false. Because of this, it would be an anachronistic reading of Calvin to ask what “role” he gives to natural theology. He neither assigns it nor denies it much of a role. He is more specifically and briskly developing what theologians usually treat under the necessity of Scripture. But this is not to say that his reflection on this knowledge does not give some foundation for Reformed thinking on the issue. I will summarize this section by means of the chapter divisions that Calvin himself gave, but with more concise titles. In the course of these sections, disputed questions by modern scholarship will be introduced.

The Knowledge of God and of Ourselves

One of the more famous statements made by Calvin begins this work: “Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”1 While this has many implications for Christian doctrine and life, it is important to note that the context is immediately that knowledge of God possessed by mankind by virtue of the created order. The trouble is that we do start on the fallen side of Eden. If the knowledge of God and of ourselves are both mutually dependent on the other, as is Calvin’s first point, then, given sin,

“So long as we do not look beyond the earth, we are quite pleased with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue; we address ourselves in the most flattering terms, and seem only less than demigods.”2

The saying comes to mind: Man seeks for God like a bank robber seeks a cop. While we do not want to utterly confuse epistemology with soteriology, we do not want to make the opposite mistake and ignore the consequences of man’s total state before God in determining his view of God. This is the setting of Calvin’s brief sketch of the doctrine. As surely as our theology and anthropology are mutually interdependent, so our view into both God and ourselves is submerged in our rebellion against God. We do not just look out from a fractured lens, but we are glancing back, only occasionally, over our shoulder and on the run.

The Nature and Tendency of this Knowledge

The first thing Calvin does in the second chapter is to offer a definition: “By the knowledge of God, I understand that by which we not only conceive that there is some God, but also apprehend what it is for our interest, and conducive to his glory, what, in short, it is befitting to know concerning him.”3 Notice that this is not his definition of the “natural knowledge” of God, but knowledge of God in general. In other words, it encompasses both of what are called natural and supernatural theology. When he comes to a finer distinction, Calvin makes a contribution to the historic discussion. It has come to be known as the “twofold knowledge of God” (duplex cognitio Dei). It refers to our knowing God as both Creator and as Redeemer. Edward Dowey warned his reader of a potential misunderstanding about these two: “It is not identical with the distinction between general and special revelation, that is, with the revelation in creation and in Scripture ... Nor does it conform to the division of the Bible into the Old and New Testaments.”4

As an example of overlapping concepts, God is known as Creator per se both in Nature and in Scripture. What Calvin’s distinction insists upon is rather the ultimate futility of knowing God merely as Creator. He wrote,

“it is one thing to perceive that God our Maker supports us by his power, rules us by his providence, fosters us by his goodness, and visits us with all kinds of blessings, and another thing to embrace the grace of reconciliation offered to us in Christ.”5

In other words, the problem is not knowing God as Creator per se—one could not know Him as Redeemer without what is prior. The problem is stopping there. In this contrast, saving knowledge does not nullify natural knowledge, but rather distinguishes itself from it. If it did nullify, Calvin would not speak of them of two ways of “knowing” God, but as two “supposed” ways, or something to that effect. This is yet another application of the maxim that grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it. The reason that the distinction matters goes back to our real state as individuals: “What avails it, in short, to know a God with whom we have nothing to do?”6

In conclusion, to speak of knowing God as Redeemer without the God of Creation (of objective nature) lands us in absurdity, or into Barthianism (but I repeat myself); whereas poking and prodding at a “god of nature” apart from Christ is to presume to do just that—to reduce God to an abstraction, a passive specimen on the Petri dish of our self-professed genius and from the safety of a life oblivious to the coming judgment.

Such Knowledge is Naturally Implanted

Another distinguishing feature of Calvin’s doctrine here is known as the sensus divinitatis, that is, the “sense of deity,”7 with which God has endued all mankind. This is an internal sense that God exists, being with every single human being from birth—even while the mode of this “sense” is a highly debatable point. At any rate, even the grossest idolatry and myriad of religions testify to this.

Against this backdrop, Calvin engages in a bit of apologetics. He answers the charge “that religion was devised by the cunning and craft of a few individuals, as a means of keeping the body of the people in due subjection.”8 Clearly such cynical deconstructions did not originate with the likes of Marx and Nietzsche. Even ancient Greek and Roman writers dealt with this concept. Now Calvin acknowledges that such has happened. However, that “they never could have succeeded in this, had the minds of men not been previously imbued with that uniform belief in God, from which, as from its seed, the religious propensity springs.”9

But about this seed of religion, Calvin says it “is indelibly engraved on the human heart.”10 That can mean several things; and what is at stake is usually whether or not Calvin’s view is consistent with demonstrative natural theology (i.e. formal arguments), or not. The reason one is related to the other is because if all one needs to “know God by nature” is what one is already born with, well, then, case closed. What need would there be for further proof or evidence?

Michael Sudduth speaks of the “exclusive immediacy interpretation of Calvin,” that is, the theory that Calvin’s doctrine of natural knowledge of God “involves no inferential element at all.”11 Chief among proponents of this idea were T. H. L. Parker,12 Alvin Plantinga,13 and Dewey Hoitenga.14 This view does not deny that there is a kind of knowledge gained through media and argumentation, but it denies that we “arrive at belief in God by way of argument or inference from other beliefs.”15 Instead we arrive at a basic belief in God by something like acquaintance or intuition.

Paul Helm offers balance, namely, that “it is not obvious that Calvin is saying that each human being is directly aware of God in this manner, the possessor of an unmediated experience of God.” Helm goes on to acknowledge Calvin’s apparent “lack of interest in discursive proofs of God’s existence,”16 yet he cautions modern readers from flying to the other extreme of making Calvin into an immediatist or fideist. He further addresses the implications of the fall for Calvin on this knowledge, “Though this awareness is perverted by the Fall, it is not obliterated.”17

Knowledge “Stifled or Corrupted, Ignorantly or Maliciously”

This chapter is set forth very much in the spirit of Paul’s words about the Gentiles, that, “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart” (Eph. 4:18). This ought to protect us from the two ditches that the unbeliever’s problem is either intellectual-not-moral or else moral-not-intellectual. It is both. The two problems exacerbate each other. Here is how he puts it:

“Mingled vanity and pride appear in this, that when miserable men do seek after God, instead of ascending higher than themselves as they ought to do, they measure them by their own carnal stupidity, and neglecting solid inquiry, fly off to indulge their curiosity in vain speculation.”18

Expressions such as these—“deservedly blinded” and “court darkness” and “licentious desire and overweening confidence in the pursuit of forbidden knowledge.”19 All of this paints the picture of sin causing error and error causing more sin, and so on. Calvin anticipates the thoughts of Stephen Charnock from the next century concerning the practical atheist: “every man who indulges in security, after extinguishing all fear of divine judgment, virtually denies that there is a God.” He cites Psalm 14:1; 53:1; and 36:1 toward this end. By this point, a balanced doctrine is taking shape: “Still, however, the conviction that there is some Deity continues to exist, like a plant which can never be completely eradicated, though so corrupt, that it is only capable of producing the worst of fruit.”20

Clear in God’s Creation and Governance of the World

The fifth chapter is by far the largest of the section. He now turns from this natural knowledge inside of us outward: “so to manifest his perfections in the whole structure of the universe, and daily place himself in our view, that we cannot open our eyes without being compelled to behold him.”21 On the one hand, such traces of the divine are clear to even “the most illiterate peasant,” but this observation does not prevent Calvin from also affirming that those conversant in “liberal studies are thereby assisted and enabled to obtain deeper insight into the secret workings of divine wisdom.”22

The human being was called a “microcosm,” or little world, and so encompasses in himself both the reasoning about God through nature, but also made up the finest “specimen of divine power, wisdom, and goodness.”23 If one can sense God in anything, much more so could God be evidenced in the nature of man. This is where one gets into the realms of reason, morality, meaning, and even aesthetics. Yet this we turn into a mirror, producing what Calvin called “many monster minds—minds which are not afraid to employ the seed of Deity deposited in human nature as a means of suppressing the name of God.”24 This is the greatest perversion and ingratitude, and the biblically informed reader of Calvin here must mentally connect Genesis 3:5 and Romans 1:21-32 in an instant. This is the devil’s first lie daily recapitulated.

Note how this rounds out Calvin’s picture. The natural knowledge of God is both internal and external to man. There is both a subjective and objective dimension—an immediate communication of natural revelation and a mediate communication. This is important because it will often be argued by presuppositionalists who want to ground their view in Reformed history, that Calvin held only to an immediate aspect. This was the approach of Greg Bahnsen in his debate with R. C. Sproul, and today K. Scott Oliphint puts most of the stress of Calvin’s view here as well.25

However, by the time the careful reader arrives at the end of Chapter 5, such a view cannot be sustained. That both the ignorant and learned know God, from immediate ways through the various media of observation and longing and even excusing oneself morally, and that deliberate, sequential reasoning is being employed in countless ways—not to speak of the formal arguments of natural theology—reflects a view where the natural knowledge of God is both immediate and mediate.

A Few Excerpts from Calvin’s Commentaries to Consider

Commenting on the classic general revelation passage of Romans 1:19-20, Calvin said, “God has presented to the minds of all the means of knowing him, having so manifested himself by his works, that they must see what of themselves they seek not to know—that there is some God; for the world does not exist by chance, nor could it have proceeded from itself.”26 Calvin’s remarks even seem to have a Platonic ring. He links the author of Hebrews and his comment here.

“God is in himself invisible; but as his majesty shines forth in his works and in his creatures everywhere, men ought in these to acknowledge him, for they clearly set forth their Maker: and for this reason the Apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews says, that this world is a mirror, or the representation of invisible things.”27

So he sees the many particulars of this world as expressions, or analogies, of divine things. While not explicitly suggesting a formal argument from effects to cause, Calvin speaks as if the recognition of God through nature at least works in an a posteriori fashion. He commented, “By saying, that God has made it manifest, he means, that man was created to be a spectator of this formed world, and that eyes were given him, that he might, by looking on so beautiful a picture, be led up to the Author himself.”28 This being “led up” seems more likely to describe a process of discursive reasoning rather than an original deposit of knowledge in a person. Calvin couples this with the act of “looking.”

The same can be witnessed in the other classic general revelation passage. For Calvin, Psalm 19:1-6 gives the logic of a design inference, and that via discursive reasoning:

“David shows us how it is that the heavens proclaim to us the glory of God, namely, by openly bearing testimony that they have not been put together by chance, but were wonderfully created by the Supreme Architect. When we behold the heavens, we cannot but be elevated, by the contemplation of them, to Him who is their great Creator.”29

Of this “elevation” that Calvin takes for granted, not many would seriously defend the notion that there is either innate (from birth) or intuited (later on) knowledge about God in the stars or a mountain range or a baby’s cry. In and of themselves such phenomena contain no “data” that could intelligibly count as theologically conclusive. Rather there is a reason. The reason is what one would give to anyone who asks: “But why does the brilliance of that star suggest anything about your deity?” And likewise with the endurance of the mountains or the new life of the infant. The very poetic language of the Psalm is figurative and reminds us that such phenomena in nature do not literally communicate the reason.

What about the episode on Mars Hill in Acts 17? He takes issue with Jerome’s understanding of Paul as attributing “that to one God which was written of many,”30 but he does not fixate on this to conclude that a general theism cannot entail “true natural theology.” On the contrary, he discusses the point mentioned earlier about Romans 1 and idolatry. True knowledge is a prerequisite for false worship to be blameworthy. We must remember how the Genevan Reformer was always keen in his commentaries to take a dig at Rome when it was suitable to the context, and he certainly does not miss that opportunity with this text. Yet he composes himself and says, “I answer, that Paul doth not in this place commend that which the men of Athens had done; but taketh from their affection, though it were corrupt, free matter for teaching.”31 Our reading must focus here on the identity of the Apostle’s students who would be taught. It was the pagans. In other words, Calvin recognized that Paul was taking true knowledge that these pagans both (a) possessed as lines of reason and (b) twisted as idolatry—and he further used it as grounds for commending right belief. It can all go together if one keeps the epistemological question and the soteriological question distinct. Calvin touches upon the matter of method. On the one hand, he must begin with the true God and make inferences on that basis. On the other hand his audience is only able to understand this on the basis of some common field of knowledge. He says,

“If any man will intreat generally of religion, this must be the first point, that there is some divine power or godhead which men ought to worship. But because that was out of question, Paul descendeth unto the second point, that the true God must be distinguished from all vain inventions. So that he beginneth with the definition of God, that he may thence prove how he ought to be worshipped; because the one dependeth upon the other.”32

Now as to the words cited from the Greek poets, Calvin says that these “came from no other fountain save only from nature and common reason,”33 and yet here is the Holy Spirit inspiring their use through Paul. Although that first poet, Aratus, “spake of Jupiter,” yet “Paul, in applying that unto the true God … wrest it unto a contrary sense.”34 Then the most pertinent inference made in the commentary: “For because men have naturally some perseverance of God, they draw true principles from that fountain.”35 Nothing more is being claimed or needs to be claimed, as classical arguments have never maintained that such knowledge saves. It is only that such knowledge is true in itself. In summary, this text presents two tremendous difficulties for the position against classical views of natural theology: First, Paul is modeling with approval extra-biblical antecedents concluding in true knowledge about God; and second, Paul is quoting from pagan (unregenerate) sources as if the relevant proposition in those sources constituted true knowledge of God.

Acts 14:16-17 is seldom considered in this context. Here Calvin once again attributes discursive reasoning to the apostles in their address in Lystra. He is quick to maintain that, “faith is not conceived by the bare beholding of the heaven and earth, but by the hearing of the word.” Yet on the other hand, “Paul and Barnabas take from the Gentiles in this place the cloak [pretext] of ignorance … cut off this frivolous objection, when they show that God lay hid in such sort, that he [still] bare witness of himself and his divinity”; and that specifically about a general theistic position: “this letteth not but that they may be made without excuse, even without the word.”36 So on the one hand, the manner of the Apostle’s address was not “after the manner of the philosophers, of the secrets of nature, for they spake unto an unlearned multitude,” and yet in the form of ground and consequent, that is, discursive reasoning, “it behooved them to set that before them plainly which the most ignorant did know.”37

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1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.1.1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 4.

2. Calvin, Institutes, I.1.2 [5].

3. Calvin, Institutes, I.2.1 [7].

4. Edward A. Dowey, Jr., The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 43.

5. Calvin, Institutes, I.2.1 [7].

6. Calvin, Institutes, I.2.2 [8].

7. Calvin, Institutes, I.3.1 [9].

8. Calvin, Institutes, I.3.2 [10].

9. Calvin, Institutes, I.3.2 [10].

10. Calvin, Institutes, I.3.3 [10].

11. Michael Sudduth, The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2016), 60.

12. T. H. L. Parker, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 9, n.1

13. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 171-77.

14. Dewey Hoitenga, Faith and Reason from Plato to Plantinga (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), 155-57.

15. Sudduth, The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology, 60.

16. Paul Helm, Faith and Understanding (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 180.

17. Helm, “Nature and Grace,” in Aquinas Among the Protestants, ed. Manfred Svensson and David VanDrunen (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2018), 232

18. Calvin, Institutes, I.4.1 [12].

19. Calvin, Institutes, I.4.1 [12].

20. Calvin, Institutes, I.4.4 [14].

21. Calvin, Institutes, I.5.1 [16].

22. Calvin, Institutes, I.5.2 [17].

23. Calvin, Institutes, I.5.3 [17].

24. Calvin, Institutes, I.5.3 [17].

25. K. Scott Oliphint, “A Primal and Simple Knowledge” A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes: Essays and Analysis, ed. David W. Hall and Peter A. Lillback (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2008),

26. Calvin, Commentaries, XIX:II.71.

27. Calvin, Commentaries, XXV:70; cf. Institutes, I.5.1 [16].

28. Calvin, Commentaries, XXV:70.

29. Calvin, Commentaries, IV:309.

30. Calvin, Commentaries, XIX:156.

31. Calvin, Commentaries, XIX:157.

32. Calvin, Commentaries, XIX:158.

33. Calvin, Commentaries, XIX:169.

34. Calvin, Commentaries, XIX:169.

35. Calvin, Commentaries, XIX:169.

36. Calvin, Commentaries, XIX:18, 19.

37. Calvin, Commentaries, XIX:19.