Pondering Platinga’s A Priori Premise: Sensus Divinitatis.

Alvin Platinga

Earlier I wondered about the argument that it is a natural belief, an inbuilt sense in the human species to know that there is a God, as presented in “Knowledge and Christian Belief”. Alvin Platinga refers to it as a sensus divinitatis, which he in turn found in Calvin’s and Thomas Aquina’s writings.

            I may not have come to any final conclusion yet of how I relate to this, whether I am convinced it is warranted or not. As we know, Paul, the apostle, claims there is no excuse, no reason to reject the existence of God – but to suggest a sense, like memory is a sense, is to open for an ability in us to reach faith in God. I know we have to realize a point of contact, an axis mundi, so to speak, where there is a direct link between God and man. The question is whether that is in God or in man.

            One solution is to emphasize God’s act, God’s initiative – for when we become Christians, we are given a new beginning, a new spirit, a new life. This is an act of God’s Holy Spirit, and the connection between me as a person and God is through the new spirit He has created in my heart.

            Faith in God comes from hearing about God. We do not talk of our ears as means of faith. If there is a sensus divinitatis, which human faculty qualifies as the basic meeting point? We may say: the conviction of truth is in out inner being, in our heart. I have to admit that there is a point of meeting between the human person and God prior to conversion, prior to the new birth. I suppose it is fair to say that there is a sense that there is a God. So, is Platinga right?

            The theology of man’s fallen nature is not overlooked in his book, but it is referred to as a marred faculty. I still wonder about the total breech; is it there?

           

I like the way Platinga argues against people who claim that theistic belief is false. He shows that there is no warrant for such a claim (that it is false), as it is not supported by any truth.

Likewise, he argues that to believe in God and act upon it as basis for life and for gaining knowledge is warranted, because God is true; the biblical teachings about God is true. If they were not, there is no warrant for the truth claim, and we are left in the dark like an antitheist. But God is there. He is real.    

      As I drove home from choir practice tonight I thought of a rather mundane example of faith: To sit on a chair is an act of faith – faith in the chair that it will hold my weight. I may have developed such faith on the basis of experience, or I may have enough knowledge about physics to be convinced that the chair will hold me when I sit on it. In contrast, if I imagined a sitting-contraption that was not there, which really never had existed, even if I imagined that I would pull it out and prepare to sit on it, it would never hold me. It simply is not there, there is no truth to back up the faith.

I wonder a little – I can see that the theistic argument covers the claim that God is; but is it therefore also obvious who God is?

            As a Christian, I know God. As a Christian, I receive the Word with heart and soul and mind; I trust the witnesses and testimonies in the Word. God has revealed himself in history and through Jesus, and He has reached into my world, saved me, given me new life. To talk about how God is and who God is, is not a problem for me personally. But I still wonder: can we argue for the nature of God?