Christian Philosophy

“Aquinas and Calvin agree on the claim that there is a kind of natural knowledge of God (and who can reject anything on which C alvin and Aquinas are in accord?). My model is based on Calvin’s version of the suggestion, not because I think Calvin is to be preferred to Aquinas, but because we can usefully see his suggestion as a kind of meditation on and development of a theme suggested by Aquinas.

According to Aquinas, “To know in a general and confused wayu that Gopd exists is implanted in us by nature.” In the opening chapters of the Institutes of the Christian Religion Calvin concurs: there is a sort of natural knowledge of God. Calvin expands this theme into a suggestion as to how beliefs about God can have warrant and constitute knowledge. What he says can be seen as a development of that remark of Thomas Aquinas’; but it can also be seen as a development of what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 1″ - Alvin Plantinga, p31, Knowledge and Christian Belief, 2015 Eerdmans Publishing

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