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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSUS DIVINITATIS AND ITS APPLICATION TO THE PROPAGATION OF THE CHRISTIAN GOSPEL: CASE STUDIES OF THE DIVINE SENSE IN WESTERN CHRISTIAN HISTORY A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF ARTS IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ANCIENT HISTORY MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY BY JAMES EDWARD GIBSON B.A., B.D., Dip. Teach, M.A., S.T.M. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA MARCH, 2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . .. ..9 Chapter I. PLATO (circa 424 – 399 BC) and the Early Church Fathers . 14 II. THOMAS AQUINAS (1224-1274) and the Scholastics. 45 III. JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564) and Reformation Theology. 70 IV. JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-1758) and Evangelicalism . 104 V. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN (1801-1890) and Catholicism . 141 VI. ALVIN PLANTINGA (1932- ) and Reformed Epistemology . 181 CONCLUSION . 231 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 246 The history of Christian thought has presented several varied concepts of how the Divine and human minds are related. The chapters of this thesis are six successive case studies of this ―divine sense‖ in western Christian thought. Research interest began about John Calvin‘s particular version: the sensus divinitatis (the sense of the divine). Initial efforts were to exposit its meaning and then discover from where the idea developed. Calvin sought to reproduce a biblical outlook. So the trail was expected to trace back to biblical starting points. Strangely, just immediately after the forming of the New Testament, Calvin‘s exact concept is missing. There is in early Christian centuries not an absence of any ―divine sense‖ – just that of Calvin‘s particular version. Research direction adjusted to take stock of the varied concepts represented across Christian history and via six case studies set out the development of the ―divine sense‖. The hope was to explain the development from a ―divine sense‖ to a ―sense of the divine‖. Each case study was seen in the intersection of their particular ideas with the philosophical winds of the times. The start is in Plato‘s ideas and their varied impact on the early Church fathers. Thomas Aquinas follows. Aquinas switched the major philosophical underpinning to Aristotle. The third is Calvin, the fourth Jonathan Edwards, and the fifth Cardinal John Henry Newman. Edwards and Newman‘s writings were against a backdrop of developing Modernity. The last is the Reformed Epistemologist, Alvin Plantinga, who utilized Aquinas and Calvin‘s idea of the sensus divinitatis in an apologetic to show that, due to the divine sense, belief in God can be responsibly and rationally held in the absence of outward evidence. The historical thesis is that development can be seen if one ―graphs a line‖ through these six sets of ideas. There is something to conclude about the persistence of the idea through history in terms of human awareness about God. Belief in God is not only due to gospel presentation, but also to the innate sense of the divine. The gospel being presented has as an ally within the people on the receiving end. This work has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other university or institution. Unless otherwise cited, the material is all original. No matters have needed the Ethics Committee approval. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my family: Michelle, Heidi, Callum, Lachlan, Shona, Kieran and Brynlea: seven people who have stood by my completing this work often at cost to them and their own needs. I had in mind to do this doctoral work when I met and married Michelle 34 years ago. The children cannot remember any time when I wasn‘t doing it. To my Church, Salisbury Baptist in Brisbane who have often put up with too complicated sermons because of the books I have been reading, but with great patience have allowed me to finish without complaint. To Macquarie University whose superb program has been a joy for the entire period of study and my supervisor Dr. Stuart Piggin whose insights and balance of opinion has been a model of wisdom and encouragement. 9 INTRODUCTION The Call for this Study In the 1980s this student was pastoring a church in Adelaide, South Australia. To keep the mind active he also completed all the undergraduate philosophy subjects offered at the University of Adelaide. In one such course, Marxism, the lecturer introduced himself by explaining that, although still a socialist, he was no longer a Marxist. He had applied the test of history on the Marxist predictions concerning the coming of the utopian state. When around the globe this utopia had not anywhere sufficiently materialised, he felt his ideology disproven. One could not but admire the lecturer‘s courage, intellectual rigour and honesty concerning his favoured speculative ideology. There began in this thesis writer‘s mind the desire to find some equivalent test for Christianity or theism. To some degree there was a developing call to add in more evidentialist elements to how the Christian faith was expressed to others while being aware that these evidences were not necessarily the origin of one‘s own faith. The more philosophy was studied, the more it was apparent that this was not really being an evidentialist at all. At the same period of time, Plantinga and Wolterstorff edited the book Faith and Rationality.1 This book included material on the evidentialist challenge to Christian/theistic belief. This book speaks to just this area of mind of many a student where questions remain unresolved about the relationship of faith to evidences in the modern age. 1 Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds. Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). 10 There had been previous moments for this writer of being confronted with this unresolved question to do with faith and evidences. One had occurred at a university party a Christian friend and this writer attended in the dorm room of a girl student. The girl had moved out all her furniture and the students were sitting around the walls relaxing with drinks when we arrived. We said hello to the host and set about talking to each student in turn about Christianity around the room, going in opposite directions. On meeting up again, having completed the circle, we could see the party was warming up with conviviality aided by the alcohol. The host looked relieved when we thanked her and left. Driving home we shared about our opportunities and conversations and both broke into laughter – neither of us had become Christians ourselves for the reasons we had given the students. We were both sons of Baptist Ministers. My Christian friend had at the age of three ―tumbled out of his cot and given his life to Jesus‖ in line with his family upbringing. I was the product of a Billy Graham Crusade in Perth, West Australia. There was a large gap between our own Christian experiences and the rationales we were giving others. Such events militate against the sincerity of any developing evidentialism. There was needed a more finely tuned nuance about the relationship between truth and experience, between evidences and faith. Plantinga‘s ―Reformed Epistemology‖2 addressed this issue and so initial exploration for a topic for a PhD thesis began in that epistemological arena, and Macquarie University‘s having a ―Centre for the History of Christian Thought and Experience‖ allowed the history connection. 2 “Reformed Epistemology” is a school of Apologetics following the writings of Alvin Plantinga. C.S. Evans wrote: “It is not an overstatement to say that Alvin Plantinga and his fellow Reformed epistemologists have revolutionized discussions in apologetics and philosophy of religion in the past twenty-five years. Previously, debates hinged around the question of what kind of evidence is required for religious belief and whether enough evidence of that kind is available. Reformed epistemology changed the terms of the debate by arguing that belief in God, and even more specific Christian beliefs, can be ‘properly basic’ and not founded on evidence at all.” C.S. Evans, “Approaches to Christian apologetics” in New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics, ed. Campbell Campbell-Jack and Gavin J. McGrath (Leicester,England and Downers Grove, Illinois; Inter-Varsity Press, 2006), 15-21. 11 Plantinga‘s epistemological ideas made recognition of both Aquinas and Calvin. He referred to Aquinas and then Calvin as both mentioning a natural knowledge of God and he used the possibility of the idea in his epistemological framework. It was an epistemological theory that needed only the possibility of an alternate source of belief in God that did not rely on reason and evidences, but which came from human nature operating naturally.3 It was a defence against the challenge that such beliefs in God were irrationally held if not founded on sufficient evidences. One is obviously not irrational to have beliefs caused by human nature operating properly. It did not have to be proven so, but just possible to negate the necessity of the verdict of irrationality. This reference to an implanted knowledge of God seemed a good epistemological start to take, not claiming too much which would make the conclusion more tenuous and allowing for some middle ground of evidences giving extra weight after the fact to beliefs that may have arisen from another route. This exactly answered the need in this thesis writer‘s mind. It fitted in with the original attraction to some form of evidentialism, providing reasons and proofs for the faith, even though one‘s own faith had come about on other grounds. History is a powerful discipline. It does not appear strongly to prove things to the same degree as scientific proofs. But it is very hard to fly in the face of its deliverances and it certainly can add plausibility to ideas which may stand on other grounds.
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