John Calvin, in his Institutes, taught that men have a natural inclination that gives us knowledge of the divine. He also accepts original sin as the view that wisdom and other gifts God gave Adam were lost:
“After the heavenly image in man was effaced, he not only was himself punished by a withdrawal of the ornaments in which he had been arrayed—viz. wisdom, virtue, justice, truth, and holiness, and by the substitution in their place of those dire pests, blindness, impotence, vanity, impurity, and unrighteousness, but he involved his posterity also, and plunged them in the same wretchedness.”
(Institutes, Vol. I, Bk. II, Chap. 1, Sec. 5)“…our nature is not only destitute of all good, but is so fertile in all evils that it cannot remain inactive. Those who have called it concupiscence have used an expression not improper, if it were only added, which is far from being conceded by most persons, that everything in man, the understanding and will, the soul and body, is polluted and engrossed by this concupiscence; or, to express it more briefly, that man is of himself nothing else but concupiscence.”
(Institutes, Vol. I, Bk. II, Chap. 1, Para. 8; Allen translation.)
1) So, man is destitute of all good
and
” That there exists in the human minds and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead, the memory of which he constantly renews and occasionally enlarges, that all to a man being aware that there is a God, and that he is their Maker, may be condemned by their own conscience when they neither worship him nor consecrate their lives to his service.”
(Institutes, Vol I, Bk. I, Chap 1, Section 3)
2) Man’s sense of deity occurs by instinct
3) If the “sensus divinitatis” within man is good, then Calvin’s system is contradictory as it is a apart of man’s nature.
4) Either he must deny that its a part of man’s nature or that it isn’t good.
In the first quote, Calvin calls the two propositions concupiscence—1) our nature is destitute of all goods and 2) fertile in all evils. His second point in the quote is to say that every part of man has this property of concupiscence:
“that everything in man, the understanding and will, the soul and body, is polluted and engrossed by this concupiscence; or, to express it more briefly, that man is of himself nothing else but concupiscence.”
Thus, whatever is in man is a) destitute of good and b) fertile in all evil.
5) either the sensus divinitatis is good or it isn’t.
We could argue that it is good.
i) Knowledge of good is good.
ii) God is good
iii) The sensus divinitatis is knowledge of God.
iv) Therefore, the sensus divinitatis is good.
We could also change i) to i*) x is good if it has a property shared by God although one may not describe the property accurately. For example, one may believe that some music is good. Music can have the property of being beautiful or inducing pleasure. God has this property. Thus, the music would be good.
Thus, since the sensus divinitatis is knowledge of the divine and God has the property of divinity, then it is a good instinct.
6) But what does Calvin mean by good?
“In this way, we feel dissatisfied with ourselves, and become truly humble, while we are inflamed with new desires to seek after God, in whom each may regain those good qualities of which all are found to be utterly destitute.”
(Institutes, Vol. I, Bk. II, Chap. 1, Sec. I)
So, it looks like x is good if it came from God. This is consistent with what James teaches: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:17, ESV)
But this just isn’t my reading of Calvin, claiming that we still possess gifts from God. Calvin admits this:
When reflecting on what God gave us at our creation, and still continues graciously to give, we perceive how great the excellence of our nature would have been had its integrity remained, and, at the same time, remember that we have nothing of our own, but depend entirely on God, from whom we hold at pleasure whatever he has seen it meet to bestow;
(Institutes, Vol. I, Bk. II, Chap. 1, Sec. I)
Here, it may be remarked that the quote doesn’t necessitate interpreting Calvin to see gift’s within man as the object of the quote; however, the next sentences show by context that Calvin was speaking about the image of God:
For as God at first formed us in his own image, that he might elevate our minds to the pursuit of virtue, and the contemplation of eternal life, so to prevent us from heartlessly burying those noble qualities which distinguish us from the lower animals, it is of importance to know that we were endued with reason and intelligence, in order that we might cultivate a holy and honourable life, and regard a blessed immortality as our destined aim. At the same time, it is impossible to think of our primeval dignity without being immediately reminded of the sad spectacle of our ignominy and corruption, ever since we fell from our original in the person of our first parent. In this way, we feel dissatisfied with ourselves, and become truly humble, while we are inflamed with new desires to seek after God, in whom each may regain those good qualities of which all are found to be utterly destitute.
(Institutes, Vol. I, Bk. II, Chap. 1, Sec. I)
But if whatever comes from God is good, and man still possesses something of the image of God, then it is false that our nature is “destitute of all good.” Further, if this just is the doctrine of total depravity, then it is false. Finally, since original sin, implies “total depravity” on Calvin’s view and he affirms the sensus divinitatis, it follows that his view is contradictory. The existence of the the sensus divinitatis implies that original sin is false. Since Calvin affirms both, his view is contradictory. Scripture teaches that God only gives us good gifts and if we have anything from God that continues after the fall, then we possess some good. But if this the case total depravity is false and so is the doctrine of original sin.