How should one make sense of the Christian confession that God has instilled a 'sense of divinity' in every person? While other approaches have identified the sense with a perceptual or cognitive faculty or with the empirical reports of theistic belief, this Element advances an affective model of general revelation, which draws from the writings of the neo-Calvinist branch of the Reformed tradition. The author argues that the sense of divinity refers to an implanted 'feeling of divinity', a sensus numinis, and that this model makes better sense of the Christian witness, theologically re-orients the empirical findings from the cognitive science of religion, and eludes influential objections against the doctrine of general revelation.
How should one make sense of the Christian confession that God has instilled a 'sense of divinity' in every person? This Element advances an affective model of general revelation, which draws from the writings of the neo-Calvinist branch of the Reformed tradition.