The Lord says all men are culpable and worthy of wrath because, “That which is known about God is evident within them” (Rom 1:19). Jean Calvin summarizes, “The knowledge of God being manifested to all makes the reprobate without excuse [to believe].”

Calvin then states the skeptics rebuttal to this point.

“[Therefore some maintain], that religion was devised by the cunning and craft of a few individuals, as a means of keeping the body of the people in due subjection, while there was nothing which those very individuals, while teaching others to worship God, less believed than the existence of a God.”

People still use this argument. “There is nothing new under the Sun.” — Solomon

Calvin’s response, “I readily acknowledge, that designing men have introduced a vast number of fictions into religion, with the view of inspiring the populace with reverence or striking them with terror, and thereby rendering them more obsequious; but they never could have succeeded in this, had the minds of men not been previously imbued with that uniform belief in God, from which, as from its seed, the religious propensity springs.[1]

What do you think of Calvin’s response? How do you answer this question?

[1] Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Translated by Henry Beveridge, Book 1, Chapter 3, argument 2.