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them unto man. God has made Himself known. Alongside of the archetypal knowledge of God,
found in God Himself, there is also an ectypal knowledge of Him, given to man by revelation.
The latter is related to the former as a copy is to the original, and therefore does not possess
the same measure of clearness and perfection. All our knowledge of God is derived from His
self-revelation in nature and in Scripture. Consequently, our knowledge of God is on the one
hand ectypal and analogical, but on the other hand also true and accurate, since it is a copy of
the archetypal knowledge which God has of Himself.
2. INNATE AND ACQUIRED KNOWLEDGE OF GOD (COGNITIO INSITA AND ACQUISTA).
A
distinction is usually made between innate and acquired knowledge of God. This is not a strictly
logical distinction, because in the last analysis all human knowledge is acquired. The doctrine of
innate ideas is philosophical rather than theological. The seeds of it are already found in Plato’s
doctrine of ideas, while it occurs in Cicero’s De Natura Deorum in a more developed form. In
modern philosophy it was taught first of all by Descartes, who regarded the idea of God as
innate. He did not deem it necessary to consider this as innate in the sense that it was
consciously present in the human mind from the start, but only in the sense that man has a
natural tendency to form the idea when the mind reaches maturity. The doctrine finally
assumed the form that there are certain ideas, of which the idea of God is the most prominent,
which are inborn and are therefore present in human consciousness from birth. It was in this
form that Locke rightly attacked the doctrine of innate ideas, though he went to another
extreme in his philosophical empiricism. Reformed theology also rejected the doctrine in that
particular form. And while some of its representatives retained the name “innate ideas,” but
gave it another connotation, others preferred to speak of a cognitio Dei insita (ingrafted or
implanted knowledge of God). On the one hand this cognitio Dei insita does not consist in any
ideas or formed notions which are present in man at the time of his birth; but on the other
hand it is more than a mere capacity which enables man to know God. It denotes a knowledge
that necessarily results from the constitution of the human mind, that is inborn only in the
sense that it is acquired spontaneously, under the influence of the semen religionis implanted
in man by his creation in the image of God, and that is not acquired by the laborious process of
reasoning and argumentation. It is a knowledge which man, constituted as he is, acquires of
necessity, and as such is distinguished from all knowledge that is conditioned by the will of
man. Acquired knowledge, on the other hand, is obtained by the study of God’s revelation. It
does not arise spontaneously in the human mind, but results from the conscious and sustained
pursuit of knowledge. It can be acquired only by the wearisome process of perception and
reflection, reasoning and argumentation. Under the influence of the Hegelian Idealism and of
the modern view of evolution the innate knowledge of God has been over-emphasized; Barth
on the other hand denies the existence of any such knowledge.