Sensus divinitatis and natural knowledge of God

In the article, the author considers the model of the natural knowledge of God that was proposed by a prominent American philosopher of religion and epistemologist Alvin Plantinga as a response to the so-called anti-theistic de jure objection. According to this objection, the belief in God should be taken to be irrational independently whether God exists or not because this belief is a result of some epistemic defect. By means of his model which he denotes as «the Aquinas/ Calvin model» Plantinga shows that given God’s existence, the belief in Him is not a result of any epistemic defect, but to the contrary, it is an epistemically proper attitude in the face of God’s existence. The core of Plantinga’s model is the special cognitive mechanism which he calls sensus divinitatis, and that is innate to any human and aimed especially to natural knowledge of God. In the article, the author shows that despite its appeal Plantinga’s model suffers from some drawbacks. In the same time, the author claims that these drawbacks are not fatal and proposes some way how it could be improved.