It looks as if for once in my life I'm ahead of the game. While everyone who is (worthily) celebrating the 500th Anniversary of John Calvin's birth by reading through his Institutes of the Christian Religion is only beginning their work, I just completed reading through the Institutes for my Pastoral Ministry Apprenticeship. In the spirit of the Calvin Quincentennial, I offer this reflection on my past semester with Calvin.
John Calvin was likely the greatest theological mind that God has brought the church since Augustine of Hippo. While many have recognized Calvin’s theological and exegetical brilliance, far less realize that he was also a deeply pastoral man whose heart beat for Christians to know God and live in covenant relationship with Him. This is evident all throughout his commentaries, which are not obscure, scientific observations on the Biblical texts in the ancient languages but incisive, careful exegesis combined with a pastor’s confidence that God’s Spirit authored the Scriptures so that we might know him. Such a concern is also evident in Calvin’s magisterial Institutes of the Christian Religion, a work that Calvin intended to have the dual function of an apologia for the faith of the Protestants and an instruction for Christian on what being a Christian is all about. The Institutes is certainly a towering work of theology but it is not theology in the vein of dusty Scholasticism; it is theology that bleeds a passion for God and a passion for men to know Him and ascribe to Him the honor that He is due. Such is evident in the very first sentence of the Institutes, in I. i. 1., “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” After having spent the last semester with Calvin reading the Institutes, I can say that through this study Calvin has helped me to know God and myself more. Not only this, but Calvin lays God before us and in so doing allows us to understand ourselves better in His light. Therefore, I seek to lay out in this paper some reflections on how Calvin has helped me to know God and know myself better in the course of reading the Institutes of the Christian Religion.
“In short, even if not all suffered under crass vices, or fell into open idolatries, yet there was no pure and approved religion, founded upon common understanding alone. For even though few persons did not share in the madness of the common herd, there remains the firm teaching of Paul that the wisdom of God is not understood by the princes of this world.”In this way, Calvin rejects the entire scope of Medieval “Natural Theology” which found its ultimate expression in Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. Such a strong insistence on the transcendence of God can often have the negative effect of making God seem quite remote from humankind. However, the Triune God is not only transcendent, He is paradoxically very immanent and intimate with His people. Such is the importance of revelation. Everything that we know about God is what God chooses to reveal to us by means of His Word. Therefore Calvin writes, “since either the custom of the city or the agreement of tradition is too weak and frail and bond of piety to follow in worshiping God, it remains for God himself to give witness of himself from heaven.” Revelation is our lifeline to God and ultimately this revelation was given to us in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Now, any knowledge of God must come through the working of the Spirit on a person’s life to allow them to see the glorious radiance of God in the person of Jesus.
While it is wonderful good news that the transcendent God makes Himself immanent through revelation in the living Word of His Son and the written Word that bears testimony to Him, Calvin also offers us caution about our knowledge of God. In I. xiii. 1. Calvin writes,
“For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to ‘lisp’ in speaking to us. Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.”As Paul writes in 1 Cor 12:12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Because God is transcendent and we are mere finite creatures, God must accommodate himself to our limited capacities for knowledge and understanding if he is to reveal anything of Himself to us. It seems that such an insight as this should lead us to great caution in how we do Theology. We don’t know God as He is in Himself, we know Him as He has accommodated Himself to us through revelation, the primary and fullest means of which is Jesus. The implication of this is that Jesus is central to revelation and to our ability to know God.
In addition, it was encouraging to see that Calvin understood the essence of what Piper calls “Christian Hedonism. He writes in I. xiv. 22., “It is to recognize that God has destined all things for our good and salvation but at the same time to feel his power and grace in ourselves and in the great benefits he has conferred upon us, and so bestir ourselves to trust, invoke, praise, and love him.” Here is contained the astounding truth that God’s work on our behalf is what bring Him the most glory. God destines all things for our good which displays his power in the creation and also invokes the response of love, trust and praise. So, in this way, when we are satisfied in God, God is most glorified.
In III. ii. Calvin deals with the topic of faith in a way that is more comprehensive and sweet to the Christian than I have seen anywhere else. He defines faith in III. ii. 7. As “a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” It is this faith that God uses to unite us to Christ and which assures us that God is merciful and kind towards us. This kind of firm and confident assurance must be present in the life of a Christian as it is one of the primary marks of the Spirit’s work in a person.
However, this is not to say that in this “now/not yet” age that faith will not have its moments of doubt. While it is certainly true that doubt in faith should cause to always go back and examine ourselves to see whether we are truly in the faith. However, weak or doubting faith is not a sign that one is not a Christian; it is actually an assurance that one is indeed a Christian. Calvin writes, “He who, struggling with his own weakness, presses toward faith in his moments of anxiety is already in large part victorious.” So a faith that, despite its weakness and doubt, still moves toward Christ and longs for Him is actually a sign that ones faith is real and genuine.
Again, God knows the human frailty and weakness and sustains us with faith empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit so that we remain faithful to Him in confident assurance of His grace towards us throughout our life. However, this sign of God’s goodness towards us is not merely an internal reality, it is something that is signified for us through the two sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Calvin’s understanding, particularly of the Supper, is a beautiful exposition of God’s love and care for us. Calvin writes of this in IV. xviii. 19., “the Supper should be a sort of continual food on which Christ spiritually feeds the household of his believers.” It is a visible sign of the invisible reality that Christ flesh and blood are our true food which nourish us and give us life which will fully be experienced in His presence for eternity. So, as the Church gathers to partake of the Lord’s Supper, Christ is there present through His Word, continuing the flow of grace towards us that was begun with His sacrificial, atoning death on the Cross.
Lastly, it should be mentioned that Calvin does as points fall into a sort of Platonic dualism by which he seems to indicate that the “body” is evil and the “spirit” is good. Such dualisms have had a powerful influence on Western Society and the Church in particular. So for a man such as Calvin, who got so many things right in his theology and understanding of the Scriptures, such accommodations to the culture should serve as a warning that there are “gaps” in our theology where we have unwittingly become entangled with the philosophy of the age and not with the doctrine from the Word of God.
So much more could be recounted in spending a whole semester soaking in the God entranced theology of a man such as John Calvin. Space hinders me from discussing Calvin’s Trinitarian vision, his account of the substitutionary atonement, his vision of the Church that is so desperately needed in our Western, individualistic society and his stunning accounting of God’s sovereignty both over the entire creation in general and in the salvation of man more specifically. If his theological work were studied more closely and heeded more carefully, it could have the same radical, powerful impact on the Church of the 21st century as it had in the 16th century when Calvin lived and wrote.
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