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CALVIN and CHRIST by David Bond

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CALVIN and CHRIST by David Bond 1 CALVIN AND CHRIST by David Bond In the minds of many people the name of John Calvin is synonymous with ‘predestination.’ A standard English dictionary defines Calvinism as, ‘The theological system of John Calvin and his followers, characterized by emphasis on predestination and justification. 1 However, when we turn to the writings and sermons of Calvin himself, whilst the providence of God certainly one of his key concerns, as discussed in chapters 16 and 17 of Book I in the Institutes, it is significant that, in the final edition of the Institutes in 1559, he removed the discussion of predestination from Book Ito Book III. This suggests that predestination was not a priority for Calvin in the same way as for many of his theological heirs. As to why the confusion about Calvin in the popular mind, this is surely understandable in the light of priority that so many Calvinists have given to predestination. It is also understandable in view of the way in which Calvinists regularly define the real essence of Calvinism in terms the so-called Five Points of Calvinism. As valuable as these Five Points may have been in their historical context as a response to the Remonstrants, for many Calvinists they can also be an obstacle to appreciating issues that were more central to his concerns. As to how Calvinism came to characterized, all too often with predestination as its key concern, I believe that Alistair McGrath, in his book A Life of John Calvin, gives an adequate explanation. McGrath points to a change of theological methodology in Beza. As he explains: Where Calvin adopts an inductive and analytic approach to theology, focusing upon the specific historical event of Jesus Christ and moving out to explore its implications, De Bèze adopts a deductive and synthetic approach, beginning from general principles and proceeding to deduce their consequences for Christian theology . These general principles - the Divine decrees – are determined with reference to the doctrine of predestination, which thus assumes the status of a controlling principle . 2 Here McGrath points us towards to what really was at the heart of Calvin’s theological and spiritual concerns, namely, the historical event of Jesus Christ. Calvin himself makes this clear when he says, in comment on Philippians 3:8 - ‘I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord’: 3 . there are many things that have an appearance of excellence, but the knowledge of Christ surpasses to such a degree everything else by its sublimity, that, as compared with it, there is nothing that is not contemptible. Let us, therefore, learn from this, what value we ought to set upon the knowledge of Christ alone. 4 He speaks just as emphatically in his Harmony of the Gospels, in comment on Luke 24:26 - ‘Thus it is written’: The same words warn us of what end we must principally learn from the Law and the Prophets: as Christ is the end and soul of the Law, whatever we may learn without Him or apart from Him, is vain and unsatisfying. 5 When we turn to the final version of the Institutes in 1559, which constitute the final, definitive, systematic, and logical ordering of his theology just six years before his death, we also see the key importance that he attaches to the person and work of Christ. In the first book, The Knowledge of God the Creator, he embarks on a full discussion of God as Triune in chapter 13, in which context he presents a full explanation of the person of Christ within the Triune Godhead. He then devotes the whole of his second book to The Knowledge of God the Redeemer in Christ In the light this, I find it hard to resist Alister McGrath’s conclusion that, ‘If there is a centre of Calvin’s religious thought, that centre may reasonably be identified as Jesus Christ himself.’ 6 The anomaly is, 1 See: Collins Concise Dictionary (Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995. 2 Alister E McGrath, A Life of John Calvin (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1990), p.213 3 Phil 3:8 4 Philippians CD 5 Luke 24:26. 6 Alister McGrath, A Life of John Calvin (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1990), p.149. 2 however, as Stephen Edmonson highlights in his book Calvin’s Christology, that Calvin’s ‘Christology . is too often ignored, underutilized, or mistaken in the cornucopia of modern Calvin scholarship.’ 7 In studying this great subject of Calvin and Christ, I shall be dealing with the Institutes as my most primary source, adopting mostly Calvin’s own logical ordering of his subject matter in the Institutes. But I shall also be drawing on his other commentaries, sermons and writings where appropriate. Before I proceed, however, may I emphasize, along with John Calvin, the danger of approaching the doctrine of Christ in a detached and coldly scholastic manner, such as we often find in discussions of the person and work of Christ. As Calvin himself says: . the knowledge of God, as I understand it, is that by which we not only conceive that there is a God, but also grasp what befits us and is proper to his glory . we shall not say that . God is known where there is no religion or piety.8 Here indeed is pure and real religion: faith so joined with an earnest fear of God that this fear also embraces willing reverence, and carries with it such legitimate worship as is prescribed in the law. 9 What praise can we offer him? To be brief, we must be sure of the infinite good that is done to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, in order that we may be ravished in love with our God and inflamed with a proper zeal to obey him, and keep ourselves strictly in awe of him with all out thoughts, with all our affections, and with all our hearts. 10 In other words, if we can study Calvin’s doctrine of Christ without being inwardly stirred by an increased sense of His glory and love, an increasing love for Him, and a growing desire to serve and obey Him, then we have missed the vibrant and warmly spiritual heart of John Calvin. 1. THE CENTRALITY OF CHRIST Having highlighted the centrality of Christ for Calvin, I want to demonstrate now in precisely what sense Christ was central for Calvin. Our starting point is in Calvin’s underlying distinction between God as He is in Himself and God as He is revealed to us. As Paul Helm explains: He is drawing a contrast between two different kinds of knowledge; namely, the knowledge that we may have of God – which is partial, multiform, and accommodated to our capacity – and the knowledge that God, and only God, has of himself. In Jerome Gellman’s terms, God has an ‘inner life.’ 11 Stephen Edmonson precisely what this implies with Christ. He says: Fundamental to Calvin’s theology is the intuition of the infinite gap between God and humanity, a gap grounded in our creatureliness and exacerbated by our sin. We have no capacity for God, so God capacitates Godself to us . God in Christ brings Godself down to our level so that God might communicate God’s will and grace to us. God in Christ condescends. 12 In other words, because God is infinite and we are finite, our understanding of God is unavoidably finite and partial. Nevertheless, we can still know God in a real way insofar as He has revealed Himself to us in and through Christ - Christ the Mediator, who not only reconciles us to God, but who, in His very person and works, reveals God to us. As Calvin says: ‘God is not to be sought out in His unsearchable height, but is to be known by us, in so far as He manifests himself in Christ.’ 13 ‘All thinking about God without Christ is a vast abyss which immediately swallows up all our thoughts.’ 14 ‘Irenaeus writes that the Father, himself infinite, 7 S Edmonson. Calvins’ Christology (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p.2 8 Institutes I.2.1 9 Institutes I.3.2 10 Sermons 20 on Ephesians (Banner of Truth), p.295 11 Paul Helm, Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford University Press, ), p.30. 12 Stephen Edmonson, Calvin’s Christology (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p.38 13 2 Cor 3:6 (CD) 14 Comm. 1 Pet 1:20 3 becomes finite in the Son, for he has accommodated himself to our little measure, lest our minds be overwhelmed by the immensity of his glory.’ 15 Or as Charles Wesley says so simply, but beautifully: ‘Our God contracted to a span, Incomprehensibly made man.’ 16 Calvin also insists that Christ is the central, unifying key to Scripture, Old Testament and New. As he explains in his preface to Olivétan’s French Translation of the New Testament: This is what we should in short seek in the whole of Scripture: truly to know Jesus Christ, and the infinite riches that are comprised in him, and are offered to us by him from God the Father. If one were to sift thoroughly the Law and the Prophets, he would not find a single word which would not draw and bring us to him . our minds ought to come to a halt at the point where we learn in Scripture to know Jesus Christ and him alone, so that we can be led by him to the Father who contains in himself all perfection. 17 Again, in comment on Romans 10:4 - ‘Christ is the end [completion, perfection] of the law’ - he says: .
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