Piety and Mystery in Calvin's Doctrine of the Trinity
[Found an older term paper I had written for a Reformation theology course, so I figured I'd post it. Enjoy!]
Few figures in the
long and colorful line of Christian theologians throughout the centuries can
boast simultaneously of such a plethora of both passionately devoted epigones
and equally and intractably passionate opponents as John Calvin. Calvin’s thought, in the words of one commentator,
because of its brilliance and influence has “been avidly deconstructed…in
search of a theological or religious ally or, occasionally, in search of a
historical source for the theological trials of the present.”[1] In “normative and mythic ways,”[2]
some invoke Calvin’s theology as an exuberant paean of Christian thought, and
to others it is a funeral dirge whose Cthonic notes can only be meticulously
expunged through critique.
Calvin
though, like many, has been submitted to the trenchant principle that “history
is rewritten in every age.” Over the
past years, this has often meant Calvin is represented—especially by those who
have not read him closely—as a stringent and doctrinaire systematician whose
writings provide a somnambulant trek through the labyrinthine topology of the
theological landscape. Or, perhaps more
commonly, he is painted as an egotistical demagogue whose quintessential moment—rather than a horrific misstep—was a petulant
and brutal act of retribution against Michael Servetus. In this manner Calvin has been caricatured as
an icon for Christian intolerance, triumphalist adherence to an abstruse system
of theology, advocate of theocratic totalitarianism, and the proud owner of a
fatalistic metaphysics.[3] To take one particularly egregious and
unsubtle re-narration, Christopher Hitchens writes,
According to the really extreme
religious totalitarians, such as John Calvin,…an infinity of punishment can be
awaiting you even before you are born.
Calvin’s Geneva was a prototypical totalitarian state, and Calvin
himself a sadist and a torturer and a killer.
The urge to ban and censor books, silence dissenters, condemn outsiders,
invade the private sphere, and invoke an exclusive salvation is the very
essence of the totalitarian. [Calvin’s
followers] are still among us and go by the softer names of Presbyterians and
Baptists.”[4]
Or so the story
goes.[5]
What
is not often noticed, or perhaps too often ignored, is the eminently pastoral
tone of Calvin’s theology.[6] Indeed for Calvin there is no true knowledge
where there was not also true piety.[7] So far from deserving the obloquy heaped upon
him regarding a supposedly staid and somber system of theology, one can,
according to a recent study, actually divide many portions of Calvin’s writings
of the Institutes into stanzas or
strophes containing anaphoric parallelism, and in other instances, chiasm and inclusio, making for some beautiful
poetry out of what is also rigorous theology.[8] Moreover, despite the systematic nature of
Calvin’s theology, it is not meant as a splitting of the hieratic veil between
earth and heaven for pristine speculation on mysteries divine: “Calvin’s
theology is properly concerned for right answers, but his right answers should
be understood not as a logically unassailable system of ideas but in terms of
their adequacy as a heartfelt confession
of faith attempting to protect the
mystery of God’s revelation.”[9] God’s essence, for example, is simple and
incomprehensible in itself.[10] To Calvin, says Paul Helm, “we speak most
about God’s essence…when we exercise reserve and restraint.”[11]
It
will be the contention and purpose of this essay therefore, to briefly
demonstrate how Calvin’s dual emphasis on piety and God’s incomprehensible
mystery temper his otherwise systematic theological conclusions in order to exhibit,
not Calvin’s flawlessness—as if to simply oscillate to the opposite polarity in
order to compensate for absurd renderings of Calvin—but to demonstrate that
Calvin was a man intensely committed to the spiritual
welfare of the church and his fellow Christians. Yet, considering the almost unimaginably
voluminous nature of the corpus of
Calvin’s prodigious writings, we will be unable to approach anything closely
resembling an adequate survey of this nuance.
Hence in order to demonstrate Calvin’s emphasis on correct theology as a
means of piety, we will outline Calvin’s doctrine of the Trinity as a case
study—not for a simple elaboration of Calvin’s doctrine of the Trinity per se,
but by viewing its salient aspects regarding piety and mystery.
In the course of
this evaluation it will be seen that Calvin’s most developed form of the
Trinity took the shape it did not for the sake of speculation on God’s nature,
but because the mystery itself was
being constantly assaulted by those Calvin perceived as heretics which had to
be answered, and as such there was also the potential destruction of authentic
Christian piety, linked as it was to the truth of God’s revelation in
scripture. First we turn to a general
elaboration of Calvin’s concepts of piety and mystery in order to discover in a
rudimentary form what it is we are in fact looking for, and then to their
specific adumbration in Calvin’s Trinitarian doctrine.
I.
Theology and
Christian Piety
That Christian
piety—the Latin pietas—is a major
theme in Calvin’s theology has
been noted by numerous scholars,
and is by no means a novel thesis here.[12] In fact John McNeil poignantly notes that
Calvin’s theology is “his piety described at length,”[13]
and Brian Gerrish echoes this by noting that the scope of Calvin’s theology is
done “within the limits of piety alone.”[14] These
descriptions are certainly accurate, however it is pertinent to note to avoid
confusion that Calvin’s theology itself
is not considered by Calvin to be a form of piety, but produces piety as a response to the truth it conveys, so that
“piety was to be conjoined with ‘teaching’ or ‘doctrine’: Calvin did not
understand it as an exercise separable from his teaching, preaching, and
debating,” yet in contradistinction
“[Calvin] often refers to the genre
of his work as disputatio or a locus.”[15] Calvin defines his terminology of pietas in the Institutes by noting that he “calls ‘piety’ that reverence joined
with love of God which knowledge of
his benefits induces.”[16] It might be more accurate, then, to go with
Ozment’s less superlative description by noting, “the union of internal belief
and external behavior would become the hallmark of Calvinism.”[17]
Without putting
undue weight on psychoanalytic theories of disposition or pathology it can
nonetheless be speculated that this emphasis finds its pedigree in Calvin’s own
conversion to Protestantism, which he describes in a commentary on the Psalms
(1557):
At first I remained so obstinately
addicted to the superstitions of the papacy that it would have been hard indeed
to have pulled me out of so deep a quagmire by a sudden conversion. But God subdued
and made teachable a heart, which, for my age, was far too hardened in such
matters. Having received some foretaste
and knowledge of true piety, I was inflamed with such a great desire to profit by it
that, although I did not give up my other studies, I worked only slackly at
then. I was wonderstuck, when, before
the year was out, all those who had some desire for true doctrine ranged themselves
around me to learn, although I was hardly more than a beginner myself.[18]
The centerpiece
phrase to pay heed to here is the link of “God subdued and made teachable a
heart,” and Calvin’s new “knowledge of true piety.” This gives some grammatical weight, so to
speak, to divining Calvin’s psychology.
Ozment glosses this autobiographical excerpt of Calvin by noting “Calvin
strongly inclined to view his ministry as a continuous struggle to subdue and
make teachable undisciplined and hardened hearts.”[19] Beeke writes of the extent of this interconnection
in which Calvin created an integral link between doctrine and pietas in the whole of Protestantism:
For Calvin and the Reformers of the
sixteenth-century Europe, doctrine and prayer as well as faith and worship are
integrally connected. For Calvin, the
Reformation includes the reform of piety (pietas),
or spirituality, as much as a reform of
theology. The spirituality that had
been cloistered behind monastery walls for centuries had broken down. Medieval spirituality was reduced to a
celibate, ascetic, and penitential devotion in the convent or monastery. But Calvin helped Christians understand piety
in terms of living and acting every day according to God’s will in the midst of
human society. Through Calvin’s
influence, Protestant spirituality focused on how one lived the Christian life
in the family, the fields, the worship, and the marketplace. Calvin helped the Reformation change the entire focus of Christian life.[20]
In
fact in the introductory preface of the Institutes
directed to King Francis the I, Calvin mentions in no uncertain terms that the
purpose of this book is “solely to transmit certain rudiments by which those
who are touched with any zeal for religion might be shaped to true godliness [pietas].”[21] The subtitle adjoined to the first edition of
the Institutes stated this in an even
broader manner by indicating this theological reflection was “embracing almost
the whole sum of piety, & whatever is necessary to know of the doctrine of
salvation: A work most worthy to be read by all persons zealous for piety.”
In Calvin’s sense pietas designates the right attitude of
man before God. However this pietas is not a work of man. Rather it
is rooted in Calvin’s understanding of the unio
mystica with Christ, which is “one of the most consistently influential
features of Calvin’s theology and ethics.”[22] Calvin himself summarizes by writing “that
joining together of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our
hearts—in short, that mystical union—are accorded by us the highest degree of
importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in
the gifts with which he has been endowed.”[23] This union is mystical—that is to say
historical, ethical, and personal—though interestingly Calvin notes that it is not an essential union but rather “a
great mystery.”[24] There is no krasis or intermixture of human and divine substances, nonetheless
“Not only does he cleave to us by an indivisible bond of fellowship, but with a
wonderful communion, day by day, he grows more and more into one body with us,
until he becomes completely one with us.”[25]
The inculcation of
piety in man by recognition of God in the unio
mystica is like a prism that inflects a pale, spectral existence into a
pleromatic chorus: true knowledge, reverent love, filial fear, saving faith,
heartfelt worship, prayerful submission, peace with fellowman, and the absolute
end of idolatry. It shapes man to his
true form as a creature humble and penitent before the Sovereign God, and, in
fact, the zeal for piety is a zeal “to illustrate the glory of God.”[26] It is in this regard that we can understand
Calvin noting that the law is “the perfect guide to all duties of piety and
love,”[27]
because the law, according to Calvin provides for man precisely the framework
of man’s orientation to the Divine, and hence is the structure of piety
initiated through grace.
This love and
reverence for God is a necessary concomitant for the knowledge of Him, and “the
whole of life ought to be a sort of practice of godliness [pietas],”[28] and
in this matter, to complete the syllogism, the whole of life should be a
submission to sound doctrine which produces pietas
in man by God’s grace. Piety shows that
the Spirit is already working in us what had been accomplished in Christ, so
that we may live piously for Him.[29] The truth of sound doctrine, we might say, allows God to be God above man and man to be
man before God, and it is precisely in the rehabilitation and maintenance
of this distinction that man with pietas
brings glory to God in acknowledging
God as the glorious God He is, and humbly acting upon the moral precepts of
this recognition. For the pious
individual glorifying God supersedes personal salvation—it is, in fact, for
this end that we were created, namely, the glory of God.[30] Pietas,
then, stemming as it does from true doctrine, is the ultimate enactment of
anti-idolatry.
But this is not
the diminution of idolatry through an increasingly sophisticated nisus toward
the absolute, toward a pristine and intricate theory, which wards off
misunderstanding. Rather if it involves
precision, it is a precision invoked to protect
mystery. Piety, as we saw, is an
enactment of precisely the infinite
distinction between man as redeemed creature and God as creator and
redeemer. In fact we will see in the
last section, to a large degree the most sophisticated areas in Calvin’s
doctrine of the Trinity were defensive
stratagems and maneuverings in order to buttress either piety or mystery
wherever he perceived they were being assaulted. Doctrine is a humble recognition of God’s
supernal mystery even in the midst of his concrete, accommodating
revelation. It is to this idea of God’s
accommodation and mystery to which we turn.
That God is a
supernal and transcendent sovereign, governing the world from the
heights of His mystery, is a claim
Calvin seldom departs from.
Nevertheless, lest too much credence is given to the exaggerated claims
of some of Calvin’s less informed opponents that this is a triumphalist and
absolute picture set forth in Calvin with the pristine clarity of a
mathematical proof, we here are exploring in an initial way how Calvin guards
the divine mystery. There is a sense in which the heights of
God’s sovereignty is mitigated and
paradoxically maintained precisely in this mitigation, by God Himself on behalf
of man. God approaches man in ways
understandable to man, thus in a particular way “abrogating,” his transcendence
to meet man and redeem him. God, so to
speak limits himself—accommodates—to our particular, finite, fallen, and
creaturely ways of thinking and speaking in order to communicate with us
intelligibly:
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 loftineness.[32]
Yet simultaneously
God’s transcendence is truly
maintained, for above, behind, and beyond this revelation is the mystery of God
in se (in Himself). Calvin’s numerous references to divine
incomprehensibility and inscrutability naturally predispose him to the type of via negativa that is the theory of God’s
accommodation, even though this can hardly been said to be on identical lines
with the apophatic tradition as a whole.[33]
In fact, most poignantly, Calvin often represents this theory of accommodation
along the lines of a father’s care for his children:
In setting forth this example of
great compassion to be seen in man [the parable of the prodigal son], He [the
Father] willed to teach us how much more abundantly we ought to expect
it of Him. For He is not only a father
but by far the best and kindest of all fathers, provided we still cast
ourselves upon His mercy.[34]
Elsewhere
Calvin uses the beautiful “ruling metaphor” of divine theater regarding the world to describe accommodation. As Ford Battles describes it: “A stage play
is itself an accommodated representation of the playwright’s inspiration and
insight into human existence to the more limited vision of his audience, so in
the vast theater of heaven and earth the divine playwright stages the ongoing
drama of creation, alienation, return, and forgiveness for the teeming audience
of humanity itself.”[35] In other words, “God clothes, so to speak,
his invisible inaccessible nature with the visible, palpable raiment of the
universe in which we live.”[36]
We should caution
that this is not evidence that Calvin is espousing a type of natural theology
apart from revelation, rather “accommodated revelation of God to us [in nature]
takes its scriptural starting point not in Gen. 1 so much as in Romans 1. The Institutes
is constructed backward from the incarnation through the law…the theater is
built, the stage set, wherein the audience, inexcusable in its blindness, may
at last view its true destiny in Christ.”[37]
Elsewhere Calvin also speaks of man’s naturally limited capacities, and the
necessary noetic deprivations that come along with our post-lapsarian
corruption.[38] Hence rather than the mystical ascent of the
apophatic, Calvin’s accommodation is more of a regulating principle which sees
God as providing the proper hermeneutical contexts for successful transmission
of information to creatures, who are in multifarious ways unsuited
receptors. Moreover, even as a
regulating hermeneutic there are nonetheless a stable “core of facts,” that
Calvin believes are certain and not-accommodated:
The appeal to accommodation…governs
the use of anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language in Scripture to
characterize God. Such accommodated
language is ‘controlled’ by literal
truths about God’s nature [e.g. omnipotence, timelessness, etc…]…hence Calvin
is not claiming that we will not be able to speak of or understand God at all
unless he accommodates himself to our understanding and refers to himself in
ways which imply change as he interacts with his people…some human language
about God [for Calvin] is exact…One
reason why Calvin thought that language about divine repentance is an
accommodation to our understanding but that of God foreseeing is not is that
such foreseeing coheres with his ‘core theism,’ particularly his emphasis upon
God’s eternity and immutability, whereas the ascription of repentance to God
does not.[39]
Therefore
we must certainly avoid the anachronistic conclusion that Calvin is some sort
of proto-Kantian epistemologist who moves God to the margins and borders of
experience—the nescient depths of the noumenal—and
whose luminous phenomenal surface
would then always only be a trace infinitely remote and unbridgeable to
God-in-Himself.[40] Accommodated reality actually reveals the
truth to which it points. On the other
hand Calvin’s theory of accommodation does represent a keen awareness that this
movement of God to man involves the translation
required to speak to beings that are radically bound in all the lineaments of
their being to space and time—limitations which necessitate a space of communion
between man and God suitable to man, and initiated from the Divine side
itself. God interprets Godself for us.
The space of meeting cannot be set up in advance by man, because man is
by nature “a perpetual factory of idols,” and his mind “full as it is of pride
and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it
sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it
conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God.”[41]
Hence
this section comes around to the same concept as our previous section on pietas: Our unio mystica with Christ is the ultimate example of
accommodation. This provides an
additional perspective to Calvin’s complex doctrine of Christ as mediator:
There are two reasons why there can
be no faith in God, unless Christ put himself as it were in the middle, for we
must first ponder the vastness of the divine glory and at the same time the
slenderness of our understanding. Far
from certain is it that our keenness could climb so high as to apprehend
God. Therefore all thinking about God,
apart from Christ, is a bottomless abyss which utterly swallows up all our
senses…The other reason is that when faith ought to join us to God, we shy away
from and dread all approach, unless the Mediator meets us to free us from
fear…Hence it is clear that we cannot trust in God save through Christ. In Christ God so to speak makes himself
little, in order to lower himself to our capacity; and Christ alone calms our
consciences that they may dare intimately to approach God.[42]
In
this sense we might note that all other acts of accommodation point to Christ,
who is the supreme instance of this principle.[43]
The
importance of Christ for Calvin, even from the modest analysis of our first two
sections, can hardly be overstated. In
regards to our pietas before God, it
is only when we are joined to Christ in mystical union that we can achieve our
true destiny as creatures to glorify God as
God, to in fact speak truly of God and hence have his moral and spiritual
life in the fecundity allowed via God’s truth.
On the other hand, in the advent of Christ we see that God is truly in nostrum medius—in our midst—while
nonetheless remaining a mysterious reality ultra
nos—outside of us. This dialectic
applies to Christ in the so-called extra
Calvinisticum, though this exceeds the scope of our essay.[44] For our immediate goals, it suffices to note
that the convergence of these two themes—piety and mystery—in the figure of
Christ as Mediator plays a heavy role in Calvin’s Trinitarian theology, as we
shall see. As will be shown, most of the
development of Calvin’s doctrine in its intricacy is based upon the fact that
what he perceives as heretical devarications from truth are in fact abrogating
either true piety, or mystery, or both at once, and must be combated.
III.
A Case Study
of Trinity, Piety, and Mystery: The Threads Intertwine.
It has been noted
that in the Institutes there is no
systematic discussion of the
existence, nature, or attributes of
God.[45] In this sense one can see a contrast between
Calvin’s treatment of the doctrine of God from, say, Thomas Aquinas’ extensive
discussion on the same topic.[46] Warfield notes this “absence,” cannot be
attributed to “indifference to [the attributes] on Calvin’s part, or to any
peculiarity of his dogmatic standpoint,” rather “the omission…belongs to the
peculiarity of the treatise as a literary
product…[Calvin passes over the attributes] not because there was nothing
to say about these topics, nor because…they were insignificant…but simply because
he had been led already to say informally about them all that was necessary for
the religious, practical purpose he had in view in writing this treatise.”[47] Willhelm Niesel adds nuance to this general
consensus by noting “the purpose of Calvin’s Trinitarianism is to secure the
biblical message, ‘God revealed in the flesh’ against false interpretations,”[48]
and Charles Partee balances this nuance by adding “certainly Calvin’s doctrine
of the Trinity defends his Christology, but a more obvious reason for the
brevity of his exposition is the desire to be faithful to Scripture and to resist intellectual speculation about
deity.”[49] Or, to translate these (accommodate?) into
the specific idiom of this essay, Calvin’s doctrine of the Trinity can be seen
as 1.) relating to pietas by guarding
the truth of Christ and God and 2.) protecting the mystery of God by
elaborating the boundaries of possible speculation.
For Calvin, God is essentially Trinitarian, and this
Trinitarianism plays a fundamental role in his theology—there can really be no
complete discussion on God without invoking His Trinitarian nature. Having
affirmed God’s essential unity—and having just prior called attention to false
idols—Calvin turns to the elaboration of the true God as Triune:
But God also designates himself by
another special mark to distinguish himself precisely from idols. For he so proclaims himself the sole God as
to offer himself to be contemplated clearly in three persons. Unless we grasp these, only the bare and
empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true
God…When we profess to believe in one God, under the name of God is understood
a single, simple essence, in which we comprehend three persons, or
hypostaseis. Therefore, whenever the
name of God is mentioned without particularization, there are designated no
less the Son and the Spirit than the Father; but where the Son is joined to the
Father, then the relation of the two enters in; and so we distinguish among the
persons.[50]
Nor
is this desideratum of theology esoteric or merely for cognitive consent to a
proposition. As has been shown, one
cannot magnify the intellectual side of Calvin’s thought without simultaneously
magnifying the fiduciary. On the most
basic level, for Calvin the Trinitarian doctrine of God is important because,
as is noted in the very first sentences of the Institutes, “the knowledge of God and of ourselves…are connected
together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes,
and gives birth to the other. For…no man
can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in
whom he lives and moves.”[51] That is, one cannot even think of oneself properly without God. Hence Calvin elsewhere states “We must not
suppose that Christian faith is a naked and mere knowledge of God or
understanding of the Scriptures, which floats in the brain without touching the
heart,”[52]
and that “the assent we give to God…is rather of the heart than of the brain,
and rather of the affections than of the understanding.”[53]
Given
the intimate tie in Calvin between truth and piety—and the role pietas plays in the essential
constitution of man as man before God as God—the emphasis on mystery in the
Trinity guards the propriety of the
truth revealed in Scripture, and hence is a bastion securing man as man and God
as God and the necessary distinction between them. Man as creature can only exist authentically as a creature before God. But which God? The Triune God revealed in scripture. Hence misidentification—through an ambiguity
of non-scriptural means, or over-precision
of philosophical discourse—not only is idolatrous, but also constitutes a
fundamental disruption of man’s nature before God as it disallows him to exist
as a creature of the true God. The
doctrine of the Trinity is that place where “if anywhere in the secret
mysteries of Scripture, we ought to play the philosopher soberly and with great
moderation; let us use great caution that neither our thoughts nor our speech
go beyond the limits to which the Word of God itself extends… [we must] not
take it into our heads either to seek out God anywhere else than in his Sacred
Word, or to think anything about him that is not prompted by his Word.”[54]
Calvin,
though, is not a iblicist in the strict sense of the term, as “he thinks it is
permissible and even necessary, to use language and concepts drawn from
extra-biblical sources to articulate—and
in particular, defend—the biblical doctrine.”[55] That is to say he is quite aware—and
affirms—the Niceno-Constantinopolitan rendition of Trinitarian doctrine with
its usage of terms like hypostasis
and ousia—albeit not uncritically,
nor by way of a mandatory confession of these creeds, especially in the
so-called autotheos controversy,
mentioned below. Yet he expresses his
reticence to press the precision of these terms except where necessary to
combat heresy by citing with approval a passage from Hilary of Poitiers:
The guilt of the heretics and
blasphemers compels us to undertake what is unlawful, to scale arduous heights,
to speak of the ineffable, and to trespass upon forbidden places. And since by faith alone we should fulfill
what is commanded, namely, to adore the Father, to venerate the Son with Him,
and to abound in the Holy Spirit, we are forced to raise our lowly words to
subjects tat cannot be described. By the
guilt of another we are forced into guilt, so that what should have been
restricted to the pious contemplation of our minds is now exposed to the
dangers of human speech.[56]
Calvin
goes on to note his own content toward elaborating only a minimalist expression
of Trinitarian faith if it were not for heretical intrusions: “if, therefore,
these terms [such as trinity, person] were not rashly invented, we ought to
beware lest by repudiating them we be accused of overweening rashness. Indeed, I
could wish they were buried, if only among all men this faith were agreed
on: that Father and Son and Spirit are
one God, yet the Son is not the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but that they
are differentiated by a peculiar quality.”[57]
In Helm’s words,
“the use of a certain kind of substantive expression for God’s threeness [hypostasis] and another kind of
expression for God’s oneness [ousia] safeguards New Testament talk about the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…it helps us to say the right kind of thing
in turn about God the Father, Son, and Spirit that is not sayable of the
others.” And, for example, “guided by
the presence of the substantive ‘person,’ we are prevented from entertaining
and favouring certain thoughts about the threeness of the Trinity that would be
at odds with the data of the New Testament…[such as] three aspects of one
God…or three gods…or the thought of Spirit as impersonal.”[58]
Hence we can see
why, later in his career, Calvin was forced to assert the deity of the Son and
the Holy Spirit in the strongest terms possible against his opponents by
utilizing Trinitarianism with increased precision—most notably against Michael
Servetus, George Blandrata, and Valentine Gentile. Gentile, for example, sought to explain the
inner mechanisms of God, and taught that the Father alone is God Himself—autotheos—so that the Son and Holy
Spirit are of a different essence than the Father, who infused into them his
own deity.[59] In many ways this appears, despite the
terminological differences, to be similar to the claims of Eunomius against the
Cappadocians in arguing that Fatherhood was an essential quality of God—hence
the Son and the Spirit, possessing sonhood and spiration respectively, must be essentially different from the
Father. Against Gentile, Calvin
emphasized that the Son—and by extension the Spirit—are themselves autotheos with the Father. To do this Calvin puts forward a strikingly
sophisticated argument that in many ways parallels the Cappadocian’s response
to Eunomius:
Certainly the Father would not
differ from the Son unless he had in himself something unique, which was not
shared with the Son. Now what can they
find to distinguish him? If the
distinction is in the essence, let them answer whether or not [the Father] has
shared it with the Son. Indeed, this
could not be done in part because it would be wicked to fashion a
half-God. Besides, in this way they
would basely tear apart the essence of God.
It remains that the essence is wholly and perfectly common to Father and
Son. If this is true, then there is
indeed with respect to the essence no distinctions of one from the other.[60]
That
is to say that each of the Persons of the Trinity are wholly and perfectly God,
and are not partitions of the essence.
In this way Calvin can call the Son autotheos
because the Son is wholly and perfectly God.
Interestingly enough, though, when challenged by Caroli to endorse the
Nicene and Athanasian creeds, Calvin refused to do so on the grounds that his allegiance
was to God, and not Athanasisus. And
though he endorsed the eternal begottenness of the Son,[61]
he, in an anti-Caroli and anti-Gentile moment, objected to the Nicene Creed’s
“light from light, true God from true God,” because,
even though we admit that in
respect to order and degree the beginning of divinity is in the Father, yet we
say that it is a detestable invention that essence is proper to the Father
alone, as if he were the deifier of the son [as Gentile taught]. For in this way either essence would be
manifold or they call Christ ‘God’ in title and imagination only. If they grant that the Son is God, but second
to the Father, then in him will be begotten and formed the essence that is in
the Father unbegotten and unformed.[62]
It
is no wild claim, then, to view this autotheos
controversy as Calvin essentially protecting his most basic understanding of
Christian theology as leading to pietas
and protecting the essential mystery of God as Trinity. If Gentile was correct, we might speculate, then
the internal “mechanism,” of God is explained—the Father transfers His essence
to the Son and Spirit to a lesser degree much like an echo recapitulates with
diminishing return the initial sonorousness of a voice. But this explanation assaults the ramparts of
heaven, expanding the limits of man’s reason to encompass even God, and, to
Calvin, sets up its own idolatry by attempting to make God understandable
beyond any allowable boundary set by Scripture’s revelation. Moreover true pietas—which as we saw was linked intrinsically to the unio mystica with Christ—would be
entirely circumvented, as Christ is no longer “true God,” in an authentic
sense, but some type of ontologically derivative creature imbued with the
Father’s essence.
IV.
Conclusion
It is an unfortunate
truism that in general the things we most dislike are the things
which we least understand. In many instances this is nowhere more true
than much of the enmity toward John Calvin.
While it has not been the intention of this essay to recommend Calvin’s
system as a whole, or to defend Calvin from many of his most severe mistakes,
it has been an attempt, so to speak, to humanize
the theologian. We have seen how
important piety before the mystery of God is for Calvin’s theology, and that
this is expressed quintessentially in his doctrine of God as the Trinity. Calvin was hardly the caricature of the cold
systematic theologian which he so often suffers under the malfeasance of those
who, often out of misunderstanding, respond to him with vituperous and
uncharitable attacks. In fact theologies
today could benefit much from Calvin’s continuing of the Augustinian tradition
of incorporating spirituality, prayer, and personal reflection into even the
most philosophically rigorous portions of their thought. We would all do well to remember how
interconnected our thought life is to our personal and communal service and
piety. And above all, our humility
before God and one another is based on the fact that while God’s truth is
eternal, our appreciation for that truth marches on, and can only stumble with
us toward Zion.
[1] Richard A. Muller The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the
Foundation of a Theological Tradition –Oxford Studies in Historical
Theology. (New York: Oxford, 2000) p.4.
[2] Charles Partee The Theology of John Calvin (Louisville:
Westminster John-Knox Press, 2008) p.xi.
[3] On a personal note it should
be mentioned that I chose John Calvin as a topic of inquiry in order to
overcome my own unwarranted prejudices by increasing my knowledge of him, even
in so modest a form as this essay.
[4] Christopher Hitchens God is not Great: How Religion Poisons
Everything (Boston: Twelve, 2007) pp.233-234. It should be noted that this quote was utilized
not for its ability to represent the average take on Calvin, or even for its
“scholarly analysis.” We should be
hesitant to award anyone the title of “scholar,” to one who has mastered the
art of bombastic flippancy and wild generalizations as Hitchens has. Nonetheless this is a fairly common
conception of Calvin amongst those who already find Christianity a barbarity,
so that, in a certain sense, a partial exoneration of Calvin’s character can in
itself have an apologetic force.
[5] C.f. Partee Theology of John Calvin p.5ff for a
brief survey of critiques.
[6] Joel R. Beeke “Calvin on
Piety,” in The Cambridge Companion to
John Calvin ed. Donald K. McKim (Cambridge: Cambridge Universtiy Press,
2004) p.125ff.
[8] Ford Lewis Battles Interpreting John Calvin ed. Robert
Benedetto (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1996) pp.249ff
[9] Partee Theology of John Calvin p.31.
Emphasis added.
[10] John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion
1.13.2. Hereafter designated Inst with section numbers.
[11] Paul Helm John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford: Oxford
Universit Press, 2004) p.14.
[12] For a survey of such
material see the endnotes of Beeke “Calvin on Piety,” pp.145-152; c.f. Battles Interpreting John Calvin pp.289-306 in
the chapter entitled “True Piety According to Calvin.” It should be noted at the outset that I am
indebted to these two essays for directing me to many of the references to
piety in Calvin’s Institutes, and
they helped to (relatively) abrogate my ignorance of Calvin’s theological
orientation to piety in a much shorter amount of time than I could have hoped
on my own.
[13] Cited in John Hesselink,
“The Development and Purpose of Calvin’s Institutes,” in Richard C. Gamble, ed.
Articles on Calvin and Calvinism vol.4,
Influences Upon Calvin and Discussion of the 1559 Institutes (New York:
Garland, 1992) pp.215-216.
[14] Brian A. Gerrish, “Theology
Within the Limits of Piety Alone: Schliermacher and Calvin’s Doctrine of God,”
in B.A. Gerrish and Robert Bendetto, eds., Reformatio
Perennis: Essays on Calvin and the Reformation in Honor of Ford Lewis Battles
(Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1981) pp.67-87.
[15] Muller The Unaccommodated Calvin p.107.
Muller goes on to note “it is simply not helpful to declare that
Calvin’s Institutes is not a
theological system, that it is ‘pastoral,’ rather than ‘dogmatic theology,’
that it is a ‘theology of piety’…Calvin’s theology was certainly pastoral…it
certainly contains elements of piety throughout…but also has profound dogmatic
concerns throughout.” (p.181). I am no
Calvin expert, but I feel that this distinction by Muller, though helpful for
illustrative purposes, really has to presume that pastoral piety and dogmatics
are two separate themes able to be more or less discretely identified. It is in this way Muller can state the Institutes “contains elements of piety,” but also “has profound dogmatic concerns
throughout.” (note this additive conjunction “also,” indicates the compounding of two or more relatively distinct
elements). If by this he means that
dogmatic and pietistic concerns are distinct but inseparable, so be it. However I get the feeling from this statement
that he sees piety in one area, and dogmatic concern in another. Given Calvin’s
emphasis on the intrinsic relation between inner and outer life, it is hard for
me to understand how something could “simply” be dogmatic in one area, or pietas in another. Pietas
appears to stem precisely from “dogmatic concern.”
[17] Steven Ozment The Age of Reform 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of
Late Medieval and Reformation Europe. (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1981) p.356.
[18] Cited in Ibid p.355.
[20] Beeke “Calvin on Piety,”
p.145.
[22] D. Willis Watkins “The Unio Mystica and the Assurance of Faith
According to Calvin.” p.78. I should
note for the record here too that the unio
mystica hardly exhausts the extent of Calvin’s concept of pietas, which finds continued
elaboration in, e.g. his pneumatology and sacramentology. For our purposes here Calvin’s emphasis of
the unio mystica is singled out in
order to provide a clear transition from this general discussion of piety to
our “case study,” of piety’s relation to theology in Calvin’s understanding of
the Trinity. We will see that in the Trinitarian
controversies Calvin heavily emphasized that Christ is autotheos—that is, “God Himself”—no doubt due to his opponents
denial of this and emphasis that the Father alone
is autotheos. If Christ is something of an ontic remotion
from the original source of the Father, however, this obviously would impeded
Calvin’s concept of the unio mystica
with Christ, and hence its corresponding result in piety. It is just this relation that we will briefly
explore in the final section.
[24] Inst.
II.12.7; III.11.5. This concept of the unio mystica is perhaps the root of the
accusations that Calvin leans towards a more “Nestorian,” concept of prosopic and not hypostatic unification, though how substantial this claim is I am
in no position to say.
[26] cited in Beeke p.126.
[31] For more in depth summaries
see: Paul Helm Calvin’s Ideas
pp.184-208; Ford Battles Interpreting
John Calvin pp.117-137.
[33] For the specific historical
precedent to Calvin’s view of accommodation see: Battles Interpreting John Calvin pp.119-124. He notes that Calvin’s theory finds a dual
precedent in the “rhetorical accommodation,” in classical rhetoric and in the
accommodation theory of Church Fathers like Origen, Tertullian, and Hillary of
Poitiers.
[35] Battles Interpreting John Calvin p.131.
[37] Battles Interpreting John Calvin p.132.
[39] Helm Calvin’s Thought pp.192-193.
[42] Commentary on 1 Peter tome 7, p.8.
One gets the image here of God kneeling down like a parent to talk face
to face with their child.
[43] Battles Interpreting John Calvin p.137.
[44] See Helm John Calvin’s Ideas pp.58-92.
[45] B.B. Warfield Calvin and Augustine (Philadelphia: The
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1956) p.134.
[46] Robert Letham The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History,
Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2004) p.252.
[47] Warfield Calvin and Augustine p.135.
[48] Willhelm Niesel The Theology of John Calvin 1st
ed. trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956) p.57.
[49] Partee The Theology of John Calvin p.65.
[52] Cited in Warfield Calvin and Augustine p.138.
[55] Helm John Calvin’s Ideas p.37
[58] Helm John Calvin’s Ideas p.39.
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