Institutes of the Christian Religion; Book I (Knowledge of God the Creator) Chap. 1-4
Being bored and waiting to leave for Korea, I've decided to reread John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. In order to more thoroughly read it than the last time I read it through, I'm taking down some notes and attempting some kind of analysis for each chapter. It is one of the formative texts of the Protestant form of Christianity, of which sometimes I forget I belong so I think its really important for me to take more seriously the documents of the Reformation. For the time being I'm just working through the first book, Knowledge of God the Creator. If I make it through, I may decide to move on to the remaining seven books. But I may not. Hopefully, whatever I get done will be helpful.
Chapter I
Calvin begins his Institutes with a discussion regarding the Knowledge of God the Creator; that is God, not understood through the person, redemption and mediation of Grace in Jesus Christ. He begins that the there is no correct understanding of God without a proper understanding of oneself. This is chapter one. According to Calvin the proper understanding of human nature is one of complete and utter wretchedness. Knowledge of God, of His infinite goodness is predicated on realization of the gulf that exists between man and God. He says, “In each of us must, then be so stung by the consciousness of his own unhappiness as to attain at least some knowledge of God.” That only in the the realization of one's “vanity, poverty, infirmity, depravity, ignorance and corruption” can man comprehend, or begin to comprehend “that the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, full abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness rest in the Lord alone.” In this way knowledge of oneself is necessary to the proper understanding of God. However, in what way is this possible?
To begin to solve this question, Calvin introduces a paradox. “Without God, there is no knowledge of self,” he says. Therefore, the knowledge of God is necessary for the proper understanding of God and the knowledge of oneself is necessary for the proper understanding of God.
Though Calvin does not even hint at this, I feel the paradox inherent in this principal correlates strongly with many of the other paradoxes inherent in Christian doctrine. The doctrine of the Incarnation, of hypostatic union, that the person of Christ is fully man and fully God, is most assuredly a contradiction in terms. Likewise, free choice and predestination, both attested to biblically, are seemingly contradictory. The whole of the Christian message subsists in paradox. However, even outside of any theological understanding of things, we dwell in a world of paradox and of mystery. Modern physics, for instance, understands the universe being born in “the Big Bang” from a singularity (that is, a point of finite space and infinite mass). Our very existence, the existence of sound, of light, of the planets, of time and of all things (including everything not commonly understood as things) derive themselves from something that can only be understood as paradox and grasped in awe as mystery. But enough of my aside. What I think is important to take away from chapter one is that the proper understanding of God and of oneself are mutually dependent things. In biology, I suppose it would called a symbiosis.
Chapter II
He ends Chapter One concluding that though knowledge of God and or oneself are mutually dependent, he will proceed to a more detailed discussion of what it means “to know God” in the interest of clarity and “right teaching”. He thus begins Chapter Two with such a discussion, first explaining that “piety” is requisite to the knowledge of God? Now this is not the common, sentimental notion of piety, of saying your prayers in the evening and attending church on Sundays. What he is getting is closer to the Roman pietas: The Roman notion of pietas, at least according to my college Latin professor, was the sense of duty toward the gods, the state and even the family. Aeneas in Vergil is Aeneas Pietas, the dutiful Aeneas. However, Calvin goes ever further than the ordinary Latin definition, explaining, “I call 'piety' that reverence joined with the love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces.”It therefore a dutifulness, ordered to and compelled by the love of God. For Calvin such a condition in man is necessary for him to know God.. Calvin's discussion of “the knowledge of God” is not at this point “the knowledge with which men, in themselves lost and accursed, apprehend God, the Redeemer in Christ” but is rather about man in his primal man. This sort of piety existed in Adam and has been distorted because of the Fall. And man when he possessed this piety fully sought nothing beyond “the Author of every good. He then begins a brief discussion of “fear and reverence” which he also ascribes to the state of piety, describing the pious as those who restrain from sinning, not out of the dread of punishment alone; but, because (he) loves and reveres God as Father” and “ worships and adores Him as Lord.” even if there were no Hell.
Chapter III
However, this piety, this sense of duty toward the reverence of God is not entirely gone from man. Calvin says, “That there is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity.” He proves this, rather unsatisfactorily to modern ears, using evidence from Cicero However, the basic claim that even the most primitive tribes retain some conception of the divine is essentially true and certainly has both a rational and a biblical basis. Even idolatry, for Calvin is proof of this. Echoing the first chapter of Romans, he states that vestiges of this reverence exist even in paganism.
He then takes to task those who would say that religion was created by a minority of men to hold “the simple folk in thrall”. This anticipates Marx's belief that religion is the “opium of the masses”. He does admit that “many things in religion” may have been used by men to this end. However, for Calvin, the ultimate origin of religion is this germ of piety that exists in all men. Because of this vestigial knowledge of God man it is not excusable for man not to give God full and due reverence.
Atheism to Calvin is impossible. He feels that those who deny God always do so with “sardonic laughter”. They make great effort and strain to deny this vestigial awareness of God. He mentions Diagoras, a sort of 5th century Athenian Richard Dawkins who ridiculed the belief in the gods. To Calvin, such a position is strained and against common sense.
Ultimately, what Calvin is trying to do here is to obliterate any value to natural theology. Things such a Aquinas teleological argument for the existence of God is worthless. What is the point of proving the existence of God? Common sense proves it already. However, this common sense awareness of the divine is completely without value. What matters is the recovery of primal mankind's absolute piety and reverence to God.
Chapter IV
Chapter Five is essentially a commentary of the Romans 1. The seed of true divinity has been planted in man. However, man in his corruption has distorted this seed, this memory into myriad superstitions. Now, according to Calvin(and Paul for that matter) , “no real piety remains in man”. The identification of “piety” being the quality lost through the Fall can, however, be safely attributed to Calvin. Paul does make use of that term, though he certainly implies something close to it.
This loss of 'piety' has created a gulf between man and God so much so that man 'cannot but move his own feet with out plunging into ruin.” Whatever ever act of worship they direct toward divinity cannot, through this loss of original 'piety', pay tribute to God. They can only worship a dream and an invention of their of own imagining. Even if they want to worship God they cannot. This is Paul's explanation for the multitude of religious faiths. Calvin simply, connects this with this concept through his idea of an original loss of 'piety', which is in of itself is connected with Augustine's idea of original sin. In this way Calvin is within and commenting on the theological tradition of the Western Church.
From this everyday, almost benign ignorance of God, Calvin then discuses the brazen turning away from God of which the Psalmist says, “Fools say in their hearts,'There is no God. Their deed are loathsome and corrupt” (Ps. 14.1). In their personal sinning, they extinguish even the vestigial awareness of divinity that all man posses. These men “ heedlessly indulge in themselves” and destroy this universal “ fear of judgment” that exists in all men. These men are then compelled to create a conception of God, “stripped of all His glory” and made powerless. This god affirms the wishes and desires of men, and is made in man's image, rather than man being made in the image of God. This, I feel not only exists in the traditional forms of paganism but also can be a paganism made in the likeness of Christianity. Perhaps, that is the perennial problem within the Church and especially today. That we constantly strive to make a God but who affirms our own actions rather than a God who constantly challenges our sinfulness and gives us the Grace to be transformed into His image rather than He into ours. This can be seen among the the so-called conservatives and also the liberals. It is a pitiable situation, for which we need only the Grace of God to remedy. Calvin quotes the pagan philosopher Lacantius saying, “ No religion is genuine unless it be joined with truth.” When Nietzsche wrote that God is dead, he meant the God of the philosophers, whose assumed existence was central to all cosmologies and systems of thought up until that time. This God is indeed dead. He was fashioned by our hands and then sacrificed, leaving nothing behind except his impress on history. This is the god, of whom the Psalmist speaks when he says, “They have eyes that see not and ears that hear not.” It is the god of whom Calvin is talking about here.
Next, Calvin speaks of hypocrisy and of the kind of distortion that existed in the well developed pagan religions and indeed, even in the Judaism at the time of Christ. It is a religion created through th fear of the gods. It is a 'vain and false shadow of religion.” In there sinfulness and corruption, they seek to avert the wrath of god or gods. They 'ought to have been consistently obedient'. However, through their loss of 'piety', they are made incapable of this. Though they rebel against god, the seek “ to placate him with sacrifices.” This characterizes, in my view, the misunderstood and improper legalism of the Pharisees. They sought to purify themselves through the cult of the Temple, rather understanding it as a sign of God's faithfulness to man, and through Grace, of man's faithfulness to God as exemplified in the Hebrew Bible by Abraham. Sadly, this misunderstanding, transformed the true religion revealed in the Old Testament into something more similar to to the pagan religions of the Mediterranean world. In those traditions, man must avert the wrathful nemesis of Gods. The entire ritual activity of the Greeks were focused on placating the gods in order to avoid this wrathful judgment.
I shall end here, feeling that the first four chapters can be rightly grouped together and have a sort of self contained logic. Man has been implanted with a natural knowledge of God. However, through the Fall, man has lost his primal state of piety (as Calvin describes it) which made the perfect knowledge of God that Adam impossible. Though man still retains some of this “piety', it has been distorted and now only lends itself to corrupt and vain manifestations of religion. They create a self-affirming God in their own image, who is made in the image of man, his sinfulness included. He turns completely away from God but hope to satisfy Him with vain and worthless sacrifices rather than the perfect obedience and 'piety' that God demands. Ultimately, according to Calvin, man is totally corrupt. Any vestige of God within himself is clouded by this corruption. Grace is needed to bridge this gulf, Grace though Jesus Christ. But this is a later discussion. What Calvin is talking about in the first book of his Institutes is man's ultimately inadequacy and his need which will be fulfilled in Jesus.
