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Calvin and Common Grace
Herman Bavinck
The Princeton Theological Review Vol. 7 No. 3 (1909), pp 437-465
Translated by Geerhardus Vos
Christianity has from the beginning laid claim to be the one true
religion. Already in the Old Testament the consciousness exists that
Jehovah alone is Elohim and that the gods of the heathen are things
of naught and vanity; and in the New Testament the Father of Jesus
Christ is the only true God, whom the Son reveals and declares, and
access to whom and communion with whom the Son alone can
mediate. This conviction of the absoluteness of the Christian religion
has entered so deeply into the consciousness of the Church that the
whole history of Christian doctrine may be viewed as one great
struggle for upholding it over against all sorts of opposition and
denial. For the life of the Church as well as for every individual man
the fundamental question is: What think ye of the Christ? This was
the issue in the christological and anthropological controversies of
the ancient Church, this the issue at the time of the Reformation and
in the age of the "Enlightenment", and this is still the issue at the
present day in the spiritual battles witnessed by ourselves. No
progress can be marked in this respect: the question of the ages is
still the question of our time,—Is Christ a teacher, a prophet, one of
the many founders of religions; or is he the Only-begotten from the
Father, and therefore the true and perfect revelation of God?
But if Christianity bears such an absolute character, this fact
immediately gives rise to a most serious problem. The Christian
religion is by no means the sole content of history; long before
Christianity made its appearance there existed in Greece and Rome a
rich culture, a complete social organism, a powerful political system,
a plurality of religions, an order of moral virtues and actions. And
even now, underneath and side by side with the Christian religion a
rich stream of natural life continues to flow. What, then, is the
relation of Christianity to this wealth of natural life, which,
originating in creation, has, under the law there imposed upon it,
developed from age to age? What is the connection between nature
and grace, creation and regeneration, culture and Christianity,
earthly and heavenly vocation, the man and the Christian? Nor can it
be said that this problem has now for the first time forced itself upon
us, owing to the wide extension of our world-knowledge, the
entrance of the heathen nations into our field of vision and the
extraordinary progress made by civilization. In principle and essence
it has been present through all the ages,—in the struggle between
Israel and the nations, in the contest between the Kingdom of
Heaven and the world-power, in the warfare between the foolishness
of the cross and the wisdom of the world.
To define this relation, Scripture draws certain lines which it is not
difficult to trace. It proceeds on the principle that for man God is the
supreme good. Whatever material or ideal possessions the world may
offer, all these taken together cannot outweigh or even be compared
with this greatest of all treasures, communion with God; and hence,
in case of conflict with this, they are to be unconditionally sacrificed.
"Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that
I desire besides thee." This, however, does not hinder earthly
possessions from retaining a relative value. Considered in themselves
they are not sinful or unclean; so long as they do not interfere with
man's pursuit of the kingdom of heaven, they are to be enjoyed with
thanksgiving. Scripture avoids both extremes, no less that of
asceticism on the one hand than that of libertinism on the other
hand. The recognition of this as a principle appears most clearly in
its teaching that all things, the entire world with all its treasures,
including matter and the body, marriage and labor, are created and
ordained of God; and that Christ, although, when He assumed a true
and perfect human nature, He renounced all these things in
obedience to God's command, yet through His resurrection took
them all back as henceforth purified of all sin and consecrated
through the Spirit. Creation, incarnation and resurrection are the
fundamental facts of Christianity and at the same time the bulwarks
against all error in life and doctrine.
It needs no pointing out, however, that in the first age Christians had
to assume a preponderantly negative attitude towards the culture of
their time. They were neither sufficiently numerous nor on the whole
sufficiently influential in the world to permit of their taking an active,
aggressive part in the affairs of state and society, of science and art.
Besides this, all institutions and elements of culture were so
intimately associated with idolatry and superstition that without
offense to conscience it was impossible to take part in them. For the
first Christians nothing was to be expected from the Graeco-Roman
world but persecution and reproach. Consequently, nothing was left
for them but to manifest their faith for the time being through the
passive virtues of obedience and patience. Only gradually could the
Church rise to the higher standpoint of trying all things and holding
fast to that which is good, and adopt an eclectic procedure in its
valuation and assimilation of the existing culture.
Often in the past, and again in our own time has the charge been
brought against the Christian Church, that in applying this principle,
it has falsified the original Gospel. Harnack finds in the history of
doctrine a progressive Hellenizing of original Christianity. Hatch
regards the entire Christian cultus, particularly that of the
sacraments, in the light of a degeneration from the primitive Gospel.
To Sohm the very idea of ecclesiastical law appears contradictory to
the essence of the Christian Church. But such assertions partake of
gross exaggeration. If in all these respects nothing but degeneration
is to be found, it will be easy to show that to a considerable degree
the degeneration must have set in with the Apostles and even with
the writers of the synoptic Gospels, as has been freely acknowledged
by not a few writers of recent date. The Christian Church is indeed
charged with having falsified the original Gospel, but those who
bring the charge retain practically nothing of this Gospel or are at
least unable to say in what this Gospel consisted. It is as a rule made
out to have been a simple doctrine of morals with an ascetic tinge.
Then the problem arises, how such a Gospel could ever have come
into real contact with culture, especially to the extent of suffering
corruption from culture. A conception is thus formed, both of the
original Gospel and of the attitude of the Christian Church toward
pagan culture, which is based wholly on fancy and is at war with all
the facts.
For not only is the Gospel not ascetic, but even the Christian Church,
at least in its first period, never adopted this standpoint. However
much it might be on its guard against paganism, it never despised or
condemned natural life as in itself sinful. Marriage and family life,
secular calling and military estate, the swearing of the oath and the
waging of war, government and state, science and art and
philosophy,—all these were recognized from the beginning as divine
institutions and as divine gifts. Hence theology early began to form
relations with philosophy; the art of painting, as practiced in the
catacombs, attached itself to the symbols and figures of antiquity;
architecture shaped the churches after pagan models; music availed
itself of the tunes which Graeco-Roman art had produced. On every
hand a strong effort is perceptible to bring the new religion into
touch with all existing elements of culture.
It was possible for the first Christians to do this because of their firm
conviction that God is the Creator of heaven and earth, who in times
past has never left Himself without witness to the heathen. Not only
was there an original revelation, which, though in corrupted form,
yet survived in tradition; it was also regarded as probable that
certain philosophers had possessed a degree of acquaintance with
the writings of the Jews. But in addition to this there existed in
paganism a continued revelation through nature and the reason, in
heart and conscience,—an illumination of the Logos, a speech from
the wisdom of God through the hidden working of grace. Anima
naturaliter Christiana, the man is older than the philosopher and
the poet, Tertullian exclaimed, thus formulating a truth which lived
in the hearts of all. No doubt among the heathen this wisdom has in
many respects become corrupted and falsified; they retain only
fragments of truth, not the one, entire, full truth. But even such
fragments are profitable and good. The three sisters, logic, physics
and ethics, are like unto the three wise men from the east, who came
to worship in Jesus the perfect wisdom. The good philosophical
thoughts and ethical precepts found scattered through the pagan
world receive in Christ their unity and center. They stand for the
desire which in Christ finds its satisfaction; they represent the
question to which Christ gives the answer; they are the idea of which
Christ furnishes the reality. The pagan world, especially in its
philosophy, is a pedagogy unto Christ; Aristotle, like John the
Baptist, is the forerunner of Christ. It behooves the Christians to
enrich their temple with the vessels of the Egyptians and to adorn the
crown of Christ, their king, with the pearls brought up from the sea
of paganism.
In saying this, however, we by no means wish to imply that the
attitude of the Church towards the world has at all times and in every
respect measured up to the Church's high calling. A priori it is not to
be expected that it should, inasmuch as every human development
shows abnormal traits and the life of every individual Christian is
tainted with error and sin. When the Church of Rome maintains that
the Gospel has been preserved by her and unfolded in its original
purity, this claim is made possible only through ascribing infallibility
to the Church. But by the very act of subscribing to this dogma,
Rome acknowledges that without such a supernatural gift the
development could not have been kept pure. Further, by attributing
this gift to the Pope alone, Rome admits the possibility of error not
only in the ecclesia discens but also in the ecclesia docens, even
where the latter convenes in ecumenical council. And Rome's
confining the effect of this infallible guidance to papal deliverances
ex cathedra involves the confession that the Roman Catholic system,
as a whole, with all its teaching and practice, enjoys no immunity
from corruption. The dogma of papal infallibility is not the ground or
cause, but only one of the many consequences and fruits of the
system. And this system itself has not grown up from one principle;
it has been developed in the course of the ages by the cooperation of
numerous factors,—a development the end of which has not yet been reached.
Although Roman Catholicism has been built up out of varied, even
heterogeneous elements, it nevertheless forms a compact structure, a
coherent view of the world and of life, shaped in all its parts by a
religious principle. This religion embraces in the first place a series of
supernatural, inscrutable mysteries, chief among which are the
Trinity and the Incarnation. These truths have been entrusted to the
Church to be preserved, taught and defended. To discharge these
functions the Church, in the person of the Pope, as successor of
Peter, needs the gift of infallibility. The doctrines are authoritatively
imposed by the Church on all its members. The faith which accepts
these mysteries has for its specific object the Church-dogma; it does
not penetrate through the dogma to the things themselves of which
the dogma is the expression; it does not bring into communion with
God; it does not represent a religious but an intellectual act, the
assensus, the fides historica. Faith is not a saving power in itself, but
is merely preparatory to salvation; nevertheless, it is something
meritorious because and in so far as it is an act of submission to
ecclesiastical authority.
The Church, however, is not merely the possessor of supernatural
truth; in the second place it is also the depository and dispenser of
supernatural grace. As the Church doctrine is infinitely exalted above
all human knowledge and science, so the grace kept and distributed
by the Church far transcends nature. It is true this grace is, among
other things, gratia medicinalis, but this is an accidental and
adventitious quality. Before all else it is gratia elevans, something
added to and elevating above nature. As such it entered into the
image of God given to Adam before the Fall, and as such it again
appears in the restoration to that original state. In view of its adding
to exalted nature a supernatural element, it is conceived as
something material, enclosed in the sacrament, and as such
dispensed by the priest. Thus every man becomes, for his knowledge
of supernatural truth and for his reception of supernatural grace,
that is, for his heavenly salvation, absolutely dependent on the
Church, the priest and the sacrament. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
But even this grace, which, to be sure, remains subject to loss and
recovery until the end of life, does not assure man of attainment to
fellowship with God. All it does is to impart to him the power
whereby, if so choosing, he may merit, through good works,
supernatural salvation, the visio Dei. Since work and reward must be
proportionate, the good works which merit supernatural salvation
must all be of a specific kind and therefore need to be defined and
prescribed by the Church. The Church, besides being the depository
of truth and the dispenser of grace, is in the third place also law-giver
and judge. The satisfactions which the Church imposes are according
to the character of the sins committed. The rapidity or slowness with
which a man attains to perfection, how much time he shall spend in
purgatory, how rich a crown he will receive in heaven,—all this
depends on the number of extraordinary, supernatural works which
he performs. Thus a spiritual hierarchy is created. There exists a
hierarchy in the world of angels, and a hierarchy in the ecclesiastical
organization, but there is a hierarchy also among the saints on earth
and the blessed in heaven. In an ascending scale the saints, divided
into orders and ranks, draw near to God, and in proportion as they
become partakers of the divine nature are admitted to the worship
and adoration of the deity.
In view of what has been said it is evident that truth, grace and good
works bear, according to Rome, a specific, supernatural character.
And because the Church is the God-appointed depository of all these
blessings, the relation between grace and nature coincides with that
between the Church and the world. The world, the state, natural life,
marriage and culture are not sinful in themselves; only they are of a
lower order, of a secular nature, and, unless consecrated by the
Church, easily become an occasion for sinning. This determines the
function of the Church with reference to the world. It is the calling of
the Church to declare unto the world that in itself the world is
profane, but that nevertheless, through the consecration of the
Church, it may become a vehicle of grace. Renunciation of the world
and sovereignty over the world with Rome spring from one and the
same principle. The celibacy of the priesthood and the elevation of
marriage to the rank of a sacrament are branches of the same stem.
The whole hierarchical idea is built on the sharp distinction between
nature and grace. Where the supernatural character of the Church
and the efficacy of the sacrament and the priestly office are
concerned, this system brooks neither compromise nor concession;
but aside from this, it leaves room for a great variety of steps and
grades, of ranks and orders in holiness and salvation. The Church
contains members that belong to it in body only, and members
belonging to it with a part of their powers or with all their powers; it
makes concessions to the weak and worships the saints; a lax
morality and a severe asceticism, an active and a contemplative
mode of life, rationalism and supernaturalism, unbelief and
superstition equally find a place within its walls.
Towards the close of the Middle Ages this system had become
corrupt in almost every respect. In the sphere of truth it had
degenerated into nominalistic scholasticism; in the sphere of grace
into demoralizing traffic in indulgences; in the sphere of good works
into the immoral life of priests and monks. Numerous efforts were
made to remedy these faults and to reform the Church from within.
But the Reformation of the sixteenth century differed from all these
attempts in that it not merely opposed the Roman system in its
excrescences but attacked it internally in the foundations on which it
rested and in the principles out of which it had been developed. The
Reformation rejected the entire system, and substituted for it a
totally different conception of veritas, gratia, and bona opera. It was
led to this new conception not through scientific reflections or
philosophical speculations, but through earnest, heartfelt concern for
the salvation of souls and the glory of God. The Reformation was a
religious and ethical movement through and through. It was born
out of the distress of Luther's soul.
When a helpless man, out of distress of soul, looks to the Gospel for
deliverance, the Gospel will appear to him in a totally new light. All
at once it ceases to be a set of supernatural, inscrutable mysteries to
be received on ecclesiastical authority, with renunciation of the
claims of reason, by meritorious assent. It straightway becomes a
new Gospel, good tidings of salvation, revelation of God's gracious
and efficacious will to save the sinner, something that itself imparts
the forgiveness of sin and eternal life and therefore is embraced by
lost man with joy, that lifts him above all sin and above the entire
world to the high hope of a heavenly salvation. Hence it is no longer
possible to speak of the Gospel with Rome as consisting of
supernatural mysteries to be responded to by man in voluntary
assent. The Gospel is not law, neither as regards the intellect nor as
regards the will; it is in essence a promise, not a demand but a gift, a
free gift of the divine favor; nay, in it the divine will itself through the
Gospel addresses itself to the will, the heart, the innermost essence
of man, and there produces the faith which rests in this divine will
and builds on it and puts its trust in it through all perils, even in the
hour of death.
By reason of this new conception of the Gospel, which in principle
was but a return to the old, Scriptural conception, it could not be
otherwise than that faith also should obtain a totally new
significance. If the Gospel is not a veritas to which the gratia is
added later on, but is itself gratia in its very origin, the revelation of
God's gracious will, and at the same time the instrument for making
this will effective in the heart of man, then faith can no longer remain
a purely intellectual assent. It must become the confidence in the
gracious will of God, produced by God himself in man's heart; a
surrender of the whole man to the divine grace; a resting in the
divine promise; a receiving of a part in God's favor; admission into
communion with him; an absolute assurance of salvation. With
Rome, faith is but one of the seven preparations, which lead on to the
reception of the gratia infusa in baptism, and hence bears no
religious character; it is naught but a fides historica, which stands in
need of the supplement of love in order to become complete and
sufficient unto salvation. To the Reformers faith from its very first
inception is religious in nature. As fides justificans salvifica it differs
not in degree but in principle and essence from the fides historica. It
has for its object God himself, God in Christ, and Christ in the garb of
Holy Scripture, Thus it is seen to be the principle of the true fear
of God,
To all the Reformers, therefore, there lies behind the Gospel and
behind faith the gracious and efficacious will of God. Nay, more than
this, in the Gospel and in faith the divine will is revealed and
realized. This is the reason why the religious conception of the
Gospel and of faith is with the Reformers most intimately connected
with their belief in predestination. We in our time no longer
understand this. We have lost the habit of religious thinking, because
we feel less for ourselves the personal need of communion with God,
and so feel less of the impulse to interpret the world from a religious
point of view. Instead, our age has learned to think in the terms of
natural science; it has substituted for the divine will the omnipotent
law and the omnipotent force of nature, and thus thrown itself into
the arms of determinism. It claims to have long since outgrown the
belief in predestination. And undoubtedly there exists between these
two, however often they may be mixed and confounded, a difference
of principle. Determinism is in principle rationalistic; it cherishes the
delusion of being able to explain everything from the reign of natural
law, holding that all existing things are rational since reason
perceives that they could not be otherwise than they actually are.
Predestination, on the other hand, is a thoroughly religious
conception. While able to recognize natural law and to reckon with
the forces of nature, it refuses to rest in this or to consider natural
necessity the first and last word of history.
He who has learned to regard communion with God as the supreme
good for his own person, must feel bound to work his way back,
behind the world and all its phenomena, until he arrives at the will of
God. He must seek an explanation of the origin, development and
goal of the world-process, which shall be in accordance with that will
and hence bear an ethico-religious character. This is the reason that,
so soon as a religious movement appears in history, the problem of
predestination comes to the front. In a way, this is true of all
religions, but it applies with special pertinence to the history of the
Christian religion. In proportion as the Christian religion is distinctly
experienced and appreciated in its essence as true, full religion, as
pure grace, it will also be felt to include, and that directly, without
the need of dialectic deduction, the confession of predestination.
Hence all the Reformers were agreed on this point. It is true that
with Luther it was afterwards, for practical reasons, relegated to the
background, but even he never recanted or denied it. It was in the
controversy about the servum or liberum arbitrium that the
Reformation and humanism parted ways once for all. Erasmus was
and continued to be a Romanist in spite of his ridicule of the monks.
The doctrine of predestination, therefore, is no discovery of Calvin;
before Calvin it had been professed by Luther and Zwingli. It sprang
spontaneously from the religious experience of the Reformers. If
Calvin introduced any modification, it consists in this, that he freed
the doctrine from the semblance of harshness and arbitrariness and
imparted to it a more purely ethico-religious character.
For, all affinity and agreement notwithstanding, Calvin differed from
Luther and Zwingli. He shared neither the emotional nature of the
one nor the humanistic inclinations of the other. When, in a manner
as yet but very imperfectly known to us, he was converted, this
experience was immediately accompanied by such a clear, deep and
harmonious insight into Christian truth as to render any subsequent
modification unnecessary. The first edition of the Institutio which
appeared in March, 1536, was expanded and increased in the later
issues, but it never changed, and the task which, in his view, the
Reformation had to accomplish, remained from beginning to end his
own goal in life. and while Zwingli one-sidedly defined faith as
,—a faith which renews the entire man in his being
and consciousness, in soul and body, in all his relations and
activities, and hence a faith which exercises its sanctifying influence
in the entire range of life, upon Church and school, upon society and
state, upon science and art. But in order to be able to perform this
comprehensive task,—in order to be truly, always and everywhere a
fides salvificans, it was necessary for faith first of all to be fully
assured of itself, and no longer to be tossed to and fro by every wind
of doubt. This explains why, more than with Zwingli and Luther,
faith is with Calvin unshaken conviction, firm assurance.
But if faith is to be such an unshaken assurance it must rest on a
truth removed from all possibility of doubt; it must attest itself as
real by its own witness and power in the heart of man. A house that
will defy the tempest cannot be built on the sand. Behind faith,
therefore, must lie the truth, the will and act of God. In other words,
faith is the fruit or effect of election; it is the experience of an act of
God. Always and everywhere Calvin recurs to this will of God. The
world with its infinite multitude of phenomena, with its diversities
and inequalities, its disharmonies and contrasts, is not to be
explained from the will of the creature nor from the worth or
unworthiness of man. It is true, inequality and contrast appear most
pronounced in the allotment of man's eternal destiny. They are,
however, by no means confined to this, but show themselves in every
sphere, in the different places of habitation appointed for men, in the
different gifts and powers conferred upon them in body and soul, in
the difference between health and sickness, wealth and poverty,
prosperity and adversity, joy and sorrow, in the varying ranks and
vocations, and, last of all, in the fact itself that men are men and not
animals. Let the opponents of the doctrine of election, therefore,
answer the question,The more we reflect upon the world the more we are
forced to fall back upon the hidden will of God and find in it the
ultimate ground for both the existence of the world and its being
what it is. All the standards of goodness and justice and righteous
recompense and retribution for evil which we are accustomed to
apply, prove wholly inadequate to measure the world. The will of
God is, and from the nature of the case must be, the deepest cause of
the entire world and of all the. The unfathomable mystery of the world compels the
intellect and the heart, theology and philosophy alike to fall back
upon the will of God and seek rest in it.
It frequently happens, however, that theology and philosophy are not
contented with this. They then endeavor, after the manner of Plato
and Hegel, to offer a rational explanation of the world. Or, while
falling back upon the will of God, they make out of this will a
as is done by Gnosticism, or a blind, irrational and
unhappy will, as is done by Schopenhauer, or an unconscious and
unknowable power, as is done by von Hartmann and Spencer. By his
Christian faith Calvin was kept from these different forms of
pantheism. It is true, Calvin upholds with the utmost energy the
sovereignty of the divine will over and against all human reasoning.
Predestination belongs to the which man
may not enter and in regard to which his curiosity must remain
unsatisfied; for they form a labyrinth from which no one can find the
exit. Man may not even investigate with impunity the things God
meant to keep secret. God wants us to adore, not to comprehend, the
majesty of His wisdom. Nevertheless God is not exlex. He sufficiently
vindicates His justice by convicting of guilt those who blaspheme
Him in their own consciences. His will is not absolute power, but ab
lex. And the Gospel reveals to us what is the content, the heart and
the kernel, as it were, of this will.
For since the Fall nature no longer reveals to us God's paternal favor.
On every side it proclaims the divine curse which cannot but fill our
guilty souls with despair. . Aside from the special revelation in Christ, man has no true
knowledge of heavenly things. He is ignorant and blind as respects
God, His fatherhood and His law as the rule of life. Especially of the
he is without the faintest
consciousness, for human reason neither can attain nor strives to
attain to this truth, and therefore fails to understand
. And herein precisely consists the
essence of God's special revelation in Christ, and this is the central
content of the Gospel: God here makes Himself known to us not
merely as our Creator, but as our Redemptor. He does not here tell
us what He is, to enable us to indulge in speculation, but causes us to
—these constitute the essence of the
Gospel and the firm foundation of faith. He is a true believer, who,
firmly convinced that God is to him a gracious and loving Father,
expects everything from His loving-kindness.
This concentration of the Gospel in the promise of divine mercy not
only provided Calvin with a firm footing in the midst of the shifting
opinions of his time, but also widened his outlook and enlarged his
sympathies, so that, while resolutely standing by his own confession,
he nevertheless perpetually mediated the things that made for unity
and peace among all the sons of the Reformation. To be sure, the
conception usually formed of Calvin differs widely from this. His
image as commonly portrayed has for its only features those of cruel
severity and despotic intolerance. But such a conception does grave
injustice to the Genevan Reformer. Unfortunately, he must be held
responsible for the death of Servetus, although in this respect he only
stands on a level with the other Reformers, none of whom had
entirely outgrown all the errors of their age. But the Calvin who gave
his approval to the execution of Servetus is not the only Calvin we
know. There is also a far different Calvin, one who was united with
his friends in the bonds of the most tender affection, whose heart
went out in sympathy to all his suffering and struggling brethren in
the faith, one who identified himself with their lot, and supplied
them with comfort and courage and cheer in their severest
afflictions. We know of a Calvin who without intermission labored
most earnestly for the union of the divided Protestants, who sought
God in His Word alone and was unwilling to bind himself even to
such terms as "Trinity" and "Person", who refused to subscribe to the
Nicene and Athanasian creeds, who discountenanced every
disruption of the Church on the ground of minor impurities of
doctrine, who favored fraternal tolerance in all questions touching
the form of worship. There was a Calvin, who, notwithstanding all
differences of opinion, cherished the highest regard for Luther,
Melanchthon and Zwingli, and recognized them as servants of God;
who himself subscribed to the Augsburg Confession and, reserving
the right of private interpretation, acknowledged it as the expression
of his own faith; who recommended the Loci of Melanchthon,
although differing from him on the points of free-will and
predestination; who refused to confine the invisible Church to any
single confession, but recognized its presence wherever God works
by His Word and Spirit in the hearts of men.
Still another injustice, however, must be laid to the charge of the
average conception of Calvin. Men sometimes speak as if Calvin
knew of nothing else to preach but the decree of predestination with
its two parts of election and reprobation. The truth is that no
preacher of the Gospel has ever surpassed Calvin in the free,
generous proclamation of the grace and love of God. He was so far
from putting predestination to the front, that in the Institutio the
subject does not receive treatment until the third book, after the
completion of the discussion of the life of faith. It is entirely wanting
in the Confessio of 1536 and is only mentioned in passing, in
connection with the Church, in the Catechismus Genevensis of 1545.
And as regards reprobation, before accusing Calvin, the charge
should be laid against Scripture, against the reality of life, against the
testimony of conscience; for all these bear witness that there is sin in
the world, and that this awful reality, this decretum horribile, cannot
have its deepest ground in the free will of man. And there are still
other features in Calvin's doctrine of reprobation to which attention
should be called. There is in the first place the fact that he says so
little about the working of reprobation. The Institutio is a work
characterized by great sobriety, wholly free from scholastic
abstruseness; it everywhere treats the doctrines of faith in the closest
connection with the practice of religion. This is especially true of
eschatology. As is well known, Calvin never could bring himself to
write a commentary on the Apocalypse, and in his Institutio he
devotes to "the last things"; only a few paragraphs. He avoids all
spinosae quaestiones with reference to the state of glory, and
interprets the descriptions given by Scripture of the state of the lost
as symbolical: darkness, weeping, gnashing of teeth, unquenchable
fire, the worm that dies not,—all these serve to impress upon us
quam sit calamitosum alienari ab omni Dei societate, and
majestatem Dei ita sentire tibi adversam ut effugere nequeas quin
ab ipsa urgearis. The punishment of hell consists in exclusion from
fellowship with God and admits of degrees. In connection with Paul's
words, that at last God will be all in all, it is not forbidden to think of
the devil and the godless, since in their subjection also the glory of
God shall be revealed.
But of even greater significance is it that with Calvin reprobation
does not mean the withholding of all grace. Although man through
sin has been rendered blind to all the spiritual realities of the
kingdom of God, so that a special revelation of God's fatherly love in
Christ and a specialis illuminatio by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of
the sinners here become necessary, nevertheless there exists
alongside of these a generalis gratia which dispenses to all men
various gifts. If God had not spared man, his fall would have involved
the whole of nature in ruin. As it was, God immediately after the Fall
interposed, in order by His common grace to curb sin and to uphold
in being the universitas rerum. For after all sin is rather an
adventitia qualitas than a substantialis proprietas, and for this
reason God is operis sui corruptioni magis infensus quam operi suo.
Although for man's sake the whole of nature is subject to vanity,
nevertheless nature is upheld by the hope which God implanted in its
heart. There is no part of the world in which some spark of the divine
glory does not glimmer. Though it be a metaphorical mode of
expression, since God should not be confounded with nature, it may
be affirmed in a truly religious sense that nature is God. Heaven and
earth with their innumerable wonders are a magnificent display of
the divine wisdom.
Especially the human race is still a clear mirror of the operation of
God, an exhibition of His manifold gifts. In every man there is still a
seed of religion, a consciousness of God, wholly ineradicable,
convincing all of the heavenly grace on which their life depends, and
leading even the heathen to name God the Father of mankind. The
supernatural gifts have been lost, and the natural gifts have become
corrupted, so that man by nature no longer knows who and what God
seeks to be to him. Still these latter gifts have not been withdrawn
entirely from man. Reason and judgment and will, however corrupt,
yet, in so far as they belong to man's nature, have not been wholly
lost. The fact that men are found either wholly or in part deprived of
reason, proves that the tithe to these gifts is not self-evident and that
they are not distributed to men on the basis of merit. Nonetheless,
the grace of God imparts them to us. The reason whereby man
distinguishes between truth and error, good and evil, and forms
conceptions and judgments, and also the will which is inseparable
from human nature as the faculty whereby man strives after what he
deems good for himself,—these raise him above the animals.
Consequently it is contrary to Scripture as well as to experience to
attribute to man such a perpetual blindness as would render him
unable to form any true conception. On the contrary, there is light
still shining in the darkness, men still retain a degree of love for the
truth, some sparks of the truth have still been preserved. Men carry
in themselves the principles of the laws which are to govern them
individually and in their association with one another. They agree in
regard to the fundamentals of justice and equity, and everywhere
exhibit an aptness and liking for social order. Sometimes a
remarkable sagacity is given to men whereby they are not only able
to learn certain things, but also to make important inventions and
discoveries, and to put these to practical use in life. Owing to all this,
not only is an orderly civil society made possible among men, but
arts and sciences develop, which are not to be despised. For these
should be considered gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is true the Holy Spirit
as a spirit of sanctification dwells in believers only, but as a spirit of
life, of wisdom and of power He works also in those who do not
believe. No Christian, therefore, should despise these gifts; on the
contrary, he should honor art and science, music and philosophy and
various other products of the human mind as praestantissima
Spiritus dona, and make the most of them for his own personal use.
Accordingly, in the moral sphere also distinctions are to be
recognized between some men and others. While all are corrupt, not
all are fallen to an equal depth; but there are sins of ignorance and
sins of mallice. There is a difference between Camillus and Catiline.
Even to sinful man sometimes speciosae dotes and speciales Dei
gratiae are granted. In common parlance it is even permissible to
say that one man has been born bene, another pravae naturae. Nay,
every man has to acknowledge in the talents entrusted to him a
specialis or peculiaris Dei gratia. In the diversity of all these gifts we
see the remnants of the divine image whereby man is distinguished
from all other creatures.
In view of all these utterances, which it would be easy to increase and
enforce from the other works of Calvin, it is grossly unjust to charge
the Reformer with narrow-mindedness and intolerance. It is, of
course, a different question whether Calvin himself possessed talent
and aptness for all these arts and sciences to which he accords praise.
But even if this be not so, even if he did not possess the love for
music and singing which distinguished Luther, this is not to his
discredit, for not only has every genius its limitations, but the
Reformers were and had to be by vocation men of faith, and for
having excelled in this they deserve our veneration and praise, no
less than the men of art and science. Calvin affirms, it is true, that
the virtues of the natural man, however noble, do not suffice for
justification at the judgment-bar of God, but this is due to his
profound conviction of the majesty and spiritual character of the
moral law. Aside from this, he is more generous in his recognition of
what is true and good, wherever it be found, than any other
Reformer. He surveys the entire earth and finds everywhere the
evidence of the divine goodness, wisdom and power. Calvins
teleological standpoint does not render him narrow in his
sympathies, but rather gives to his mind the stamp of catholicity.
This appears with equal clearness from the calling which he assigns
to the Christian. In regard to this also Calvin takes his point of
departure in the will of God. To the Romanist view he brings in
principle the same objection that bears against the pagan
conception: the doctrine of the meritoriousness of good works is a
delusion; the monastic vows are an infringement of Christian liberty;
the perfection striven after by this method is an arbitrary ideal, set
up by man himself. Romanism and paganism both minimize the
corruption of human nature, and in the matter of good works start
from the free will of man. In contradistinction to this Calvin proceeds
on the principle: nostri non sumus, Dei sumus. The Christian's life
ought to be one continual sacrifice, a perfect consecration to God, a
service of God's name, obedience to His law, a pursuit of His glory.
This undivided consecration to God assumes on earth largely the
character of self-denial and cross-bearing. Paganism knows nothing
of this; it merely prescribes certain moral maxims and strives to
bring man's life into subjection to his reason or will, or to nature. But
the Christian subjects also his intellect and his will and all his powers
to the law of God. He does not resign himself to the inevitable, but
commits himself to the heavenly Father, who is not like unto a
philosopher preaching virtue, but is the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
The result is that for Calvin the passive virtues of submission,
humility, patience, self-denial, cross-bearing stand in the
foreground. Like St. Augustine, Calvin is mortally afraid of pride,
whereby man exalts himself above God. His strong insistence upon
the inability of man and the bondage of the will is not for the purpose
of plunging man into despair, but in order to raise him from his
lethargy and to awaken in him the longing for what he lacks, to make
him renounce all self-glorying and self-reliance and put all his
confidence in God alone. Calvin strips man of everything in order to
restore unto him all things in God. Quanto magis in te infirmus es,
tanto magis te suscipit Dominus; nostra humilitas ejus altitudo.
Humilitas thus becomes the first virtue; it grows on the root of
election; we are continually taught it by God in all the adversity and
crucifixion of the present life; it places us for the first time in the
proper relation towards God and our fellowman. For it reconciles us
to the fact that this life is for us a land of pilgrimage, full of perils and
afflictions, and teaches us to surrender ourselves in all things to the
will of God: Dominus ita voluit, ergo ejus voluntatem sequamur. It
likewise teaches us to love our neighbor, to value the gifts bestowed
upon him and to employ our own gifts for his benefit.
Still it would be a mistake to imagine that according to Calvin the
Christian life is confined to the practice of the passive virtues. It is
true, he often speaks of despising the present and contemplating the
future life. But on considering the times in which Calvin lived, the
persecution and oppression to which the Reformation was exposed
in well-nigh every country, the bodily and mental suffering the
Reformer himself had to endure,—on considering all this we cannot
wonder that he exhorts the faithful before all things to the exercise of
humility and submission, to patience and obedience, to self-denial
and cross-bearing. This has always been so in the Christian Church,
and may be traced back to the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles. It
does not speak favorably for the depth and intensity of our spiritual
life, if we are inclined to find fault with Calvin, the other Reformers,
and the martyrs of the Church for this alleged one-sidedness of their
faith. It rather should excite our admiration that, in the midst of such
circumstances, they so largely kept still an eye open for the positive
vocation of the Christian. With Calvin at least the reverse side to the
attitude thus criticized is not wanting. Nor does it appear merely
after an incidental fashion, by way of appendix to his ethics; it is the
outcome of his own most individual principle; its root again lies in
his conception of the will of God.
As is universally acknowledged, we owe to Luther the restoration of
mans natural calling to a place of honor. Calvin, however, carried
this principle enunciated by his predecessors to its furthermost
consequences. He viewed the whole of life from the standpoint of the
will of God and placed it in all its extent under the discipline of the
divine law. It was the common conviction of the Reformers that
Christian perfection must be realized not above and outside of, but
within the sphere of the calling assigned us by God here on earth.
Perfection consists neither in compliance with arbitrary human or
ecclesiastical commandments, nor in the performance of all sorts of
extraordinary activities. It consists in the faithful discharge of their
ordinary daily duties which have been laid by God upon every man in
the conduct of life. But much more strongly than Luther, Calvin
emphasizes the idea that life itself in its whole length and breadth
and depth must be a service of God. Life acquires for him a religious
character, is subsumed under and becomes a part of the Kingdom of
God. Or, as Calvin himself repeatedly formulates it: Christian life is
always and everywhere a life in the presence of God, a walking before
His face,—coram ipso ambulare, ac si essemus sub ejus oculis.
When, therefore, Calvin speaks of despising the present life, he
means by this something far different from what was meant by
medieval ethics. He does not mean that life ought to be fled from,
suppressed, or mutilated, but wishes to convey the idea that the
Christian should not give his heart to this vain, transitory life, but
should possess everything as not possessing it, and put his
confidence in God alone. But life in itself is a benedictio Dei and
comprises many divina beneficia. It is for believers a means to
prepare them far the heavenly salvation. It should be hated only
quatenus nos peccato teneat obnoxios, and this hatred should never
relate to life as such. On the contrary, this life and the vocation in it
given us by God are a part which we have no right to abandon, but
which without murmuring and impatience we must faithfully guard,
so long as God Himself does not relieve us. So to view life, as a
vocatio Dei,—this is the first principle, the foundation of all moral
action; this imparts unity to our life and symmetry to all its parts;
this assigns to each one his individual place and task, and provides
the precious comfort quod nullum erit tam sordidum ac vile opus,
quod non coram Deo resplendeat et pretiosissimum habeatur.
Thus Calvin sees the whole of life steeped in the light of the divine
glory. As in all nature there is no creature which does not reflect the
divine perfection, so in the rich world of men there is no vocation so
simple, no labor so mean, as not to be suffused with the divine
splendor and subservient to the glory of God's name. And Calvin
applies this point of view to a still wider range. All the possessions of
life are after the same manner rescued from the dishonor to which
ascetic moralism had abandoned them. To be sure, he protests
against defiling the conscience in the use of these possessions and
insists upon it that the Christian should be actuated by praesentis
vitae contemptu et immortalitatis meditatione. But he maintains
with equal emphasis that all these possessions are gifts of God,
designed not merely to provide for our necessities, but also bestowed
for our enjoyment and delight. When God adorns the earth with trees
and plants and flowers, when He causes the vine to grow which
makes glad the heart of man, when He permits man to dig from out
the earth the precious metals and stones which shine in the light of
the sun,—all this proves that God does not mean to restrict the use of
earthly possessions to the relief of our absolute necessities, but has
given them to man also for enjoyment of life. Prosperity, abundance
and luxury also are gifts of God, to be enjoyed with gratitude and
moderation. And Calvin does not want to bind the conscience with
regard to this to rigid rules, but expects it freely to regulate itself by
the general principles laid dawn in Scripture for this purpose.
It must be admitted that the Reformer of Geneva did not always
adhere in practice consistently to this golden rule. Instead of leaving
room for individual liberty he endeavored to bring the entire
compass of life under definite rules. The Consistory had for its task
and had to exercise
censorship over every improper word and every wrong act; it had to
watch over orthodoxy and church-attendance, to be on the lookout
for Romish customs and wordily amusements, to oversee domestic
life and the education of children; it had to keep its eyes on the
tradesman in his store, on the craftsman in his workshop, on the
merchant in the market-place, and to subject the entire range of life
to the strictest discipline. Even regulations for fire-departments and
night-watches, for market-facilities and street-cleaning, for trade and
industry, for the prosecution of law-suits and the administration of
justice are to be found among Calvin's writings. It is possible to
justify all these measures in view of the circumstances under which
they were introduced in Geneva. But nobody can deny that Calvin
went too far in the creation of a moral police of this kind, that he
introduced a régime which, while perhaps necessary and productive
of excellent results for that age, is yet unsuited to other times and to
different conditions.
But this criticism of Calvin's practice by no means detracts from the
glory of the principle proclaimed by him. What he advocates in
imitation of Zwingli was not a mere religious and ecclesiastical
reform, but a moral reformation embracing the whole of life. Both
Zwingli and Calvin waged war not merely against the Judaistic self righteousness of the Roman Church,
but assailed with equal vigor all
pagan license. Both desired a national life in all its parts inspired and
directed by the principles of the divine Word. And both were led to
this view by their theological principle; they took their point of
departure in all their thought and activity in God, walked with Him
through all of life and brought back to God as an offering all they
were and had. Behind everything the sovereign will of God lies
hidden and works. The content, the kernel of this will is made known
to us in the Gospel; from it we know that God is a merciful and
gracious Father, who in spite of all opposition proposes to Himself
the salvation of the Church, the redemption of the world, the
glorification of His perfections. But this will of God is not an
impotent desire, it is omnipotent energy. It realizes itself in the faith
of the elect; true faith is an experience of the work of God in one's
soul, and for this reason affords unshakable assurance, immovable
confidence, the power to surmount all pain and peril through
communion with God. Through this gracious and omnipotent will of
God is made known in the Gospel alone and experienced in faith
only, nevertheless it does not stand isolated, but is encompassed,
supported and reinforced by the operation of the same will in the
world at large. Special grace is encircled by common grace; the
vocation which comes to us in faith is connected and connects us
with the vocation presented to us in our earthly calling; the election
revealed to us in faith through this faith communicates its power to
our entire life; the God of creation and of regeneration is one. Hence
the believer cannot rest contented in his faith, but must make it the
point of vantage from which he mounts up to the source of election
and presses forward to the conquest of the entire world.
History has demonstrated that the belief in election, provided it be
genuine, that is, a heartfelt conviction of faith, does not produce
careless or Godless men. Especially as developed and professed by
Calvin, it is a principle which cuts off all Romish error at the root.
Whereas with Rome special revelation consists primarily in the
disclosure of certain mysteries, with Calvin it receives for its content
the gracious fatherly will of God realizing itself through the Word of
revelation. With Rome faith is nothing more than an intellectual
assent, preparing man for grace on the principle of
with Calvin faith is the reception of grace itself, experience of the
power of God, undoubting assurance of God, through and through
religious in its nature. With Rome grace chiefly serves the purpose of
strengthening the will of man and qualifying him for the
performance of various meritorious good works prescribed by the
Church; with Calvin the grace received through faith raises man to
the rank of an organ of the divine will and causes him to walk in
accordance with this will before the presence of God and for the
divine glory. The Reformation as begun by Luther and Zwingli, and
reinforced and carried through by Calvin, put an end to the Romish
supernaturalism and dualism and asceticism. The divine will which
created the world, which in the state of sin preserves it through
common grace and makes itself known through special grace as the
will of a merciful and gracious Father, aims at the salvation of the
world, and itself through its omnipotent energy brings about this
salvation. Because it thus placed the whole of life under the control
of the divine will, it was possible for Calvin's ethics to fall into two
precise regulations, into rigorism and puritanism; but in principle
his ethics is diametrically apposed to all asceticism, it is catholic and
universal in its scope.
In order to prove this by one striking example attention may be
called to the fact that medieval ethics consistently disapproved the
principle of usury on the ground of its being forbidden by Scripture
and contrary to the unproductive nature of money. Accordingly it
looked with contempt upon trade and commerce. Luther,
Melanchthon, Zwingli and Erasmus adhered to this view, but Calvin,
when this important problem had been submitted to him, formulated
in a classic document the grounds on which it could be affirmed that
a reasonable interest is neither in conflict with Scripture nor with the
nature of money. He took into account the law of life under which
commerce operates and declared that only the sins of commerce are
to be frowned upon, whereas commerce itself is to be regarded as a
calling well-pleasing to God and profitable to society. And this
merely illustrates the point of view from which Calvin habitually
approached the problems of life. He found the will of God revealed
not merely in Scripture, but also in the world, and he traced the
connection and sought to restore the harmony between them. Under
the guidance of the divine Word he distinguished everywhere
between the institution of God and human corruption, and then
sought to establish and restore everything in harmony with the
divine nature and law. Nothing is unclean in itself; every part of the
world and every calling in life is a revelation of the divine perfections,
so that even the humblest day laborer fulfills a divine calling. This is
the democratic element in the doctrine of Calvin: there is with God
no acceptance of persons; all men are equal before Him; even the
humblest and meanest workman, if he be a believer, fills a place in
the Kingdom of God and stands as a colaborer with God in His
presence. But—and this is the aristocratic, reverse side to the
democratic view—every creature and every calling has its own
peculiar nature: Church and state, the family and society, agriculture
and commerce, art and science are all institutions and gifts of God,
but each in itself is a special revelation of the divine will and
therefore possesses its own nature. The unity and the diversity in the
whole world alike point back to the one sovereign, omnipotent,
gracious and merciful will of God.
In this spirit Calvin labored in Geneva. But his activity was not
confined to the territory of one city. Geneva was to Calvin merely the
center, from which he surveyed the entire field of the Reformation in
all lands. When his only child was taken away from him by death, he
consoled himself with the thought that God had given him numerous
children after the Spirit. And so it was indeed. Through an extensive
correspondence he kept in touch with his fellow-laborers in the work
of the Reformation; all questions were referred to him; he was the
councillor of all the leaders of the great movement; he taught
hundreds of men and trained them in his spirit. From all quarters
refugees came to Geneva, that bulwark against Rome, to seek
protection and support, and afterwards returned to their own lands
inspired with new courage. Thus Calvin created in many lands a
people who, while made up from all classes, nobles and plain
citizens, townspeople and countryfold, were yet one in the
consciousness of a divine vocation. In this consciousness they took
up the battle against tyranny in Church and state alike, and in that
contest secured liberties and rights which are still ours at the present
day. Calvin himself stood in the forefront of this battle. Life and
doctrine with him were one. He gave his body a living, holy sacrifice,
well-pleasing unto God through Jesus Christ. Therein consisted his
reasonable service.
Herman Bavinck
The Princeton Theological Review Vol. 7 No. 3 (1909), pp 437-465
Translated by Geerhardus Vos
Christianity has from the beginning laid claim to be the one true
religion. Already in the Old Testament the consciousness exists that
Jehovah alone is Elohim and that the gods of the heathen are things
of naught and vanity; and in the New Testament the Father of Jesus
Christ is the only true God, whom the Son reveals and declares, and
access to whom and communion with whom the Son alone can
mediate. This conviction of the absoluteness of the Christian religion
has entered so deeply into the consciousness of the Church that the
whole history of Christian doctrine may be viewed as one great
struggle for upholding it over against all sorts of opposition and
denial. For the life of the Church as well as for every individual man
the fundamental question is: What think ye of the Christ? This was
the issue in the christological and anthropological controversies of
the ancient Church, this the issue at the time of the Reformation and
in the age of the "Enlightenment", and this is still the issue at the
present day in the spiritual battles witnessed by ourselves. No
progress can be marked in this respect: the question of the ages is
still the question of our time,—Is Christ a teacher, a prophet, one of
the many founders of religions; or is he the Only-begotten from the
Father, and therefore the true and perfect revelation of God?
But if Christianity bears such an absolute character, this fact
immediately gives rise to a most serious problem. The Christian
religion is by no means the sole content of history; long before
Christianity made its appearance there existed in Greece and Rome a
rich culture, a complete social organism, a powerful political system,
a plurality of religions, an order of moral virtues and actions. And
even now, underneath and side by side with the Christian religion a
rich stream of natural life continues to flow. What, then, is the
relation of Christianity to this wealth of natural life, which,
originating in creation, has, under the law there imposed upon it,
developed from age to age? What is the connection between nature
and grace, creation and regeneration, culture and Christianity,
earthly and heavenly vocation, the man and the Christian? Nor can it
be said that this problem has now for the first time forced itself upon
us, owing to the wide extension of our world-knowledge, the
entrance of the heathen nations into our field of vision and the
extraordinary progress made by civilization. In principle and essence
it has been present through all the ages,—in the struggle between
Israel and the nations, in the contest between the Kingdom of
Heaven and the world-power, in the warfare between the foolishness
of the cross and the wisdom of the world.
To define this relation, Scripture draws certain lines which it is not
difficult to trace. It proceeds on the principle that for man God is the
supreme good. Whatever material or ideal possessions the world may
offer, all these taken together cannot outweigh or even be compared
with this greatest of all treasures, communion with God; and hence,
in case of conflict with this, they are to be unconditionally sacrificed.
"Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that
I desire besides thee." This, however, does not hinder earthly
possessions from retaining a relative value. Considered in themselves
they are not sinful or unclean; so long as they do not interfere with
man's pursuit of the kingdom of heaven, they are to be enjoyed with
thanksgiving. Scripture avoids both extremes, no less that of
asceticism on the one hand than that of libertinism on the other
hand. The recognition of this as a principle appears most clearly in
its teaching that all things, the entire world with all its treasures,
including matter and the body, marriage and labor, are created and
ordained of God; and that Christ, although, when He assumed a true
and perfect human nature, He renounced all these things in
obedience to God's command, yet through His resurrection took
them all back as henceforth purified of all sin and consecrated
through the Spirit. Creation, incarnation and resurrection are the
fundamental facts of Christianity and at the same time the bulwarks
against all error in life and doctrine.
It needs no pointing out, however, that in the first age Christians had
to assume a preponderantly negative attitude towards the culture of
their time. They were neither sufficiently numerous nor on the whole
sufficiently influential in the world to permit of their taking an active,
aggressive part in the affairs of state and society, of science and art.
Besides this, all institutions and elements of culture were so
intimately associated with idolatry and superstition that without
offense to conscience it was impossible to take part in them. For the
first Christians nothing was to be expected from the Graeco-Roman
world but persecution and reproach. Consequently, nothing was left
for them but to manifest their faith for the time being through the
passive virtues of obedience and patience. Only gradually could the
Church rise to the higher standpoint of trying all things and holding
fast to that which is good, and adopt an eclectic procedure in its
valuation and assimilation of the existing culture.
Often in the past, and again in our own time has the charge been
brought against the Christian Church, that in applying this principle,
it has falsified the original Gospel. Harnack finds in the history of
doctrine a progressive Hellenizing of original Christianity. Hatch
regards the entire Christian cultus, particularly that of the
sacraments, in the light of a degeneration from the primitive Gospel.
To Sohm the very idea of ecclesiastical law appears contradictory to
the essence of the Christian Church. But such assertions partake of
gross exaggeration. If in all these respects nothing but degeneration
is to be found, it will be easy to show that to a considerable degree
the degeneration must have set in with the Apostles and even with
the writers of the synoptic Gospels, as has been freely acknowledged
by not a few writers of recent date. The Christian Church is indeed
charged with having falsified the original Gospel, but those who
bring the charge retain practically nothing of this Gospel or are at
least unable to say in what this Gospel consisted. It is as a rule made
out to have been a simple doctrine of morals with an ascetic tinge.
Then the problem arises, how such a Gospel could ever have come
into real contact with culture, especially to the extent of suffering
corruption from culture. A conception is thus formed, both of the
original Gospel and of the attitude of the Christian Church toward
pagan culture, which is based wholly on fancy and is at war with all
the facts.
For not only is the Gospel not ascetic, but even the Christian Church,
at least in its first period, never adopted this standpoint. However
much it might be on its guard against paganism, it never despised or
condemned natural life as in itself sinful. Marriage and family life,
secular calling and military estate, the swearing of the oath and the
waging of war, government and state, science and art and
philosophy,—all these were recognized from the beginning as divine
institutions and as divine gifts. Hence theology early began to form
relations with philosophy; the art of painting, as practiced in the
catacombs, attached itself to the symbols and figures of antiquity;
architecture shaped the churches after pagan models; music availed
itself of the tunes which Graeco-Roman art had produced. On every
hand a strong effort is perceptible to bring the new religion into
touch with all existing elements of culture.
It was possible for the first Christians to do this because of their firm
conviction that God is the Creator of heaven and earth, who in times
past has never left Himself without witness to the heathen. Not only
was there an original revelation, which, though in corrupted form,
yet survived in tradition; it was also regarded as probable that
certain philosophers had possessed a degree of acquaintance with
the writings of the Jews. But in addition to this there existed in
paganism a continued revelation through nature and the reason, in
heart and conscience,—an illumination of the Logos, a speech from
the wisdom of God through the hidden working of grace. Anima
naturaliter Christiana, the man is older than the philosopher and
the poet, Tertullian exclaimed, thus formulating a truth which lived
in the hearts of all. No doubt among the heathen this wisdom has in
many respects become corrupted and falsified; they retain only
fragments of truth, not the one, entire, full truth. But even such
fragments are profitable and good. The three sisters, logic, physics
and ethics, are like unto the three wise men from the east, who came
to worship in Jesus the perfect wisdom. The good philosophical
thoughts and ethical precepts found scattered through the pagan
world receive in Christ their unity and center. They stand for the
desire which in Christ finds its satisfaction; they represent the
question to which Christ gives the answer; they are the idea of which
Christ furnishes the reality. The pagan world, especially in its
philosophy, is a pedagogy unto Christ; Aristotle, like John the
Baptist, is the forerunner of Christ. It behooves the Christians to
enrich their temple with the vessels of the Egyptians and to adorn the
crown of Christ, their king, with the pearls brought up from the sea
of paganism.
In saying this, however, we by no means wish to imply that the
attitude of the Church towards the world has at all times and in every
respect measured up to the Church's high calling. A priori it is not to
be expected that it should, inasmuch as every human development
shows abnormal traits and the life of every individual Christian is
tainted with error and sin. When the Church of Rome maintains that
the Gospel has been preserved by her and unfolded in its original
purity, this claim is made possible only through ascribing infallibility
to the Church. But by the very act of subscribing to this dogma,
Rome acknowledges that without such a supernatural gift the
development could not have been kept pure. Further, by attributing
this gift to the Pope alone, Rome admits the possibility of error not
only in the ecclesia discens but also in the ecclesia docens, even
where the latter convenes in ecumenical council. And Rome's
confining the effect of this infallible guidance to papal deliverances
ex cathedra involves the confession that the Roman Catholic system,
as a whole, with all its teaching and practice, enjoys no immunity
from corruption. The dogma of papal infallibility is not the ground or
cause, but only one of the many consequences and fruits of the
system. And this system itself has not grown up from one principle;
it has been developed in the course of the ages by the cooperation of
numerous factors,—a development the end of which has not yet been reached.
Although Roman Catholicism has been built up out of varied, even
heterogeneous elements, it nevertheless forms a compact structure, a
coherent view of the world and of life, shaped in all its parts by a
religious principle. This religion embraces in the first place a series of
supernatural, inscrutable mysteries, chief among which are the
Trinity and the Incarnation. These truths have been entrusted to the
Church to be preserved, taught and defended. To discharge these
functions the Church, in the person of the Pope, as successor of
Peter, needs the gift of infallibility. The doctrines are authoritatively
imposed by the Church on all its members. The faith which accepts
these mysteries has for its specific object the Church-dogma; it does
not penetrate through the dogma to the things themselves of which
the dogma is the expression; it does not bring into communion with
God; it does not represent a religious but an intellectual act, the
assensus, the fides historica. Faith is not a saving power in itself, but
is merely preparatory to salvation; nevertheless, it is something
meritorious because and in so far as it is an act of submission to
ecclesiastical authority.
The Church, however, is not merely the possessor of supernatural
truth; in the second place it is also the depository and dispenser of
supernatural grace. As the Church doctrine is infinitely exalted above
all human knowledge and science, so the grace kept and distributed
by the Church far transcends nature. It is true this grace is, among
other things, gratia medicinalis, but this is an accidental and
adventitious quality. Before all else it is gratia elevans, something
added to and elevating above nature. As such it entered into the
image of God given to Adam before the Fall, and as such it again
appears in the restoration to that original state. In view of its adding
to exalted nature a supernatural element, it is conceived as
something material, enclosed in the sacrament, and as such
dispensed by the priest. Thus every man becomes, for his knowledge
of supernatural truth and for his reception of supernatural grace,
that is, for his heavenly salvation, absolutely dependent on the
Church, the priest and the sacrament. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
But even this grace, which, to be sure, remains subject to loss and
recovery until the end of life, does not assure man of attainment to
fellowship with God. All it does is to impart to him the power
whereby, if so choosing, he may merit, through good works,
supernatural salvation, the visio Dei. Since work and reward must be
proportionate, the good works which merit supernatural salvation
must all be of a specific kind and therefore need to be defined and
prescribed by the Church. The Church, besides being the depository
of truth and the dispenser of grace, is in the third place also law-giver
and judge. The satisfactions which the Church imposes are according
to the character of the sins committed. The rapidity or slowness with
which a man attains to perfection, how much time he shall spend in
purgatory, how rich a crown he will receive in heaven,—all this
depends on the number of extraordinary, supernatural works which
he performs. Thus a spiritual hierarchy is created. There exists a
hierarchy in the world of angels, and a hierarchy in the ecclesiastical
organization, but there is a hierarchy also among the saints on earth
and the blessed in heaven. In an ascending scale the saints, divided
into orders and ranks, draw near to God, and in proportion as they
become partakers of the divine nature are admitted to the worship
and adoration of the deity.
In view of what has been said it is evident that truth, grace and good
works bear, according to Rome, a specific, supernatural character.
And because the Church is the God-appointed depository of all these
blessings, the relation between grace and nature coincides with that
between the Church and the world. The world, the state, natural life,
marriage and culture are not sinful in themselves; only they are of a
lower order, of a secular nature, and, unless consecrated by the
Church, easily become an occasion for sinning. This determines the
function of the Church with reference to the world. It is the calling of
the Church to declare unto the world that in itself the world is
profane, but that nevertheless, through the consecration of the
Church, it may become a vehicle of grace. Renunciation of the world
and sovereignty over the world with Rome spring from one and the
same principle. The celibacy of the priesthood and the elevation of
marriage to the rank of a sacrament are branches of the same stem.
The whole hierarchical idea is built on the sharp distinction between
nature and grace. Where the supernatural character of the Church
and the efficacy of the sacrament and the priestly office are
concerned, this system brooks neither compromise nor concession;
but aside from this, it leaves room for a great variety of steps and
grades, of ranks and orders in holiness and salvation. The Church
contains members that belong to it in body only, and members
belonging to it with a part of their powers or with all their powers; it
makes concessions to the weak and worships the saints; a lax
morality and a severe asceticism, an active and a contemplative
mode of life, rationalism and supernaturalism, unbelief and
superstition equally find a place within its walls.
Towards the close of the Middle Ages this system had become
corrupt in almost every respect. In the sphere of truth it had
degenerated into nominalistic scholasticism; in the sphere of grace
into demoralizing traffic in indulgences; in the sphere of good works
into the immoral life of priests and monks. Numerous efforts were
made to remedy these faults and to reform the Church from within.
But the Reformation of the sixteenth century differed from all these
attempts in that it not merely opposed the Roman system in its
excrescences but attacked it internally in the foundations on which it
rested and in the principles out of which it had been developed. The
Reformation rejected the entire system, and substituted for it a
totally different conception of veritas, gratia, and bona opera. It was
led to this new conception not through scientific reflections or
philosophical speculations, but through earnest, heartfelt concern for
the salvation of souls and the glory of God. The Reformation was a
religious and ethical movement through and through. It was born
out of the distress of Luther's soul.
When a helpless man, out of distress of soul, looks to the Gospel for
deliverance, the Gospel will appear to him in a totally new light. All
at once it ceases to be a set of supernatural, inscrutable mysteries to
be received on ecclesiastical authority, with renunciation of the
claims of reason, by meritorious assent. It straightway becomes a
new Gospel, good tidings of salvation, revelation of God's gracious
and efficacious will to save the sinner, something that itself imparts
the forgiveness of sin and eternal life and therefore is embraced by
lost man with joy, that lifts him above all sin and above the entire
world to the high hope of a heavenly salvation. Hence it is no longer
possible to speak of the Gospel with Rome as consisting of
supernatural mysteries to be responded to by man in voluntary
assent. The Gospel is not law, neither as regards the intellect nor as
regards the will; it is in essence a promise, not a demand but a gift, a
free gift of the divine favor; nay, in it the divine will itself through the
Gospel addresses itself to the will, the heart, the innermost essence
of man, and there produces the faith which rests in this divine will
and builds on it and puts its trust in it through all perils, even in the
hour of death.
By reason of this new conception of the Gospel, which in principle
was but a return to the old, Scriptural conception, it could not be
otherwise than that faith also should obtain a totally new
significance. If the Gospel is not a veritas to which the gratia is
added later on, but is itself gratia in its very origin, the revelation of
God's gracious will, and at the same time the instrument for making
this will effective in the heart of man, then faith can no longer remain
a purely intellectual assent. It must become the confidence in the
gracious will of God, produced by God himself in man's heart; a
surrender of the whole man to the divine grace; a resting in the
divine promise; a receiving of a part in God's favor; admission into
communion with him; an absolute assurance of salvation. With
Rome, faith is but one of the seven preparations, which lead on to the
reception of the gratia infusa in baptism, and hence bears no
religious character; it is naught but a fides historica, which stands in
need of the supplement of love in order to become complete and
sufficient unto salvation. To the Reformers faith from its very first
inception is religious in nature. As fides justificans salvifica it differs
not in degree but in principle and essence from the fides historica. It
has for its object God himself, God in Christ, and Christ in the garb of
Holy Scripture, Thus it is seen to be the principle of the true fear
of God,
To all the Reformers, therefore, there lies behind the Gospel and
behind faith the gracious and efficacious will of God. Nay, more than
this, in the Gospel and in faith the divine will is revealed and
realized. This is the reason why the religious conception of the
Gospel and of faith is with the Reformers most intimately connected
with their belief in predestination. We in our time no longer
understand this. We have lost the habit of religious thinking, because
we feel less for ourselves the personal need of communion with God,
and so feel less of the impulse to interpret the world from a religious
point of view. Instead, our age has learned to think in the terms of
natural science; it has substituted for the divine will the omnipotent
law and the omnipotent force of nature, and thus thrown itself into
the arms of determinism. It claims to have long since outgrown the
belief in predestination. And undoubtedly there exists between these
two, however often they may be mixed and confounded, a difference
of principle. Determinism is in principle rationalistic; it cherishes the
delusion of being able to explain everything from the reign of natural
law, holding that all existing things are rational since reason
perceives that they could not be otherwise than they actually are.
Predestination, on the other hand, is a thoroughly religious
conception. While able to recognize natural law and to reckon with
the forces of nature, it refuses to rest in this or to consider natural
necessity the first and last word of history.
He who has learned to regard communion with God as the supreme
good for his own person, must feel bound to work his way back,
behind the world and all its phenomena, until he arrives at the will of
God. He must seek an explanation of the origin, development and
goal of the world-process, which shall be in accordance with that will
and hence bear an ethico-religious character. This is the reason that,
so soon as a religious movement appears in history, the problem of
predestination comes to the front. In a way, this is true of all
religions, but it applies with special pertinence to the history of the
Christian religion. In proportion as the Christian religion is distinctly
experienced and appreciated in its essence as true, full religion, as
pure grace, it will also be felt to include, and that directly, without
the need of dialectic deduction, the confession of predestination.
Hence all the Reformers were agreed on this point. It is true that
with Luther it was afterwards, for practical reasons, relegated to the
background, but even he never recanted or denied it. It was in the
controversy about the servum or liberum arbitrium that the
Reformation and humanism parted ways once for all. Erasmus was
and continued to be a Romanist in spite of his ridicule of the monks.
The doctrine of predestination, therefore, is no discovery of Calvin;
before Calvin it had been professed by Luther and Zwingli. It sprang
spontaneously from the religious experience of the Reformers. If
Calvin introduced any modification, it consists in this, that he freed
the doctrine from the semblance of harshness and arbitrariness and
imparted to it a more purely ethico-religious character.
For, all affinity and agreement notwithstanding, Calvin differed from
Luther and Zwingli. He shared neither the emotional nature of the
one nor the humanistic inclinations of the other. When, in a manner
as yet but very imperfectly known to us, he was converted, this
experience was immediately accompanied by such a clear, deep and
harmonious insight into Christian truth as to render any subsequent
modification unnecessary. The first edition of the Institutio which
appeared in March, 1536, was expanded and increased in the later
issues, but it never changed, and the task which, in his view, the
Reformation had to accomplish, remained from beginning to end his
own goal in life. and while Zwingli one-sidedly defined faith as
,—a faith which renews the entire man in his being
and consciousness, in soul and body, in all his relations and
activities, and hence a faith which exercises its sanctifying influence
in the entire range of life, upon Church and school, upon society and
state, upon science and art. But in order to be able to perform this
comprehensive task,—in order to be truly, always and everywhere a
fides salvificans, it was necessary for faith first of all to be fully
assured of itself, and no longer to be tossed to and fro by every wind
of doubt. This explains why, more than with Zwingli and Luther,
faith is with Calvin unshaken conviction, firm assurance.
But if faith is to be such an unshaken assurance it must rest on a
truth removed from all possibility of doubt; it must attest itself as
real by its own witness and power in the heart of man. A house that
will defy the tempest cannot be built on the sand. Behind faith,
therefore, must lie the truth, the will and act of God. In other words,
faith is the fruit or effect of election; it is the experience of an act of
God. Always and everywhere Calvin recurs to this will of God. The
world with its infinite multitude of phenomena, with its diversities
and inequalities, its disharmonies and contrasts, is not to be
explained from the will of the creature nor from the worth or
unworthiness of man. It is true, inequality and contrast appear most
pronounced in the allotment of man's eternal destiny. They are,
however, by no means confined to this, but show themselves in every
sphere, in the different places of habitation appointed for men, in the
different gifts and powers conferred upon them in body and soul, in
the difference between health and sickness, wealth and poverty,
prosperity and adversity, joy and sorrow, in the varying ranks and
vocations, and, last of all, in the fact itself that men are men and not
animals. Let the opponents of the doctrine of election, therefore,
answer the question,The more we reflect upon the world the more we are
forced to fall back upon the hidden will of God and find in it the
ultimate ground for both the existence of the world and its being
what it is. All the standards of goodness and justice and righteous
recompense and retribution for evil which we are accustomed to
apply, prove wholly inadequate to measure the world. The will of
God is, and from the nature of the case must be, the deepest cause of
the entire world and of all the. The unfathomable mystery of the world compels the
intellect and the heart, theology and philosophy alike to fall back
upon the will of God and seek rest in it.
It frequently happens, however, that theology and philosophy are not
contented with this. They then endeavor, after the manner of Plato
and Hegel, to offer a rational explanation of the world. Or, while
falling back upon the will of God, they make out of this will a
as is done by Gnosticism, or a blind, irrational and
unhappy will, as is done by Schopenhauer, or an unconscious and
unknowable power, as is done by von Hartmann and Spencer. By his
Christian faith Calvin was kept from these different forms of
pantheism. It is true, Calvin upholds with the utmost energy the
sovereignty of the divine will over and against all human reasoning.
Predestination belongs to the which man
may not enter and in regard to which his curiosity must remain
unsatisfied; for they form a labyrinth from which no one can find the
exit. Man may not even investigate with impunity the things God
meant to keep secret. God wants us to adore, not to comprehend, the
majesty of His wisdom. Nevertheless God is not exlex. He sufficiently
vindicates His justice by convicting of guilt those who blaspheme
Him in their own consciences. His will is not absolute power, but ab
lex. And the Gospel reveals to us what is the content, the heart and
the kernel, as it were, of this will.
For since the Fall nature no longer reveals to us God's paternal favor.
On every side it proclaims the divine curse which cannot but fill our
guilty souls with despair. . Aside from the special revelation in Christ, man has no true
knowledge of heavenly things. He is ignorant and blind as respects
God, His fatherhood and His law as the rule of life. Especially of the
he is without the faintest
consciousness, for human reason neither can attain nor strives to
attain to this truth, and therefore fails to understand
. And herein precisely consists the
essence of God's special revelation in Christ, and this is the central
content of the Gospel: God here makes Himself known to us not
merely as our Creator, but as our Redemptor. He does not here tell
us what He is, to enable us to indulge in speculation, but causes us to
—these constitute the essence of the
Gospel and the firm foundation of faith. He is a true believer, who,
firmly convinced that God is to him a gracious and loving Father,
expects everything from His loving-kindness.
This concentration of the Gospel in the promise of divine mercy not
only provided Calvin with a firm footing in the midst of the shifting
opinions of his time, but also widened his outlook and enlarged his
sympathies, so that, while resolutely standing by his own confession,
he nevertheless perpetually mediated the things that made for unity
and peace among all the sons of the Reformation. To be sure, the
conception usually formed of Calvin differs widely from this. His
image as commonly portrayed has for its only features those of cruel
severity and despotic intolerance. But such a conception does grave
injustice to the Genevan Reformer. Unfortunately, he must be held
responsible for the death of Servetus, although in this respect he only
stands on a level with the other Reformers, none of whom had
entirely outgrown all the errors of their age. But the Calvin who gave
his approval to the execution of Servetus is not the only Calvin we
know. There is also a far different Calvin, one who was united with
his friends in the bonds of the most tender affection, whose heart
went out in sympathy to all his suffering and struggling brethren in
the faith, one who identified himself with their lot, and supplied
them with comfort and courage and cheer in their severest
afflictions. We know of a Calvin who without intermission labored
most earnestly for the union of the divided Protestants, who sought
God in His Word alone and was unwilling to bind himself even to
such terms as "Trinity" and "Person", who refused to subscribe to the
Nicene and Athanasian creeds, who discountenanced every
disruption of the Church on the ground of minor impurities of
doctrine, who favored fraternal tolerance in all questions touching
the form of worship. There was a Calvin, who, notwithstanding all
differences of opinion, cherished the highest regard for Luther,
Melanchthon and Zwingli, and recognized them as servants of God;
who himself subscribed to the Augsburg Confession and, reserving
the right of private interpretation, acknowledged it as the expression
of his own faith; who recommended the Loci of Melanchthon,
although differing from him on the points of free-will and
predestination; who refused to confine the invisible Church to any
single confession, but recognized its presence wherever God works
by His Word and Spirit in the hearts of men.
Still another injustice, however, must be laid to the charge of the
average conception of Calvin. Men sometimes speak as if Calvin
knew of nothing else to preach but the decree of predestination with
its two parts of election and reprobation. The truth is that no
preacher of the Gospel has ever surpassed Calvin in the free,
generous proclamation of the grace and love of God. He was so far
from putting predestination to the front, that in the Institutio the
subject does not receive treatment until the third book, after the
completion of the discussion of the life of faith. It is entirely wanting
in the Confessio of 1536 and is only mentioned in passing, in
connection with the Church, in the Catechismus Genevensis of 1545.
And as regards reprobation, before accusing Calvin, the charge
should be laid against Scripture, against the reality of life, against the
testimony of conscience; for all these bear witness that there is sin in
the world, and that this awful reality, this decretum horribile, cannot
have its deepest ground in the free will of man. And there are still
other features in Calvin's doctrine of reprobation to which attention
should be called. There is in the first place the fact that he says so
little about the working of reprobation. The Institutio is a work
characterized by great sobriety, wholly free from scholastic
abstruseness; it everywhere treats the doctrines of faith in the closest
connection with the practice of religion. This is especially true of
eschatology. As is well known, Calvin never could bring himself to
write a commentary on the Apocalypse, and in his Institutio he
devotes to "the last things"; only a few paragraphs. He avoids all
spinosae quaestiones with reference to the state of glory, and
interprets the descriptions given by Scripture of the state of the lost
as symbolical: darkness, weeping, gnashing of teeth, unquenchable
fire, the worm that dies not,—all these serve to impress upon us
quam sit calamitosum alienari ab omni Dei societate, and
majestatem Dei ita sentire tibi adversam ut effugere nequeas quin
ab ipsa urgearis. The punishment of hell consists in exclusion from
fellowship with God and admits of degrees. In connection with Paul's
words, that at last God will be all in all, it is not forbidden to think of
the devil and the godless, since in their subjection also the glory of
God shall be revealed.
But of even greater significance is it that with Calvin reprobation
does not mean the withholding of all grace. Although man through
sin has been rendered blind to all the spiritual realities of the
kingdom of God, so that a special revelation of God's fatherly love in
Christ and a specialis illuminatio by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of
the sinners here become necessary, nevertheless there exists
alongside of these a generalis gratia which dispenses to all men
various gifts. If God had not spared man, his fall would have involved
the whole of nature in ruin. As it was, God immediately after the Fall
interposed, in order by His common grace to curb sin and to uphold
in being the universitas rerum. For after all sin is rather an
adventitia qualitas than a substantialis proprietas, and for this
reason God is operis sui corruptioni magis infensus quam operi suo.
Although for man's sake the whole of nature is subject to vanity,
nevertheless nature is upheld by the hope which God implanted in its
heart. There is no part of the world in which some spark of the divine
glory does not glimmer. Though it be a metaphorical mode of
expression, since God should not be confounded with nature, it may
be affirmed in a truly religious sense that nature is God. Heaven and
earth with their innumerable wonders are a magnificent display of
the divine wisdom.
Especially the human race is still a clear mirror of the operation of
God, an exhibition of His manifold gifts. In every man there is still a
seed of religion, a consciousness of God, wholly ineradicable,
convincing all of the heavenly grace on which their life depends, and
leading even the heathen to name God the Father of mankind. The
supernatural gifts have been lost, and the natural gifts have become
corrupted, so that man by nature no longer knows who and what God
seeks to be to him. Still these latter gifts have not been withdrawn
entirely from man. Reason and judgment and will, however corrupt,
yet, in so far as they belong to man's nature, have not been wholly
lost. The fact that men are found either wholly or in part deprived of
reason, proves that the tithe to these gifts is not self-evident and that
they are not distributed to men on the basis of merit. Nonetheless,
the grace of God imparts them to us. The reason whereby man
distinguishes between truth and error, good and evil, and forms
conceptions and judgments, and also the will which is inseparable
from human nature as the faculty whereby man strives after what he
deems good for himself,—these raise him above the animals.
Consequently it is contrary to Scripture as well as to experience to
attribute to man such a perpetual blindness as would render him
unable to form any true conception. On the contrary, there is light
still shining in the darkness, men still retain a degree of love for the
truth, some sparks of the truth have still been preserved. Men carry
in themselves the principles of the laws which are to govern them
individually and in their association with one another. They agree in
regard to the fundamentals of justice and equity, and everywhere
exhibit an aptness and liking for social order. Sometimes a
remarkable sagacity is given to men whereby they are not only able
to learn certain things, but also to make important inventions and
discoveries, and to put these to practical use in life. Owing to all this,
not only is an orderly civil society made possible among men, but
arts and sciences develop, which are not to be despised. For these
should be considered gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is true the Holy Spirit
as a spirit of sanctification dwells in believers only, but as a spirit of
life, of wisdom and of power He works also in those who do not
believe. No Christian, therefore, should despise these gifts; on the
contrary, he should honor art and science, music and philosophy and
various other products of the human mind as praestantissima
Spiritus dona, and make the most of them for his own personal use.
Accordingly, in the moral sphere also distinctions are to be
recognized between some men and others. While all are corrupt, not
all are fallen to an equal depth; but there are sins of ignorance and
sins of mallice. There is a difference between Camillus and Catiline.
Even to sinful man sometimes speciosae dotes and speciales Dei
gratiae are granted. In common parlance it is even permissible to
say that one man has been born bene, another pravae naturae. Nay,
every man has to acknowledge in the talents entrusted to him a
specialis or peculiaris Dei gratia. In the diversity of all these gifts we
see the remnants of the divine image whereby man is distinguished
from all other creatures.
In view of all these utterances, which it would be easy to increase and
enforce from the other works of Calvin, it is grossly unjust to charge
the Reformer with narrow-mindedness and intolerance. It is, of
course, a different question whether Calvin himself possessed talent
and aptness for all these arts and sciences to which he accords praise.
But even if this be not so, even if he did not possess the love for
music and singing which distinguished Luther, this is not to his
discredit, for not only has every genius its limitations, but the
Reformers were and had to be by vocation men of faith, and for
having excelled in this they deserve our veneration and praise, no
less than the men of art and science. Calvin affirms, it is true, that
the virtues of the natural man, however noble, do not suffice for
justification at the judgment-bar of God, but this is due to his
profound conviction of the majesty and spiritual character of the
moral law. Aside from this, he is more generous in his recognition of
what is true and good, wherever it be found, than any other
Reformer. He surveys the entire earth and finds everywhere the
evidence of the divine goodness, wisdom and power. Calvins
teleological standpoint does not render him narrow in his
sympathies, but rather gives to his mind the stamp of catholicity.
This appears with equal clearness from the calling which he assigns
to the Christian. In regard to this also Calvin takes his point of
departure in the will of God. To the Romanist view he brings in
principle the same objection that bears against the pagan
conception: the doctrine of the meritoriousness of good works is a
delusion; the monastic vows are an infringement of Christian liberty;
the perfection striven after by this method is an arbitrary ideal, set
up by man himself. Romanism and paganism both minimize the
corruption of human nature, and in the matter of good works start
from the free will of man. In contradistinction to this Calvin proceeds
on the principle: nostri non sumus, Dei sumus. The Christian's life
ought to be one continual sacrifice, a perfect consecration to God, a
service of God's name, obedience to His law, a pursuit of His glory.
This undivided consecration to God assumes on earth largely the
character of self-denial and cross-bearing. Paganism knows nothing
of this; it merely prescribes certain moral maxims and strives to
bring man's life into subjection to his reason or will, or to nature. But
the Christian subjects also his intellect and his will and all his powers
to the law of God. He does not resign himself to the inevitable, but
commits himself to the heavenly Father, who is not like unto a
philosopher preaching virtue, but is the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
The result is that for Calvin the passive virtues of submission,
humility, patience, self-denial, cross-bearing stand in the
foreground. Like St. Augustine, Calvin is mortally afraid of pride,
whereby man exalts himself above God. His strong insistence upon
the inability of man and the bondage of the will is not for the purpose
of plunging man into despair, but in order to raise him from his
lethargy and to awaken in him the longing for what he lacks, to make
him renounce all self-glorying and self-reliance and put all his
confidence in God alone. Calvin strips man of everything in order to
restore unto him all things in God. Quanto magis in te infirmus es,
tanto magis te suscipit Dominus; nostra humilitas ejus altitudo.
Humilitas thus becomes the first virtue; it grows on the root of
election; we are continually taught it by God in all the adversity and
crucifixion of the present life; it places us for the first time in the
proper relation towards God and our fellowman. For it reconciles us
to the fact that this life is for us a land of pilgrimage, full of perils and
afflictions, and teaches us to surrender ourselves in all things to the
will of God: Dominus ita voluit, ergo ejus voluntatem sequamur. It
likewise teaches us to love our neighbor, to value the gifts bestowed
upon him and to employ our own gifts for his benefit.
Still it would be a mistake to imagine that according to Calvin the
Christian life is confined to the practice of the passive virtues. It is
true, he often speaks of despising the present and contemplating the
future life. But on considering the times in which Calvin lived, the
persecution and oppression to which the Reformation was exposed
in well-nigh every country, the bodily and mental suffering the
Reformer himself had to endure,—on considering all this we cannot
wonder that he exhorts the faithful before all things to the exercise of
humility and submission, to patience and obedience, to self-denial
and cross-bearing. This has always been so in the Christian Church,
and may be traced back to the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles. It
does not speak favorably for the depth and intensity of our spiritual
life, if we are inclined to find fault with Calvin, the other Reformers,
and the martyrs of the Church for this alleged one-sidedness of their
faith. It rather should excite our admiration that, in the midst of such
circumstances, they so largely kept still an eye open for the positive
vocation of the Christian. With Calvin at least the reverse side to the
attitude thus criticized is not wanting. Nor does it appear merely
after an incidental fashion, by way of appendix to his ethics; it is the
outcome of his own most individual principle; its root again lies in
his conception of the will of God.
As is universally acknowledged, we owe to Luther the restoration of
mans natural calling to a place of honor. Calvin, however, carried
this principle enunciated by his predecessors to its furthermost
consequences. He viewed the whole of life from the standpoint of the
will of God and placed it in all its extent under the discipline of the
divine law. It was the common conviction of the Reformers that
Christian perfection must be realized not above and outside of, but
within the sphere of the calling assigned us by God here on earth.
Perfection consists neither in compliance with arbitrary human or
ecclesiastical commandments, nor in the performance of all sorts of
extraordinary activities. It consists in the faithful discharge of their
ordinary daily duties which have been laid by God upon every man in
the conduct of life. But much more strongly than Luther, Calvin
emphasizes the idea that life itself in its whole length and breadth
and depth must be a service of God. Life acquires for him a religious
character, is subsumed under and becomes a part of the Kingdom of
God. Or, as Calvin himself repeatedly formulates it: Christian life is
always and everywhere a life in the presence of God, a walking before
His face,—coram ipso ambulare, ac si essemus sub ejus oculis.
When, therefore, Calvin speaks of despising the present life, he
means by this something far different from what was meant by
medieval ethics. He does not mean that life ought to be fled from,
suppressed, or mutilated, but wishes to convey the idea that the
Christian should not give his heart to this vain, transitory life, but
should possess everything as not possessing it, and put his
confidence in God alone. But life in itself is a benedictio Dei and
comprises many divina beneficia. It is for believers a means to
prepare them far the heavenly salvation. It should be hated only
quatenus nos peccato teneat obnoxios, and this hatred should never
relate to life as such. On the contrary, this life and the vocation in it
given us by God are a part which we have no right to abandon, but
which without murmuring and impatience we must faithfully guard,
so long as God Himself does not relieve us. So to view life, as a
vocatio Dei,—this is the first principle, the foundation of all moral
action; this imparts unity to our life and symmetry to all its parts;
this assigns to each one his individual place and task, and provides
the precious comfort quod nullum erit tam sordidum ac vile opus,
quod non coram Deo resplendeat et pretiosissimum habeatur.
Thus Calvin sees the whole of life steeped in the light of the divine
glory. As in all nature there is no creature which does not reflect the
divine perfection, so in the rich world of men there is no vocation so
simple, no labor so mean, as not to be suffused with the divine
splendor and subservient to the glory of God's name. And Calvin
applies this point of view to a still wider range. All the possessions of
life are after the same manner rescued from the dishonor to which
ascetic moralism had abandoned them. To be sure, he protests
against defiling the conscience in the use of these possessions and
insists upon it that the Christian should be actuated by praesentis
vitae contemptu et immortalitatis meditatione. But he maintains
with equal emphasis that all these possessions are gifts of God,
designed not merely to provide for our necessities, but also bestowed
for our enjoyment and delight. When God adorns the earth with trees
and plants and flowers, when He causes the vine to grow which
makes glad the heart of man, when He permits man to dig from out
the earth the precious metals and stones which shine in the light of
the sun,—all this proves that God does not mean to restrict the use of
earthly possessions to the relief of our absolute necessities, but has
given them to man also for enjoyment of life. Prosperity, abundance
and luxury also are gifts of God, to be enjoyed with gratitude and
moderation. And Calvin does not want to bind the conscience with
regard to this to rigid rules, but expects it freely to regulate itself by
the general principles laid dawn in Scripture for this purpose.
It must be admitted that the Reformer of Geneva did not always
adhere in practice consistently to this golden rule. Instead of leaving
room for individual liberty he endeavored to bring the entire
compass of life under definite rules. The Consistory had for its task
and had to exercise
censorship over every improper word and every wrong act; it had to
watch over orthodoxy and church-attendance, to be on the lookout
for Romish customs and wordily amusements, to oversee domestic
life and the education of children; it had to keep its eyes on the
tradesman in his store, on the craftsman in his workshop, on the
merchant in the market-place, and to subject the entire range of life
to the strictest discipline. Even regulations for fire-departments and
night-watches, for market-facilities and street-cleaning, for trade and
industry, for the prosecution of law-suits and the administration of
justice are to be found among Calvin's writings. It is possible to
justify all these measures in view of the circumstances under which
they were introduced in Geneva. But nobody can deny that Calvin
went too far in the creation of a moral police of this kind, that he
introduced a régime which, while perhaps necessary and productive
of excellent results for that age, is yet unsuited to other times and to
different conditions.
But this criticism of Calvin's practice by no means detracts from the
glory of the principle proclaimed by him. What he advocates in
imitation of Zwingli was not a mere religious and ecclesiastical
reform, but a moral reformation embracing the whole of life. Both
Zwingli and Calvin waged war not merely against the Judaistic self righteousness of the Roman Church,
but assailed with equal vigor all
pagan license. Both desired a national life in all its parts inspired and
directed by the principles of the divine Word. And both were led to
this view by their theological principle; they took their point of
departure in all their thought and activity in God, walked with Him
through all of life and brought back to God as an offering all they
were and had. Behind everything the sovereign will of God lies
hidden and works. The content, the kernel of this will is made known
to us in the Gospel; from it we know that God is a merciful and
gracious Father, who in spite of all opposition proposes to Himself
the salvation of the Church, the redemption of the world, the
glorification of His perfections. But this will of God is not an
impotent desire, it is omnipotent energy. It realizes itself in the faith
of the elect; true faith is an experience of the work of God in one's
soul, and for this reason affords unshakable assurance, immovable
confidence, the power to surmount all pain and peril through
communion with God. Through this gracious and omnipotent will of
God is made known in the Gospel alone and experienced in faith
only, nevertheless it does not stand isolated, but is encompassed,
supported and reinforced by the operation of the same will in the
world at large. Special grace is encircled by common grace; the
vocation which comes to us in faith is connected and connects us
with the vocation presented to us in our earthly calling; the election
revealed to us in faith through this faith communicates its power to
our entire life; the God of creation and of regeneration is one. Hence
the believer cannot rest contented in his faith, but must make it the
point of vantage from which he mounts up to the source of election
and presses forward to the conquest of the entire world.
History has demonstrated that the belief in election, provided it be
genuine, that is, a heartfelt conviction of faith, does not produce
careless or Godless men. Especially as developed and professed by
Calvin, it is a principle which cuts off all Romish error at the root.
Whereas with Rome special revelation consists primarily in the
disclosure of certain mysteries, with Calvin it receives for its content
the gracious fatherly will of God realizing itself through the Word of
revelation. With Rome faith is nothing more than an intellectual
assent, preparing man for grace on the principle of
with Calvin faith is the reception of grace itself, experience of the
power of God, undoubting assurance of God, through and through
religious in its nature. With Rome grace chiefly serves the purpose of
strengthening the will of man and qualifying him for the
performance of various meritorious good works prescribed by the
Church; with Calvin the grace received through faith raises man to
the rank of an organ of the divine will and causes him to walk in
accordance with this will before the presence of God and for the
divine glory. The Reformation as begun by Luther and Zwingli, and
reinforced and carried through by Calvin, put an end to the Romish
supernaturalism and dualism and asceticism. The divine will which
created the world, which in the state of sin preserves it through
common grace and makes itself known through special grace as the
will of a merciful and gracious Father, aims at the salvation of the
world, and itself through its omnipotent energy brings about this
salvation. Because it thus placed the whole of life under the control
of the divine will, it was possible for Calvin's ethics to fall into two
precise regulations, into rigorism and puritanism; but in principle
his ethics is diametrically apposed to all asceticism, it is catholic and
universal in its scope.
In order to prove this by one striking example attention may be
called to the fact that medieval ethics consistently disapproved the
principle of usury on the ground of its being forbidden by Scripture
and contrary to the unproductive nature of money. Accordingly it
looked with contempt upon trade and commerce. Luther,
Melanchthon, Zwingli and Erasmus adhered to this view, but Calvin,
when this important problem had been submitted to him, formulated
in a classic document the grounds on which it could be affirmed that
a reasonable interest is neither in conflict with Scripture nor with the
nature of money. He took into account the law of life under which
commerce operates and declared that only the sins of commerce are
to be frowned upon, whereas commerce itself is to be regarded as a
calling well-pleasing to God and profitable to society. And this
merely illustrates the point of view from which Calvin habitually
approached the problems of life. He found the will of God revealed
not merely in Scripture, but also in the world, and he traced the
connection and sought to restore the harmony between them. Under
the guidance of the divine Word he distinguished everywhere
between the institution of God and human corruption, and then
sought to establish and restore everything in harmony with the
divine nature and law. Nothing is unclean in itself; every part of the
world and every calling in life is a revelation of the divine perfections,
so that even the humblest day laborer fulfills a divine calling. This is
the democratic element in the doctrine of Calvin: there is with God
no acceptance of persons; all men are equal before Him; even the
humblest and meanest workman, if he be a believer, fills a place in
the Kingdom of God and stands as a colaborer with God in His
presence. But—and this is the aristocratic, reverse side to the
democratic view—every creature and every calling has its own
peculiar nature: Church and state, the family and society, agriculture
and commerce, art and science are all institutions and gifts of God,
but each in itself is a special revelation of the divine will and
therefore possesses its own nature. The unity and the diversity in the
whole world alike point back to the one sovereign, omnipotent,
gracious and merciful will of God.
In this spirit Calvin labored in Geneva. But his activity was not
confined to the territory of one city. Geneva was to Calvin merely the
center, from which he surveyed the entire field of the Reformation in
all lands. When his only child was taken away from him by death, he
consoled himself with the thought that God had given him numerous
children after the Spirit. And so it was indeed. Through an extensive
correspondence he kept in touch with his fellow-laborers in the work
of the Reformation; all questions were referred to him; he was the
councillor of all the leaders of the great movement; he taught
hundreds of men and trained them in his spirit. From all quarters
refugees came to Geneva, that bulwark against Rome, to seek
protection and support, and afterwards returned to their own lands
inspired with new courage. Thus Calvin created in many lands a
people who, while made up from all classes, nobles and plain
citizens, townspeople and countryfold, were yet one in the
consciousness of a divine vocation. In this consciousness they took
up the battle against tyranny in Church and state alike, and in that
contest secured liberties and rights which are still ours at the present
day. Calvin himself stood in the forefront of this battle. Life and
doctrine with him were one. He gave his body a living, holy sacrifice,
well-pleasing unto God through Jesus Christ. Therein consisted his
reasonable service.