Conclusion

Summary

Our reconsideration of John Calvin has left us with many trajectories into the future, and I would like to take the remaining chapter to trace out where I see each trajectory heading, and also to answer questions that each trajectory raises for us.

First of all, Calvin himself would expand the scope of our contemplation of the universe to include not only the heavens beyond the earth, but also the works of God that confront us on earth. Calvin thought that the best place to proceed after contemplating the stars, planets, sun and moon was the atmosphere, for the sudden changes one sees there are a striking contrast to the abiding order, harmony, and symmetry one sees in the heavens, and thus provide a more striking testimony to the powers of God. Once again, this contemplation has one level for the unlearned, and another for the learned; but the investigations of the learned do not mean that the unlearned cannot profit from this contemplation, any more than the contemplation of the unlearned necessitates the rejection of more learned investigations. As we saw with regard to astronomy, the purpose of the learned investigation of the atmosphere would be to learn the natural causes of the natural effects we see, while simultaneously seeing all natural causes and effects as works of God that reveal the powers of God. Calvin was increasingly concerned that the method of Aristotle would raise the possibility that the mediate causes of atmospheric effects would blind the learned to the awareness that all such causes and effects are also the work of God.

Philosophers think not that they have reasoned skillfully enough about inferior causes, unless they separate God very far from his works. It is a diabolical science, however, which fixes our contemplations on the works of nature, and turns them away from God. If anyone who wished to know a man should take no notice of his face, but should fix his eyes only on the points of his nails, his folly might justly be derided. But far greater is the folly of those philosophers, who, out of mediate and proximate causes, weave themselves veils, lest they should be compelled to acknowledge the hand of God, which manifestly displays itself in his works.

However, Calvin does not think that we arrive at this awareness by breaking the causal nexus with allegedly divine works, but rather by means of the experience of awe, astonishment, and wonder, which opens us up to the presence of God hidden within the events we seek to understand.