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Determinism and the Hiddenness of God in Calvin's Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

C. J. Kinlaw
C. J. Kinlaw
Affiliation:
Wake Forest University
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Extract

Julian N. Hartt once observed that Calvin so accentuates divine causation that he denies all secondary agency. A strong statement of God's omnipotence commits Calvin to the position that divine causation is the only connection that has any foundation in reality. And this claim, Hartt noted, places Calvin dangerously close to Spinozism. I have no stake (nor does Hartt) in any analysis that attempts to indicate affinities between Calvin and the Dutch rationalist whom he predates by several generations. But, as Hartt suggested and as I will demonstrate, a persuasive case can be made for Calvin's commitment to a thoroughgoing causal determinism that has God at the helm directing every event. Now one should note at the outset that Calvin has solid theological reasons for stressing the role of God's all-determining will in the course of events. As a Reformation theologian, he is a persistent defender of the utter gratuitousness of grace, thereby denying that the moral, spiritual, and epistemological chasm separating the human and the divine can in any way be reconciled by human being. Yet, for Calvin, grace possesses an omnicompetence – even faith is the gift of grace – which, when examined within the total context of his thought, reveals the radical dependence of the entire created order upon the will of God.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 497 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

page 497 note 1 Hartt made this observation in a conversation at the University of Virginia in the Spring of 1982.

page 497 note 2 Bois, Henri, La Philosophie de Calvin (Paris: Librairie Generale et Protestante, 1919), passim.Google Scholar

page 497 note 3 Torrance, T. F., Calvin's Doctrine of ManGoogle Scholar and Jacobs, Paul, Praedestination und Vorantwortlichkeit bei CalvinGoogle Scholar, and Bois are some exceptions.

page 498 note 1 Dowey, Edward, The Knowledge of God in Calvin's Theology (Columbia, 1952).Google Scholar

page 498 note 2 Ibid. pp. 218–19.

page 499 note 1 All citations from the Institutes are taken from the McNeil edition, trans. Battles, Ford Lewis (Westminster, 1960).Google Scholar Hereafter, citations will be made in the text by book, chapter and section.

page 499 note 2 Calvin, John, Concerning Eternal Predestination, trans. Reid, J. K. S. (London: Clark 1961), p. 177.Google Scholar

page 499 note 3 These passages are quoted in Partee, Charles, Calvin and Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 1977), p. 77.Google Scholar

page 501 note 1 What God decrees will necessarily take place, not because God has exercised any foreknowledge, but simply from the fact that God has issued a command (see III, 21, 5; III, 21, I; III, 22, 3–6).

page 504 note 1 Calvin, , ‘Articles Concerning Predestination’, in Calvin: Theological Treatises, ed. Reid, J. K. S. (Westminster, 1954), pp. 179–80.Google Scholar

page 504 note 2 Niesel, Wilhelm, The Theology of Calvin, trans. Knight, Harold (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980).Google Scholar

page 506 note 1 Gerrish, Brian, ‘To the Unknown God: Luther and Calvin on the Hiddenness of God’, journal of Religion LIII (1973), 274.Google Scholar In his essay Gerrish directs this question to the early Luther, but later notes that such a question could equally apply to Calvin.

page 506 note 2 Ibid.

page 506 note 3 See Barth's, Church Dogmatics, II, 1 and II, 2.Google Scholar

page 507 note 1 Dowey, , p. 188.Google Scholar

page 507 note 2 Ibid. Emphasis mine.

page 507 note 3 An exception is the Commentary on St John, where Calvin often maintains that Christ atones only for those given him by the Father.

page 507 note 4 Concerning Eternal Predestination, p. 113.

page 508 note 1 I am not referring to the inescapable veiling of the divine that is part of the act of self-revelation itself. This is not Pascal's Dieu cache in the Eucharist or Barth's veiled unveiling or Tillich's claim that no religiously symbolic material is itself divine. Rather, I am speaking of what Gerrish (sec note o, p. o) calls Hiddenness II, the hidden God behind revelation, the hidden God that stands outside any possible relation.

page 509 note 1 Concerning Eternal Predestination, pp. 102–3.

page 509 note 2 Ibid. pp. 148–9.

page 509 note 3 I would like to thank Professor Carlos Eire for reading an earlier draft of this essay and making many helpful comments.