Calvin's Institutes: Thoughts

I apologise for the recent drought in posts, but I have been busy with various family commitments, plus work is always tough. Anyway, I have just finished reading Calvin's Institutes. Before going into specifics, I would like to evaluate the book as a whole.

After reading through the entirety of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, it can be seen that Calvin was an expert in his time. Definitely, he knew the writings of the church fathers and other early Christians better than most people, and his form of argumentation is probably best suited for that era. Nevertheless, it is a pain to read for those of us who do not live in such an era. The beginning three books (on God the Father and His work; on Jesus Christ and His work; on the grace of God, faith, justification and salvation) are doctrinally solid, though it takes effort to go through the convoluted arguments suited for another age, which I have done previously on the following subjects(Against the Charismatics, On Faith, Christian Living, Election and Reprobation and Election: Contrary texts?). Book 4, on the external means of grace and the Church ('practical' Christianity) however, seemed to grow less solid biblically as the book draws to a close, though knowing the constraints of that time, the fact that Calvin managed to salvage and rediscover so much truth from Scripture in the midst of the rank apostasy that is Romanism is something very remarkable. Anyway, here are 4 areas I would like to comment on, namely:

• The Church and her officers

• On the nature of sacraments

• Infant Baptism

• Civil government

I would address 3 of them here while the one on the nature of sacraments would be tackled later in the next post.

With regards to the subject of the Church, Calvin taught the concept of the Visible and the Invisible Church (Vol. II, p. 288). Also, he differentiated between necessary, esential doctrines in which belief is essential for salvation, while others ('minor' doctrines) are said to be "the subject of controversy among the churches [but] do not destroy the unity of the faith" (Vol. II, p. 291). So far, so good.

The bone of contention with Calvin, of course, would be on the topic of the officers of the church. Seeing that it came from Calvin's pen, it may be possible that later Reformed writers followed his assumption that Eph. 4:11 taught Paul was writing about the officers of the church in this verse, when in fact he was not. Paul was here talking about the people with such giftings, which is not the same as talking about Officers of the church, which are found primarily in the Pastoral Epistles. (There is a reason why they are called the Pastoral Epistles). After all, if you admit they are officers, then it would be inconsistent to then say that the 'officers' of Apostles, Prophets and Evangelists are not still present today, since these are all mentioned as it were in 'one breath'. Furthermore, teachers should be an office as well. Of coure, you can always say that the Greek grammatical construct here would render the phrase as 'pastor-teacher', which is fine and woud remove the latter problem, but not the former one.

With regards to the topic of Infant Baptism (In Chapter XVI), although I am a pedobaptist, I would say that Calvin's arguments on this topic are not as strong that they can be called convincing. However, he did masterfully refuted some of the arguments which the Anabaptists have brought up during his time with regards to the denial of the analogy between circumcision and baptism, that children cannot understand the faith and baptism, that instruction should precede baptism etc. Such common baptist arguments are disposed of easily enough. However, the degree of similarity between the Covenant in OT and NT times especially with regards to baptism are not properly discussed. Of course, this is not Calvin's fault, but just to point out something he wrote which is not exactly convincing.

With regards to Civil government, I would just briefly state some points. Calvin, living in such a time, assume the union of Church and State which was common then. As such, the magistrate was to enforce the rulings of the Church with regards to religious laws, better known as the first four laws in the 10 commandments (Vol. II, p. 658). Calvin gave the example of the praise given to OT kings who restored the worship of God, and he states that a ruler is needed since without a ruler, there would be anarchy as in the time of Judges, when everybody did as he pleased (Judges 21:25). However, we must remember that OT Israel was a theocracy, and therefore anything with respect to its governance was analogous to that of the church, not the world. As for the verse Judges 21:25, this only proves that a ruler is needed for order, not that that ruler should be a magistrate. In fact, elders are supposed to rule the church, so the problem of anarchy is solved.

Calvin also maintained that the care of Christian princes and magistrates should be to protect the church (Vol. III, p. 658). Defintely, as individual Christians, they should endeavor to serve God in whatever they do, which would include protecting the church through restraining her persecutors and charging them to protect against any crime committed against them. However, the extrapolation of something Christian politicians should do personally into what Christian politicians ought to do as a career duty is another story altogether. And thus my disagreement with Calvin.

Lastly, I would mention the topic of submission to authority. Certainly, Calvin is against the submittion to the government if they attempt to force you to sin or even deny Christ (Vol. II, p. 675). Calvin, however, maintains that it is correct to obey and submit even to a tyrant, using the commands of God to the exiled Jews in Babylon to submit to their leaders as an example. This, however, misinterprets the passage. The context is talking about the exile being a judgment from God. As such, instead of Calvin seeing that "the Lord was pleased to demand for this dire and ferocious tyrant [Nebuchadnezzer], for no other reason than just that he held the kingdom' (Vol. II, p. 672), the context shows that the Jews were commanded to submit to Nebuchadnezzer because they are to submit to God's judgments, nothing whatsoever to do with whether he was/is a king. Therefore, regardless of the truth of civil disobedience, the fact of the matter is that Calvin did not prove that civil disobedience against a tyrant is wrong.

After having looked through these 3 issues, let us see what Calvin has to say about the nature of Sacraments.

[to be continued]