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Calvin's Doctrine of God
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn01> 1


Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

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scanned, proof-read, and marked-up by Lance George Marshall

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Having expounded in the opening chapters of the "Institutes" the sources and
means of the knowledge of God, Calvin naturally proceeds in the next series
of chapters (I. x. xi. xii. xiii.) to set forth the nature of the God who,
by the revelation of Himself in His Word and by the prevalent internal
operation of His Spirit, frames the knowledge of Himself in the hearts of
His people. He who expects to find in these chapters, however, an orderly
discussion of the several topics which make up the locus de Deo in our
formal dogmatics, will meet with disappointment. Calvin is not writing out
of an abstract scientific impulse, but with the needs of souls, and, indeed,
also with the special demands of the day in mind. And as his purpose is
distinctively religious, so his method is literary rather than scholastic.
In the freedom of his literary manner, he had permitted himself in the
preceding chapters repeated excursions into regions which, in an exact
arrangement of the material, might well have been reserved for exploration
at this later point. To take up these topics again, now, for fuller and more
orderly exposition, would involve much repetition without substantially
advancing the practical purpose for which the "Institutes" were written.
Calvin was not a man to confound formal correctness of arrangement with
substantial completeness of treatment; nor was he at a loss for new topics
of pressing importance for discussion. He skillfully interposes at this
point, therefore, a short chapter (chap. x.) in which under the form of
pointing out the complete harmony with the revelation of God in nature of
the revelation of God in the Scriptures - the divine authority of which in
the communication of the knowledge of God he had just demonstrated - he
reminds his readers of all that he had formerly said of the nature and
attributes of God on the basis of natural revelation, and takes occasion to
say what it remained necessary to say of the same topics on the basis of
supernatural revelation. Thus he briefly but effectively brings together
under the reader's eye the whole body of his exposition of these topics and
frees his hands to give himself, under the guidance of his practical bent
and purpose, to the two topics falling under the rubric of the doctrine of
God which were at the moment of the most pressing importance. His actual
formal treatment of the doctrine of God thus divides itself into two parts,
the former of which (chaps. xi. xii.), in strong Anti-Romish polemic is
devoted to the uprooting of every refuge of idolatry, while the latter
(chap. xiii.), in equally strong polemic against the Anti-trinitarianism of
the day, develops with theological acumen and vital faith the doctrine of
Trinity in Unity. 

It is quite true, then, as has often been remarked, that the "Institutes"
contain no systematic discussion of the existence, the nature, and the
attributes of God.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn02> 2 And
the lack of formal, systematic discussion of these fundamental topics, may,
no doubt, be accounted a flaw, if we are to conceive the "Institutes" as a
formal treatise in systematic theology. But it is not at all true that the
"Institutes" contain no sufficient indication of Calvin's conceptions on
these subjects: nor is it possible to refer the absence of formal discussion
of them either to indifference to them on Calvin's part or to any
peculiarity of his dogmatic standpoint,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn03> 3 or
even of his theological method.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn04> 4 The
omission belongs rather to the peculiarity of this treatise as a literary
product. Calvin does not pass over all systematic discussion of the
existence, nature, and attributes of God because from his theological
standpoint there was nothing to say upon these topics, nor because, in his
theological method, they were insignificant for his system; but simply
because he had been led already to say informally about them all that was
necessary for the religious, practical purpose he had in view in writing
this treatise. For here as elsewhere the key to the understanding of the
"Institutes" lies in recognizing their fundamental purpose to have been
religious, and their whole, not coloring merely, but substance, to be
profoundly religious - in this only reflecting indeed the most determinative
trait of Calvin's character. 

It is important to emphasize this, for there seems to be still an impression
abroad that Calvin's nature was at bottom cold and hard and dry, and his
life-manifestation but a piece of incarnated logic: while the "Institutes"
themselves are frequently represented, or rather misrepresented - it is
difficult to believe that those who so speak of them can have read them - as
a body of purely formal reasoning by which intolerable conclusions are
remorselessly deduced from a set of metaphysical assumptions.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn05> 5
Perhaps M. Ferdinand Brunetière may be looked upon as a not unfair
representative of the class of writers who are wont so to speak of the
"Institutes."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn06> 6
According to him, Calvin has "intellectualized" religion and reduced it to a
form which can appeal only to the "reasonable," or rather to the "reasoning"
man. "In that oratorical work which he called The Institutes," M. Brunetière
says, "if there is any movement . . . it is not one which comes from the
heart . . . and - I am speaking here only of the writer or the religious
theorizer, not of the man - the insensibility of Calvin is equalled only by
the rigor of his reasoning. . . ." The religion Calvin sets forth is "a
religion which consists essentially, almost exclusively, in the adhesion of
the intellect to truths all but demonstrated," and commends itself by
nothing "except by the literalness of its agreement with a text - which is a
matter of pure philology - and by the solidity of its logical edifice -
which is nothing but a matter of pure reasoning." To Calvin, he adds,
"religious truth attests itself in no other manner and by no other means
than mathematical truth. As he would reason on the properties of a triangle,
or of a sphere, so Calvin reasons on the attributes of God. All that will
not adjust itself to the exigencies of his dialectic, he contests or he
rejects . . . Cartesian before Descartes, rational evidence, logical
incontradiction are for him the test or the proof of truth. He would not
believe if faith did not stay itself on a formal syllogism. . . . From a
'matter of the heart,' if I may so say, Calvin transformed religion into an
'affair of the intellect.' " 

We must not fail to observe, in passing, that even M. Brunetière refrains
from attributing to Calvin's person the hard insensibility which he
represents as the characteristic of his religious writings - a tribute, we
may suppose, to the religious impression which is made by Calvin's
personality upon all who come into his presence, and which led even M.
Ernest Renan, who otherwise shares very largely M. Brunetiere's estimate of
him, to declare him "the most Christian man of his age."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn07> 7 Nor
can we help suspecting that the violence of the invectives launched against
the remorseless logic of the "Institutes" and of Calvin's religious
reasoning in general, is but the index of the difficulty felt by M.
Brunetière and those who share his point of view, in sustaining themselves
against the force of Calvin's argumentative presentation of his religious
conceptions. It is surely no discredit to a religious reasoner that his
presentation commends his system irresistibly to all "reasonable," or let us
even say "reasoning" men. A religious system which cannot sustain itself in
the presence of "reasonable" or "reasoning" men, is not likely to remain
permanently in existence, or at least in power among reasonable or reasoning
men; and one would think that the logical irresistibility of a system of
religious truth would be distinctly a count in its favor. The bite of M.
Brunetière's assault is found, therefore, purely in its negative side. He
would condemn Calvin's system of religion as nothing but a system of logic;
and the "Institutes," the most systematic presentation of it, as in essence
nothing but a congeries of syllogisms, issuing in nothing but a set of
logical propositions, with no religious quality or uplift in them. In this,
however, he worst of all misses the mark; and we must add he was peculiarly
unfortunate in fixing, in illustration of his meaning, on the two matters of
the "attributes of God" as the point of departure for Calvin's dialectic and
of the intellectualizing of "faith" as the height of his offending. 

In Calvin's treatment of faith there is nothing more striking than his
determination to make it clear that it is a matter not of the understanding
but of the heart; and he reproaches the Romish conception of faith precisely
because it magnifies the intellectual side to the neglect of the fiducial.
"We must not suppose," it is said in the Confession of Faith drawn up for
the Genevan Church,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn08> 8 either
by himself or by his colleagues under his eye, "that Christian faith is a
naked and mere knowledge of God or understanding of the Scriptures, which
floats in the brain without touching the heart. . . . It is a firm and solid
confidence of the heart." Or, as he repeats this elsewhere,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn09> 9 "It is
an error to suppose that faith is a naked and cold knowledge.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn10> 10 . . .
Faith is not a naked knowledge,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn11> 11 which
floats in the brain, but draws with it a living affection of the heart."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn12> 12 "True
Christian faith," he expounds in the second edition of the "Institutes,"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn13> 13 . . .
"is not content with a simple historical knowledge, but takes its seat in
the heart of man." "It does not suffice that the understanding should be
illuminated by the Spirit of God if the heart be not strengthened by His
power. In this matter the theologians of the Sorbonne very grossly err, -
thinking that faith is a simple consent to the Word of God, which consists
in understanding, and leaving out the confidence and assurance of the
heart." "What the understanding has received must be planted in the heart.
For if the Word of God floats in the head only, it has not yet been received
by faith; it has its true reception only when it has taken root in the
depths of the heart." Again, to cite a couple of passages in which the less
pungent statement of the earlier editions has been given new point and force
in the final edition of the "Institutes": "It must here be again observed,"
says he, <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn14>
14 "that we are invited to the knowledge of God - not a knowledge which,
content with empty speculation, floats only in the brain, but one which
shall be solid and fruitful, if rightly received by us, and rooted in the
heart." "The assent we give to God," he says again,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn15> 15 " as
I have already indicated and shall show more largely later - is rather of
the heart than of the brain, and rather of the affections than of the
understanding."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn16> 16 It is
quite clear, then, that Calvin did not consciously address himself merely to
the securing of an intellectual assent to his teaching, but sought to move
men's hearts. His whole conception of religion turned, indeed, on this:
religion, he explained, to be pleasing to God, must be a matter of the
heart, <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn17>
17 and God requires in His worshippers precisely heart and affection.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn18> 18 All
the arguments in the world, he insists, if unaccompanied by the work of the
Holy Spirit on the heart, will fail to produce the faith which piety
requires." 

This scarcely sounds like a man to whom religion was simply a matter of
logical proof. 

And so far is he from making the attributes of God, metaphysically
determined, the starting-point of a body of teaching deduced from them by
quasi-mathematical reasoning - as one would deduce the properties of a
triangle from its nature as a triangle - that it has been made his reproach
that he has so little to say of the divine nature and attributes, and in
this little confines himself so strictly to the manifest indicia of God in
His works and the direct teaching of Scripture, refusing utterly to follow
"the high priori" road either in determining the divine attributes or from
them determining the divine activities. Thus, his doctrine of God is, it is
said, no doubt notably sober and restrained, but also, when compared with
Zwingli's, for example - equally notably unimportant.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn20> 20 It is
confessed, however, that it is at least thoroughly religious; and in this is
found, indeed, its fundamental characteristic. Precisely where Calvin's
doctrine differs from Zwingli's markedly is that he constantly contemplated
God religiously, while Zwingli contemplated him philosophically - that to
him God was above and before all things the object of religious reverence,
while to Zwingli he was predominatingly the First Cause, from whom all
things proceed.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn21> 21 "It
is not with the doctrine of God," says the historian whose representations
we have been summarizing, "but with the worship of God that Calvin's first
concern was engaged. Even in his doctrine of God - as we may perceive from
his remarks upon it - religion stands ever in the foreground (I. ii. 1).
Before everything else Calvin is a religious personality. The Reformation
confronts Catholicism with a zeal to live for God. With striking justice
Calvin remarked that 'all alike engaged in the worship of God, but few
really reverenced Him, - that there was everywhere great ostentation in
ceremonies but sincerity of heart was rare' (I. ii. 2). Reverence for God
was the great thing for Calvin. If we lose sight of this a personality like
Calvin cannot be understood; and it is only by recognizing the religious
principle by which he was governed, that a just judgment can be formed of
his work as a dogmatician. . . ."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn22> 22
Again, Calvin "considers the knowledge of the nature and of the attributes
of God more a matter of the heart than of the understanding; and such a
knowledge, he says, must not only arouse us to 'the service of God, but must
also awake in us the hope of a future life' (I. v. 10). In his extreme
practicality - as the last remark shows us - Calvin rejected the
philosophical treatment of the question. The Scriptures, for him the source
of the knowledge of God, he takes as his guide in his remarks on the
attributes. . . ." <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/$fn23> 23 Still
again, "Already more than once have we had occasion to note that when Calvin
treats of God, he does this as a believer, for whom the existence of God
stands as a fixed fact; and what he says of God, he draws from the
Scriptures as his fundamental source, finding his pride in remaining a
Biblical theologian, and whenever he can, taking the field against the
philosophico more interpretari of the Scriptural texts (see e.g. I. xvi. 3).
His doctrine of God has the practical end of serving the needs of his
fellow-believers. It is also noteworthy that he closes every stage of the
consideration with an exhortation to the adoration of God or to the
surrender of the heart to Him. Of the doctrine of the Trinity he declares
that he will hold himself ever truly to the Scriptures, because he desires
to do nothing more than to make what the Scriptures teach accessible to our
conceptions planioribus verbis, and this will apply equally to the whole of
his doctrine of God."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn24> 24 In a
word, nothing can be clearer than that in his specific doctrine of God as
well as in his general attitude to religious truth Calvin is as far as
possible from being satisfied with a merely logical effect. When we listen
to him on these high themes we are listening less to the play of his
dialectic than to the throbbing of his heart. 

It was due to this his controlling religious purpose, and to his dominating
religious interest, that Calvin was able to leave the great topics of the
existence, the nature, and the attributes of God, without formal and
detailed discussion in his "Institutes." It is only a matter, we must
reiterate, of the omission of formal and detailed discussion; for it
involves not merely a gross exaggeration but a grave misapprehension to
represent him as leaving these topics wholly to one side, and much more to
seek to account for this assumed fact from some equally assumed peculiarity
of Calvin's theological point of view or method. Under the impulse of his
governing religious interest, he was able to content himself with such an
exposition of the nature and attributes of God, in matter and form, as
served his ends of religious impression, and was under no compulsion to
expand this into such details and order it into such a methodical mode of
presentation as would satisfy the demands of scholastic treatment. But to
omit what would be for his purpose adequate treatment of these fundamental
elements of a complete doctrine of God would have been impossible, we do not
say merely to a thinker of his systematic genius, but to a religious teacher
of his earnestness of spirit. In point of fact, we do not find lacking to
the "Institutes" such a fundamental treatment of these great topics as would
be appropriate in such a treatise. We only find their formal and separate
treatment lacking. All that it is needful for the Christian man to know on
these great themes is here present. Only, it is present so to speak in
solution, rather than in precipitate: distributed through the general
discussion of the knowledge of God rather than gathered together into one
place and apportioned to formal rubrics. It is communicated moreover in a
literary and concrete rather than in an abstract and scholastic manner. 

It will repay us to gather out from their matrix in the flowing discourse
the elements of Calvin's doctrine of God, that we may form some fair
estimate of the precise nature and amount of actual instruction he gives
regarding it. We shall attempt this by considering in turn Calvin's doctrine
of the existence, knowableness, nature, and attributes of God. 

We do not read far into the "Institutes" before we find Calvin presenting
proofs of the existence of God. It is quite true that this book, being
written by a Christian for Christians, rather assumes the divine existence
than undertakes to prove it, and concerns itself with the so-called proofs
of the divine existence as means through which we rather obtain knowledge of
what God is, than merely attain to knowledge that God is. But this only
renders it the more significant of Calvin's attitude towards these so-called
proofs that he repeatedly lapses in his discussion from their use for the
former into their use for the latter and logically prior purpose. That he
thus actually presents these proofs as evidences specifically of the
existence of God can admit of no doubt.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn25> 25

If, for example, he adduces that sensus deitatis with which all men, he
asserts, are natively endowed, primarily as the germ which may be developed
into a profound knowledge of God, he yet does not fail explicitly to appeal
to it also as the source of an ineradicable conviction, embedded in the very
structure of human nature and therefore present in all men alike, of the
existence of God. He tells us expressly that because of this sensus
divinitatis, present in the human mind by natural instinct, all men without
exception (ad unum omnes) know (intelligant, perceive, understand) "that God
exists" (Deum esse), and are therefore without excuse if they do not worship
Him and willingly consecrate their lives to Him (I. iii. 1). It is to
buttress this assertion that he cites with approval Cicero's declaration
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn26> 26 that
"there is no nation so barbarous, no tribe so savage, that there is not
stamped on it the conviction that there is a God."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn27> 27 Thus
he adduces the argument of the consensus gentium - the so-called
"historical" argument - with exact appreciation of its true bearing, not
directly as a proof of the existence of God, but directly as a proof that
the conviction of the divine existence is a native endowment of human
nature, and only through that indirectly as a proof of the existence of God.
This position is developed in the succeeding paragraph into a distinct
anti-atheistic argument. The existence of religion, he says, presupposes,
and cannot be accounted for except by, the presence in man of this "constant
persuasion of God" from which as a seed the propensity to religion proceeds:
men may deny "that God exists,"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn28> 28 "but
will they, nill they, what they wish not to know they continually are aware
of." <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn29> 29
It is a persuasion ingenerated naturally into all, that "some God exists"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn30> 30 (I.
iii. 3), and therefore this does not need to be inculcated in the schools,
but every man is from the womb his own master in this learning, and cannot
by any means forget it. It is therefore mere detestable madness to deny that
"God exists" (I. iv. 2).
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn31> 31 In
all these passages Calvin is dealing explicitly, not with the knowledge of
what God is, but with the knowledge that God is. It is quite
incontrovertible, therefore, that he grounds an argument - or rather the
argument - for the existence of God in the very constitution of man. The
existence of God is, in other words, with him an "intuition," and he makes
this quite as plain as if he had devoted a separate section to its
exposition. 

Similarly, although he writes at the head of the chapter in which he
expounds the revelation which God makes of Himself in His works and deeds:
"That the knowledge of God is manifested in the making of the world and its
continuous government" (chap. v.), he is not able to carry through his
exposition without occasional lapses into an appeal to the patefaction of
God in His works as a proof of His existence, rather than as a revelation of
His nature. The most notable of these lapses occurs in the course of his
development of the manifestation of God made by the nature of man himself
(I. v. 4), where once more he gives us an express anti-atheistic argument.
"Yea," he cries, "the earth is supporting to-day many monstrous beings, who
without hesitation employ the very seed of divinity which has been sown in
human nature for eclipsing of the name of God. How detestable, I protest, is
this insanity, that a man, discovering God a hundred times in his body and
soul, should on this very pretext of excellence deny that God exists!
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn32> 32 They
will not say that it is by chance that they are different from brute beasts;
they only draw over God the veil of 'nature,' which they declare the maker
of all things, and thus abolish (subducunt) Him. They perceive the most
exquisite workmanship in all their members, from their countenances and eyes
to their very finger nails. Here, too, they substitute 'nature' in the place
of God. But above all how agile are the movements of the soul, how noble its
faculties, how rare its gifts, discovering a divinity which does not easily
permit itself to be concealed: unless the Epicureans, from this eminence,
should like the Cyclops audaciously make war against God. Is it true that
all the treasures of heavenly wisdom concur for the government of a worm
five feet long, and the universe lacks this prerogative? To establish the
existence of a kind of machinery in the soul, correspondent to each several
part of the body, makes so little to the obscuring of the glory of God that
it rather illustrates it. Let Epicurus tell what concourse of atoms in the
preparation of food and drink distributes part to the excrements, part to
the blood, and brings it about that the several members perform their
offices with as much diligence as if so many souls by common consent were
governing one body." "The manifold agility of the soul," he eloquently adds
(I. v. 5, med.), "by which it surveys the heavens and the earth, joins the
past to the future, retains in memory what it once has heard, figures to
itself whatever it chooses; its ingenuity, too, by which it excogitates
incredible things and which is the mother of so many wonderful arts; are
certain insignia in man of divinity. . . . Now what reason exists that man
should be of divine origin and not acknowledge the Creator? Shall we,
forsooth, discriminate between right and wrong by a judgment which has been
given to us, and yet there be no Judge in heaven? . . . Shall we be thought
the inventors of so many useful arts, that we may defraud God of His praise
- although experience sufficiently teaches us that all that we have is
distributed to us severally from elsewhere? . . ." Calvin, of course, knows
that he is digressing in a passage like this - that "his present business is
not with that sty of swine," as he calls the Epicureans. But digression or
not, the passage is distinctly an employment of the so-called
physico-theological proof for the existence of God, and advises us that
Calvin held that argument sound and would certainly employ it whenever it
became his business to develop the arguments for the existence of God. 

The proofs for the existence of God on which we perceive Calvin thus to rely
had been traditional in the Church from its first age. It was precisely upon
these two lines of argument that the earliest Fathers rested. "He who knows
himself," says Clement of Alexandria, quite in Calvin's manner, "will know
God." <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn33> 33
"The knowledge of God," exclaims Tertullian, "is the dowry of the soul."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn34> 34 " If
you say, 'Show me thy God,"' Theophilus retorts to the heathen challenge, "I
reply, 'Show me your man and I will show you my God."'
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn35> 35 The
God who cannot be seen by human eyes, declares Theophilus,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn36> 36 "is
beheld and perceived through His providence and works": we can no more
surely infer a pilot for the ship we see making straight for the harbor,
than we can infer a divine governor for the universe tending straight on its
course. "Those who deny that this furniture of the whole world was perfected
by the divine reason," argues the Octavius of Minucius Felix,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn37> 37 "and
assert that it was heaped together by certain fragments casually adhering to
each other, seem to me to have neither mind, nor sense, nor, in fact, even
sight itself." "Whence comes it," asks Dionysius of Alexandria, criticizing
the atomic theory quite in Calvin's manner,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn38> 38 that
the starry hosts - "this multitude of fellow-travellers, all unmarshalled by
any captain, all ungifted with any determination of will, and all unendowed
with any knowledge of each other, have nevertheless held their course in
perfect harmony?" Like these early Fathers, Calvin adduces only these two
lines of evidence: the existence of God is already given in our knowledge of
self, and it is solidly attested by His works and deeds. Whether, had we
from him a professed instead of a merely incidental treatment of the topic,
the metaphysical arguments would have remained lacking in his case as in
theirs, <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn39>
39 we can only conjecture; but it seems very possible that as foreign to his
a posteriori method (cf. I. v. 9) they lay outside of his scheme of proofs.
Meanwhile, he has in point of fact adverted, in the course of this
discussion, only to the two arguments on which the Church teachers at large
had depended from the beginning of Christianity. He states these with his
accustomed clearness and force, and he illuminates them with his genius for
exposition and illustration; but he gives them only incidental treatment
after all. In richness as well as in fulness of presentation he is surpassed
here by Zwingli,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn40> 40 and
it is to Melanchthon that we shall have to go to find among the Reformers a
formal enumeration of the proofs for the divine existence.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn41> 41 

That this God, the conviction of whose existence is part of the very
constitution of the human mind and is justified by abundant manifestations
of Himself in His works and deeds, is knowable by man, lies on the face of
Calvin's entire discussion. The whole argument of the opening chapters of
the "Institutes" is directed precisely to the establishment of this
knowledge of God on an irrefragable basis: and the emphasis with which the
reality and trustworthiness of our knowledge of God is asserted is equalled
only by the skill with which the development of our native instinct to know
God into an actual knowledge of Him is traced (in chap. i.), and the
richness with which His revelation of Himself in His works and deeds is
illustrated by well-chosen and strikingly elaborated instances (in chap.
v.). Of course, Calvin does not teach that sinful man can of himself attain
to the knowledge of God. The noetic effects of sin he takes very seriously,
and he teaches without ambiguity that all men have grossly degenerated from
the true knowledge of God (chap. iv.). But this is not a doctrine of the
unknowableness of God, but rather of the incapacitating effects of sin.
Accordingly he teaches that the inadequateness of the knowledge of God to
which alone sinners can attain is itself a sin. Men's natures prepare them
to serve God, God's revelations of Himself display Him before men's eyes: if
men do not know God they are without excuse and cannot plead their
inculpating sinfulness as exculpation. God remains, then, knowable to normal
man: it is natural to man to know Him. And if in point of fact He cannot be
known save by a supernatural action of the Holy Spirit on the heart, this is
because man is not in his normal state and it requires this supernatural
action of the Spirit on his heart to restore him to his proper natural
powers as man. The "testimony of the Holy Spirit in the heart" does not
communicate to man any new powers, powers alien to him as man: it is
restorative in its nature and in principle merely recovers his powers from
their deadness induced by sin. The knowledge of God to which man attains
through the testimony of the Spirit is therefore the knowledge which belongs
to him as normal man: although now secured by him only in a supernatural
manner, it is in kind, and, so far as it is the product of his innate sensus
deitatis and the revelation of God in His works and deeds, it is in mode
also, natural knowledge of God. Calvin's doctrine of the noetic effects of
sin and their removal by the "testimony of the Spirit," that is to say, by
what we call "regeneration," must not then be taken as a doctrine of the
unknowableness of God. On the contrary it is a doctrine of the knowableness
of God, and supplies only an account of why men in their present condition
fail to know Him, and an exposition of how and in what conditions the
knowableness of God may manifest itself in man as now constituted in an
actually known God. When the Spirit of God enters the heart with recreative
power, he says, then even sinful man, his blurred eyes opened, may see God,
not merely that there is a God, but what kind of being this God is (I. i. 1;
ii. 1; v. 1). 

Of course, Calvin does not mean that God can be known to perfection, whether
by renewed man, or by sinless man with all his native powers uninjured by
sin. In the depths of His being God is to him past finding out; the human
intelligence has no plumbet to sound those profound deeps. "His essence"
(essentia), he says, "is incomprehensible (incomprehensibilis); so that His
divinity (numen) wholly escapes all human senses" (I. v. 1, cf. I. xi. 3);
and though His works and the signs by which He manifests Himself may
"admonish men of His incomprehensible essence" (I. xi. 3), yet, being men,
we are not capax Dei; as Augustine says somewhere, we stand disheartened
before His greatness and are unable to take Him in (I. v. 9).
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn42> 42 We
can know then only God's glory (I. v. 1), that is to say, His manifested
perfections (I. v. 9), by which what He is to us is revealed to us (I. x.
2). What He is in Himself, we cannot know, and all attempts to penetrate
into His essence are but cold and frigid speculations which can lead to no
useful knowledge. "They are merely toying with frigid speculations," he says
(I. ii. 2), "whose mind is set on the question of what God is (quid sit
Deus), when what it really concerns us to know is rather what kind of a
person He is (qualis sit) and what is appropriate to His nature (natura)"
(I. ii. 2).
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn43> 43 We
are to seek God, therefore, "not with audacious inquisitiveness by
attempting to search into His essence (essentia), which is rather to be
adored than curiously investigated; but by contemplating Him in His works,
in which He brings Himself near to us and makes Himself familiar and in some
measure communicates Himself to us" (I. v. 9). For if we seek to know what
He is in Himself (quis sit apud se) rather than what kind of a person He is
to us (qualis erga nos) - which is revealed to us in His attributes
(virtutes) - we simply lose ourselves in empty and meteoric speculation (I.
x. 2). 

The distinction which Calvin is here drawing between the knowledge of the
quid and the knowledge of the qualis of God; the knowledge of what He is in
Himself and the knowledge of what He is to us, is the ordinary scholastic
one and fairly repeats what Thomas Aquinas contends for ("Summa Theol.," i.
qu. 12, art. 12), when he tells us that there is no knowledge of God per
essentiam, no knowledge of His nature, of His quidditas per speciem
propriam; but we know only habitudinem ipsius ad creaturas. There is no
implication of nominalism here; nothing, for example, similar to Occam's
declaration that we can know neither the divine essence, nor the divine
quiddity, nor anything intrinsic to God, nor anything that God is realiter.
When Calvin says that the Divine attributes describe not what God is apud
se, but what kind of a person He is erga nos,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn44> 44 he is
not intending to deny that His attributes are true determinations of the
divine nature and truly reveal to us the kind of a person He is; he is only
refusing to speculate on what God is apart from His attributes by which He
reveals Himself to us, and insisting that it is only in these attributes
that we know Him at all. He is refusing all a priori methods of determining
the nature of God and requiring of us to form our knowledge of Him a
posteriori from the revelation He gives us of Himself in His activities.
This He insists is the only knowledge we can have of God, and this the only
way we can attain to any knowledge of Him at all. Of what value is it to us,
he asks (I. v. 9), to imagine a God of whose working we have had no
experience? Such a knowledge only floats in the brain as an empty
speculation. It is by His attributes (virtutes) that God is manifested; it
is only through them that we can acquire a solid and fruitful knowledge of
Him. The only right way and suitable method of seeking Him, accordingly, is
through His works, in which He draws near to us and familiarizes Himself to
us and in some degree communicates Himself to us. Here is not an assertion
that we learn nothing of God through His attributes, which represent only
determinations of our own. On the contrary, here is an assertion that we
obtain through the attributes a solid and fruitful knowledge of God. Only it
is not pretended that the attributes of God as revealed in His activities
tell us all that God is, or anything that He is in Himself: they only tell
us, in the nature of the case, what He is to us. Fortunately, says Calvin,
this is what we need to know concerning God, and we may well eschew all
speculation concerning His intrinsic nature and content ourselves with
knowing what He is in His relation to His creatures. His object is, not to
deny that God is what He seems - that His attributes revealed in His
dealings with His creatures represent true determination of His nature. His
object is to affirm that these determinations of His nature, revealed in His
dealings with His creatures, constitute the sum of our real knowledge of
God; and that apart from them speculation will lead to no solid results. He
is calling us back, not from a fancied knowledge of God through His
activities to the recognition that we know nothing of Him, that what we call
His attributes are only effects in us: but from an a priori construction of
an imaginary deity to an a posteriori knowledge of the Deity which really is
and really acts. This much we know, he says, that God is what His works and
acts reveal Him to be; though it must be admitted that His works and acts
reveal not His metaphysical Being but His personal relations - not what He
is apud se, but what He is quoad nos. 

Of the nature of God in the abstract sense, thus - the quiddity of God, in
scholastic phrase - Calvin has little to say.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn45> 45 But
his refusal to go behind the attributes which are revealed to us in God's
works and deeds, affords no justification to us for going behind them for
him and attributing to him against his protest developed conceptions of the
nature of the divine essence, which he vigorously repudiates. Calvin has
suffered more than most men from such gratuitous attributions to him of
doctrines which he emphatically disclaims. Thus, not only has it been
persistently asserted that he reduced God, after the manner of the Scotists,
to the bare notion of arbitrary Will, without ethical content or
determination,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn46> 46 but
the contradictory conceptions of a virtual Deism
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn47> 47 and a
developed Pantheism
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn48> 48have
with equal confidence been attributed to him. To instance but a single
example, Principal A. M. Fairbairn permits himself to say that "Calvin was
as pure, though not as conscious and consistent a Pantheist as Spinoza."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn49> 49
Astonishing as such a declaration is in itself, it becomes more astonishing
still when we observe the ground on which it is based. This consists
essentially in the discovery that the fundamental conception of Calvinism is
that "God's is the only efficient will in the universe, and so He is the one
ultimate causal reality"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn50> 50 -
upon which the certainly very true remark is made that "the universalized
Divine will is an even more decisive and comprehensive Pantheism than the
universalized Divine substance."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn51> 51 The
logical process by which the Calvinistic conception of the sovereign will of
God as the prima causa rerum - where the very term prima implies the
existence and reality of "second causes" - is transmuted into the
Pantheising notion that the will of God is the sole efficient cause
operative in the universe; or by which the Calvinistic conception of God as
the sovereign ruler of the universe whose "will is the necessity of things"
is transmuted into the reduction of God, Hegelian-wise, into pure and naked
will <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn52> 52
- although it has apparently appealed to many, is certainly very obscure. In
point of fact, when the Calvinist spoke of God as the prima causa rerum (the
phrase is cited from William Ames
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn53> 53) he
meant by it only that all that takes place takes place in accordance with
the divine will, not that the divine will is the only efficient cause in the
universe; and when Calvin quotes approvingly from Augustine - for the words
are Augustine's
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn54> 54 -
that "the will of God is the necessity of things," so little is either he or
Augustine making use of the words in a Pantheistic sense that he hastens to
explain that what he means is only that whatever God has willed will
certainly come to pass, although it comes to pass in "such a manner that the
cause and matter of it are found in "the second causes (ut causa et materia
in ipsis reperiatur).
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn55> 55 

Calvin beyond all question did cherish a very robust faith in the immanence
of God. "Our very existence," he says, "is subsistence in God alone" (I. i.
1). He even allows, as Dr. Fairbairn does not fail to inform us, that it may
be said with a pious meaning - so only it be the expression of a pious mind
- that "nature is God" (I. v. 5, end).
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn56> 56 But
Dr. Fairbairn neglects to mention that Calvin adds at once, that the
expression is "crude and unsuitable" (dura et impropria), since "nature is
rather the order prescribed by God"; and, moreover, noxious, because tending
to "involve God confusedly with the inferior course of His works." He
neglects also to mention that the statement occurs at the end of a long
discussion, in which, after rebuking those who throw an obscuring veil over
God, retire Him behind nature, and so substitute nature for Him - Calvin
inveighs against the "babble about some sort of hidden inspiration which
actuates the whole world," as not only "weak" but "altogether profane," and
brands the speculation of a universal mind animating and actuating the world
as simply jejune (I. v. 4 and 5). Even his beloved Seneca is reproved for
"imagining a divinity transfused through all parts of the world" so that God
is all that we see and all that we do not see as well (I. xiii. 1), while
the Pantheistic scheme of Servetus is made the object of an extended
refutation (II. xiv. 5-8). To ascribe an essentially Pantheistic conception
of God to Calvin in the face of such frequent and energetic repudiations of
it on his own part
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn57> 57 is
obviously to miss his meaning altogether. If he "may be said to have
anticipated Spinoza in his notion of God as causa immanens," and "Spinoza
may be said . . . to have perfected and reduced to philosophical consistency
the Calvinistic conception of Deity"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn58> 58 -
this can mean nothing more than that Calvin was not a Deist. And in point of
fact he repudiated Deism with a vehemence equal to that which he displays
against Pantheism. To rob God of the active exercise of His judgment and
providence, shutting Him up as an idler (otiosum) in heaven, he
characterizes as nothing less than "detestable frenzy," since, says he,
"nothing could less comport with God than to commit to fortune the abandoned
government of the world, shut His eyes to the iniquities of men and let them
wanton with impunity" (I. iv. 2).
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn59> 59 

Calvin's conception of God is that of a pure and clear Theism, in which
stress is laid at once on His transcendence and His immanence, and emphasis
is thrown on His righteous government of the world. "Let us bear in mind,
then," he says as he passes from his repudiation of Pantheism, "that there
is one God, who governs all natures" (I. v. 6, ad init.), "and wishes us to
look to Him, - to put our trust in Him, to worship and call upon Him" (I. v.
6); to whom we can look up as to a Father from whom we expect and receive
tokens of love (I. v. 3). So little is he inclined to reduce this divine
Father to bare will, that he takes repeated occasion expressly to denounce
this Scotist conception. The will of God, he says, is to us indeed the
unique rule of righteousness and the supremely just cause of all things; but
we are not like the sophists to prate about some sort of "absolute will" of
God, "profanely separating His righteousness from His power," but rather to
adore the governing providence which presides over all things and from which
nothing can proceed which is not right, though the reasons for it may be
hidden from us (I. xvii. 2, end). "Nevertheless," he remarks in another
place, after having exhorted his readers to find in the will of God a
sufficient account of things - "nevertheless, we do not betake ourselves to
the fiction of absolute power, which, as it is profane, so ought to be
deservedly detestable to us; we do not imagine that the God who is a law to
Himself is exlegem, . . . the will of God is not only pure from all fault,
but is the supreme rule of perfection, even the law of all laws" (III.
xxiii. 2, end).
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn60> 60 In a
word, the will of God is to Calvin the supreme rule for us, because it is
the perfect expression of the divine perfections.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn61> 61

Calvin thus refuses to be classified as either Deist, Pantheist, or Scotist;
and those who would fain make him one or the other of these have nothing to
go upon except that on the one hand he does proclaim the transcendence of
God and speaks with contempt of men who imagine that divinity is transfused
into every part of the world, and that there is a portion of God not only in
us but even in wood and stone (I. xiii. 1, 22); and on the other he does
proclaim the immanence of God and invites us to look upon His works or to
descend within ourselves to find Him who "everywhere diffuses, sustains,
animates and quickens all things in heaven and in earth," who,
"circumscribed by no boundaries, by transfusing His own vigor into all
things, breathes into them being, life and motion" (I, xiii. 14); while
still again he does proclaim the will of God to be inscrutable by such
creatures as we are and to constitute to us the law of righteousness, to be
accepted as such without murmurings or questionings. In point of fact, all
these charges are but several modes of expressing the dislike their authors
feel for Calvin's doctrine of the sovereignty of the divine will, which,
following Augustine, he declares to be "the necessity of things": they would
fain brand this hated conception with some name of opprobrium, and,
therefore, seek to represent Calvin now as hiding God deistically behind His
own law, and now as reducing Him to a mere stream of causality, or at least
to mere naked will.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn62> 62 By
thus declining alternately to contradictories they show sufficiently clearly
that in reality Calvin's doctrine of God coincides with none of these
characterizations. 

The peculiarity of Calvin's conception of God, we perceive, is not
indefiniteness, but reverential sobriety. Clearing his skirts of all
Pantheistic, Deistic, Scotist notions - and turning aside even to repudiate
Manichaeism and Anthropomorphism (I. xiii. 1) - he teaches a pure Theism
which he looks upon as native to men (I. x. 3). The nature of this one God,
he conceives, can be known to us only as He manifests it in His works (I. v.
9); that is to say, only in His perfections. What we call the attributes of
God thus become to Calvin the sum of our knowledge of Him. In these
manifestations of His character we see not indeed what He is in Himself, but
what He is to us (I. x. 2); but what we see Him to be thus to us, He truly
is, and this is all we can know about Him. We might expect to find in the
"Institutes," therefore, a comprehensive formal discussion of the
attributes, by means of which what God is to us should be fully set before
us. This, however, as we have already seen, we do not get.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn63> 63 And
much less do we get any metaphysical discussion of the nature of the
attributes of God, their relation to one another, or to the divine essence
of which they are determinations. We must not therefore suppose, however,
that we get little or nothing of them, or little or nothing to the point. On
the contrary, besides incidental allusions to them throughout the
discussion, from which we may glean much of Calvin's conceptions of them,
they are made the main subject of two whole chapters, the one of which
discusses in considerable detail the revelation of the divine perfections in
His works and deeds, the other the revelation made of them in His Word. We
have already remarked upon the skill with which Calvin, at the opening of
his discussion of the doctrine of God (chap. x.), manages, under color of
pointing out the harmony of the description of God given in the Scriptures
with the conception of Him we may draw from His works, to bring all he had
to say of the divine attributes at once before the reader's eye. The
Scriptures, says he, are in essence here merely a plainer (I. x. 1)
republication of the general revelation given of God in His works and deeds:
they "contain nothing" in their descriptions of God, "but what may be known
from the contemplation of the creatures" (I. x. 2, med.). And he illustrates
this remark by quoting from Moses (Ex. xxxiv. 6), the Psalms (cxlv.) and the
prophets (Jer. ix. 24), passages in which God is richly described, and
remarking on the harmony of the perfections enumerated with those which he
had in the earlier chapter (v.) pointed out as illustrated in the, divine
works and deeds. This comparison involves a tolerably full enumeration and
some discussion of the several attributes, here on the basis of Scripture,
as formerly (chap. v.) on the basis of nature. He does not, therefore,
neglect the attributes so much as deal with them in a somewhat indirect
manner. And, we may add, in a highly practical way: for here too his zeal is
to avoid "airy and vain speculations" of what God is in Himself and to focus
attention upon what He is to us, that our knowledge of Him may be of the
nature of a lively perception and religious reaction (I. x. 2, ad init. et
ad fin.). 

In a number of passages Calvin brings together a plurality of the attributes
- his name for them is "virtues"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn64> 64 - and
even hints at a certain classification of them. One of the most beautiful of
these passages formed the opening words of the first draft of the
"Institutes," but fell out in the subsequent revisions - to the regret of
some, who consider it, on the whole, the most comprehensive description of
God Calvin has given us.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn65> 65 It
runs as follows: "The sum of holy doctrine consists of just these two
points, - the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. These, now,
are the things which we must keep in mind concerning God. First, we should
hold fixed in firm faith that He is infinite wisdom, righteousness,
goodness, mercy, truth, power (virtus), and life, so that there exists no
other wisdom, righteousness, goodness, mercy, truth, power, and life (Baruch
iii.; James i.), and wheresoever any of these things is seen, it is from Him
(Prov. xvi.). Secondly, that all that is in heaven or on earth has been
created for His glory (Ps. cxlviii.; Dan. iii.; and it is justly due to Him
that everything, according to its own nature, should serve Him, acknowledge
His authority, seek His glory, and obediently accept Him as Lord and King
(Rom. i.). Thirdly, that He is Himself a just judge, and will therefore be
severely avenged on those who depart from His commandments, and are not in
all things subject to His will; who in thought, word, and deed have not
sought His glory (Ps. vii.; Rom. ii.). In the fourth place that He is
merciful and long-suffering, and will receive into His kingdom, the
miserable and despised who take refuge in His clemency and trust in His
faithfulness; and is ready to spare and forgive those who ask His favor, to
succor and help those who seek His aid, and desirous of saving those who put
their trust in Him (Ps. ciii.; Is. Iv.; Ps. xxv., ixxxv.)." In the first
clause of this striking paragraph we have a formal enumeration of God's
ethical attributes, which is apparently meant to be generically complete -
although in the course of the paragraph other specific forms of attributes
here enumerated occur; and all of them are declared to exist in God in an
infinite mode. The list contains seven items: wisdom; righteousness;
goodness (clemency); mercy (long-sufferingness); truth; power; life.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn66> 66 If we
compare this list with the enumeration in the famous definition of God in
the Westminster "Shorter Catechism" (Q. 4),
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn67> 67 we
shall see that it is practically the same: the only difference being that
Calvin adds to the general term "goodness" the more specific "mercy,"
affixes "life" at the end, and omits "holiness," doubtless considering it to
be covered by the general term "righteousness." 

If just this enumeration does not recur in the "Institutes" as finally
revised, something very like it evidently underlies more passages than one.
Even in the first section of the first chapter, which has taken its place,
we have an enumeration of the "good things" (bona) in God which stand
opposed to our "evil things" (mala), that brings together wisdom, power,
goodness, and righteousness: for in God alone, we are told, can be found
"the true light of wisdom, solid power (virtus), a perfect affluence of all
good things, and the purity of righteousness" (I. i. 1). In the opening
section of the next chapter we have two enumerations of the divine
perfections, obviously rhetorical, and yet betraying an underlying basis of
systematic arrangement: the later and fuller of these brings together power,
wisdom, goodness, righteousness, justice, mercy - closing with a reference
to God's powerful "protection." God, we are told, "sustains this world by
His immense power (immensa potentia), governs it by His wisdom, preserves it
by His goodness, rules over the human race especially by His righteousness
and justice (iudicium), bears with it in His mercy, defends it by His
protection (praesidium)." The most complete enumerations of all, however,
are given, when, leaving the intimations of nature, Calvin analyses some
Scriptural passages with a view to drawing out their descriptions of the
divine perfections. His analysis of Exod. xxxiv. 6 is particularly full (I.
x. 2). He finds the divine eternity and self-existence embodied in the name
Jehovah; the divine strength and power (virtus et potentia) expressed in the
name Elohim; and in the description itself an enumeration of those virtues
which describe God not indeed as He is apud se, but as He is erga nos - to
wit, His clemency, goodness, mercy, righteousness, justice, truth. The
strongest claim which this passage has on our interest, however, is the
suggestion it bears of a classification of the attributes. The predication
to God of eternity and self-existence (aujtousi>a) evidently is for Calvin
something specifically different from the ascription to Him of those virtues
by which are described not what He is apud se, but what He shows Himself to
be erga nos. They in a word belong rather to the quiddity of God than to His
qualitas. In a subsequent passage (xiii. 1) we have a plainer hint to the
same effect. There we are given "two epithets" which we are told are applied
by Scripture to the very "essence" of God, in its rare speech concerning His
essence - immensity and spirituality.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn68> 68 It
seems quite clear, then, that Calvin was accustomed to distinguish in his
thought between such epithets, describing what God is apud se, and those
virtues by which He is manifested to us in His relations erga nos. That is
to say, he distinguishes between what are sometimes called His physical or
metaphysical and His ethical attributes: that is to say, between the
fundamental modes of the Divine Being and the constitutive qualities of the
Divine Person.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn69> 69 

If we profit by this hint and then collect the attributes of the two classes
as Calvin occasionally mentions them, we shall in effect reconstruct
Calvin's definition of God.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn70> 70 This
would run somewhat as follows: There is but one only true God,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn71> 71 a
self-existent,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn72> 72
simple, <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn73>
73 invisible,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn74> 74
incomprehensible
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn75> 75
Spirit, <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn76>
76 infinite,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn77> 77
immense, <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn78>
78 eternal,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn79> 79
perfect, <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn80>
80 in His Being, power,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn81> 81
knowledge,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn82> 82
wisdom, <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn83>
83 righteousness,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn84> 84
justice, <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn85>
85 holiness,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn86> 86
goodness,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn87> 87 and
truth. <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn88>
88 In addition to these more general designations, Calvin employs a
considerable number of more specific terms, by which he more precisely
expresses his thought and more fully explicates the contents of the several
attributes. Thus, for example, he is fond of the term "severity"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn89> 89 when
he is endeavoring to give expression to God's attitude as a just judge to
the wicked; and he is fond of setting in contrast with it the corresponding
term "clemency"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn90> 90 to
express His attitude towards the repentant sinner. It is especially the idea
of "goodness" which he thus draws out into its several particular
manifestations. Beside the term "clemency" he sets the still greater word
"mercy," or "pity,"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn91> 91 and
by the side of this again he sets the even greater word "grace,"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn92> 92 while
the more general idea of "goodness" he develops by the aid of such synonyms
as "beneficence"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn93> 93 and
"benignity,"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn94> 94 and
almost exhausts the capacity of the language to give expression to his sense
of the richness of the Divine goodness.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn95> 95 God
is "good and merciful" (ii. 2), "benign and beneficent" (v. 7), "the fount
and source of all good" (ii. 2), their fecund "author" (ii. 2), whose "will
is prone to beneficence" (x. 1), and in whom dwells a "perfect affluence,"
nothing less than an "infinity," of good things. And therefore he looks
upwards to this God not only as our Lord (ii. 1) the Creator (ii. 1),
Sustainer (ii. 1), and Governor (ii. 1) of the world - and more particularly
its moral governor (ii. 2), its "just judge" (ii. 2) - but more especially
as our " defender and protector,"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn96> 96 our
Father <http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn97>
97 who is also our Lord, in whose "fatherly indulgence"
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn98> 98 we
may trust. 

There is in the "Institutes" little specific exposition of the manner in
which we arrive at the knowledge of these attributes. The works of God, we
are told, illustrate particularly His wisdom (v. 2) and His power (v. 6).
But His power, we are further told, leads us on to think of His eternity and
His self-existence, "because it is necessary that He from whom everything
derives its origin, should Himself be eternal and have the ground of His
being in Himself":
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn99> 99 while
we must posit His goodness to account for His will to create and preserve
the world.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn100> 100 By
the works of providence God manifests primarily His benignity and
beneficence; and in His dealing with the pious, His clemency, with the
wicked His severity
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn101> 101 -
which are but the two sides of His righteousness: although, of course, "His
power and wisdom are equally conspicuous."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn102> 102 It
is precisely the same body of attributes which are ascribed to God in the
Scriptures,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn103> 103 and
that not merely in such a passage as Ex. xxxiv. 6, to which we have already
alluded, but everywhere throughout their course (x. 1, ad fin.). Psalm
cxlv., for example, so exactly enumerates the whole list of God's
perfections that scarcely one is lacking. Jeremiah ix. 24, while not so
full, is to the same effect. Certainly the three perfections there mentioned
are the most necessary of all for us to know - the divine "mercy in which
alone consists all our salvation; His justice, which is exercised on the
wicked every day, and awaits them more grievously still in eternal
destruction; His righteousness, by which the faithful are preserved and most
lovingly supported." Nor, adds Calvin, is there any real omission here of
the other perfections - "either of His truth, or power, or holiness, or
goodness." "For how could we be assured, as is here required, of His
righteousness, mercy and justice, unless we were supported by His inflexible
veracity? And how could we believe that He governs the world in justice and
righteousness unless we acknowledged His power? And whence proceeds His
mercy but from His goodness? And if all His ways are justice, mercy,
righteousness, certainly holiness also is conspicuous in them." The divine
power, righteousness, justice, holiness, goodness, mercy, and truth are here
brought together and concatenated one with the others, with some indication
of their mutual relations, and with a clear intimation that God is not
properly conceived unless He is conceived in all His perfections. Any
description of Him which omits more or fewer of these perfections, it is
intimated, is justly chargeable with defect. Similarly when dealing with
those more fundamental "epithets" by which His essence is described (xiii.
1), he makes it plain that not to embrace them all in our thought of God,
and that in their integrity, is to invade His majesty: the fault of the
Manichaeans was that they broke up the unity of God and restricted His
immensity.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn104> 104 

There is no lack in Calvin's treatment of the attributes, then, of a just
sense of their variety or of the necessity of holding them all together in a
single composite conception that we may do justice in our thought to God. He
obviously has in mind the whole series of the divine perfections in clear
and just discrimination, and he accurately conceives them as falling apart
into two classes, the one qualities of the divine essence, the other
characteristics of the divine person - in a word, essential and personal
attributes: and he fully realizes the relation of these two classes to each
other, and as well the necessity of embracing each of the attributes in its
integrity in our conception of God, if we are to do any justice whatever to
that conception. 

What seems to be lacking in Calvin's treatment of the attributes is detailed
discussion of the notion imbedded in each several attribute and elaboration
of this notion as a necessary element in our conception of God. Calvin
employs the terms unity, simplicity, self-existence, incomprehensibility,
spirituality, infinity, immensity, eternity, immutability, perfection,
power, wisdom, righteousness, justice, holiness, goodness, benignity,
beneficence, clemency, mercy, grace,
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn105> 105 as
current terms bearing well-understood meanings, and does not stop to develop
their significance except by incidental remarks.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn106> 106 The
confidence which he places in their conveyance of their meaning seems to be
justified by the event; although, no doubt, much of the effect of their mere
enumeration is due to the remarkable lucidity of Calvin's thought and style:
he uses his terms with such consistency and exactness, that they become
self-defining in their context. We are far, then, from saying that his
method of dealing with the attributes, by mere allusion as we might almost
call it, is inadequate for the practical religious purpose for which he was
writing: and certainly it is far more consonant with the literary rather
than scholastic form he gives his treatise. When we suggest, then, that from
the scholastic point of view it seems that it is precisely at this point
that Calvin's treatment of the attributes falls somewhat short of what we
might desire, we must not permit to slip out of our memory that Calvin
expressly repudiates the scholastic point of view and is of set purpose
simple and practical.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn107> 107 He
does not seek to obtain for himself or to recommend to others such a
knowledge of God as merely "raises idle speculation in the brain"; but such
as "shall be firm and fruitful" and have its seat in the heart. He purposely
rejects, therefore, the philosophical mode of dealing with the attributes
and devotes himself to awakening in the hearts of his readers a practical
knowledge of God, a knowledge which functions first in the fear (timor) of
God and then in trust (fiducia) in Him. 

And here we must pause to take note of this two-fold characterization of the
religious emotion, corresponding, as it does in Calvin's conception, to the
double aspect in which God is contemplated by those who know Him. God is our
Lord, in whose presence awe and reverence become us; God is our Father, to
whom we owe trust and love. Fear and love - both must be present where true
piety is: for, says Calvin, what "I call piety (pietas) is that reverence
combined with love of God, which a knowledge of His benefits produces" (I.
ii. 1). In the form he has given this statement the element of reverence
(reverentia) appears to be made the formative element: piety is reverence,
although it is not reverence without love. But if it is not reverence in and
of itself but only the reverence which is informed by love, love after all
may be held to become the determining element of true piety. And Calvin does
not hesitate to declare with the greatest emphasis that the apprehension of
God as deserving of our worship and adoration - in a word as our Lord -
simpliciter, does not suffice to produce true piety: that is not born, he
says, until "we are persuaded that God is the fountain of all that is good
and cease to seek for good elsewhere than in Him" (ibid.); that is to say,
until we apprehend Him as our Father as well as our Lord. "For," adds he,
"until men feel that they owe everything to God, that they are cherished by
His paternal care, that He is the author to them of all good things and
nothing is to be sought out of Him, they will never subject themselves to
Him in willing obedience (observantia, reverent obedience); or rather I
should say, unless they establish for themselves a solid happiness in Him
they will never devote themselves to Him without reserve truly and heartily
(vere et ex animo totos)." And then he proceeds (I. ii. 2) to expound at
length how the knowledge of God should first inspire us with fear and
reverence and then lead us to look to Him for good. The first thought of Him
awakes us to our dependence on Him as our Lord: any clear view of Him begets
in us a sense of Him as the fountain and origin of all that is good - such
as in anyone not depraved by sin must inevitably arouse a desire to adhere
to Him and put his trust (fiducia) in Him - because he must recognize in Him
a guardian and protector worthy of complete confidence (fides). "Because he
perceives Him to be the author of all good, in trial or in need," he
proceeds, still expounding the state of mind of the truly pious man, "he at
once commits himself to His protection, expectant of His help; because he is
convinced that He is good and merciful, he rests on Him in assured trust
(fiducia), never doubting that a remedy is prepared in His clemency for all
his ills; because he recognizes Him as Lord and Father, he is sure that he
ought to regard His government in all things, revere His majesty, seek His
glory, and obey His behests; because he perceives Him to be a just judge,
armed with severity for punishing iniquities, he keeps His tribunal always
in view, and in fear restrains and checks himself from provoking His wrath.
And yet, he is not so terrified by the sense of His justice, that he wishes
to escape from it, even if flight were possible: rather he embraces Him not
less as the avenger of the wicked than as the benefactor of the pious, since
he perceives it to belong to His glory not less that there should be meted
out by Him punishment to the impious and iniquitous, than the reward of
eternal life to the righteous. Moreover, he restrains himself from sinning
not merely from fear of punishment, but because he loves and reverences God
as a father (loco patris) and honors and worships Him as Lord (loco domini),
and even though there were no hell he would quake to offend Him." 

We have quoted this eloquent passage at length because it throws into
prominence, as few others do, Calvin's deep sense not merely of reverence
but of love towards God. To him true religion always involves the
recognition of God not only as Lord but also as Father. And this double
conception of God is present whether this religion be conceived as natural
or as revealed. "The knowledge of God," says he (I. x. 2, ad fin.), "which
is proposed to us in the Scriptures is directed to no other end than that
which is manifested to us in the creation: to wit, it invites us first to
the fear of God, then to trust in Him; so that we may learn both to serve
Him in perfect innocence of life and sincere obedience, and as well to rest
wholly in His goodness." That is, in a word, the sense of the divine
Fatherhood is as fundamental to Calvin's conception of God as the sense of
His sovereignty. Of course, he throws the strongest conceivable emphasis on
God's Lordship: the sovereignty of God is the hinge of His thought of God.
But this sovereignty is ever conceived by him as the sovereignty of God our
Father. The distinguishing feature of Calvin's doctrine of God is, in a
word, precisely the prevailing stress he casts on this aspect of the
conception of God. It is a Lutheran theologian who takes the trouble to make
this plain to us. "The chief elements which are dealt with by Calvin in the
matter of the religious relation," he says, "are summed up in the
proposition: God is our Lord, who has made us, and our Father from whom all
good comes; we owe Him, therefore, honor and glory, love and trust. We must,
so we are told in the exposition of the Decalogue in the first edition of
the Institutes, just as we are told in Luther's Catechism - we must 'fear
and love' God. . . . [But] we find in the Institutes, and, indeed,
particularly in the final edition, expressions in which the second of these
elements is given the preference. . . . We may find, indeed, in Luther and
the Lutherans, the element of fear in piety still more emphasized than in
Calvin. . . ."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn108> 108 In
a word, with all his emphasis on the sovereignty of God, Calvin throws an
even stronger emphasis on His love: and his doctrine of God is preeminent
among the doctrines of God given expression in the Reformation age in the
commanding place it gives to the Divine Fatherhood. "Lord and Father" -
fatherly Sovereign, or sovereign Father - that is how Calvin conceived God. 

It was precisely because Calvin conceived of God not only as Lord, but also
as Father, and gave Him not merely his obedience but his love, that he
burned with such jealousy for His honor. Everything that tended to rob God
of the honor due Him was accordingly peculiarly abhorrent to him. We cannot
feel surprised, therefore, that he devotes so large a portion of his
discussion of the doctrine of God to repelling that invasion of the divine
rights which was wrought by giving the worship due to Him alone to others,
and particularly to idols, the work of man's own hand. His soul filled with
the vision of the majesty of a God who will not give His glory to another,
and his heart aflame with a sense of the Fatherly love he was receiving from
this great God, the Lord of heaven and earth, he turned with passionate
hatred from the idolatrous rites into which the worship of the old Church
had so largely degenerated, and felt nothing so pressingly his duty as to
trace out the fallacies in the subtle pleas by which men sought to justify
them to themselves, and so far as lay within him to rescue those who looked
to him for guidance from such dreadful profanation of the divine majesty. As
a practical man, with his mind on the practical religious needs of the time,
this "brutal stupidity" of men, desiring visible figures of God - who is an
invisible Spirit - corrupting the divine glory by fabricating for themselves
gods out of wood, or stone, or gold, or silver, or any other dead stuff,
seemed to him to call for rebuke as little else could. The principle on
which he proceeds in his rebuke of idolatry is expressed by himself in the
words, that to attribute to anything else than to the one true God, anything
that is proper to divinity is "to despoil God of His honor and to violate
His worship."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn109> 109 So
deeply rooted is the jealousy for the divine honor given expression in this
principle not only in Calvin's thought, but in that of the whole tendency of
thought which he represents, that it may well be looked upon as a
determinative trait of the Reformed attitude - which has therefore been
described as characterized by a determined protest against all that is pagan
in life and worship."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn110> 110

Certainly the zeal of Calvin burned warmly against the dishonor he felt was
done to God by the methods of worshipping Him prevalent in the old Church.
God has revealed Himself not only in His Word, but also in His works, as the
one only true God. But the vanity of man has ever tended to corrupt the
knowledge of God and to invent gods many and lords many, and not content
with that, has sunk even to the degradation of idolatry - fabricating gods
of wood or stone, gold or silver, or some other dead stuff. It is, of
course, not idolatry in general, but the idolatry of the Church of Rome that
Calvin has his eye particularly upon, as became him as a practical man,
absorbed in the real problems of his time. He therefore particularly
animadverts upon the more refined forms of idolatry, ruthlessly reducing
them to the same level in principle with the grossest. God does not compare
idols with idols, he says, as if one were better and another worse: He
repudiates all without exception - all images, pictures, or any other kind
of tokens by which superstitious people have imagined He could be brought
near to them (I. xi. 1, end). He embraces all forms of idolatry, however, in
his comprehensive refutation; he even expressly adverts to the "foolish
subterfuge" (inepta cautio) of the Greeks, who allow painted but not graven
images (I. xi. 4, end). Or rather he broadens his condemnation until it
covers even the false conceptions of God which we frame in our imaginations
(I. xi. 4, ad init.), substituting them for the revelations He makes of
Himself: for the "mind of man," he says, "is, if I may be allowed the
expression, a perpetual factory of idols" (I. xi. 8). Thus he returns to
"the Puritan conception" which we have seen him already announcing in former
chapters, and proclaims as his governing principle (I. xi. 4, med.) that
"all modes of worship which men excogitate from themselves are detestable."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn111> 111 

He does not content himself, however, with proclaiming and establishing this
principle. He follows the argument for the use of images in worship into its
details and refutes it item by item. To the plea that "images are the books
of the illiterate" and by banishing them he is depriving the people of their
best means of instruction, he replies that no doubt they do teach something,
but what they teach is falsehood: God is not as they represent Him (§§ 5-7).
To the caveat that no one worships the idols, but the deity through the
idols, that they are never called "gods" and that what is offered them is
doulei>a, not latrei>a - he replies that all this is distinction without
difference; the Jews in their idolatry reasoned in a similar manner, and it
is easy to erect a distinction between words, but somewhat more difficult to
establish a real difference in fact (§§ 9-11). To the reproach that he is
exhibiting a fanaticism against the representative arts, he rejoins that
such is far from the case; he is only seeking to protect these arts from
abusive application to wrong purposes (§§ 12, 13). And finally to the appeal
to the decisions of the Council of Nice of 786-787 favorable to
image-worship, he replies by an exposure of the "disgusting insipidities"
and "portentous impiety" of the image-worshipping Fathers at that Council
(§§ 14 sq.). The discussion is then closed (chap. xii.), with a chapter in
which he urges that God alone is to be worshipped and only in the way of His
own appointment; and above all that His glory is not to be given to another.
Thus the ever-present danger of idolatry, as evidenced in the gross
practices of Rome, is itself invoked to curb speculation on the nature of
the Godhead and to throw men back on the simple and vitalizing revelation of
the word of a God like us in that He is a spiritual person, but unlike us in
that He is clothed in inconceivable majesty. These two epithets - immensity
and spirituality - thus stand out as expressing the fundamental
characteristics of the divine essence to Calvin's thinking: His immensity
driving us away in terror from any attempt to measure Him by our sense; His
spirituality prohibiting the entertainment of any earthly or carnal
speculation concerning Him (I. xiii. 1). 

In the course of this discussion there are three matters on which Calvin
somewhat incidentally touches which seem too interesting to be passed over
unremarked. These are what we may call his philosophy of idolatry, his
praise of preaching, and his recommendation of art. 

His philosophy of idolatry (I. xi. 8, 9) takes the form of a psychological
theory of its origin. While allowing an important place in the fostering and
spread of idolatry to the ancient customs of honoring the dead and
superstitiously respecting their memory, he considers idolatry more ancient
than these customs, and the product of debased thoughts of God. He
enumerates four stages in its evolution. First, the mind of man, filled with
pride and rashness, dares to imagine a god after its own notion;
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn112> 112 and
laboring in its dullness and sunk in the crassest ignorance, naturally
conceives a vain and empty spectre for God. Next, man attempts to give an
outward form to the god he has thus inwardly excogitated; so that the hand
brings forth the idol which the mind begets. Worship follows hard on this
figment; for, when they suppose they see God in the images, men naturally
worship Him in them. Finally, their minds and eyes alike being fixed upon
the images, men begin to become more imbruted, and stand amazed and lost in
wonder before the images, as if there were something of divinity inherent in
them. Thus easy Calvin supposes to be the descent from false notions of
deity to the superstitious adoration of stocks and stones, and thus clearly
and reiteratedly he discovers the roots of idolatry in false conceptions of
God and proclaims its presence in principle wherever men permit themselves
to think of God otherwise, in any particular, than He has revealed Himself
in His works and Word. 

As we read Calvin's energetic arraignments of the sinfulness of our
deflected conceptions of God - the essential idolatry of the imaginary
images we form of Him - and our duty diligently to conform our ideas of God
to the revelations of Himself He has graciously given us, we are reminded of
an eloquent picture which the late Professor A. Sabatier once drew
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn113> 113 of
a concourse of professing Christians coming together to worship in common a
God whom each conceives after his own fashion. Anthropomorphists, Deists,
Agnostics, Pantheists - all bow alike before God and worship, says Prof.
Sabatier; and the worship of one and all is acceptable, equally acceptable,
to God. Not so, rejoins M. Bois:
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn114> 114 and
there is not a less admirable spectacle in the world than this. Calvin was
of M. Bois's opinion. To his thinking we have before us in such a concourse
only a company of idolaters - each worshipping not the God that is but the
god who in the pride of his heart he has made himself. And to each and all
Calvin sends out the cry of, Repent! turn from the god you have made
yourself and serve the God that is! 

It is in the midst of his response to the specious plea that images are the
books of the illiterate and the only means of instruction available for them
that Calvin breaks out into a notable eulogy on preaching as God's ordained
means of instructing His people (I. xi. 7). Even though images, he remarks,
were so framed that they bore to the people a message which might be
properly called divine - which too frequently is very far from the case -
their childish suggestions (naeniae) are little adapted to convey the
special teaching which God wishes to be taught His people in their solemn
congregations, and has made the common burden of His Word and Sacraments -
from which it is to be feared, however, the minds of the people are fatally
distracted as their eyes roam around to gaze on their idols. Do you say the
people are too rude and ignorant to profit by the heavenly message and can
be reached only by means of the images? Yet these are those whom the Lord
receives as His own disciples, honors with the revelation of His celestial
philosophy, and has commanded to be instructed in the saving mysteries of
His kingdom! If they have fallen so low as not to be able to do without such
"books" as images supply, is not that only because they have been defrauded
of the teaching which they required? The invention of images, in a word, is
an expedient demanded not by the rudeness of the people so much as by the
dumbness of the priests. It is in the true preaching of the Gospel that
Christ is really depicted - crucified before our eyes openly, as Paul
testifies: and there can be no reason to crowd the churches with crucifixes
of wood and stone and silver and gold, if Christ is faithfully preached as
dying on the cross to bear our curse, expiating our sins by the sacrifice of
His body, cleansing us by His blood and reconciling us to God the Father.
>From this simple proclamation more may be learned than from a thousand
crosses. Thus Calvin vindicates to the people of God their dignity as God's
children taught by His Spirit, their right to the Gospel of grace, their
capacity under the instruction of the Spirit to receive the divine message,
and the central place of the preaching of the atonement of Christ in the
ordinances of the sanctuary. 

It seems the more needful that we should pause upon Calvin's remarks on art
in this discussion long enough to take in their full significance, that this
is one of the matters on which he has been made the object of persistent
misrepresentation. It has been made the reproach of the Reformation in
general and of Calvinism in particular that they have morosely set
themselves in opposition to all artistic development, while Calvin himself
has been inveighed against as the declared enemy of all that is beautiful in
life. Thus, for example, Voltaire in his biting verse has explained that the
only art which flourished at Geneva (where men cyphered but could not laugh)
was that of the money-reckoners: and that nothing was sung there but the
antique concerts of "the good David" in the belief "that God liked bad
verses." Even professed students of the subject have passionately assailed
Calvin as insensible to the charms of art and inimical to all forms of
artistic expression. Thus, M. D. Courtois, the historian of sacred music
among the French Reformed, permits himself, quite contrary to the facts in
the sphere of his own especial form of art, to say that Calvin "nourished a
holy horror for all that could resemble an intrusion of art into the
religious domain"; and M. E. Müntz, who writes on "Protestantism and Art,"
exclaims that "in Calvin's eyes beauty is tantamount to idolatry"; while M.
O. Douen, the biographer of Clement Marot, brands Calvin as "anti-liberal,
anti-artistic, anti-human, anti-Christian." The subject is too wide to be
entered upon here in its general aspects. Professor E. Doumergue and Dr. A.
Kuyper have made all lovers of truth their debtors by exposing to the full
the grossness of such calumnies.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn115> 115

In point of fact Calvin was a lover and fosterer of the arts, counting them
all divine gifts which should be cherished, and expressly declaring even of
those which minister only to pleasure that they are by no means to be
reckoned superfluous and are certainly not to be condemned as if forsooth
they were inimical to piety. Even in the heat of this arraignment of the
misuse of art-representations in idolatry which is at present before us, we
observe that he turns aside to guard himself against being misunderstood as
condemning art-representations in general (§ 12). The notion that all
representative images are to be avoided he brands as superstition and
declares of the products both of the pictorial and of the sculptural arts
that they are the gifts of God granted to us for His own glory and our good.
"I am not held," he says, "in that superstition, which considers that no
images at all are to be endured. I only require that since sculptures and
pictures are gifts of God, the use of them should be pure and legitimate;
lest what has been conferred on us by God for His own glory and for our
good, should not only be polluted by preposterous abuse, but even turned to
our injury." Here is no fanatical suspicion of beauty: no harsh assault upon
art. Here is rather the noblest possible estimate of art as conducive in its
right employment to the profit of man and the glory of the God who gives it.
Here is only an anxiety manifested to protect such a noble gift of God from
abuse to wrong ends. Accordingly in the "Table or brief summary of the
principal matters contained in this Institution of the Christian religion,"
which was affixed to the French edition of 1560, the contents of this
section are described as follows: "That when idolatry is condemned, this is
not to abolish the arts of painting and sculpture, but to require that the
use of both shall be pure and legitimate; and we are not to amuse ourselves
by representing God by some visible figure, but only such things as may be
objects of sight."
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn116> 116
Calvin, then, does not at all condemn art, but only pleads for a pure and
reverent employment of art as a high gift of God, to be used like all others
of God's gifts so as to profit man and glorify the Great Giver. 

If we inquire more closely what he held to be a legitimate use of the
pictorial arts, we must note first of all that he utterly forbids all
representations of God in visible figures.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn117> 117
This prohibition he rests on two grounds: first, God Himself forbids it; and
secondly, "it cannot be done without some deformation of His glory," - in
which we catch again the note of zeal against everything which detracts from
the honor of God. To attempt the portraiture of God is, thus, to Calvin, not
merely to disobey God's express command, but also to dishonor Him by an
unworthy representation of Him, which is essential idolatry. Highly as he
esteemed the pictorial arts, as worthy of all admiration in their true
sphere, he condemned utterly pressing them beyond their mark, lest even they
should become procurers to the Lords of Hell. We note secondly that he
dissuaded from the ornamentation of the churches with the products of the
representative arts (I. xi. 13); but this on the ground not of the express
commandment of God or of an inherent incapacity of art to serve the purposes
contemplated, but of simple expediency.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn118> 118
Experience teaches us, he says, that to set up images in the churches is
tantamount to raising the standard of idolatry, because the folly of man is
so great that it immediately falls to offering them superstitious worship.
And a deeper reason lies behind, which would determine his judgment even if
this peril were not so great. The Lord has Himself ordained living and
expressive images of His grace for His temples, by which our eyes should be
caught and held - such ceremonies as Baptism and the Lord's Supper - and we
cannot require others fabricated by human ingenuity; and it seems unworthy
of the sanctity of the place to intrude them. There is, of course, an echo
here of Calvin's fundamental "Puritan principle" with reference to the
worship of God: his constant and unhesitating contention that only that
worship which is ordained by Himself is acceptable to God. Had God desired
the aid of pictorial representations to quicken the devotions of His people
He would have ordained them: to employ them is in principle to despise the
provisions He has made and to invent others - and we may be sure inadequate
if not misleading ones - for ourselves. 

This is not the place to inquire into Calvin's positive theory of
art-representation. It is worth while, however, as illustrating the wide
interests of the man, to note that he has such a theory and betrays the fact
that he has it and somewhat of the lines on which it runs, in incidental
remarks, even in such a discussion as this. It emerges, for example, that he
would confine the sphere of the representative arts to the depicting of
objects of sight (ea sola quorum sint capaces oculi) - of such things as the
eye sees. Of these, however, he discovers two classes - "histories and
transactions" on the one side, "images and forms of bodies" on the other.
<http://www.lgmarshall.org/Warfield/warfield_doctrinegod.html#fn119> 119 The
former may be made useful for purposes of instruction or admonition, he
thinks; the latter, so far as he sees, serve only the ends of delectation.
Both are, however, alike legitimate, if only they be kept to their proper
places and used for their proper ends; for the delectation of man is as
really a human need as his instruction. So little does Calvin then set
himself with stern moroseness against all art-representation, that he is
found actually forming a comprehensive theory of art-representation and
pleading for its use, not only for the profit, but also for the pleasure of
man. 

It remains to speak of Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity.  

<hr size=2 width="25%" align=left> 

Endnotes:

1.	From The Princeton Theological Review, vii 1909, pp. 381-436.  
2.	Cf. Köstlin, "Calvin's Institutio," etc., in Studien und Kritiken,
1868, i. pp. 61-2: "On the other hand - and this is for us the most
important matter, - there is not given there any comprehensive exposition of
the attributes, especially not of the ethical attributes of God, nor is any
such afterwards attempted." Again, iii. p. 423: "We cannot present and
follow out the doctrine of the Institutio on the divine nature and the
divine attributes, and their relations, as a whole, as we can its doctrine
of the Trinity, because Calvin himself, as we have mentioned already, has
nowhere presented them as a whole." Cf. also P. J. Muller, "De Godaleer van
Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 11: "Neither by Zwingli nor by Calvin are
there offered proofs of the existence of God" (cf. p. 18). Again, "De
Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, p. 26: "A doctrine of the nature of God as such
we do not find in Calvin." Ibid., p. 38: "We find nowhere in Calvin a
special section which is devoted particularly to the treatment of God's
attributes"; "since he gives no formal doctrine of the attributes, we find
in him also no classification of the attributes." 
3.	As Köstlin, for example, has suggested, as cited, p. 423, followed
by P. J. Muller in his earlier work, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, pp.
10, 46.  
4.	So P. J. Muller expresses himself in his later volume - "De Godsleer
van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 46 - modifying his earlier view: "Köstlin
asks if it does not belong to Calvin's dogmatic standpoint that he does not
venture to seek after a bond between the several elements which come forward
in God's many-sided relation to men. This question can undoubtedly be
answered in the affirmative, although we should rather speak here of the
peculiarity of Calvin's method." That is to say, Muller here prefers to
refer the phenomenon in question to Calvin's a posteriori method rather than
to his theological standpoint. 
5.	Andre Duran, "Le Mysticisme de Calvin," 1900, p. 8, justly says:
"The Institutes are remarkable precisely for this: the absence of
speculation. It is especially with the heart that Calvin studies God in His
relations with men; and it is by the heart that he attains to complete union
of man with God." For a satisfactory discussion of the "heart in Calvin's
theology" see E. Doumergue, "Jean Calvin," etc., iii. 1905, pp. 560-563.
Compare also the third address in Doumergue's " L'Art et le sentiment dans
l'oeuvre de Calvin," Geneva, 1902.  
6.	"Discours de combat," 1903, pp. 135-140. 
7.	"Études d'histoire religieuse," ed. 7, 1864, p. 342: "l'homme le
plus chrétien de son siècle." It must be borne in mind that this is not very
high praise on M. Renan's lips; and was indeed intended by him to be
depreciatory. We need not put an excessive estimate on Calvin's greatness,
he says in effect; he lived in an age of reaction towards Christianity and
he was the most Christian man of his age: his preeminence is thus accounted
for.  
8.	"Instruction et confession de foy dont on use en l'eglise de Genève"
(Opp. xxii. 47). The Strasburg editors assign it to Calvin's colleagues;
Doumergue ("Jean Calvin," ii. 1902, pp. 236-251) to Calvin.  
9.	"Vera Christianae pacificationis et ecclesiae reformandae ratio,"
1549 (Opp. vii. 598-M). 
10.	nudam frigidamque notitiam. 
11.	nudam notitiam. 
12.	vivum affectum qui cordi insideat. 
13.	Ed. of 1539: the quotations are made from the French version of
1541, pp. 189, 202, 204. See Opp. iii. 15, 53, 57. 
14.	I. v. 9. 
15.	III. ii. 8.  
16.	Cordis esse magis quam cerebri, et affectus magis quam
intelligentiae. 
17.	fidem et veritatem cordis. 
18.	cor et animum (Opp. vi. 477, 479). 
19.	I. vii. 4. 
20.	Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p.
111: "A theologian like Calvin, Zwingli was not; but still in the history of
the doctrine of God the pages devoted to Zwingli are more important than
those devoted to Calvin. The loci de Trinitate, de Creatione, and de Lapso
apart, Zwingli's system is undeniably more coherent than that of Calvin, in
which we miss the bond by which the several parts are joined. On the other
hand, however, we miss in Zwingli's doctrine of God precisely what
constitutes the value of a doctrine of God for the theologian, that is to
say, its religious character. We do not find in Zwingli as in Calvin a
recoil from the consequences of his own reasoning, which leads necessarily
to the ascription to God of the origination of evil, or sin, just because
God is not with him as with Calvin conceived above everything as the object
of religious reverence, but rather as the object of speculative thought."  
21.	Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 6:
"If the doctrine of God for the theologian is determined by its religious
character, the contemplation of God as the object of religious reverence
will take a higher place with him than the merely philosophical
contemplation of God as the ultimate cause. Since it is not to be denied -
as the following exposition will show - that with Zwingli God is
speculatively contemplated much more as the ultimate cause than as the
object of religious reverence, we may conclude that - so far as religious
value is concerned - Zwingli's doctrine of God must be ranked below
Calvin's." Again (p. 21): "In the nature of the case Calvin's conceptions of
the nature of God must be very sober. For to him, God was very predominantly
the object of religious reverence, and he could not therefore do otherwise
than disapprove of the attempt to penetrate into the nature of the Godhead
(I. v. 9). With Zwingli, on the contrary, in whose system God is
preeminently conceived as the ultimate cause, the doctrine of the nature of
God must form one of the most important sections of the doctrine of God."
Once more (p. 23): "Calvin, whose pride it was to be a 'Biblical
theologian,' does not follow the method of the philosophers, - the
aprioristic method. He is therefore sober in his conceptions of the nature
of God, since he had noted that in the Scriptures God speaks little of His
nature, that He may teach us sobriety" - quoting I. xiii. 1: ut nos in
sobrietate contineat, parce de sua essentia [Deus] disserit. 
22.	Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, p. 117.  
23.	Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, pp.
46, 47. The author of the anonymous Introduction to the edition of the
"Institutes" in French, published by Meyrueis et Cie, Paris, 1859, p. xii.,
says similarly: "Of a mind positive, grave, practical, removed from all need
of speculation, very circumspect, not expressing its thought until its
conviction had attained maturity, taking the fact of a divine revelation
seriously, Calvin learned his faith at the feet of the Holy Scriptures . .
." 
24.	P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, pp. 103-104.  
25.	P. J. Muller's view is different, as may be seen from the following
extracts: "Neither by Zwingli nor by Calvin are there offered proofs of the
existence of God, although there are particular passages in their writings
which seem to recall them. The proposition 'That God exists' needed neither
for themselves nor for their fellow-believers, nor even against Rome, any
proof. It has been thought indeed that the so-called cosmological argument
is found in Zwingli, the physico-theological argument in Calvin (Lipsius,
Lehrb. der ev. prot. Dogmatik, ed. 2, 1879, p. 213). But it would not be
difficult to show that in the case of neither have we to do with a
philosophical deduction, but only with an aid for attaining a complete
knowledge of God" ("De Godsleer van Z. en C.," 1883, p. 11, cf. p. 14). In a
note Prof. Muller adverts to the possible use by Calvin, I. iii. 1, of "the
so-called historical argument." "If Zwingli gives us no proof of God's
existence, the same is true of Calvin. It is true that the
physico-theological argument has been discovered in the Institutes. Yet as
he wrote over the fifth chapter of the first book, 'That the knowledge of
God is manifested in the making and continuous government of the world,' -
it is already evident from this that he did not intend to argue from the
teleology of the world to the existence of God as its Creator, Sustainer,
and Governor, but that he wished merely to point to the world as to 'a
beautiful book,'-to speak in the words of our [Netherlandish] Confession
(Art. ii.), - 'in which all creatures, small and great, serve as letters to
declare to us the invisible things of God.' Here, too, we have accordingly
to do simply with a means for a rise to a fuller knowledge of God" (Do., p.
16). "The Scholastics may indeed - although answering the inquiry
affirmatively - begin with the question, Is there a God? Such a question
cannot rise with Calvin. The Reformer, assured of his personal salvation,
the ground of which lay in God Himself, could also for his co-believers
leave this question to one side. Practical value attached only to the
inquiry how men can come to know God, of whose existence Calvin entertained
no doubt" ("De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, p. 11).  
26.	ut ethnicus ille ait (the allusion is to Cicero, "De natura deorum,"
i. 16). 
27.	Deum esse. 
28.	qui Deum esse negent.  
29.	velint tamen nolint, quod nescire cupiunt, subinde sentiscunt. 
30.	imo et naturaliter ingenitam esse omnibus hanc persuasionem, esse
aliquem Deum. 
31.	negantes Deum esse. 
32.	Deum esse neget.  
33.	"Paed.," III. i. ed. Stählin, i. 1905, p. 235; cf. E. T. in the
"Ante-Nicene Christian Library": "Clement of Alexandria," i. 1867, p. 273.
Cf. "Strom.," V. xiii. ; "Protrep.," vi.  
34.	"Adv. Marc.," i. 10: E. T. "The Ante-Nicene Fathers," iii. 1903, p.
278. Cf. "De test. animae," vi.: E. T. op. cit., p. 179. 
35.	"Ad Autol.," i. 2: E. T. "Ante-Nicene Fathers," ii. 1903, p. 89. 
36.	Do., i. 5: E. T. op. cit., p. 90. 
37.	Chap. xvii.: E. T. "Ante-Nicene Fathers," iv. 1902, p. 182. 
38.	"Adv. Epic.," iii.: E. T. "Ante-Nicene Fathers," vi. 1899, p. 88.  
39.	H. C. Sheldon, "History of Christian Doctrine," i. 1886, p. 56:
"Metaphysical proofs of the existence of God, such as those adduced by
Augustine, Anselm, and Descartes, were quite foreign to the theology of the
first three centuries." But in the next age they had already come in; cf.
Sheldon, p. 187: "We find a new class of arguments, something more in the
line of the metaphysical than anything which the previous centuries brought
forward. Three writers in particular aspired to this order of proofs; viz.,
Diodorus of Tarsus, Augustine, and Boëthius." Augustine is the real father
of the ontological argument: but Augustine only chronologically belonged to
the old world; as Siebeck puts it, he was "the first modern man." 
40.	Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godaleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, pp.
11-16, where a very interesting account is given of Zwingli's handling of
the theistic proofs-though Prof. Muller thinks that Zwingli employs them not
to establish the existence of God but to increase our knowledge of God. With
Zwingli all knowledge of God rests at bottom on Revelation, which is his way
of saying what Calvin means by his universal sensus deitatis. Zwingli says,
on his part, that "a certain seed of knowledge of God is sown [by God] also
among the Gentiles" (iii. 158). But he argues with great force and in very
striking language, that all creation proclaims its maker. Cf. A. Baur,
"Zwinglis Theologie," i. 1885, pp. 382-383: "In the doctrine of God, Zwingli
distinguishes two questions: first that of the nature, and secondly that of
the existence of God. The answer to the first question surpasses the powers
of the human mind; that of the second, does not." That the knowledge of the
existence of God, which "may be justified before the understanding "
(Muller, p. 13), does not involve a knowledge of His nature, Zwingli holds,
is proved by the wide fact of polytheism on the one hand and the
accompanying fact, on the other, that natural theism is always purely
theoretical (Baur, p. 383). 
41.	In the earliest "Loci Communes" (1521) there was no locus de Deo at
all. In the second form (1535-1541) there was a locus de Deo, but it was not
to it but to the locus de Creatione that Melanchthon appended some arguments
for the existence of God, remarking ("Corp. Ref.," xxi. 369): "After the
mind has been confirmed in the true and right opinion of God and of Creation
by the Word of God itself, it is then both useful and pleasant to seek out
also the vestiges of God in nature and to collect the arguments (rationes)
which testify that there is a God." These remarks are expanded in the final
form (1542+) and reduced to a formal order, for the benefit of "good
morals." The list ("Corp. Ref.," xxi. 641-643) consists of nine
"demonstrations, the consideration of which is useful for discipline and for
confirming honest opinions in minds." "The first is drawn from the order of
nature itself, that is from the effects arguing a maker. . . . The second,
from the nature of the human mind. A brute thing is not the cause of an
intelligent nature. . . . The third, from the distinction between good and
evil . . . and the sense of order and number. . . . Fourthly: natural ideas
are true: that there is a God, all confess naturally: therefore this idea is
true. . . . The fifth is taken, in Xenophanes, from the terrors of
conscience. . . . The sixth from political society. . . . The seventh is . .
. drawn from the series of efficient causes. There cannot be an infinite
recession of efficient causes. . . . The eighth from final causes.... The
ninth from prediction of future events." "These arguments," he adds, "not
only testify that there is a God, but are also indicia of providence....
They are perspicuous and always affect good minds. Many others also could
certainly be collected; but because they are more obscure, I leave off." . .
. G. H. Lamers, "Geschiedenis der Leer aangande God," 1897, p. 179 (6871,
remarks: "It should be noted that Melanchthon always when speaking of God,
whether as Spirit or as Love, wishes everywhere to ascribe the highest value
to God's ethical characteristics. Even the particulars, nine in number, to
which he (Doedes, Inleiding tot de Leer van God, p. 191) points as proofs
that God's existence must be recognized, show that ethical considerations
especially attract him." More justly Herrlinger, "Die Theologie
Melanchthons," 1879, comments on Melanchthon's use of the "proofs" as
follows: "The natural knowledge of God, resting on an innate idea and
awakened especially by teleological contemplation of the world, Melanchthon
makes in his philosophical writings, particularly in his physics, the object
of consideration, so that we may speak of the elements of a natural theology
in him" (p. 168). Melanchthon heaps up these arguments, enumerating nine of
them, in the conviction that they will mutually strengthen one another.
Herrlinger thinks that, as they occur in much the same order in more of
Melanchthon's writings than one, they may be arranged on some principle -
possibly beginning with particulars in nature and man, proceeding to human
association, and rising to the entirety of nature (p. 392). He continues (p.
393): "Clearly enough it is the teleological argument which in all these
proofs is the real nerve of the proof. Melanchthon accords with Kant, as in
the high place he gives this proof, so also in perceiving that all these
proofs find their strength in the ontological argument, in the innate idea
of God, which is the most direct witness for God's existence. 15. 564; 'The
mind reasons of God from a multitude of vestiges. But this reasoning would
not be made if there were not infused (insita) into the mind a certain
knowledge (notitia) or pro>lhyiv of God.' Similarly, De Anima, 13. 144,
169." The relation of the proofs to the innate sensus deitatis here
indicated, holds good also for Calvin.  
42.	"In Psalmos," 144: illum non possumus capere, velut sub eius
magnitudine deficientes.  
43.	We cannot know the quiddity of God: we can only know His quality:
that is, to say what His essence is, is beyond our comprehension, but we may
know Him in His attributes. 
44.	Cf. the passage in ed. 2 and other middle editions in which,
refuting the Sabellians, he says that such attributes as strength, goodness,
wisdom, mercy, are "epithets" which "show qualis erga nos sit Deus," while
the personal names, Father, Son, Spirit, are "names" which "declare qualis
apud semetipsum vere sit" (Opp. i. 491).  
45.	Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godaleer van Calvijn," 1881, p. 26: "A
doctrine of the nature of God as such we do not find in Calvin." To teach us
modesty, Calvin says, God says little of His nature in Scripture, but to
teach us what we ought to know of Him he gives us two epithets - immensity
and spirituality (p. 29). Again, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883,
pp. 30-31: "The little that Calvin gives us on this subject (the Divine
Essence) limits itself to the remark that God's essence is 'immense and
spiritual' (I. xiii. 1), 'incomprehensible to us' (I. v. 1)." Again, p. 38:
"If the aprioristic method [as employed by Zwingli] is thus not favorable to
the development of a doctrine of the Trinity, Calvin's aposterioristic
method is on the other hand the reason that his conceptions of the nature of
God - apart from the Trinity - are of less significance than Zwingli's.
Since our understanding, according to Calvin, is incapable of grasping what
God is, it is folly to seek with arrogant curiosity to investigate God's
nature, 'which is much rather to be adored than anxiously to be inquired
into' (On Romans, i. 19: 'They are mad who seek to discover what God is';
Institutes, I. ii. 2: 'The essence of God is rather to be adored than
inquired into'). If we nevertheless wish to solve the problem up to a
certain point, let this be done only by means of the Scriptures in which God
has revealed His nature to us so far as it is needful for us to know it. The
warning he gives us is therefore certainly fully comprehensible, - that
'those who devote themselves to the solving of the problem of what God is
should hold their speculations within bounds; since it is of much more
importance for us to know what kind of a being God is' (I. ii. 2). How can a
man who cannot understand his own nature be able to comprehend God's nature?
'Let us then leave to God the knowledge of Himself: and' - so Calvin says -
'we leave it to Him when we conceive Him as He has revealed Himself to us,
and when we seek to inquire with reference to Him nowhere else than in His
Word' (I. xiii. 21). . . ." 
46.	This is fast becoming the popular representation. Cf. e.g. Williston
Walker, "John Calvin," 1906, p. 149: "Thus he owed to Scotus, doubtless
without realizing the obligation, the thought of God as almighty will, for
motives behind whose choice it is as absurd as it is impious to inquire."
Again, p. 418: "Whether this Scotist doctrine of the rightfulness of all
that God wills by the mere fact of His willing it, leaves God a moral
character, it is perhaps useless to inquire." But Calvin does not borrow
unconsciously from Scotus: he openly repudiates Scotus. And Calvin is so far
from representing the will of God to be independent of His moral character,
that he makes it merely the expression of His moral character, and only
inscrutable to us. Cf. also C. H. Irwin, "John Calvin," 1909, p. 179:
"Holding as he did the theory of Duns Scotus, that a thing is right by the
mere fact of God willing it, he never questioned whether a course was or was
not in harmony with the Divine character, if he was once convinced that it
was a course attributed to God in Scripture." But Calvin did not hold that a
thing is made right by the mere fact that God wills it but that the fact
that God wills it (which fact Scripture may witness to us) is proof enough
to us that it is right. The vogue of this remarkable misrepresentation of
Calvin's doctrine of God is doubtless due to its enunciation (though in a
somewhat more guarded form) by Ritschl (Jahrbb. für deutsche Theologie,
1868, xiii. pp. 104 sq.). Ritschl's fundamental contention is that the
Nominalistic conception of God, crowded out of the Roman Church by Thomism,
yet survived in Luther's doctrine of the enslaved will and Calvin's doctrine
of twofold predestination (p. 68), which presuppose the idea of "the
groundless arbitrariness of God" in His actions. Calvin was far from
adopting this principle in theory or applying it consistently. He is aware
of and seeks to guard against its dangers (p. 106); but his doctrine of a
double predestination (in Ritschl's opinion) proceeds on its assumption: "In
spite of Calvin's reluctance, we must judge that the idea of God which
governs this doctrine comes to the same