The Lessons of Calvin's 1541 Institutes

The lessons of Calvin's 1541 Institutes  -  What lessons does the author of the Institutes have to teach us?

Historically speaking, two things stand out.  The first is the Reformer's debt to the Church Fathers of the third, fourth and fifth centuries, above all to Augustine and Chrysostom.  The Fathers were by no means infallible, but they proved to be helpful allies in Calvin's endeavour to show that the evangelical faith was not a chicken newly hatched from Luther's egg.  On occasion they articulate vital truths  with beautiful economy.  In the second place we are reminded of the broad front on which Calvin is obliged to fight.  On the right is Rome's massive orthodoxy, refined by Scholastics of the quality of Lombard and Aquinas and super-refined by their less gifted imitators.  On the left is a myriad of dissenting movements  -  Anabaptism, spiritualism, antinomianism, antitrinitarianism and the most shadowy "ism" of all  -  scepticism.  The opposition to Rome and to the papacy is of course fundamental, but it is not exclusive.

On another, more important, level, the Institutes remind us that there is a good and a bad way to do theology.  Speculative theology, which asks questions the Scriptures do not answer, or intuitive theology, which works upwards from man to God, is bad theology.  The human mind cannot fathom the unfathomable.  Calvin is adamant that only God can speak of God, and in words which accommodate themselves to our weakenss.  Since we do not recognize God in his works of creation and of providence, we must seek him in his written Word, whose witness is sealed to us by his Holy Spirit.  the Institutes of 1539/1541 contains well over two thousand biblical references, widely spread but with a marked concentration on the Psalms, Isaiah, the first and fourth Gospels, Romans and 1 Corinthians.  Nor is Scripture a convenient peg on which doctrine may be hung, more or less at will;  it is the indispensable foundation on which doctrine rests, the standard by which it is judged, and the rule by which it is corrected.

While election figures prominently in the Institutes as central to the plan of salvation,  it is presented as an act not so much of God's sovereign power as of his merciful providence.  By itself, election does not exhaust Calvin's understanding of redemption.  The Institutes, faithful to the New Testament witness to Jesus Christ, lay much stress on the humanity of the Son of God. The necessity of the incarnation is driven home by a series of rapid questions.  How could the Son mediate between God and man and intercede for sinners "if he were not our close neighbour, allied to us, a high priest able to pity our infirmities"?  How could we be confident that we were God's children, without the guarantee that God's Son "took his body from ours, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, to become one with us", making ours by grace what was his by right?  Who could make satisfaction for sin before a just and holy God, but the one "who bore the penalty for sin in the very flesh in which sin had been committed"?  How could death be endured "except by one who is Man, and be overcome except by one who is God"?

Only by embracing Christ can we know God as Father.  Only as the Son consents to be our brother does his Father  become "our Father".  The resulting family relationship  -  expressed more often by the image of adoption  -  so binds us to Christ that we are made one with him, grafted into him, joined to him together with all who are born of God's Spirit.  "If we love Jesus Christ we will love him in our brothers."

On the cardinal doctrine of justification Calvin is at one with all the mainstream Reformers.  For Christ's sake believers are accounted righteous by grace through faith.  However, grace which renders us blameless  before God but which leaves sanctification to us is not grace in all its fullness.  While the pursuit of holiness is incumbent on every Christian, the author of the Institutes insists that justification and sanctification are inseparable, though distinct.  God's will, he reminds us, was "to sanctify us by the offering of Jesus Christ made once and for all" (Heb. 10:10).  "To receive Christ's righteousness," says Calvin, "we must first possess him.  And we cannot possess him without sharing in his sanctification, since he cannot be divided into pieces.  By sharing in Christ we are no less sanctified than justified."  Our sancitification is therefore complete in Christ: it ought to be manifest in our works.  That our works habitually fall short should drive us continually to repentance, to prayer, and to more earnest effort, but not to despair.  Christ who is our wisdom, righteousness and redemption, is also our sanctification (1 Cor.1:30).

(Robert White, translator of 1541 edition of Calvin's Institutes, The Banner of Truth, Aug.-Sept. 2014)