Having dispensed with the question of whether there is a God by simple assertion, Calvin turns his attention to Scripture. Again, though he is about to write more than 1,000-pages of analysis and instruction which rely upon his premises, he dismisses his premises as self-evident and unworthy of argument or, even, explanation.
Therefore, though the effulgence which is presented to every eye, both in the heavens and on the earth, leaves the ingratitude of man without excuse, since God, in order to bring the whole human race under the same condemnation, holds forth to all, without exception, a mirror of his Deity in his works, another and better help must be given to guide us properly to God as a Creator. Not in vain, therefore, has he added the light of his word in order that he might make himself known …
Those are the opening words of Book I, Chapter 6. Notice his continued insistence that everything he has said so far is obvious, and notice the odd remark that God has made it so in order that nobody may escape condemnation — not so that all may enjoy eternal life, but so that nobody may escape condemnation.
This is striking for a couple of reasons. First, he is offhandedly dismissing objections heard even in his day: What about the savages who never hear the Good News? Second, the dismal certainty that God makes certain everybody knows of Him in order to assure that even the savages are eligible for eternal use as sconces on the walls of hell.
I tend to be wary of long-distance literary psychoanalysis but, really, the man was a vicious and obsessively morbid nut.
And on and on he goes, page after page. No argument, no explanation — just one smug assertion after another.
At length, in order that, while doctrine was continually enlarged, its truth might subsist in the world during all ages, it was his pleasure that the same oracles which He had deposited with the fathers should be consigned, as it were, to public records.
He briefly digresses to take a swipe at those who aren’t so impressed with him as he is himself.
Hence it is not strange that those who are born in darkness become more and more hardened in their stupidity; because the vast majority instead of confining themselves within due bounds by listening with docility to the word, exult in their own vanity.
The first hint, perhaps, of the blood-soaked dictator that Calvin would eventually become.
The Institutes was first published in 1536, when Calvin was just 27-years old; he must have been 25 or 26 when he began work. In time he would become the absolute dictator of Geneva, directly responsible for the execution — at the stake, generally — of 58-heretics.
I’m about sick of Calvin. He does not argue, he does not reason, he does not explain — he asserts and, in time, he would simply kill those who questioned his assertions. He is important, but only in the narrow sense that he shaped an era and his thought, such as it was, remains influential; he is the theologian who shaped Protestantism, but he is not an important thinker qua thinker. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that there is no evidence in the first 50-pages of his magnum opus that he ever did much serious thinking at all, about anything. I worry that I have become stupider for reading so much of him as I have.
I am not going to give him another couple weeks to convince me he deserves to be taken seriously. What I’m going to do is cherry-pick from here on out, looking to his teachings about particular topics.
loading...
