With Calvin in the Theater of God: The Glory of Christ and Everyday Life by David Mathis & John Piper & Julius Kim

Author:David Mathis & John Piper & Julius Kim
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Religion, Biography
ISBN: 9781433514135
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2010-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

84 WiTh Calvin in the TheaTer of God

then show how his view of the supremacy of Scripture affects the task

of preaching in a way that we have lost. It was that view of preaching,

grounded on that view of Scripture, that has placed Western culture so

deeply in debt to the great teacher of Geneva.

CALVIN’S VERY HIGH VIEW OF SCRIPTURE

Let’s begin with some things that we might have guessed. Calvin had a

very high view of Scripture. As he said in the Institutes,

Let this be a firm principle: No other word is to be held as the Word of

God, and given place as such in the church, than what is contained first

in the Law and the Prophets, then in the writings of the apostles; and the

only authorized way of teaching in the church is by the prescription and

standard of his Word.1

We have, therefore, an assigned agenda. Comparing the apostles to

their purported successors in the Roman communion, Calvin described

the apostles as being “sure and genuine scribes of the Holy Spirit.”2 In

the course of his discussion of predestination, Calvin said that “Scripture

is the school of the Holy Spirit.”3

What is obvious to us has been obvious to many other observers as

well. David Steinmetz says, “While Calvin is only too eager to recom-

mend the boundless power of God as a comfort for believers, he does not

want the godly to contemplate that power except through the spectacles

of Scripture. To investigate the will of God apart from the revealed will of

God in the Bible is to lose oneself in a labyrinth of vain speculation.”4

Who could dare say that Calvin had low views of God’s greatness and

sovereignty? At the same time, for Calvin it was never naked philosophi-

cal sovereignty. Our only comfort in life and in death is not a syllogism.

God reveals himself in creation, in the Scriptures, and ultimately in the

incarnation.

We come to understand his power and majesty by starting with what

he gives, by starting where he invites us to start. We do not start with

an a priori God, an infinite Definition in the Sky. We start with a God

who stoops to reveal himself or, as Calvin himself once put it, a God

1 Institutes, 4.8.8.

2 Institutes, 4.8.9.

3 Institutes, 3.21.3.

4David Steinmetz, Calvin in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 48.

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