Ten Myths About Calvinism: Recovering the Breadth of the Reformed Tradition by Kenneth J. Stewart

Author:Kenneth J. Stewart [Stewart, Kenneth J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780830868469
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2011-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

The Short-Term Effects of Calvin’s Moderation

It would be pleasant, indeed, to be able to recount that the Reformer of Geneva—and those who looked to his example—occupied a middle ground regarding the role of the various arts within a purified Christianity. But the evidence seems to suggest instead that while Calvin’s position on these questions was more nuanced than that of Zwingli, nevertheless the long-term direction of Reformed thought in the century following was influenced more by Zwingli’s austerity than by any moderation Calvin represented on the subject.

There had been incidents of iconoclasm at Geneva in advance of Calvin’s initial arrival there in the summer of 1536. But Calvin, the great opponent of public lawlessness, would have nothing to do with any mobs bent on the destruction of statues, windows or paintings. Yet what Calvin did add to the discussion was a spate of biblical and theological writings that elaborated just how unthinkable were human attempts to depict the divine by artistic media. Unaided human understanding cannot approximate the likeness of God transcendent; the freedom has lain with God to disclose himself to us in acts of revelation and through his incarnate Son. Calvin was arguing to this effect as early as the first edition of his Institutes in 1536. That early, he was busy refuting the traditional defense of images, which posited that they are “the books of the uneducated”:

We shall answer that this [i.e., images] is not the method of teaching the people of God whom the Lord wills to be instructed with a far different doctrine than this trash. He has set forth the preaching of his Word as a common doctrine for all. What purpose did it serve for so many crosses—of wood, stone, even of silver and gold—to be erected, if this fact had been duly and faithfully taught: that Christ was offered on account of our sins that he might bear our curse and cleanse our trespasses? From this one word they could have learned more than from a thousand crosses of either wood or stone.[34]

Having struck such a note early in his career, it is hardly surprising that later Calvin needed to respond to the suggestion that he had helped create a Christian society inhospitable to gifted artists. He protested both that

sculpture and painting are gifts from God: I see a pure and legitimate use of each, lest those things which the Lord has conferred upon us for his glory and our good be not only polluted by perverse misuse but also turned to our destruction. We believe it wrong that God should be represented by a visible appearance because he himself has forbidden it (Ex. 20.4) and it cannot be done without some defacing of his glory.

Furthermore,

It remains that only those things are to be sculptured or painted which the eyes are capable of seeing: let not God’s majesty, which is far above the perception of the eyes, be debased through unseemly representations.[35]

It seemed, in consequence, that the ecclesiastical uses of art were virtually nonexistent.

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