Grace Theological College

Insights

Andrew Young, our Associate Principal, South Island has been writing weekly Insights for several years now. These Insights are often related to material being taught at GTC or to lessons God has brought to Andrew through his work for the College and the different experiences that has brought.

Our new series for 2010 is Insights from Calvin’s Institutes.

INSIGHTS 2010.

Current Insight: AWARENESS OF DIVINITY NOT ENOUGH

According to John Calvin, God has planted in each of us an awareness of the divine. As much as people might want to escape the idea that there is a God, they cannot. There is something within us that won’t let that happen. To put it another way, there is a “seed of religion” in us all.

Yet this awareness of the existence of God is not the same as having a true knowledge of him. It is simply an inescapable sense that there is a God who made us and who will one day judge us. The “seed of religion” within us doesn’t of itself grow into the plant of true godliness or guarantee that people will seek after God. It is enough to leave us without excuse for not worshipping the true God, but it doesn’t spontaneously produce such worship.

Indeed, Calvin goes so far as to say that while God has put an awareness of himself in every person, “scarcely one man in a hundred is met with who fosters it, once received, in his heart, and none in whom it ripens – much less shows fruit in season (Psalm 1:3)” (Institutes I.iv.1). All, he says, “degenerate from the true knowledge of him. And so it happens that no real piety remains in the world” (ibid).

How, we might ask, does this happen? Why is it that people with an innate awareness of God don’t seek after him? Calvin offers two explanations. Basically, he says, people either try to suppress or smother it, or they corrupt it with superstitions. By “superstitions” he means self-invented religions. Most people don’t deny the reality of God, they simply create their own.

And why is this? Is it simply a function of ignorance – the fact that people cannot know the true God? No, Calvin says, echoing the Apostle Paul in Romans 1:21-23. The problem is not one of inability to know the true God, since from the creation of the world the things that can be known about God – his eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1:20) – can be known by all. At heart, the slide into superstition is a result of pride and stubbornness – or, to put it another way, the product of wilful rejection of the true God. “The blindness under which they labour” Calvin contends, “is almost always mixed with proud vanity and obstinacy” (ibid).

Proof that pride is at the root of idolatry is evidenced, Calvin believes, by the fact that people refuse to “rise higher than themselves” when devising a god to worship. Rather than apprehend God as he reveals himself, they prefer to “measure him by the yardstick of their own carnal stupidity, and neglect sound investigation; thus out of curiosity they fly off into empty speculation” (ibid). The Apostle Paul referred to this when he wrote, “Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (Romans 1:21-23). Paul here charges idolaters with (i) wilful rejection of God, and (ii) false (and proud) claims to wisdom. This is what lies at the root of idolatry.

But people don’t only corrupt the seed of religion within them through idolatry, Calvin says, they also try to smother it by consciously turning away from God. “Many,” he writes, “after they have become hardened in insolent and habitual sinning, furiously repel all remembrance of God” (I.iv.2) They try to put him out of their minds, and even go so far as to say “there is no God.”

Calvin notes David’s reference to this in Psalms 14 and 53 where he writes “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Ps. 14:1; 53:1). On the surface such “fools” appear to be flatly denying God’s existence, “even though this is freely suggested to them inwardly from the feeling of nature” (ibid). However, Calvin argues, this is not really the case. Rather, in their reckless and hardened course of sinning they boldly declare that there is no God who judges the deeds of men. “Despoiling him of his judgement and providence,” Calvin says, “they shut him up idle in heaven” (ibid). On they go in their course of sin, becoming more and more brazen in it to the point of “proudly applauding their wrongdoing.” All the while this is happening they fail to see that by giving them over to their empty minds and evil desires, God is in fact “fattening their hearts” for judgment.

Here, then, is Calvin’s explanation for why people don’t universally seek after the true God. It’s not because they have no notion there is such a being; rather, it’s because pride and stubbornness keep us from him. That’s why he must make light shine in our darkness and give us new and willing hearts before we can turn to him.