TRUE AND SOUND WISDOM
John Calvin begins his Institutes with a statement of such importance that we’ve got to pause and look at it before venturing further. It’s what we might call a thesis statement – a summary or proposition that encapsulates – or at least underlies – the truth of all that follows. If we fail to appreciate it we won’t grasp what Calvin is trying to do.
“Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom,” he writes, “consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” (I:i.1)
This statement, you will note, is about “wisdom”. Calvin is saying something about the essence or nature of “true and sound” wisdom. This, he claims, is nearly all contained in “the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”
He is evidently using the term “wisdom” here in its commonly accepted sense of applied knowledge. I like to think of wisdom as “insight and understanding that enables us to live well.” It’s more than acquaintance with facts or information – intellectual knowledge. It involves a penetrating grasp of the nature and significance of things (all sorts of reality) that imparts understanding of how to act in the best way. Ultimately the goal of wisdom is practical. It has been called “the key to successful living.”
That, in effect, is what this great work of Calvin’s is about. As mentioned last week, the Institutes of the Christian Religion was originally written for ordinary French Christians needing instruction in the basics of the Christian faith. Calvin wanted his untaught countrymen to have an understanding of biblical truth that would enable them to live as they should. In other words, he wanted them to be truly wise.
The first requirement for this, he asserts, is to know God. In saying this Calvin is reflecting his belief that there is such a being as God and that he can be known. That was something so widely accepted in his day, and certainly among his first readers, that he felt no need to establish or try to prove the existence of such a Being. He could take it for granted that his readers believed in a personal God who had revealed himself to humankind in history, and that this revelation was preserved in the Bible. We can’t assume acceptance of those ideas in our culture, but he could.
If indeed there is such a Being (something I am taking for granted as well), and if he is the self-existent Creator of all, the One who governs all, the Source of all goodness and blessing, and the great Judge before whom we must all stand, it makes sense that the very beginning of wisdom is to know him. If wisdom is knowledge that enables us to live well, and we “live and move and have our being” in this great God (Acts 17:28), nothing could be more important than to know what he is like, what he requires of us, and what he is doing. If we found ourselves enslaved to a cruel tyrant, and our lives suspended on his whims, we would make it our business to try to know his likes and dislikes so we could survive. How much more, then, as those who have been brought into being by God, are constantly sustained by him, and will be ultimately judged by him, should we make it our first business to know him. To ignore him is the height of foolishness.
But it is not only God we need to know in order to be wise, Calvin says, it is ourselves also. By that he means we need to know ourselves as creatures intended for relationship with God, each other, and the world in which we live. We can’t possibly live wisely if we don’t comprehend where we fit in God’s grand scheme of things. Only as we see ourselves as those made in his image, intended for fellowship with him, and given a mandate to rule the earth for him, can we live wisely. And not only that, it is only as we understand the way we have been affected by sin – the alienation from God and moral corruption it produces – that we can understand why we are like we are today and our need for reconciliation and renewal.
So you see, this opening statement of Calvin’s is profound and all-embracing. It addresses our deepest need in providing a foundation for approaching life. Everyone – every single person – needs to know how to live. Unlike lesser creatures we don’t exist merely by instinct or elemental processes. We have been given the ability to guide our actions through understanding. In other words, we are beings who are made to live intelligently. And the very basis of such living, Calvin correctly says, lies in knowing our Creator and knowing ourselves as his creatures.
Associate Principal GTC (