KNOWLEDGE AND PIETY
You will recall that John Calvin believed that nearly all the true and sound wisdom we possess consists in the knowledge of God and of ourselves. Having discussed the relationship between these two things he proceeds to talk more about knowing God.
The first thing he says about truly knowing God is that it involves more than conceiving that he exists. That’s where knowing him begins but it goes beyond that to “grasp what befits us [in God] and is proper to his glory.” True knowledge reaches out, as it were, and lays hold of that in God that is proper for us to receive. There is what we might call an experiential element to truly knowing God. We conceive of him in our minds and respond to that by embracing “what is to our advantage to know of him.” Perception and action are both involved.
It is one thing, Calvin writes, “to feel that God is our Maker and that he supports us by his power, governs us by his providence, nourishes us by his goodness, and attends us with all sorts of blessings.” It another thing, however, to “embrace the grace of reconciliation offered to us in Christ.” Only when both of these exist together – the perception and the action – can people be said to “know” God.
An illustration might help at this point. Writing these Insights always poses a great challenge. Every week I’m confronted with a sense of my inability to write something that will help people know God and grow in their relationship with him. In that situation I frequently remind myself that the God who made our minds is able to help us think and write, so that I need not suppose myself to be on my own in this task. To remind myself that God is such a God is part of what it means to know him. However, according to Calvin, it is only as I go beyond appreciating God’s power and willingness to help me to “grasping” this as a reality in my present need that I really know him. This is the kind of knowledge by experience that Calvin has in mind.
This leads him to say that God can never truly be known “where there is no religion or piety.” By “religion” he means the active worship of God. “Religious” people do more than consent to the existence of God; they order their lives with reference to him. They honour and adore him, fear and obey him, trust him and seek him. Where such attitudes and practices exist, people don’t stop with knowing things about God; they actually relate to him. And in doing so, they truly know him.
Similarly, “piety” in Calvin’s thinking is “that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces.” Reverence and love are the two central elements of piety, Calvin says. Reverence arises out of perception of God’s glory, love out of awareness of the “benefits” he showers upon us. Once again, where these things exist, people do not stop with contemplating God as admiring spectators. They call upon him, and look to him to provide that which is “to their advantage.”
But what is the root of such religion and piety? Where do they spring from? Calvin believes they grow out of the conviction that God is “the fountain of every good, and that we must seek nothing elsewhere than in him.” Behind the love and reverence of true worshippers is the belief that “no drop will be found either of wisdom and light, or righteousness or power or rectitude, or of genuine truth, which does not flow from him, and of which he is not the cause.” It is only when this is our firm conviction that we will “learn to seek all these things from him, and thankfully ascribe them, once received, to him.”
Once more Calvin writes, “Until men recognize that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that he is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond him – they will never yield him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in him, they will never give themselves sincerely and truly to him.”
A sense of our total dependence upon God for all that we are and have, then, is what Calvin sees as the source of that religion and piety that leads us to know him. The three things are inseparably linked. Everything begins with understanding that all that we are and have derives from God. Where this is truly appreciated it will invariably create reverence and love. And these in turn will lead us to seek after him and know him – not simply as an idea, but as a personal, living being who is the Author of all and Source of our “complete happiness.”
Andrew Young
GTC Associate Principal (