Calvin: nothing at all in the world is undertaken without his determination...
Calvin: I grant more: thieves and murderers and other evildoers are the instruments of divine providence, and the Lord himself uses these to carry out the judgments that he has determined with himself. Yet I deny that they can derive from this any excuse for their evil deeds. Why? Will they either involve God in the same iniquity with themselves, or will they cloak their own depravity with his justice? They can do neither. In their own conscience they are so convicted as to be unable to clear themselves; in themselves they so discover all evil, but in him only the lawful use of their evil intent, as to preclude laying the charge against God. Well and good, for he works through them. And whence, I ask you, comes the stench of a corpse, which is both putrefied and laid open by the heat of the sun? All men see that it is stirred up by the sun's rays; yet no one for this reason says that the rays stink." Thus, since the matter and guilt of evil repose in a wicked man, what reason is there to think that God contracts any defilement, if he uses his service for his own purpose? Away, therefore, with this doglike impudence, which can indeed bark at God's justice afar off but cannot touch it.
Calvin: all things happen by God's plan, and that nothing takes place by chance...
Schenck: My problem with Calvin's thinking here is not the middle paragraph by itself. It seems coherent to me to suggest that God can use the evil intents and actions of others to bring about good purposes. My problem is that, prior to this paragraph, he has been hammering the fact that God directs everything. Unless I have misunderstood him, the implication seems to be that Calvin not only sees God using the evil intents and actions of others, but that God has caused the evil intents and actions themselves. That would be the point where I don't think he makes sense.
The more I read Calvin, the more my expectations are confirmed. First, he was an incredible thinker in his day, an amazing one. I am especially impressed by his ability to throw around classical and patristic quotations.
Second, his hermeneutic is dated. I am nowhere near his capacity, but standing at the beginning of the twenty-first century on the shoulders of so many who have come in between, his ability to read the Bible in context looks very thin at times.
This is not a blight on Calvin, but it does make the kind of people who went after Enns look pretty stupid. They are intellectual Amish, mistaking the sixteenth century for absolute truth.
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7 comments:
But, Ken, don't you know that TRUTH doesn't change :) TRUTH is to change us!:)
I like your reference to Calvin as an "intellectural amish". I am interpreting you as saying that the philosophers from his time up until now impact how we understand life and its meaning and eveything else. We are all philosophers without knowing it, sometimes...I just wish I knew more formal philosophy, as everything boils down to philosophy...
I have been thinking about ethics and how do I think about Clinton meeting with China asking for thier political support in regards to the Middle East, and promising to "shelve" the human rights violations..ethics and political philosophy...on my blog spot...
BTW, I am learning more about functionalism (which I dismiss as too simplistic), conflict theory, and interactionism...social systems which impact society and bring a framework of interpreting information is an important "first step", in coming to conviction about what method one should use to evaluate the ethical, I think...
Unfortunately, there are a lot of Calvinists who not only still live in the sixteenth century but, moreover, believe no real Christian lived before the sixteenth century.
Just to clarify, Angie, I was not calling Calvin an intellectual Amish. Nor am I calling sophisticated Calvinists such as those at Princeton or people like Pete Enns or Jamie Smith such. I am giving the "intellectual Amish" award to those who slavishly follow Calvin's teachings today in their sixteenth century form.
A corollary here is the statement of the Westminster Theological Seminary board that speaks of the Westminster Confession (1646) as if it can be read as an absolute, timeless, inspired statement that is not a product of its time. This statement wins the WTS board an intellectual Amish award as well, which I suppose is fitting since WTS is in Pennsylvania.
I think I'm going to reflect tomorrow on the first chapter of Tom Wright's new book on justification, in which he says many of the same things about how John Piper elevates these great traditions to a status higher than Scripture itself.
When we were a part of the PCA church many years ago, I had a friend who was very Reformed and wanted to meet with me to study the Westminister Confession!
I don't think that Scripture is special revelation, like the Reformed do, I think that we have come to a more "realized eschatology" than we had in the past.
BTW, I think it is ludacrous to say that evil comes from god in any shape or form. We are to resist evil. I just saw the "Dark Knight" last night and must see it again to get everything out of it. It was the epitome of evil and reminded me of "terrorist attacks".
I want to re-iterate something that is very important to me. God is not controlling the world as if "his will" is "fate". We do not submit to evil, nor do we passively "behave" in acceptance of it as 'handed to us" as "god's will".
First, one has to believe in a god that is personally active, not just within the "world", but within one's personal experience. This is myopic, if not horrendously hard to defend. People have their religious beliefs and these beliefs are based on faith, nothing more, or nothing less.
Secondly, to think that "god" even has a will presupposes that he is personal. This is alos a belief of faith.
There is nothing that can be proved about "tradition", as it is cultural and personal understandings (interpretations). Even if the gospel accounts were eye-witness accounts, it would prove nothing about "reality", as it was their personal experience of Jesus and his life.
But, if these accounts are understandings of life given within a Greek framework, where values were interpreted within that paradigm, then we have only the myth that represents wisdom that is also representative of other tradtions.
I find evangelicalism hard to believe. Evangelicalism has the agenda to protect the scriptures from "unbelievers", so that their personal understanding can be defended. But, is defence of a protected partisan viewpoint going to bring the greatest benefit to the most? Partial truths are lies and lies are not to be believed, as it hinders rational life.
On the other hand, we must choose what we value most,the mythologcial, which points beyond itself, or the "real world". Each has its own paradigm of understanding and belief system. The real world is where life really happens, what is mythological is only a means of coping with the real world and is addiction really what we wnat for humanity's "good"?
Hi Ken,
I stumbled across your blog via the Peter Enns inteview. You might be interested in a calvinist-critique-poem I wrote from an inner-calvinist perspective... still hoping there might be a third way between the polemics.
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