From The Princeton Theological Review, vii. 1909, pp. 381–436.
Having expounded in the opening chapters of the “Institutes” the sources and means of the knowledge of God, Calvin naturally proceeds in the next series of chapters (I. x. xi. xii. xiii.) to set forth the nature of the God who, by the revelation of Himself in His Word and by the prevalent internal operation of His Spirit, frames the knowledge of Himself in the hearts of His people. He who expects to find in these chapters, however, an orderly discussion of the several topics which make up the locus de Deo in our formal dogmatics, will meet with disappointment. Calvin is not writing out of an abstract scientific impulse, but with the needs of souls, and, indeed, also with the special demands of the day in mind. And as his purpose is distinctively religious, so his method is literary rather than scholastic. In the freedom of his literary manner, he had permitted himself in the preceding chapters repeated excursions into regions which, in an exact arrangement of the material, might well have been reserved for exploration at this later point. To take up these topics again, now, for fuller and more orderly exposition, would involve much repetition without substantially advancing the practical purpose for which the “Institutes” were written. Calvin was not a man to confound formal correctness of arrangement with substantial completeness of treatment; nor was he at a loss for new topics of pressing importance for discussion. He skillfully interposes at this point, therefore, a short chapter (chap. x.) in which under the form of pointing out the complete harmony with the revelation of God in nature of the revelation of God in the Scriptures—the divine authority of which in the communication of the knowledge of God he had just demonstrated—he reminds his readers of all that he had formerly said of the nature and attributes of God on the basis of natural revelation, and takes occasion to say what it remained necessary to say of the same topics on the basis of supernatural revelation. Thus he briefly but effectively brings together under the reader’s eye the whole body of his exposition of these topics and frees his hands to give himself, under the guidance of his practical bent and purpose, to the two topics falling under the rubric of the doctrine of God which were at the moment of the most pressing importance. His actual formal treatment of the doctrine of God thus divides itself into two parts, the former of which (chaps. xi. xii.), in strong Anti-Romish polemic is devoted to the uprooting of every refuge of idolatry, while the latter (chap. xiii.), in equally strong polemic against the Anti-trinitarianism of the day, develops with theological acumen and vital faith the doctrine of Trinity in Unity.
It is quite true, then, as has often been remarked, that the “Institutes” contain no systematic discussion of the existence, the nature, and the attributes of God.1 And the lack of formal, systematic discussion of these fundamental topics, may, no doubt, be accounted a flaw, if we are to conceive the “Institutes” as a formal treatise in systematic theology. But it is not at all true that the “Institutes” contain no sufficient indication of Calvin’s conceptions on these subjects: nor is it possible to refer the absence of formal discussion of them either to indifference to them on Calvin’s part or to any peculiarity of his dogmatic standpoint,2 or even of his theological method.3 The omission belongs rather to the peculiarity of this treatise as a literary product. Calvin does not pass over all systematic discussion of the existence, nature, and attributes of God because from his theological standpoint there was nothing to say upon these topics, nor because, in his theological method, they were insignificant for his system; but simply because he had been led already to say informally about them all that was necessary for the religious, practical purpose he had in view in writing this treatise. For here as elsewhere the key to the understanding of the “Institutes” lies in recognizing their fundamental purpose to have been religious, and their whole, not coloring merely, but substance, to be profoundly religious—in this only reflecting indeed the most determinative trait of Calvin’s character.
It is important to emphasize this, for there seems to be still an impression abroad that Calvin’s nature was at bottom cold and hard and dry, and his life-manifestation but a piece of incarnated logic: while the “Institutes” themselves are frequently represented, or rather misrepresented—it is difficult to believe that those who so speak of them can have read them—as a body of purely formal reasoning by which intolerable conclusions are remorselessly deduced from a set of metaphysical assumptions.4 Perhaps M. Ferdinand Brunetière may be looked upon as a not unfair representative of the class of writers who are wont so to speak of the “Institutes.”5 According to him, Calvin has “intellectualized” religion and reduced it to a form which can appeal only to the “reasonable,” or rather to the “reasoning” man. “In that oratorical work which he called The Institutes,” M. Brunetière says, “if there is any movement … it is not one which comes from the heart … and—I am speaking here only of the writer or the religious theorizer, not of the man—the insensibility of Calvin is equalled only by the rigor of his reasoning.…” The religion Calvin sets forth is “a religion which consists essentially, almost exclusively, in the adhesion of the intellect to truths all but demonstrated,” and commends itself by nothing “except by the literalness of its agreement with a text—which is a matter of pure philology—and by the solidity of its logical edifice—which is nothing but a matter of pure reasoning.” To Calvin, he adds, “religious truth attests itself in no other manner and by no other means than mathematical truth. As he would reason on the properties of a triangle, or of a sphere, so Calvin reasons on the attributes of God. All that will not adjust itself to the exigencies of his dialectic, he contests or he rejects … Cartesian before Descartes, rational evidence, logical incontradiction are for him the test or the proof of truth. He would not believe if faith did not stay itself on a formal syllogism.… From a ‘matter of the heart,’ if I may so say, Calvin transformed religion into an ‘affair of the intellect.’ ”