Revelation and Trinity

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Preface...............................................................................xiAbbreviations.........................................................................xiiiIntroduction..........................................................................xvPart I: The Revelation of the Triune God in the 1559 Institutes.......................1Chapter I The Doctrine of Creation....................................................11Chapter II Soteriology................................................................115Part II: The Revelation of the Triune God in the Church Dogmatics.....................179Chapter III The Doctrine of God In Se.................................................191Chapter IV The Doctrine of God Ad Extra...............................................275Conclusion............................................................................365Bibliography..........................................................................369Index of Biblical References..........................................................381Index of Names and Subjects...........................................................383

Chapter One

The subject of inquiry in Book I of the 1559 Institutes is the revelation of the creative being and action of God in creation and in Scripture. Calvin here deals with God's primal and universal relationship with creation, and formulates Christian doctrines of creation and Creator from the revelation. This chapter explores these doctrines in the light of their relevance to God's revelation in creation and then to his revelation in Scripture. Its focus rests on the ontology and the epistemology of Creator and creation, and their relationship. It demonstrates the trinitarian character of the being and action of the Creator from his conceptual basis in the revelation of the triune God the Father. This relies on an elaboration of Calvin's insistence on the indispensability of faith for the noetic and conceptual possibility of this trinitarian revelation.

I.1. The Revelation of God the Father in Creation

Introduction

Calvin's treatment of God's revelation in creation, and its knowability and knowledge, is the major concern of Book I.iii-v. My constant dialogue with commentators is designed to clarify complicated issues in this. The precise nature of the sensus divinitatis and the revelation of Creator in creation are unravelled in the light of the hermeneutical relevance of faith and predestination to them. This leads us not only to illustrate the determinative source of Book I.iii-v, but also to examine the relevance of God's revelation to natural reason and to faith, and their dogmatic purposes and relationship. Their purpose is discussed, and a brief evaluation is made to point out their distinctive character.

1.i. The Sensus Divinitatis from Revelation

i.1. The Sensus Divinitatis as a Divine Origin

A sense of Deity (divinitatis sensus) is a natural awareness of God as Creator from his revelation in creation (i.e. in our natural intellect and world). It generates a sense or seed of religion (religionis semen), and has an actual content of intellectual knowledge of God as Creator, and of intellectual conscientia to obey his will. The explicit use of "self-revelation" is absent in the Institutes. It is, however, vital to notice the total dependence of the reality of the sensus divinitatis on the grace of God's self-revelation in creation. Its significance is this: it not only demonstrates the grace of God's miraculous and super-natural action as the origination of man's sensus divinitatis and sensus religionis, but it also opposes man's autonomous possession of them and man's sharing of merit with God for them. Man is utterly passive to them; they occur only by God's illumination of man's mind to respond to the grace of his self-revelation in history.

The self-revelation of God in creation entails God's accommodation and communication of himself and of his free will to us, and our feeling, hearing and understanding of his communication. In knowledge of God from his revelation in the creation of our conscious subjectivity the intuition is predominant, likewise, in knowledge of God from his revelation in the creation of our external world, visual observation and ratiocination are predominant in this knowledge. For God also reveals himself through our external world to us and for us in the process of our rational observation and ratiocination. T. F. Torrance does not seem to be fully just to the nature of Calvin's knowledge of God from his revelation in creation, as he argues for the genuineness of his auditive and intuitive knowledge of God solely from the revelation of his Word in the Bible.

Calvin contradicts the rejection of the occurrence of God's self-revelation in and through creation, and man's actual knowledge of it. Barth claims that Calvin treats them merely as a hypothetical possibility after the Fall. His claim stems from his false interpretation of Calvin's emphasis on the effect of the Fall. For Calvin, the Fall negates neither God's objective revelation in creation from the grace of God, nor its actual knowledge by man. Rather, it turns the original salvific knowledge of God from natural reason before the Fall into a unsalvific one, and nullifies its utility and effectiveness for true (salvific) knowledge and the religion. That is to say, the Fall brings about a drastic change of the nature of man and his action, but not of the nature of God and his action (revelation); the latter was already determined by his eternal will (decree) before the foundation of the world. Calvin stresses the relevance of man's created nature to the knowability and knowledge of God's revelation in creation (and in Scripture); it is the persistent concern of Book I of the 1559 Institutes.

Here I do not yet touch upon the sort of knowledge with which men, in themselves lost and accursed, apprehend God the Redeemer in Christ the Mediator; but I speak only of the primal and simple knowledge to which the very order of nature would have led us if Adam had remained upright. In this ruin of mankind no one now experiences God either as Father or asAuthor of salvation, or favorable in any way, until Christ the Mediator comes forward to reconcile him to us. Nevertheless, it is one thing to feel that God as our Maker supports us by his power, governs us by his providence, nourishes us by his goodness, and attends us with all sorts of blessings-and another thing to embrace the grace of reconciliation offered to us in Christ. First, in the fashioning of the universe and in the general teaching of Scripture the Lord shows himself to be the Creator. Then in the face of Christ (cf. II Cor. 4:6) he shows himself to be the Redeemer. Of the resulting twofold knowledge of God we shall now discuss the first aspect; the second will be dealt with in its proper place.

i.2. The Sensus Divinitatis as a dynamic event

The total dependence of the sensus divinitatis on revelation provides its noetic and conceptual dynamism, realism, existentialism, and objectivism. The ever-new objective...