The Institutes - Book I Chs 9-16

[AndOne]

I found reading these next few chapters very informative as well as convicting.

Informative in the fact that I have never read such a detailed description and explanation of the Trinity as I did in Chapter 13. It blew me away - it was hard to follow in some parts and I went over a few sections two and three times for some of the information to "sink" in! It was well worth the time to hold up on this section and not move on till I "got it."

Chapters 9 - 12 were convicting for me to read. The reason for this being is that in my zeal for Christ I got some tatoos a few years ago to represent my faith. One of the tatoos consists of three nails that are placed in the form of a cross with a crown of thorns encircling them. The other tatoo consists of a "trifetica" - which is a celtic symbol of the Trinity. To see what I am talking about - most NKJV Bibles have this symbol at the front or on one of the first pages. Surounding this symbol is some tribal designs that form into "five" points emanating from both sides of the symbol. (Yes the five points are supposed to represent the five points of grace.)

After reading Calvin's take on symbols and images - and how they do really nothing but limit mans' perception of God - or how trying to put a human understanding by using an image of our Holy Lord and Creator of the universe is a mistake - I got convicted. Now I will honestly say that when I got my tatoos my intent was simply to have something to represent my faith - not to draw people's attention to the symbols themselves or to try to represent God in a limited fashion - but I can see how someone looking at them might take it that way.

I know some will probably chastise me for even having tatoos - and I don't blame them. I admit that vanity played a part in getting them - that and the fact that I'm a sailor and that is what sailors do.

Well I got convicted - as I said - and I have asked forgiveness for my vanity and for the ignorance on my part in having them. I'm still not sure that it's entirely wrong to have them - since my intent was not to have people worship the symbols themselves - but to have the hope that someone might ask about them and then I could in turn use the opportunity to explain God's grace.

On Wednesday we will hit Chapters 17 and 18 of Book I which deal with God's providence.

 

[hopper]

I'm still not sure that it's entirely wrong to have them - since my intent was not to have people worship the symbols themselves - but to have the hope that someone might ask about them and then I could in turn use the opportunity to explain God's grace.

Exactly BB! Just as your words have done – which are also symbols used to convey and represent our faith.

As I said in commentary on chapters 1-8, this doctrine of images is perhaps Calvin’s most debatable doctrine (though other elements certainly hold our sway a bit more).

He thinks God “repudiates all likenesses, pictures, and other signs by which the superstitious have thought he will be near them.” And yet Calvin has just referred to Scripture as the image of the Holy Spirit. And what are we to think of the cloud, the dove, the fish, and the cross? He asks, “What purpose did it serve for so many crosses...to be erected here and there in churches...?” And he says, “...the Lord forbade not only the erection of statues...but also the consecration of any inscriptions and stones that would invite adoration.” Though Calvin might be disappointed (and even more so by our failures to routinely kneel in prayer in services), I know many a ‘Calvinist’ who has the sign of the fish on his car and a cross around his neck (even if careful it’s not a crucifix), and it’s rare to find one that doesn’t worship in a ‘sanctuary’ where the cross, the Bible, and the words “DO THIS IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME” are prominently displayed.

We were careful to have no framed pictures of Christ in the conservative Presbyterian church I grew up in (and I’ve still seen such gifts from church members turned away – and I might add, rightly so, in my opinion), but I certainly began to learn the Word with the help of flannelgraph depictions of Jesus in Sunday School Bible stories. The big debate when I was young was whether or not it was appropriate to have the American and Christian flag in the ‘sanctuary’. Needless to say, they were allowed.

Calvin says, “...if the papists have any shame, let them hence forward not use this evasion, that pictures are the books of the uneducated, because it is plainly refuted by very many testimonies of Scripture.” But then I think he begins to purposefully bend a bit; “Even if I were to grant them this, yet they would not thus gain much to defend their idols. It is well known that they set monstrosities of this kind in place of God.” And later, “I only say that even if the use of images contained nothing evil, it still has no value for teaching.” And yet even this he qualifies with, “...other than those living and symbolic ones which the Lord has consecrated by his Word. I mean Baptism and the Lord’s Supper...”

These were mighty issues of the Reformation. The veneration of relics is what moved Luther to post his 95 Theses on the eve of All Saint’s, and the iconoclastic destruction of images raged for quite some time. Some of Calvin’s antagonists tried to differentiate some distinction, which might also be found in Scripture. The Jews were symbolically chosen (i.e. God’s children were more of Abraham’s heart, than his flesh), they built a Tabernacle and Temple in a city as directed by God as a place for Him to dwell (again mere symbols), and though the Ark of the Covenant went before them, it was not always with God’s blessing.

Symbols have always been used by God and His people, and yet there is a line which is not to be crossed in terms of idolatry.

Do not be convicted, dear BB, if you be on the right side of that line.

I briefly illustrate my point by two examples:
1) Who among us has not felt ‘closer’ to God in a church sanctuary, or in kneeling before a cross? And yet Calvin rightly warns that our focus thus might be askew, if we attribute some nearness of God by our accessories or embody Him in such symbols.
2) Some people mark and highlight their Bibles much as they would a textbook. But I have met a few, who treat it with such holy reverence, that the careful turning of a page becomes an act of worship. They would no more dream of writing in their Bible, than they would spray paint graffiti on the walls of the church.

Symbols (even if merely words or language) are helpful and necessary tools, but only as they lead us to God, and not away from Him, and not as a substitute for Him.

 

[hopper]

I found reading these next few chapters very informative as well as convicting.

Informative in the fact that I have never read such a detailed description and explanation of the Trinity as I did in Chapter 13. It blew me away - it was hard to follow in some parts and I went over a few sections two and three times for some of the information to "sink" in! It was well worth the time to hold up on this section and not move on till I "got it."

Calvin does have a wonderful treatment of the Trinity, though I find it encouraging to see some discomfort from him with the word ‘trinity’, and again see his intent to, “let us use great caution that neither our thoughts nor our speech go beyond the limits to which the Word of God itself extends.” He reiterates Hilary’s words that, “by the wickedness of heretics we are ‘forced to submit to the peril of human speech what ought to have been locked within the sanctity of men’s minds’”; and plainly says of such words as ‘trinity’, “...indeed, I could wish they were buried, if only among all men this faith were agreed on: that Father and Son and Spirit are one God, yet the Son is not the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but that they are differentiated by a peculiar quality.”

And how curious a relating matter it is, to read that, “During this dispute, Calvin, challenged by Caroli, refused, though with no heretical intent, to declare his acceptance of the Athanasian, and even of the Nicene, Creed”, by which we define ‘Christian’ here at CF.

 

[AndOne]

Hopper -

Outstanding posts brother - points taken... Thanks for the input - it was very helpfull.

 

[hopper]

"What God has determined must necessarily so take place, even though it is neither unconditionally, nor of it's own peculiar nature, necessary." > "When he took upon himself a body like our own, no sane man will deny that [Christ's] bones were fragile; yet it was impossible to break them..." - "God subjected to fragility the bones of his Son, which he had exempted from being broken, and thus restricted to the necessity of his own plan what could have happened naturally."
Calvin thus begins, in the final paragraph of chapter 16, what he considers a conflict with logic, which becomes the basis of his perplexing presentation of 'God's will' in 17 & 18.