Over-awed by God

As John Calvin comments on Scripture and produces his Institutes, a sense of awe and distance pervades his writing. He clearly understands and communicates the ‘transcendence’ of God, who exists beyond our understanding. This pervasive focus on distance represents Calvin’s earnest desire to honor God and understand our proper place before Him. This emphasis minimizes how close God comes to us, His immanence. As Calvin comments on faith, he clearly expresses our weakness in light of God’s majesty.

"It is indeed true that the world considers it very strange when we say that no one can believe in Christ except the one to whom that is particularly given. But this is partly because people do not consider how high the heavenly wisdom is and how difficult it is to grasp, and they do not consider their own ignorance and weakness in grasping God’s mysteries; partly also it is because they pay no attention to the resoluteness of heart which is the principal part of faith."

Calvin recognizes how difficult it is for his contemporary audience to accept this idea. He explains that they do not understand how far above us God’s wisdom is and the intense stupidity that afflicts mankind. These two positions demonstrate underlying influences in his thought: his theological predecessors and contemporary opponents.

As Calvin engages the achievement-oriented Roman Catholic Church, he reacts strongly to any form of human works. In this reaction, he follows Augustine, who engaged the excessive reliance on human achievement taught by Pelagius. Both of these men focus on the transcendence of God at the expense of His immanence. They diminish human ability to the point that man has no participation in the process of salvation unless enabled by God to hear and respond by faith.

Thus opens the wormhole of Calvinistic determinism. As I gaze into the swirling vortex of ideas about the rule of God over creation and man’s ability or inability there are two things that I want to stop and consider: who are the theologians who have gone before me and engaged these same ideas? Writing about the tension between the manner of God’s sovereignty and the extent of human ability has destroyed forests of trees for paper and dried up rivers of ink. Who are these historical sources and what were the tensions they felt? Asking the historical question leads to the contemporary: Who are my opponents and why do I oppose them? Both Calvin and Augustine before him responded to opponents in their time and culture based on their understanding of Scripture and in opposition to ideas that assaulted the Christianity of the time.

I think the first sentence of Calvin quoted above pertains directly to contemporary outreach. We have a dual responsibility to explain God (as best we can) to the world around us and to encourage believers to reach out to those outside Christianity. Along the way, a self-conscious understanding of our forebears and opponents may help us maintain the tension between immanence and transcendence: the distance and closeness of God. While I respect both Calvin and Augustine’s high view of God, I don’t want to diminish how low He stoops to interact with humanity.