Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Institutes of the Christian Religion (text only) Revised edition by J. Calvin,H. Beveridge > Status Update

When we come to a doctrine of such deep mystery as the Trinity, (21) we must always humble our minds and be never go beyond the clear teachings of Scripture. Many men, arrogantly estimating their own intellect above what is wise, have both made shipwreck of their own faith and done immeasurable harm to the faith of others by "bringing down the boundless essence of God to their mind's little measure." "Let us remember that the human mind enters a labyrinth whenever it indulges its curiosity," and thus we must "submit to be guided by the divine oracles, how much soever the mystery may be beyond our reach."

(22) Those like Arius and Sabellius who attempt to rend the divine essence or confound the distinction of the persons are easily dealt with if we just attend to what has already been expounded. But what about modern day heretics like Servetus, who charge all Trinitarians with being atheists? Servetus claimed, first, that the Son and the Spirit are "certain external ideas which do not truly subsist in the divine essence, but only figure God to us under this or that form." "Moreover, those phantoms which Servetus substitutes for the hypostases [persons] he so transforms as to make new changes in God," denying His immutability. Finally, by confounding the Son and Spirit promiscuously with all other persons, Servetus opens the door for his "most execrable heresy of all... when he says that the spirits of the faithful are co-eternal and consubstantial with God." We, like the Son and Spirit, are ideas that figure God under various forms! Elsewhere he is even more clear, "assigning a substantial divinity, not only to the soul of man, but to all created things." [Servetus thus taught panentheism.]

(23) There is yet another new school of thought on the subject, equally monstrous, "that the Father, who alone is truly and properly God, transfused His Divinity into the Son and Spirit when He formed them, that He is the only essentiator." But we are by no means to admit an antithesis between the Father and the Son. Surely, Isaiah saw God seated on the throne, and yet John declares that He was Christ (Isa 6; John 12:41). Many more places in the New Testament have the name of Yahweh, the covenant Name of God, applied to Christ. Yahweh is by His Name "a se," but "whosoever says that the Son was essentiated by the Father denies His self-existence." The divine essence cannot be partialled out or divided without destroying it, divinity cannot exist without the entire essence. If God essentiates Christ, but remains the only true God, "then Christ will be a figurative God, one in name and semblance only, not in reality."

Let it be known then (24) that in those places in the Scriptures where God is differentiated from either "Christ" or "Lord" it is not to confine the divine essence to the Father alone, but to show that He, the Father, is the God of the Mediator, the man Jesus Christ. When Christ "declares that there is none good but One, that is, God, does He deprive Himself of goodness?" Should Christ be worshiped? The heretics answers to these questions prove their impiety.

(25) Another "hallucination consists in dreaming of individuals, each of whom possesses a part of the essence," which the essence itself is a completely other thing, establishing a "quaternion of gods" (Essence, Father, Son, Spirit). But we should "not disjoin the Persons from the essence, but interpose a distinction between persons residing in it." The Persons are never external from the essence. "The Father, if He were not God, could not be the Father; non could the Son be the Son unless He were God." Each Person considered in themselves have self-existence as God.

(26) But what about when Jesus explicitly says, "My Father is greater than I?" In doing so "He does not attribute to Himself a secondary divinity... He places the Father in the higher degree inasmuch as the full perfection of brightness conspicuous in heaven differs from that measure of glory which He Himself displayed when clothed in flesh."

Just as vile, (27) are those who seek to deny that the God of Christ is the God of Israel. But "the God who appeared to the fathers was no other than Christ" (preincarnate). But in saying it was Christ, we by no means exclude the Father. Those who try to use some passages of Irenaeus to say otherwise, take him out of context as Irenaeus clearly teaches that the God of Christ is the God of Israel, and that the Christ Himself is the God of Israel.

(28) "With no more truth do they claim Tertullian as a patron." As he is perhaps the first to attempt a full articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity (certainly the first to use the word), his style is "sometimes rugged and obscure." Therefore one must not pull one sentence from him here and there or he could be manipulated to say just about anything. Rather, one must take what he says as a whole.

The same kind of tricks are being pulled with the works of (29) Hilary whose "whole work is a defense of the doctrine which we maintain; and yet these men are not ashamed to produce some kind of mutilated excerpts for the purpose of persuading us that Hilary is a patron of their heresy." Those who utilize Ignatius to the same end only use Pseudo-Ignatius, and not his true, well attested writings which do nothing but agree with what has been said.

But the consent of the early fathers shines brightest in this, no early heretic attempted to use any of these pious men to bolster their corrupt teachings, and no Greek or Latin father apologizes as dissenting from his predecessors. Augustine, who is most violently opposed by heretics both old and new, "examined all ancient writings" on the subject⁹ and "reverently embraced the doctrine taught by them." His pious and humble work on the subject, "De Trinitate," is most heartily recommended.

My thoughts: Calvin is an incredibly careful theologian. Time and again he acknowledges his awareness of various pedantic theological controversies and then pointedly refuses to weigh in on them because, in his opinion, they pry too deeply into what has not been given for man to know. Along with this, he is also always conscious to place himself in the stream of historical Christianity, reflexively finding odius anything speculative or novel.

We would all benefit by learning from his example of humility.