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| Reunited and it feels so good |
Having both Calvin (Institutes) and Pascal (Pensees) as company is both terrifying and profitable. I definitely enjoy scratching my head when they say something too smart for me to figure out at first read. For that I thank God.
Calvin's Institutes is a classic textbook on Protestant Christian theology. A couple of friends and myself agreed to read it for around 15 minutes a day, with the goal of finishing it before the year ends. I will write about the entire book when I complete it.
There are many passages worthy of reflection, displayed by the ever-increasing number of highlights I have on my Kindle. Conversing with Calvin daily has been profitable in clarifying how one thinks about God and one's self. Time seems to have sweetened its content, rather than spoil it. I will not dwell on Calvin now; he seems to be a polarizing figure in Christianity, even people I consider dear to me. Suffice to say, I highly regard the man as one who was given light to those who are still in darkness (or those who are playing with the darkness) that they might turn to the true Light.
This particular post has to do with a segment I found interesting, as signified by the photo above.
"The excellence of the divine wisdom is manifested in distributing everything in due season, confounding the wisdom of the world, and taking the wise in their own craftiness, (1 Co 3:19) in short, conducting all things in perfect accordance with reason." - Institutes, Book 1. Chapter 5. Section 8
Book 1's heading is The Knowledge of God as Creator (Beveridge's translation). Before any notion of God as Savior, or Redeemer, which is most popular among believers today, Calvin proceeds to show God as Creator first. Before any protestation, Calvin explains that the true knowledge of ourselves is intricately weaved with the knowledge of God. To Calvin, the Creator-creature relationship provides the foundation of proper theological undertaking.
This particular passage (1.5.8) finds itself in Calvin's reasoning that God can be plainly seen in the natural order, in Creation. Order and Providence are both available to anyone's reflection. If one listens or takes the time to see, he will soon find that the creation declare the glory of its Maker; their preaching is unending (Psalm 19).
But is this reasonable to believe? Contemporary definitions of reason neglect the aspect of the divine, placing everything upon the hands of men. Reason is plainly a human standard of thinking: the intricate connection of all previously discovered and founded principles of thought and collated experience. Anything going beyond is subject to scrutiny: for learning or for rejection. The Christian faith is commonly held as unreasonable and therefore, for rejection, if not additionally despised by those who are the stalwarts of reason. Calvin suggests, however, that reason, while in the hands of men, is ultimately and divinely constructed. Any creaturely formation is under the government of the Creator. Only those who willingly shut their eyes would see darkness in the refulgence of creation, in the reality that there is a Creator.
As one who enjoys reading, I am fond of reading preliminaries / prefaces. They signal to me, more often than not, if a book is worth reading. Calvin's preliminary argument towards the attainment of the knowledge of God is that it is within the reach of all men: the entire creation. (Calvin deals with the another, yet clearer, means of knowing God that is also within the reach of men: the Bible.) The government of natural affairs is under the sovereign creation and rulership of its Creator, God. This does not make one Christian, but it is a necessary first step that as creatures we need to behold the Creator first. By this first argument, our creatureliness is brought to light.
Creatureliness is not a pleasant teaching. It has a growing absence even in the vernacular of contemporary Christians. I am most accustomed to hearing that believers are "princes" and "princesses", sons and daughters of the King. While this is true, most succeeding conversations revolve around some misguided applications of this reality, that of tasteless posturing, power plays, and swagger. Why, when some come to the faith, become unreasonable, forgetting they are creatures? What constitutes being adopted children of the King?
Most Christians tend to forget that, before they are redeemed (regenerated), they were firstly created (generated). God has two rights over those who call themselves 'Christian': first by creation, the second by re-creation. We do not lose our creatureliness in the redemptive process. This ought to bring us rightly to our knees. Nothing makes us better than the rest, but God Himself. I borrow Pascal's sentiment: "When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me?"
The world is already filled with the self-important, the self-loving, the self-promoting, as it is. A Christian aping the world's swagger, in the name of being a child of the King, is quite tasteless and actually unbecoming of the name. For the King himself came not to be served, but to serve. What more of creatures who cling desperately to Him for any hope? Recovering a sense of creatureliness, the first level of God's ownership over human life, confounds the wisdom of the world, even of the contemporary Christian world. In short, it is in perfect accordance to reason. Servants are no better than their Master. Reasonable creatures understand that they are no better than their Creator.
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