Calvin on Providence, Original Sin

Today is another day of reflection in my year-long reading through the Institutes. Recently I read through Calvin's teachings on everything people hate about Calvin--providence, and total depravity.

Of course, everyone loves Calvin's doctrine of providence until they suddenly don't. I mean, that's just the nature of discussions on free will--everyone wants it both ways. And in some ways, Calvin does, too. But I'll get to that in just a bit.

Here's Calvin's teaching on providence, clear as can be (from Ch. XVI, Sec. 3):

For [God] is deemed omnipotent, not because he can indeed act, yet sometimes ceases and sits in idleness, or continues by a general impulse that order of nature which he previously appointed; but because, governing heaven and earth by his providence, he so regulates all things that nothing takes place without his deliberation. (emphasis mine)

That is, one way or another, God is the cause of everything that happens, good, bad, or ugly. Of course people hate this.

And Calvin does relatively little to warm people up to the idea. That's what I love and hate about Calvin: he's just so matter-of-fact, content to call it like he sees it and let other people deal with it. I can't express this any better than he did (Ch. XVIII, Sec. 4, his closing paragraph on the topic of providence):

Let those for whom this seems harsh consider for a little while how bearable their squeamishness is in refusing a thing attested by clear Scriptural proofs because it exceeds their mental capacity, and find fault that things are put forth publicly, which if God had not judged useful for men to know, he would never have bidden his prophets and apostles to teach. ... Those who insolently scoff, even though it is clear enough that they are prating against God, are not worthy of a longer refutation.

It's hard to decide whether to laugh, cry, or cheer at such a statement. One thing is for sure: people capable of making statements as forcefully and eloquently as Calvin are destined to change the world.

In any case, Calvin really does offer a wealth of scriptural examples to support his teaching, and there is no point reiterating them all here. The interesting question is, how does Calvin deal with the problem of evil? That is, if God causes bad things, how can he avoid being the author of evil?

Although it takes a while to really figure out that Calvin isn't just a horrible person content with God allowing awful things to happen, eventually it becomes clearer that Calvin's doctrine of providence finds much of its inspiration in the event that is central to Christianity: the crucifixion of Christ. Quoting from Ch. XVIII, Sec. 1:

The Jews intended to destroy Christ; Pilate and his soldiers complied with their mad desire; yet in solemn prayer the disciples confess that all the impious ones had done nothing except what "the hand and plan" of God had decreed [Acts 4:28, cf. Vg.].

This is by no means the only example he brings up. Another perfect example is Joseph being sold by his brothers into slavery: "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good." (Gen. 50:20)

For Calvin, it's clear that God uses bad things to do good things. What's never clear is how he's going to do that. But for Calvin, this is just yet another case in which we ought to be content with our lack of knowledge, because it is not for us to understand everything.

I suppose the troubling thing about the concept of God's Sovereignty is that somehow God might think the ends justify the means. That doesn't accord with wisdom. Even if we have faith that God will make all things new, and bring about a perfection we can't possibly imagine, it's hard not to ask, why did it have to be this way?

But the crucifixion of Christ tells us that there's something going on that we don't understand. Calvin wants us to understand that we don't understand, and that we should simply believe that which is profitable for pious living. I can't help but think this is a pretty rigid way to look at it, but even when I indulge my curiosity with contemplating this topic, I find myself sympathizing with Calvin's view.

One thing the incarnation and crucifixion tell us is that God absorbs these evil things into himself. He doesn't merely cause them to happen and then glance over them as if the ends justify the means.

It's easy to object here that most of us suffer in this life not in the way Christ suffered, which was willingly and intentionally. We suffer against our will, and we often don't even see it coming.

But I wonder if our view of ourselves strictly as individuals clouds our thinking. The modern ethic of societies like America is typically "live and let live," but perhaps that's not the way God works. We're all in this together; everything is connected. One man's suffering is the suffering of the whole world, and it is God's suffering as well.

So is God some sort of masochist? No, masochists have a twisted attraction to pain. The image of God in Christ is quite different; he actually suffers, but paradoxically through that suffering he accomplishes his purposes. And he didn't mean for this to be something only God does. Jesus taught his disciples to take up their cross and follow him.

There must be incredible power in being able to conquer evil not by avoidance, nor by fighting evil with evil, but by absorption, by taking evil into the body and conquering it there. God not only does that himself on the cross, he even invites us to do that with him, by his power.

It is not small thing that Calvin's thoughts have led me down this line of thinking, but I doubt he would have let his own speculation go that far. Calvin, as I said last time, was not a fan of speculation. Only what is needed for piety, and nothing more.

There are a number of beautiful passages in Calvin's section on providence that I won't get to right now. I'm thinking particularly of Ch. XVII, Sections 8 - 11, in which he talks about how belief in God's providence gives us hope in the midst of adversity, and keeps us humble before both God and others. There's no way I can deal with all the things Calvin wrote about in this part of his book, because there really is so much richness in it.

On the doctrine of original sin, which opens up his second book "On the Knowledge of God the Redeemer," I just found it interesting to compare what Calvin actually said with what people think he said.

For instance, it's true that he thinks that knowledge of the self helps us to see how truly miserable we are, but that's not where he starts. Quoting from Book 2, Ch. I, Sec. 1:

But knowledge of ourselves lies first in considering what we were given at creation and how generously God continues his favor toward us, in order to know how great our natural excellence would be if only it had remained unblemished. ... Thus, in order that the great nobility of our race (which distinguishes us from brute beasts) may not be buried beneath our own dullness of wit, it behooves us to recognize that we have been endowed with reason and understanding so that, by leading a holy and upright life, we may press on to the appointed goal of blessed immortality.

Notice that he says first. In other words, knowledge of the self does not consist primarily in knowing how terrible we are, but rather in knowing how great God meant us to be. I think that in practice many Calvinists get this totally backwards.

It is only after meditating on what we have lost, Calvin says, that we truly long for the Kingdom of God and for eternal life. For Calvin, the goal is not to simply recognize yourself to be a sinner, but rather to desire to become a saint, to regain the "great nobility of our race."

It is in that context that he discusses original sin, where he draws mainly from Augustine. I'm not sure about Augustine's (and Calvin's) view that original sin is essentially a hereditary disease, but there is something that rings true about our inherited state as sinful people.

I guess I see it more as simply being cut off from the source of eternal life. Adam didn't have eternal life in himself; he ate of the tree of life, and he could live forever. But after his sin, God cut him off from that source of life, so that he and his children would face the world of decay.

One problem I have with classical Christian thinking on the Fall is that it tries to convince is that decay is utterly wrong, totally not the way things should be. But even the Bible seems to suggest that there's something noble about the cycles of life and death that appear in the world around us (e.g. Ecclesiastes 3:2). And certainly it would appear rather cruel of God to start letting animals die only because humans sinned against him, if in fact animals were destined for eternal life along with humans.

Perhaps instead it might be said that eternal life was prepared as a gift for humans, but the cycles of life and death and decay that govern the natural world are not necessarily evil in themselves. Maybe what is evil is for humans to forget that they are called to something higher, as Calvin suggests.

Thus God's punishment makes sense: in cutting us off from the tree of life, he is forcing us to enter a world that is governed by cycles of life, death, and decay, not a world that is inherently evil, but rather a world in which we could have had the privilege of eternal life with God. Instead we are now subject, along with everything else, to the law of entropy.

Well, that's it for my reflections today on Calvin. I think the next couple of weeks of reading should be interesting (Calvin's going to talk about free will and man's corruption. Whee!)