Saturday, February 18, 2012

John Calvin's Order

So aparantly there are certian people (Anabaptist and Arminians - perhaps) who would consider that John Calvin was not truly a Calvinist. If I may regurgitate their argument myself: They say that Calvin's view on Regeneration and Faith and Repentance is not the order that later Calvinist instituted. They claim that somewhere around book 3 chapter 3 around sections 6-10 that Calvin's order is that of Faith - Repentance - Regeneration (New Birth). Thus they claim Calvin's order falls more inline with either the Anabaptist or the Arminians (I wish to lump them together). However, this looks pretty considering the fact that they even made up arguments for this reading. But, the thing is that they are not reading Calvin as Calvin, instead they are reading Calvin as Anabaptist or whatever.
Although, Yes in the Institutes this seems to be the order in which Calvin does use. But, however, is it truly the order in which Calvin purposed? This question is not clearly asked so I will make it clear. The question one needs to consider is What is the focus of Calvin's writing. The problem with trying to put an order to Calvin's system: Faith - Repentance - Regeneration due to the apparant logic by which he wrote is that it does not truly do justice to his writings. Part of the problem is that one is trying to read Calvin in a temporal logical order in which case of course they will end up reading into Calvin what is not there. In some sense it is related to the decree of God. Although in the mind of God the decree is one, they are often viewed as multiple due to the finite mind as decrees. Further, how the decree is played out in time is different from how God ordered the decree in His mind. So although there is a logical order to the decree, the decrees itself is eternal. This is my point which is to say just because one orders something in a particular way does not mean that they are pressing the order in a temporal way. The purpose of Calvin's thought is to show that Faith and Repentance is the New Birth. When one is Born Again (Regenerated) they have a new mind and a new will (hence I once was blind but now I see). Often times one may say Repent and Believe, sometimes the order may say Believe and Repent. As Louis Berkhof said Calvin's thought of regeneration is very comprehensive, which is different from how the Westminster Divines for example had sat up their Confessions.
Therefore, one should not read Calvin's thought in light of another system. The divines were not dumb, and so to say that one person can affirmatively 'debunk' them would bring them down to our level of thinking. We simply live in a different period (not to say we can never truly understand the way they understand); but it is ridiculous to say for example one can read one or two works by John Owen and proclaim that they know better than him. When Owen wrote his works he was 17 of age who wrote on different subjects. It is often times rare today to find a PHD doctor to write on different subjects at the age of 30.
Although with this being said I would say that most calvinist today have watered down what Calvin had said. J.V. Fesko's work Diversity In the Reformed Camp is great. He says that later Calvinist have watered down the thoughts of John Calvin. What do I mean? I mean that Calvin was a Supralapsarian in the deepest sense, whereas most Calvinist and Confessions are Infralapsarians. Of course there are reasons for this but that is for another post.

No comments: