Top 30 Apologetics Books (#7): John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
Quotable
One's experience of God could continue to ground one's rational belief in God even if one were to become aware of the natural processes involved in the production and sustenance of one's belief in God. Moreover, disagreement of even very smart people on this matter needn't undermine one's rational belief in God. Let us consider a couple of examples.
Suppose you read that wild turkeys were long ago driven out of the state of Michigan. Every book that you read gives good reason for believing that the wild turkey has disappeared from the state. On the propositional evidence that you have acquired through books by relevant authorities, it is reasonable to believe that wild turkeys no longer exist in the state of Michigan. But suppose you wake up early, walk out into your backyard in Michigan, and come face-to-face with a flock of wild turkeys. At that moment, you have good experiential reason to believe that wild turkeys live in Michigan.
Your reason is not propositional; it is experiential (you see a turkey). Your reason is not an argument (unless you could turn "What I see, I see" into an argument). You simply see a wild turkey and find yourself believing that there is a wild turkey before you. Your belief is reasonably and independently grounded in your visual experience, not in a propositional argument. Wild turkeys activate your cognitive faculties in such a way as to immediately and noninferentially produce belief in the existence of wild turkeys. While the expert writers of the books and articles on wild turkeys may disagree with you, you can rightly say "So what?" They didn't see what you saw. They disagree, but both of you are rational (until the experts visit and see your turkeys themselves).
Suppose, to move us closer to the God case, your mother tells you and your brother and sister that your father went down with his ship at sea; she also shows all of you a news article that reports your father's demise. A few years later, you are walking on a beach in Panama and see your father, the proud beneficiary of an insurance scam. You walk up to him and talk with him. While your brother and sister are at home, rationally believing that their father is no longer alive, your experience of seeing and talking with your father grounds your belief that your father is indeed alive. You don't have an argument that your father is alive, and you don't need one. You might not be able to persuade your brother and sister, but so what? Your inability to persuade them does not preclude your rational belief that your father is alive. So you respectfully and reasonably agree to disagree.
In short, if one has an experience of God or if God is the ultimate cause of one’s God-belief, then one can remain rational even if that belief is mediated by a natural process and even if really smart people (who have not had the same experience) disagree.
— Kelly James Clark, God and the Brain: The Rationality of Belief (Eerdmans, 2019), 95-96.
Note: Below, Dr. Rob Bowman continues his series on the 30 most important apologetics books in church history. See his earlier posts in previous weeks of Useful Things.
#7: John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536)
John Calvin, the sixteenth-century Reformer, was the author of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, which constituted the first Protestant systematic theology. Book One of the Institutes sets forth a view of faith and knowledge that has been enormously important in the development of distinctively Reformed approaches to Christian philosophy and apologetics.
Modern interpreters are sharply divided on the question whether Calvin allowed for any sort of “natural theology” as part of a Christian apologetic. According to Calvin, God ought to be known from the “sense of divinity” within every human being (1.3.1). In addition, God “revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe” (1.5.1). Unfortunately, human depravity has rendered this internal and external general revelation incapable of creating a true knowledge of God, and humanity has corrupted the knowledge of God from natural revelation into idolatry or other forms of false worship. As a result, Calvin concludes, natural revelation ends up giving fallen human beings just enough awareness of and information about God to render them without excuse for their unbelief. This negative judgment of the effect of natural revelation is the basis for what Alvin Plantinga has called “the Reformed objection to natural theology.”
Although Calvin questioned the value of theistic proofs, he did not question their validity. He simply viewed them as of marginal value in producing the kind of assured knowledge of God that is characteristic of faith. For his purposes he preferred simple, concrete forms of the traditional theistic arguments. He offered short, simple proofs of “God’s power, goodness, and wisdom” from the power and grandeur evident in nature and from the marvelous design of the human being (1.5.1-3). These proofs are essentially concrete forms of the teleological argument. Calvin also presented a simple cosmological argument, writing that “he from whom all things draw their origin must be eternal and have beginning from himself” (1.5.6). Thus Calvin himself used forms of the traditional theistic arguments.
Calvin allows for two legitimate uses of evidential arguments for the Christian faith. First, he teaches that they can be used to confirm the truth of Scripture to believers. Second, such arguments can have the apologetic purpose of silencing critics of Scripture. For the most part this means using evidential arguments to answer objections. He insists that there are many reasons, “neither few nor weak,” by which Scripture can be “brilliantly vindicated against the wiles of its disparagers” (1.8.13). These reasons include the candor of the biblical writings, fulfilled biblical prophecies, the preservation of the Jewish race, the wisdom of the apostolic writings in contrast with their humble origins, the testimony of martyrs, and more.
The Institutes of the Christian Religion is one of the most important books published in the past five hundred years. No one should criticize Calvin without first reading him.
—Rob Bowman Jr. is an evangelical Christian apologist, biblical scholar, author, editor, and lecturer. He is the author of over sixty articles and author or co-author of thirteen books, including Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ, co-authored with J. Ed Komoszewski. He leads the Apologetics Book Club on Facebook.
Spurgeon and the Caged Lion
by Edgar Andrews
Asked how he would defend the Bible, C. H. Spurgeon famously likened it to a caged lion. He declared: “Open the door and let the lion out; he will take care of himself. … He no sooner goes forth in his strength than his assailants flee. The way to meet infidelity is to spread the Bible. The answer to every objection against the Bible is the Bible” (Speeches at Home and Abroad, from a speech at the Annual Meeting of the British and Foreign Bible Society, May 5th, 1875).
Let me say immediately that I agree totally with the great preacher, but his wisdom is misapplied if we respond with passive inaction when the Bible comes under attack. What we easily overlook is that Spurgeon gives us something important to do, namely, to open the cage door!
In this and two articles that will follow, I shall argue that this is no trivial responsibility, and that (to extend the allegory) we must (1) find the key to the cage door; (2) lubricate its rust-prone hinges; and (3) open the door wide enough to let the lion out. The lion in the cage is the Bible, of course, but the unseen elephant in the cage is its door. In this first article I’ll explain what I mean by finding the key.
Finding the Key
The key to the cage door is the Bible’s own doctrine of Scripture. Unless we both understand and proclaim what the Bible is, it will remain confined to its cage. It is commonly called “the Word of God,” but all too often that is a pious label rather than the powerful enabling conviction it ought to be. Academic theologians join forces with the mass media and timid denominations to promote the idea that the Bible is an expression of sincere but outdated beliefs, prone to ancient errors, and corrupted by myths, fictions, and the tide of time. It should be viewed (they say) as man’s fumbling search for God rather than as God’s infallible search for man. Even some evangelicals get nervous when the Bible comes under scrutiny by the world. They wonder if it really is a lion, rather than a pussy-cat that needs protection from its critics. Let’s keep it safe in its cage, they think, lest it be torn apart by its enemies. The early church had an altogether more robust view, praying: “Now Lord look on their threats, and grant to your servants that with all boldness they may speak your word” (Acts 4:29). So where do we start?
We start with what the Bible claims for itself. This statement will horrify some Christian apologists. Why, they ask, should anyone accept the Bible’s testimony to itself? Why would anyone believe a prisoner in the dock when he pleads his innocence? We need extra-biblical evidence of the Bible’s truth before we can safely unlock the cage door. Now, I’m all in favor of using historical, circumstantial, scientific, and other external evidence to support the authenticity of Scripture, but such evidence cannot take us very far. It can never establish the veracity and inerrancy of the essentially spiritual testimony of all Scripture.
God-breathed Scripture
We must begin with the Bible, as Paul does in 2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV): “All scripture is breathed out by God.” It is unfortunate that virtually all earlier English translations render this as “all scripture is given by inspiration of God,” which is ambiguous because it fails to make clear that the inspiration involved was verbal inspiration, leaving room for a wide spectrum of opinions as to what “inspiration” really means.
What Paul actually wrote was, “All Scripture is God-breathed [theopneustos],” to which we can add King David’s words —“The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word was in my tongue” (2 Samuel 23:1-3), and Peter’s assertion that “The Spirit of Christ … was in [the Old Testament prophets] when they prophesied beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that would follow” (1 Peter 1:11). Again, Peter claims that “prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). These and many other verses testify to the fact that, although the Scriptures were written by fallible men, they were given infallibly under the guidance of the Spirit of Christ “who was in them.”
The thing to grasp is this. If the Bible’s original autographs were by nature revelation from God, as they claim to be, they could not by definition become known to man by any independent, extra-biblical means. If they could, they would no longer be revelation. Self-referral is therefore a necessary consequence of revealed truth. Of course, where it intersects ascertainable history, circumstance, and science, we shall find it agrees. But the Bible’s revelation of God and message of salvation must, and do, stand upon their own merits and fruit. Let us not be afraid to say so, for only then shall we unlock the cage door.
—Edgar Andrews is Emeritus Professor of Materials Science in the University of London, England. Formerly Head of Department and Dean, he holds PhD and DSc degrees in physics and has published over 100 scientific research papers. In retirement, he serves as co-pastor of the Campus Church, Welwyn Garden City, UK. He is the author of Who Made God? Searching for a Theory of Everything and What is Man? Adam, Alien or Ape?
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(*The views and opinions expressed in the articles, videos, podcasts, and books linked to do not necessarily represent the views of the editors of The Worldview Bulletin.)
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Book Highlight
*Unless otherwise noted, descriptions are those provided by the publisher, sometimes edited for brevity.
Does cognitive science show that religious belief is irrational?
Kelly James Clark brings together science and philosophy to examine some of humanity’s more pressing questions. Is belief in God, as Richard Dawkins claims, a delusion? Are atheists smarter or more rational than religious believers? Do our genes determine who we are and what we believe? Can our very creaturely cognitive equipment help us discover truth and meaning in life? Are atheists any different from Mother Teresa? Clark’s surprising answers both defend the rationality of religious belief and contribute to the study of cognitive science.
God and the Brain explores complicated questions about the nature of belief and the human mind.
Scientifically minded, philosophically astute, and reader-friendly, God and the Brain provides an accessible overview of some new cognitive scientific approaches to the study of religion and evaluates their implications for both theistic and atheistic belief.
Praise for God and the Brain
“Carefully and thoughtfully Clark puts the lie to some unhelpful understandings and misunderstandings about religion and religious experience and offers a new perspective that holds much promise.”
—John Swinton, University of Aberdeen
Available at Amazon, Eerdmans, and other online booksellers.
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