Tonight on our way to visit Sue’s grandmother in the hospital, I picked up a new book in the mailbox. It’s Paul Helm’s Calvin: A Guide for the Perplexed (T & T Clark, 2008). He is a Teaching Fellow in Theology and Philosophy at Regent College. In Beth Israel Medical Center, we stayed there for 4-5 hours. Sue was busy talking and explaining things to her grandmother. I was drinking my coffee and finished reading a few chapters. Chapter 2 is titled “The Knowledge of God and of Ourselves.” In this chapter, he starts off with Calvin’s idea of accommodation. It is the idea that God accommodates Himself for us so that we can know Him, understand Him, and receive Him. According to Helm, Calvin is not very interested in God as He is in Himself. Rather, Calvin is interested in God as He is towards us. God is not against us, but towards us. God is not only above us, but towards us. The knowledge of God and of ourselves is possible because the inner love of the Trinity is towards us. I find this old teaching somewhat new.
God accommodates His language to us in Scripture. It’s God’s accommodated mode of lowering and communicating Himself to us. Helm said, “He comes down to our level by disclosing himself to us in language that is suited to our condition, to our straitened circumstances as time-bound and space-bound creatures. For Calvin ‘accommodation’ is usually a term of grace, the sovereign grace of the gospel as it is made known in the word of Scripture and the Incarnate Word.” It’s God’s own choice to show Himself to us. But it’s God’s “choice of grace” (pp. 21-22).
Reading the Scripture is an act of responding to His choice of grace. It’s an act of appreciating His accommodation to us. We pay attention to Scripture reading and biblical studies because He chose this mode of communication to reveal His thoughts and wills to us. Our faith is grounded in and shaped by the Scripture. Thus, to read the Scripture is to be spiritually unformed, formed, and reformed. Knowing the Scripture is to know God towards us. That’s why Christ is the key to unlock the Scripture, for the Incarnation of the Son is the apex of God’s accommodation. The downward mobility of the Son embodies the God whose intrinsic nature is towards us.
In relation to Scripture, Calvin wrote,
“So Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God. This, therefore, is a special gift, where God, to instruct the church, not merely uses mute teachers but also opens his own most hallowed lips. Not only does he teach the elect to look upon a god, but also shows himself as the God upon whom they are to look. He has from the beginning maintained this plan for his church, so that besides these common proofs he also put forth his Word, which is a more direct and more certain mark whereby he is to be recognized” (Institutes, 1.6.1).
We can say that, in the first place, the nature of biblical inspiration involves humility and benevolence. He accommodates Himself through the Scripture in order to make Himself known to us, for we sinners cannot know Him because of our own dullness. The proud and the selfish cannot understand His word. Thus, when we encounter the Word of God, our pride and selfishness must be confronted and condemned. God’s accommodation towards us through Scripture ties into Calvin’s knowledge of God and of ourselves. The knowledge of God leads to the knowledge of ourselves, and vice versa.
“Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. For we always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy—this pride is innate in all of us—unless by clear proofs we stand convinced of our own unrighteousness, foulness, folly, and impurity. Moreover, we are not thus convinced if we look merely to ourselves and not also to the Lord, who is the sole standard by which this judgment must be measured” (Institutes, 1.1.2).
“And this standard is now to be founded fully set forth in Holy Scripture and nowhere else” (Helm, p. 25).
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