John Calvin begins his theology with the knowledge of God and of self. It’s Calvin’s “double knowledge” in relationship. It is in a relationship where the Self finds a place in God’s goodness and benevolence. For Calvin, God’s goodness and benevolence is always towards us. The God as he is to us compels us to say Amen to him. As sinners we turn to him with confession, repentance, and praise. Calvin’s “double knowledge” of God and of self is not therapeutic in nature: heal me, comfort me, and fill me. “Calvin understood this knowledge of the self to be moral in nature rather than psychological, however, and held that its import was soteriological rather than therapeutic. To know one’s self in truth was to know one’s need for God’s redemption.”[1]
For Calvin, God is not defined by our religious experience. Rather, we interpret and re-interpret our religious experience according to the Scriptures revealed to us. The former is self-centered approach to Christianity; the latter, God-centered and Scripture-based. True knowledge of God and of self comes not from the inside (our experience), but from the outside (the centrality of God and the revelation of the Scriptures).
[1] David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of fading Dreams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 103n.
No comments:
Post a Comment