In the last fifty years, Calvin has undergone something of
a face-lift after years of hagiographical hearsay, parallel to the Luther
renaissance launched by Karl Holl. Largely through the efforts of Barth,
Brunner, and the Niebuhrs, a renewed post-war focus on the theology of
the Reformers, combined with the Marxian interests in social history, have
drawn historians to the primary documents instead of relying on the repetition
of caricature and gossip. Regardless of how one might view the hidden agendas
of these various historians and theologians, the renaissance of Calvin
scholarship has produced a secondary literature that is unequaled in any
prior period.
In spite of this renewed interest, however, very little has been done
with Calvin vis-a-vis the Law-Gospel hermeneutic. A number of plausible
suggestions could be adduced for this oversight. First, it might be asserted
that such a dialectical hermeneutic fell more into the province of Luther's
theology and the scholastic Lutheranism that developed from it, and in
his Institutes, Calvin does caution his readers against an excessive Law-Gospel
antinomy that might undercut the ethical life of the believer. Nevertheless,
as we shall see, this oversimplifies the Reformer's rather vast body of
material on the subject and substitutes conjecture for data.
Another possible reason for the lack of scholarship on this subject
in recent years is the theory of discontinuity between Calvin and Reformed
scholasticism, as if the latter somehow departed from the Reformer's teaching
and in distancing the Reformed tradition from Lutheranism in the polemics
of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth-centuries, Reformed dogmatics
somehow buried the Law-Gospel hermeneutic in obscurity. This discontinuity
thesis has dominated the Neo-orthodox scholarship, as I understand Luther
and Lutheranism have been similarly torn assunder. Calvin, we are told,
emphasized the absolute unconditionality of grace as God's first and last
word, while his systematicians, employing the very scholastic Aristotelian
system overthrown by the Reformers, returned to the medieval legal categories.
Thus, Calvinism (unlike Calvin) developed an elaborate federal theology
in which the first Adam's guilt is imputed and the Second Adam's righteousness
is imputed, on the basis of a penal theory of the atonement. Salvation,
therefore, is merited after all, but by Christ rather than by the believer.
Calvin, however, taught (we are told) that God's justice was not primary
and, therefore, all of this legal language about sacrifice and satisfaction
of divine wrath, the payment of a price for redemption, substitution and
imputation, is a return to medieval Augustinian categories. For many of
these writers, Luther and Calvin are perceived (remarkably, in light of
the evidence) as champions of a Gospel-Law hermeneutic that their successors
(especially the Reformed) reversed.1
Therefore, no longer is Calvin the culprit to whom we may attach the
guilt for a "legal" soteriology; it is rather his successors who failed
to anticipate the insights of Karl Barth's massive reinterpretation of
Reformation theology. In the last few years, there has been a surge of
scholarly interest in this thesis and with the passing of Neo-orthodoxy
and the steady triumph of detail-work on the primary sources, the weaknesses
of this discontinuity thesis are finally being exposed.2
The purpose of this paper, then, will be to defend a third possible
interpretation for the lack of scholarship on the topic of Calvin and the
Law-Gospel hermeneutic, offering two reasons: First, that the openness
of Reformed theology to a wide variety of modern trends has provided the
assumption that hermeneutics can be broadly established on a foundation
of general evangelical and Protestant consensus. In this way, it is neither
Calvin nor his successors who are to blame for the obscurity of the Law-Gospel
hermeneutic in contemporary Reformed theology and preaching, but contemporary
heirs of the Reformed tradition who are more in touch with broadly evangelical
trends than with their own primary documents. Second, I will argue that
the specific labels that are given to this traditional Reformation hermeneutic
differ from the Lutheran to the Reformed confessional traditions. For instance,
in the federal theology that develops the Reformers' insights, the Covenant
of Works serves the purpose of the Law in Lutheran dogmatics, while the
Covenant of Grace fills the category of Gospel. The main purpose of this
paper, then, will be to defend the proposition that Calvin did insist upon
the Law-Gospel hermeneutic as central and that the Reformed scholastics,
while introducing new terms (biblical terms, however), actually crystallized
this hermeneutic and made it central to Reformed faith and practice.
Does Calvin Explicitly Encourage the Law-Gospel Hermeneutic?
First, like Luther, Calvin sometimes refers to "the Law" as the Old
Testament and "the Gospel" as the New. Therefore, "The law included the
whole body of Scripture, up to the advent of Christ."3 Thus, Calvin writes,
"The Law consists chiefly of three parts: first, the doctrine of life;
secondly, threatenings and promises; thirdly the covenant of grace."4 One
must be careful, therefore, to distinguish by context whether the Reformers
are referring to the Law and the Gospel as Old Testament promise andNew
Testament fulfillment or as theological categories of judgment and justification,
since both senses appear to be used somewhat interchangeably, depending
on the discussion at hand and it is easy to conclude a confusion of the
Law-Gospel categories if one does not recognize the two ways in which these
terms are used.
Throughout this paper, therefore, we shall refer to these two distinct
meanings of "Law" and "Gospel" as eschatological versus theological. Against
the Anabaptists especially (and whoever found himself in the Joachimist-Marcionite
tradition), Calvin thought it necessary to expand on the unity of revelation
in the 1559 Institutes. Therefore, we find a redemptive-historical, eschatological
approach to Scripture, where Christ is to be seen at the center of all
revelation. Paul Wernle, for this reason, refers to Calvin's Old Testament
exegesis as a massive effort at "christianizing the Old Testament and its
history," although Wernle himself is convinced that this goal is hermeneutically
naive.5 In these discussions, it is revelation that is primary in the discussion
and the unity of Old and New Covenants. To be sure, there are differences6,
but the basic structure is promise and fulfillment: one covenant of grace,
administered under two distinct testaments. As Otto Weber pointed out,
the medieval hermeneutic made Christ's church "into a sacral realm with
the legalisms pertaining to it," rendering Christ simply a new Moses.7
The Reformers rejected either the tendency to collapse the New Testament
into the Old or the Anabaptist tendency to radically separate the two testaments.
In fact, Luther and Calvin both concentrated not so much on the nature
of Scripture as its content: "For Luther it is based upon the concept of
law and Gospel, for Calvin upon the aspects of threats and promises," Weber
argues8, but regardless of the specific terminology, the idea is the same.
(It is worth noting, for instance, that "promise" is substituted for "gospel"
in Melanchthon's Apology: "All Scripture should be divided into these two
chief doctrines, the law and the promises," Art. IV.).
If one were to focus exclusively on these chapters in the Institutes,
it would not be too great of a stretch to conclude that Calvin's view of
the Law and the Gospel differs greatly from Luther's. And yet, Luther himself
refers to the Law and the Gospel as Old and New Testaments, respectively.9
Especially for Calvin, therefore, two concerns dominate the hermeneutical
horizon: eschatological and theological, and in this he anticipates the
modern relationship between biblical theology and systematics.
When Calvin turns to the uses of the Law, he turns from the progress
of redemption and revelation to the categories of "Law" and "Gospel," as
described by Luther and Melanchthon as well as by the Swiss and German
Reformed, arguing that both Law and Gospel run concurrently from Genesis
to Revelation. As we shall see below, "Law" is everything in Scripture
that issues commands and threatenings; "Gospel" is everything in Scripture
that issues promises and free justification in Christ. Therefore, when
discoursing on the unity of the testaments, "law" refers to the Old and
"gospel" to the New Testament. But when discussing Law and Gospel in connection
with systematic or dogmatic theology he is in perfect agreement with Luther's
approach. Weber notes the inheritance from Augustine at this point, especially
his De Spiritu et litera: "As the Reformers saw it, Paul was really understood
here...[as] the distinction between law and Gospel, between the letter
and the spirit, was brought to full theological validity."10
As we turn now to Calvin's writings, we must begin with Calvin's theology
proper because it is here first where the Genevan Reformer is thought by
many of his critics to be a gesetz-lehrer. This assumption, widely disseminated
by the scurilous hagiography of Will Durant and Ernst Troelsch, has no
foundation in the primary sources. First, Calvin regards "the fatherly
indulgence of God"11 as primary and argues, like Luther, that outside of
Christ any discussion of God's power and righteousness will have only one
effect: to condemn the sinner and lead him to despair. Faith requires knowledge,
but not just any kind of knowledge. As I. John Hesselink describes Calvin's
view, "Faith is not produced by every part of the Word of God, for the
warnings, admonitions and threatened judgments will not instill the confidence
and peace requisite for true faith."12 Warnings and threatenings cannot
lead to faith, but can in fact "do nothing but shake it," Calvin writes.
While it is the function of the Law to strip one of self-confidence before
God, another Word must lead to faith. Therefore, "it is after we have learned
that our salvation rests with God that we are attracted to seek him...Accordingly,
we need the promise of grace, which can testify to us that the Father is
merciful; since we can approach him in no other way, and upon grace alone
the heart of man can rest." Calvin's famous definition of faith follows
from this: "...a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward
us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both
revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit."13
Throughout his sermons, tracts, commentaries, liturgies, and polemics,
God's merciful goodness in Christ is primary. Hesselink summarizes the
emerging consensus of Calvin scholars in concluding that "The evangelical,
not the legal, character of Calvin's concept of God is what stands in the
foreground."14 B. B. Warfield remarked,
That is, in a word, the sense of the divine Fatherhood is as
fundamental to Calvin's conception of God as the sense of his sovereignty....The
distinguishing feature of Calvin's doctrine of God is, in a word, precisely
the prevailing stress he casts on this aspect of the conception of God.
It is a Lutheran theologian who takes the trouble to make this plain to
us. 'The chief elements which are dealt with by Calvin in the matter of
the religious relation,' he says, 'are all summed up in the proposition:
God is our Lord, who has made us, and our Father from whom all good comes;
we owe Him, therefore, honor and glory, love and trust. We must, so we
are told in the exposition of the Decalogue in the first edition of the
Institutes, just as we are told in Luther's Catechism--we must "fear and
love" God....[But] we find in the Institutes...expressions in which the
second of these elements is given the preference....We may find, indeed,
in Luther and the Lutherans, the element of fear in piety still more emphasized
than in Calvin....'"
Thus, Warfield himself concludes, "In a word, with all his emphasis on
the sovereignty of God, Calvin throws an even stronger emphasis on His
love," so that even zeal was inspired not by fear of punishment, but by
the sense of a son defending the honor of his father.15
This leads us to Calvin's explicit statements concerning the Law and
the Gospel in this systematic-theological sense. When discussing the "fatherly
indulgence of God," Calvin explains Paul's reference to "the spirit of
bondage" versus "the spirit of adoption," in Romans 8:15:
One he calls the spirit of bondage, which we are able to derive
from the Law; and the other, the spirit of adoption, which proceeds from
the Gospel. The first, he states, wasformerly given to produce fear; the
other is given now to afford assurance. The certainty of our salvation,
which he wishes to confirm, appears, as we see, with greater clarity from
such a comparison of opposites...From the adverb again we learn that Paul
is here comparing the Law with the Gospel. This is the inestimable benefit
which the Son of God has brought us by his advent, that we should no longer
be bound by the servile condition of the Law...Although the covenant of
grace is contained in the Law [now referring to it as "Old Testament"],
yet Paul removes it from there, for in opposing the Gospel to the Law [in
the theological sense] he regards only what was peculiar to the Law itself,
viz. command and prohibition, and the restraining of transgressors by the
threat of death. He assigns to the Law its own quality, by which it differs
from the Gospel.
Therefore, there is no graciousness in the Law, as considered in itself
(i.e., as a theological-hermeneutical category), but there is graciousness
in the Old Testament, as the covenant of grace is promulgated in both testaments
under distinct administrations. A distinction is made between the totus
lex and the nuda lex, the former referring to the entire Old Testament,
while the latter refers to the Law as a category of command without promise.
But Calvin is not finished with this point:
Finally, the Law, considered in itself, can do nothing but
bind those who are subject to its wretched bondage by the horror of death
as well, for it promises no blessing except on condition, and pronounces
death on all transgressors. As, therefore, under the Law there was the
spirit of bondage,which oppressed the conscience with fear, so under the
Gospel there is the spirit of adoption, which gladdens our souls with the
testimony of our salvation. Note that Paul connects fear with bondage,
since the Law can do nothing but harass and torment our souls with wretched
discontent as long as it exercises its dominion. There is, therefore, no
other remedy for pacifying our souls than when God forgives us our sins,
and deals kindly with us as a father with his children.
This Law-Gospel antithesis is repeated throughout his writings, but, as
one might expect, is especially pronounced in his Galatians commentary:
It [Galatians 3] is an argument from contradictions, for the
same fountain cannot yield both hot and cold. The Law holds all men under
its curse. From the Law, therefore, it is useless to seek a blessing. He
calls them of the works of the law who put their trust for salvation in
those works. Such modes of expression must always be interpreted by the
state of the question. Now we know that the controversy here relates to
the cause of righteousness...The Law justifies him who fufills all its
commands, whereas faith justifies those who are destitute of the merit
of works and rely on Christ alone. To be justified by our own merit and
by the grace of another are irreconcilable; the one is overthrown by the
other.16
At the same time, Calvin warns against concluding that this purpose of
the Law is the only service it renders. "He did not propose to inquire
in how many ways the Law is of advantage to men. Readers must be put on
their guard in this matter; for I see many make the mistake of acknowledging
no other use of the Law than what is expressed here," in spite of many
Pauline passages that continue to exhort believers to order their lives
by its rule while refusing to seek righteousness by it.17 Nevertheless,
in another passage (Romans 3:21), Calvin insists that even believers after
they are justified must be vigilent in distinguishing the Law and Gospel;
otherwise, they will, with Augustine, conclude that the righteousness that
they have before God, though a gift of regenerating grace alone, is inherent
in the believer. "But it is evident from the context that the apostle includes
all works without exception, even those which the Lord produces in his
own people." It is not enough to attribute sanctification to grace; in
this whole matter, all righteousness (produced by God or self) that is
by Law is to be considered the very antithesis of the righteousness that
is by faith. "In the same way, in his Epistle to the Galatians he sets
the Law in opposition to faith with regard to the effect of justification,
because the Law promises life to those who do what it commands (Gal.2:16),
and requires not only outward performance of works, but also a sincere
love of God."
Far from adopting a Law-Gospel-Law approach, Calvin insists that the
believer no less than the unbeliever must have the Gospel "daily repeated
in the Church. That peace of conscience, which is disturbed on the score
of works, is not a one-day phenomenon, but ought to continue through our
whole life."18 Since we are ever-assaulted by the fear inculcated by the
Law, we must be ever-assured of the promises of the Gospel. Whenever the
believer seeks assurance or favor with God, the Law is never a comfort,
but when he is trusting in Christ's imputed righteousness, his relation
to the Law changes. It no longer represents God as Judge, but God as Father.
More will be said about this below. Well, then, does Hesselink summarize,
"Here Calvin does not differ significantly from Luther, except in emphasis
and discretion."19 In the Institutes, Calvin observes that "a man may indeed
view from afar the proffered promises, yet he cannot derive any benefit
from them. Therefore this thing alone remains: that from the goodness of
the promises he should the better judge his own misery, while with the
hope of salvation cut off he thinks himself threatened with certain death.
On the other hand, horrible threats hang over us, constraining and entangling
not a few of us only, but all of us to a man. They hang over us, I say,
and pursue us with inexorable harshness, so that we discern in the Law
only the most immediate death."20
The Law covenants conditionally, while the Gospel covenants on the basis
of Christ's fulfillment of all conditions in the believer's stead. "The
promises of the Law depend on the conditions of works while the Gospel
promises are free and dependent solely on God's mercy."21
There are senses in which the Law and Gospel are not opposed. First,
they agree as part of one redemptive history: There is agreement, in other
words, between the Old and New Testaments, as the Law and the Gospel have
the same offices in both. Second, they agree when touching upon the moral
use. Calvin, as we have seen, was concerned about approaches that opposed
the Law and the Gospel even when the matter of establishing acceptance
before God was not in question. When separated from the promise in Christ,
the Law is pure terror and is strictly opposed to the Gospel. When we admit
justification by an "alien righteousness," however, the believer's relation
to the Law changes and the contradiction is removed. But this is merely
consistent with the admission of a third use. While the commands of both
testaments fall into the category of "Law," the Gospel itself nevertheless
promises that this very Law will be engraved on the hearts of believers.
Thus, this prophecy is Gospel, not Law, even though the commands continue
to fall under the category of Law rather than Gospel. In seeking righteousness,
the Law is an intolerable burden leading to despair; but in seeking a manner
of gratitude for an imputed righteousness already freely given, the Law
is a gift. Christ is not only the foundation of the Gospel, but of the
Law as well. In fact, the Law is merely a written rule for the believer's
conformity to Christ's image, although it can never produce the slightest
effect toward that end. It is always the Gospel that produces faith and
faith that produces grateful service, but the Law now assists not by adding
any power or virtue to the Gospel, but by providing a written rule for
the evangelically-produced obedience.
This leads us to the Law-Gospel antithesis in the life of the believer.
Contrary to what is often supposed, Calvin did not embrace the Law-Gospel
hermeneutic for conversion, only to place believers back under the Law
as a method for obtaining righteousness in sanctification. Here, we must
again be careful to distinguish Calvin's terminology. Barth, Torrance,
and a host of Neo-orthodox interpreters have muddied the waters here by
reversing the order to Gospel-Law, and they have appealed to Calvin (not
to mention, Luther) for support. Since, as Calvin stated it, "the beginning
of repentance is a sense of God's mercy"22, it has been suggested that
Gospel is prior to Law in Calvin. The sinner will always flee from God's
power and righteousness until he is first convinced that God is willing
to be merciful to him in spite of his wretchedness. But this does not take
into account the fact that Calvin also argues repeatedly (even at the beginning
of his discussion of the use of the Law in the Institutes) that the sinner
cannot even know himself well enough to flee from God unless he knows the
judgment of the Law. To be sure, the Gospel is the object of faith and,
in fact, creates that faith, but "through the Law we become conscious of
sin" (Rom.3:20).
What these interpreters, then, fail to recognize in Calvin is the difference
in the believer's relation to the Law. The Law's imperative drives the
sinner to the indicative of the Gospel announcement. But once the believer
is justified, this order must be reversed to avoid legalism and, in fact,
is reversed in the Scriptures! The chief illustration of this in redemptive-history,
which does not go unnoticed by Calvin, is the Exodus and the subsequent
covenant at Sinai. First, God redeems his people and then he shepherds
them through the wilderness and gives them his commandments. Similarly,
Peter bases his imperative to live holy lives on the indicative, "For you
know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that
you were redeemed..., but with the precious blood of Christ..." (1 Pet.1:13-19).
We are not our own, but belong to Christ and the Law, instead of condemning
us, testifies to that fact. Calvin affirms this interpretation in his commentary
on this passage. What is abolished in the Law for Calvin is not its precepts,
but the maledictio legis. For all--including believers, who seek righteousness
from it (either for justification or sanctification) under a curse. "Being
thus led to despair of attaining any righteousness of their own, they were
to flee to the haven of divine goodness--to Christ himself. This was the
purpose of the ministry of Moses."23
It is the triumphant indicative (Christ "has become for us our sanctification,
holiness, and redemption") that opens the way for the believer's acceptance
of the imperative ("Be holy as your Father is holy"). In that sense, Gospel
must precede Law when employing the third use. But this Gospel-Law agreement
(rather than the Law-Gospel antithesis) is only in effect when considering
this third use, not when discussing the method of obtaining righteousness.
This is why, for instance, Calvin, following Bucer's Strasbourg liturgy,
admitted the singing of the Ten Commandments as well as a Psalm after Confession
and Absolution. The liturgical placement could sometimes lead to Confession
and, therefore, be placed at the beginning, or follow the Absolution as
an expression of grateful response to the Gospel assurances. Thus, Calvin
moved freely between the pedagogical and moral uses of the Law in the liturgical
life of his congregations. But at no time does he allow the faithful to
confuse the Law and the Gospel.
Thus, Calvin's "third use" is the very antithesis to legalism in that
it springs forth from the objective Gospel announcement rather than from
any attempt to appease God or create an inherent righteousness by the power
of the Law. And it is absolutely christocentric in its character, since
"the name of God is nothing but an empty imagination when it is separated
from Christ."24 "Therefore, we shall find angels and men dry, heavens empty,
the earth barren and all things worthless, if we want to partake of God's
gifts otherwise than through Christ."25 The "first step to obtaining the
righteousness of God," Calvin argues, "is to renounce our own righteousness,"
since our righteousness and God's righteousness "are opposed to one another,
and cannot stand together."26 Faith views the Law as an enemy in the point
of justification, but as a friend when joined to Christ, as faith is the
source of good works and the Law is the rule to which they are to be framed.
But whenever the believer begins to think that the beginning of the Christian
life had its source in the Gospel, but its progress is produced by the
Law, he warns, "The contrst between Law and Gospel is to be understood,
and from this distinction we deduce that, just as the Law demands work,
the Gospel requires only that men should bring faith in order to receive
the grace of God."27
From this, the believer learns that his righteousness is "from above,"
not "from below," and that even his progress in sanctification is neither
produced by the Law nor in any way a fulfillment of its conditions. And
while the stormy threatenings of Mt. Sinai continue to disturb his Sabbath
rest, the believer listens to another word: The Gospel, which quiets his
soul. The Law can never condemn, threaten, or judge, but can only serve
as the written rule for the expression of grateful Christian duty.
The "Three Uses": Upon Which "Use" Does The Emphasis Fall?
Assigning a particular "emphasis" in terms of the triplex usus legis
becomes rather difficult and anachronistic if we are thinking of Luther
and Calvin, since both were writing at a time when this distinction was
just coming into use. In fact, both referred to the "two-fold use" of the
Law: pedagogical (theological) and civil (Calvin combined the civil and
moral use until the 1559 Institutes, although there is a reference to the
"three-fold use" in the 1539 edition) and it was not until Melanchthon's
1535 Loci Communes that the three uses are established. Thus, we must beware
of expecting more refinement than the Reformers themselves display on this
point.
It is often assumed, especially by those outside of the Reformed tradition,
that Calvin regarded the "third use"--that is, the moral use, of the Law
as primary, and there is no small reason for this. Calvin himself writes
in the final 1559 edition of the Institutes that, "The third and principal
use, which pertains more closely to the proper use of the law, finds its
place among believers in whose hearts the Spirit of God already lives and
reigns" (emphasis added).28 But we would be too hasty to conclude from
this one statement that Calvin intends to make this the emphasis in the
preaching of the Law. For one thing, he declares in his commentary on John,
"The peculiar office of the Law [is] to summon consciences to the judgment-seat
of God."29 We have already noted the many references to Calvin's explanation
of the purpose of the Law that make the pedagogical use central. In fact,
"Moses had no other intention than to invite all men to go straight to
Christ."30 "The law was the grammar of theology, which, after carrying
its scholars a short way, handed them over to faith."31 The recurring emphasis
falls on the pedagogical or theological use rather than third: "The special
function of the Law was not to incline people's hearts to the obedience
of righteousness. The office of the Law, rather, was to lead people step
by step to Christ that they might seek pardon from him and the Spirit of
regeneration."32 This is especially apparent in a sermon on Isaiah 53:11:
The Law only begets death; it increases our condemnation and
inflames the wrath of God....The Law of God speaks, but it does not reform
our hearts. God may show us: 'This is what I demand of you,' but if all
our desires, our dispositions and thoughts are contrary to what he commands,
not only are we condemned, but, as I have said, the Law makes us more culpable
before God....For in the Gospel God does not say, 'You must do this or
that,' but 'believe that my only Son is your Redeemer; embrace his death
and passion as the remedy for your ills; plunge yourself beneath his blood
and it will be your cleansing.
Furthermore, whenever Calvin describes the purpose of the Law in one given
passage, it is almost always the pedagogical use that he describes: "The
Law is like a mirror, in which we behold, first, our impotence; secondly,
our iniquity which proceeds from it; and lastly, the consequence of both,
our obnoxiousness to the curse, just as a mirror represents to us the spots
on our face."33 "Paul, by the word law, frequently intends the rule of
a righteous life, in which God requires of us what we owe to him, affording
us no hope of life, unless we fulfill every part of it, and, on the contrary,
annexing a curse if we are guilty of the smallest transgression."34 "The
Law was given to cite slumbering consciences to the judgment-seat, that,
through fear of eternal death, they might flee for refuge to God's mercy."35
"The life of the Law is man's death."36 "As soon as the Law presents itself
before us, the curse of God falls upon our heads...This is the theological
use of the Law."37
In his catechetical work especially, Calvin emphasizes the pedagogical
use of the Law. For instance, in his Genevan Catechism, published in French
in 1536 and in Latin two years later, Calvin divides the questions into
the categories of Faith, The Law, Prayer, The Word of God, and the Sacraments.38
Under "Faith," there is an exposition of the Apostle's Creed in its three
parts; "The Law" follows the Decalogue and the New Testament commands,
while "Prayer," understandably, follows the form of the Lord's Prayer.
The first section, on "Faith," is, not surprisingly, soteriological in
its focus. Although "all the works which proceed from us, so as properly
to be called our own, are vicious, and therefore they can do nothing but
displease God, and be rejected by him," the sinner's only hope is the "righteousness
that is offered to us by the Gospel, so we receive it by faith." Even the
believer's works "please him, not however in virtue of their own worthiness,
but as he liberally honours them with his favour." "But seeing they proceed
from the Holy Spirit, do they not merit favor?" Calvin answers, "They are
always mixed up with some defilement from the weakness of the flesh, and
thereby vitiated." Therefore, "It is faith alone which procures favour
for them," by claiming Christ's righteousness to cover even the impurity
of our good works. Far from dividing faith from works, Calvin insists that
faith is the only proper source of the latter.
But one should not conclude that by placing Faith before The Law, Calvin
was reversing the Law-Gospel order. For even when we come to the section
on the Law, after Calvin has carefully explained the commandments and sanctions,
emphasizing their rigor especially in the light of the New Testament illuminations,
leads the catechumen to the question, "Why then does God require a perfection
which is beyond our ability?" Here, Calvin does not flinch from the pedagogical
use. If the moral use had been uppermost in his mind, it would have been
much more natural for him to have stopped short of constantly leading the
catechumen to despair. Rather, he would have stopped short of this goal
and emphasized the work of the Holy Spirit enabling the believer to perform
that which the Law requires. This is not denied, of course, by Calvin,
but it is not primary even in this discussion of the Law: "For the law
pronounces all cursed who have not fulfilled all things contained in it."
This leads one to conclude, he says, that there is a two-fold office for
the Law. "For among unbelievers it does nothing more than shut them out
from all excuse before God. And this is what Paul means when he calls it
the ministry of death and condemnation." Nevertheless, "In regard to believers
it has a very different use." But lest we too hastily conclude that Calvin
is suggesting that the pedagogical use be limited to unbelievers, we must
note carefully how he includes under the use of the Law for the believer
an abiding pedagogical purpose: "First, while they [believers] learn from
it that they cannot obtain righteousness by works, they are trained to
humility, which is the true preparation for seeking salvation in Christ."
This is a perpetual service that the Law renders to believers, so that
they are always fleeing to Christ to be clothed. Even in its moral use,
"inasmuch as it requires of them much more than they are able to perform,
it urges them to seek strength from the Lord, and at the same time reminds
them of their perpetual guilt, that they may not presume to be proud."
But third, Calvin counsels, it is there to serve as a "curb," to show the
believer the boundries of Christian liberty. Although the Law is never
satisfied by us, it does keep in view the goal toward which our lives should
aim, however imperfectly. This also checks the tendency of human nature
to invent additional laws and forms of obedience from our own wisdom or
experience. This third use of the Law in the life of the believer is clearly
set forth, but lacks the series of leading questions and answers that would
give us reason to conclude that it has priority over the pedagogical even
in the life of the believer.
Thus, while in this 1536 catechism Calvin's exposition of the Law lacks
the precision that would mark later discussions of the "three uses" (including
his own), its substance clearly leads one to conclude that it is the pedagogical
use that is emphasized for unbeliever and believer alike. This is especially
important in that Calvin had already explained the human condition and
justification under "Faith," and might well have been able to conclude
that the distinction between justification and sanctification had been
so firmly settled that he was now free to focus exclusively on the Law
as the rule for Christian practice. Nevertheless, he insists on making
the point that the Law is always judging the believer's "righteousness,"
so that if it were not for the Gospel, one's case would be no less hopeless
after conversion than before.
If Calvin does not this third use of the Law as its primary purpose,
then, why does he assert explicitly that it is "the principal use"?39 First
and foremost in Calvin's mind, the Law has no jurisdiction over the believer
in the point of condemnation. "For the law is not now acting toward us
as a rigorous enforcement officer who is not satisfied unless the requirements
are met," but is rather pointing out "the goal toward which throughout
life we are to strive." Before, the Law accused, but now it has a different
purpose: "Now, the law has power to exhort believers. This is not a power
to bind their consciences with a curse," but to point the way toward divinely-approved
service (2.7.12-13). Calvin does not regard the third use as primary in
general, but only in respect to its service to the believer who recognizes
that he is under grace and not under law. Whenever that believer forgets
this fact and hears the Law condemning him, however, the pedagogical use
is once again primary.
Second, as Richard Muller has argued, it is dangerous to interpret Calvin
exclusively on the basis of the Institutes, since it is not a systematic
theology but a catechetical treatise. According to Muller, the Reformer's
dogmatic system emerges more clearly from his commentaries and we have
already seen the weight he gives to the pedagogical use in those sources,
even referring to this as the main purpose and aim of the Law. Furthermore,
even the very placement of the Law in the 1559 Institutes is instructive.
While we must beware of placing too much weight on the arrangement of the
discussion, it is at least noteworthy that Calvin did not place his exposition
of the Law under the first book ("God the Creator") or the third ("The
Way We Receive The Grace of Christ"), even though the third section covers
the Christian life and sanctification.
This was not the case in the 1539 edition, in which Calvin placed the
exposition of the Law at the beginning of the Institutes. That he moved
it to "The Knowledge of God the Redeemer" (i.e., under soteriology rather
than ethics) is significant. Hesselink observes, "The chapter titles of
chapters 6-11, in which the discussion of the law occurs, are especially
suggestive. Chapter six, for example, has the title, 'Fallen man ought
to seek redemption in Christ.'"40 Is this the placement one would expect
in someone who regards the pedagogical use as secondary? In fact, the theme
of chapter 7 is, "The law was given not to restrain the people of the old
covenant under itself, but to foster the hope of salvation in Christ until
his coming." Next, in chapter 8, there is the exposition of the Decalogue,
immediately followed by the thesis, "Christ, although he was known to the
Jews under the law, was at length clearly revealed only through the gospel."
But the case of placement in the Institutes is not unique, for in his
1537 Instruction in Faith, he again discusses the Law under soteriology.
Hesselink writes, "Here the accent is on the first use of the law, the
usus elenchticus, whereby the law 'exercises (exerce) us in...the knowledge
of our sin and consequent fear of the Lord.'"41 Even in the life of the
believer, the preaching of the Law is primarily expressed in terms of this
pedagogical use: "When God allures us so gently and kindly by his promises
and then follows with the thunders of his curse, it is partly to render
us inexcusable and partly to shut us up, deprived of all confidence in
our own righteousness, so that we may flee to Christ who is the end of
the Law."42 Here he does not even include the moral use where one might
expect to naturally find it. "The function of the Law, then, is to uncover
the disease; it gives no hope of its cure. It is the function of the Gospel
to bring healing to those without hope."43
In his clearest exposition of the third use, in the Institutes 2.7.12,
Calvin refers to the Law as having the relationship to the flesh that a
whip has to a horse. While it cannot condemn the justified believer, it
can prod him in his duty to his Redeemer and here Luther and Calvin differ
in emphasis.
In his notable remark on this subject Luther declared, "Therefore, [faith]
is also a very mighty, active, restless, busy thing, which at once renews
a man, gives him a second birth, and introduces him to a new manner and
way of life, so that it is impossible for him not to do good without ceasing.
For as naturally as a tree bears fruit good works follow upon faith."44
Calvin certainly would not have disagreed concerning the necessary link
between faith and works, but he was somewhat less confident about the new
man. Calvin often emphasizes the abiding doubt and laziness of the believer
and this condition is true even for the genuine believer in his regenerated
state. Obedience flows from faith, but there is not always an automatic
answer of mind, heart, and body, to the master's command. Faith must generate
the gratitude necessary for good works, but the Law prods the believer
in his laziness simply by reminding him of his duty. When seeking righteousness,
duty is a legal preoccupation, but once the Law's thunder is silenced,
God often uses the Law to discipline his sons and recall them to their
former course. Nevertheless, the Law cannot do anything more than prod--and
by this, Calvin means nothing more than reminding us of our duty. But only
the Gospel promises can move us to grateful obedience: "He lays hold not
only of the precepts, but the accompanying promise of grace, which alone
sweetens what is bitter. For what would be less lovable than the Law if,
with importuning and threatening alone, it troubles souls through fear,
and distressed them through fright? David especially shows that in the
Law he apprehended the Mediator, without whom there is no delight or sweetness."45
Does the Reformed Tradition Develop Calvin's Law-Gospel Hermeneutic?
Not only has Calvin been seriously misunderstood by his friends and
critics; his successors have been maligned as relentless systematicians
whose scholastic approach obscured the theology of the Reformers. No figure
is more the target of such caricatures than Theodore Beza, Calvin's immediate
successor in Geneva. It was he, according to Barth, the Torrances, and
a host of Neo-orthodox critics, who began to shift Reformed theology away
from the Christ-centered graciousness of God to an elaborate federal theological
scheme. These debates are beyond our scope, but suffice it to say that
not only was Beza Calvin's hand-picked successor; he was the Reformer's
closest associate in both church and academy until Calvin's death in 1564.
Furthermore, Beza explicitly carried on Calvin's work and no better can
this consistency be observed than in Beza's Confession De Foi Du Chretien,
published in Geneva in 1558.
In the Confession, Beza addresses "The means which the Holy Spirit uses
to create faith in the heart of the elect." His answer, of course, is the
Word and the sacraments, and these discussions therefore follow. But the
discussion of "The Word" itself is divided into two parts: "The Law" and
"The Gospel":
We divide this Word into two principal parts or kinds: the
one is called the 'Law,' the other the 'Gospel.' For, all the rest can
be gathered under one or the other of these two headings. What we call
Law (when it is distinguished from Gospel and is taken for one of the two
parts of the Word) is a doctrine whose seed is written by nature in our
hearts...What we call the Gospel ('Good News') is a doctrine which is not
at all in us by nature, but which is revealed from Heaven (Mt.16:17; Jn.1:13),
and totally surpasses natural knowledge. By it God testifies to us that
it is his purpose to save us freely by his only Son (Rom.3:20-22), provided
that, by faith, we embrace him as our only wisdom, righteousness, sanctification
and redemption (1Cor.1:30).
Beza warns, "We must pay great attention to these things. For, with good
reason, we can say that ignorance of this distinction between Law and Gospel
is one of the principal sources of the abuses which corrupted and still
corrupt Christianity." Why is this? People always turn the Law into something
easy and the Gospel into something difficult, as if the Gospel were "nothing
other than a second Law, more perfect than the first." Beza then devotes
a great deal of space to distinguishing the Law from the Gospel. The Law
is in us by nature, the Gospel is "from above." "Having carefully understood
this distinction of the two parts of the Word of God, the Law and the Gospel,
it is easy to understand how and to what end the Holy Spirit uses the preaching
of the one and the other in the Church." We do not know our sinfulness.
"This is why God begins with the preaching of the Law," and after discussing
this point more fully, he concludes, "There then is the first use of the
preaching of the Law." But "after the Law comes the Gospel" in preaching.
In fact, Beza is clearer than Calvin in referring to "Law" and "Gospel"
as theological categories and emphasizes this over the eschatological,
redemptive-historical sense of those terms. The "third use" Beza discusses
under the heading, "The other fruit of the preaching of the Law, once the
preaching of the Gospel has effectually done its work," and here he argues
that because the believer's relation to the Law has changed, it simply
directs instead of inspiring fear and doubt. The sacraments further establish
us in the Gospel, since "the Lord has never been content solely with the
preaching of his Word," but added Baptism and the Lord's Supper "to the
preaching of this external Word, to better nourish and support our faith.
For, although Jesus Christ has already acquitted us by his death, yet,
while we are below, we possess the Heavenly Kingdom only by hope (Rom.
8:24; 1 Cor. 13:9); it is needful that we be supported to grow in this
and persevere to the end (Eph.4:15)."46
By the late sixteenth century, a growing number of Reformed theologians
were beginning to arrive at a consensus concerning the covenantal structure
of Scripture and were profoundly influenced by the Pauline Adam-Christ
typology. Calvin himself had acknowledged that Adam was offered eternal
life for himself and for his posterity upon compliance with the commandment
of God. "We cannot gainsay that the reward of eternal salvation awaits
complete obedience to the Law, as the Lord has promised," although after
the Fall, this is impossible.47 The promise, therefore, falls to the ground--or
does it? According to Calvin, as we have seen, there was a covenant of
grace announced in the protoevangelion, enacted with Abraham, promulgated
through types and shadows throughout the Mosaic administration, and fulfilled
finally in Christ. But in all of this, Christ has ever been the goal and
focal point of redemptive-history. These federal theologians, then, throughout
the period of Protestant Orthodoxy, set forth a scheme that seemed to form
a natural arrangement of the biblical passages. The covenant of works,
established in man's innocence, established a command with a promise. Upon
condition of perfect obedience, of which Adam was entirely capable, God
would graciously grant eternal life.
In Adam's disobedience, however, this covenant was broken. Nevertheless,
God still graciously offered this same eternal life through the promise
of a descendent who would crush Satan's head. Stripped of their own righteousness
according to the covenant of works, they were clothed with Christ's righteousness,
symbolized by God's act of clothing the couple with animal skins. Thus,
ever since Adam, all who have looked forward or backward to Christ for
redemption enter into a covenant of grace rather than a covenant of works.
This is not because the legal covenant was set aside, but because it was
fulfilled and its conditions were entirely satisfied by the Second Adam.
On the basis of Christ's active and passive obedience, the believer is
related to God by grace alone through faith alone.
Paul even declares that the two women, Hagar and Sarah, "represent two
covenants," one in slavery and one in freedom, one a representative of
the Law and the other of the Promise (Gal.4:24), so Calvin observes, "For
the legal covenant makes slaves and the evangelical covenant free-men."48
Zacharius Ursinus, Caspar Olevianus, William Perkins, Dudley Fenner, Johannes
Cocceius and other architects of "federal theology" succeeded in removing
any fatalistic implications in the doctrine of the decrees by attaching
it to a biblical "history of redemption." In this way, predestination was
"earthed" and understood not by metaphysical speculation, but by a "theology
from below," a theology of redemptive history, so that in Weber's words,"they
connected the distinction between law and Gospel with the doctrine of decrees
within a historical scheme."49 Thus, in much of Reformed reflection throughout
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Law-Gospel hermeneutic has
been assumed under different terms: Covenant of Works and Covenant of Grace.
In fact, in various polemical disputes within the Reformed tradition, the
most common accusation of the Orthodox against Socinians, Arminians, and
Legalists of all stripes was that they were returning to a "covenant of
works," just as Lutheran might have said that they had placed themselves
under the Law again for righteousness. This may be seen, for instance,
in the writings of the Westminster divines, most notably, the Westminster
Confession and Catechisms.
This is not to say that the use of the Law-Gospel terminology fell into
complete disuse in Reformed circles; it was still widely employed even
interchangeably with the federal language. Apparent throughout the catechetical,
polemical, homiletical, and dogmatic works of the Puritans, it may also
be discerned in the works of Zacharius Ursinus, author of the Heidelberg
Catechism. In his Commentary on The Heidelberg Catechism, the author divides
the Word into Law and Gospel in a manner identical to that of Beza and
Calvin. In fact, in the Prolegomena, he writes,
The doctrine of the church consists of two parts: the Law, and the Gospel;
in which we have comprehended the sum and substance of the sacred Scriptures.
The Law is called the Decalogue, and the Gospel is the doctrine concerning
Christ the mediator, and the free remission of sins through faith....Therefore,
the Law and Gospel are the chief and general divisions of the holy scriptures,
and comprise the entire doctrine comprehended therein.
The Law commands, the Gospel gives. "The Law is known from nature; the
Gospel is divinely revealed." Therefore, "the Law is our schoolmaster,
to bring us to Christ..."50
The Basel theologian Johannes Wollebius (1586-1629) is representative
of the next generation when in his Compendium Theologiae Christianae he
wrote, "The Redeemer is known both through the Law and through the Gospel;
from the Law we learn the need for a redeemer, and from the Gospel we learn
the truth of redemption."51 In fact, one finds it replete in Puritan literature
as late as 1680--and in some writers, far more common than the use of the
federal terminology. And regardless of the actual terms used, the idea
was clearly identical. Far from departing from the Reformers' message,
these systematizers ordered their entire system around these two poles.
However, with this covenantal emphasis, it became increasingly easy to
view federal theology more as a soteriological system than as a hermeneutic
and since coordinating all of Scripture under the categories of "covenant
of works" and "covenant of grace" is more awkward hermeneutically than
"Law" and "Gospel," it can be said with some truthfulness that the lines
were more easily blurred by seventeenth-century Puritanism and effectually
removed by the advent of both Enlightenment and revivalistic moralism in
both England and America.
Where the moral use gradually eclipses the pedagogical, the dialectical
tension of a Law-Gospel antithesis is entirely abandoned for the harmony
of indicative and imperative in the Christian life. This is far better
than reversing the indicative-imperative order in applying the third use,
but the pedagogical use of the Law in relation to the believer is not as
clearly stressed in contemporary Reformed preaching as it has been in the
tradition. Perhaps this is the reason why many Reformed pastors and theologians
are excessively anxious concerning preaching to their congregations in
a clear Law-Gospel manner. They fear that they will over-emphasize the
antithesis, and yet they have no less than Calvin, Beza, and scores of
Reformed systematizers as examples of just such an emphasis.
Whatever the actual practice, modern Reformed systematicians continue
to distinguish the Law and the Gospel and often bring greater clarity to
this position. For instance, Herman Bavinck (1895-1964) states, "The relationship
of the Old and New Testament is not like that of law and gospel. It is
rather that of promise and fulfillment (Acts 13:12 and Rom. 1:2)."52 As
we have seen, Calvin certainly would have agreed as touching upon the narrower
use of those terms (which is intended in the Lutheran approach), but sometimes
his theological heirs have more clearly distinguished the eschatological
from the theological sense of those terms and this has been quite helpful.
In his Systematic Theology, Louis Berkhof (1873-1957) discusses the Law
under "The Doctrine of the Word As A Means of Grace," with the heading,
"The Two Parts of the Word of God: The Law and the Gospel." "The Churches
of the Reformation from the very beginning distinguished the law and the
gospel as the two parts of the Word of God," he writes. "There is law and
gospel in the Old Testament and there is law and gospel in the New. The
law comprises everything in Scripture which is a revelation of God's will
in the form of command and prohibition, while the gospel embraces everything,
whether it be in the Old Testament or the New, that pertains to the work
of reconciliation and that proclaims the seeking and redeeming love of
God in Christ Jesus." Berkhof correctly observes that the Reformed system
devotes more attention than the Lutheran to the third use in connection
with sanctification, but argues also for the importance of the pedagogical
use.53
At the same time, the advances in biblical theology have encouraged
a redemptive-historical approach to Scripture that has carried with it
an implicit Law-Gospel heremeneutic even though it emphasizes this eschatological
promise-fulfillment motif. David is not to be preached for his morality
or wisdom, but rather Christ is to proclaimed as David's Savior and Son.
This redemptive-historical approach to preaching seeks to emphasize Christ
as the center of all revelation and to regard biblical characters and stories
not as mere moral examples or illustrations, but as signposts leading to
Christ. Its major modern proponents, especially in The Netherlands (Kuyper,
Schilder, Bavinck, Ridderbos) and in North America (especially Vos, De
Graaf, Kline, and Gaffin), have observed the promise-fulfillment motif
that so impressed Calvin and his immediate successors as well. Even when
a clear Law-Gospel antithesis is not explicitly stated in those terms,
such preaching has the same intention: to regard the evangelical announcement
of Christ and forgiveness as central and to eschew moralism and sentimentalism
in all of its forms.54
Furthermore, no respected Reformed biblical or systematic theologian
argues that the Law has any power or strength to give to the believer,
although this is often asserted of the Reformed tersius usus legis by its
critics. In his Romans commentary John Murray observed,
(1) Law commands and demands. (2) Law pronounces approval and
blessing upon conformity to its demands (cf. Rom.7:10; Gal.3:12). (3) Law
pronounces condemnation upon every infraction of its demand (cf. Gal.3:10).
(4) Law exposes and convicts of sin (cf. 7:7, 14; Heb.4:12). (5) Law excites
and incites sin to more aggravated transgression (cf. 7:8, 9,11,13). What
law cannot do is implicit in these limits of its potency. (1) Law can do
nothing to justify the person who has violated it. (2) Law can do nothing
to relieve the bondage of sin; it accentuates and confirms that bondage.
Therefore, "there is an absolute antithesis between the potency and provision
of law and the potency and provisions of grace."55 Ridderbos also notes:
Man, so we have seen, is entirely dependent on the grace of
God revealed in Christ not only for his justification (Rom.3-5), but also
for his deliverance from slavery under the power of sin (Rom.6-8). The
law is of no avail to him, either for the one or for the other.
The only "word" that can topple this slavery is the indicative: "You are
no longer under the law, but under grace," so that
the law (letter) and the Spirit thereby stand over against
each other in the sense that the Spirit enters in where the law has failed,
in joining battle against the power of sin and of the flesh and in vanquishing
that power...Therefore--while the law can only lead to bondage--sonship,
liberty, and the Spirit are to be found where life is lived from faith
and not from the works of the law (Gal.3:21-4:7). Here again the contrast
is between the impotence of the law and the omnipotence of the life-creating
Word of God, the promise, which has its power not in those who receive
it, but in him who gives it, not on the ground of works, but by faith.56
Ridderbos blames the loss of the objective Gospel emphasis in Protestant
preaching on pietism and the Enlightenment:
The theology of the Reformation, broadly speaking, has long found this
entrance [into Christian theology] in Paul's preaching of justification
by faith....While in Luther and Calvin all the emphasis fell on the redemptive
event that took place with Christ's death and resurrection, later under
the influence of pietism, mysticism, and moralism, the emphasis shifted
to the process of individual appropriation of the salvation given in Christ
and to its mystical and moral effect in the life of believers. Accordingly,
in the history of the interpretation of the epistles of Paul the center
of gravity shifted more and more from the forensic to the pneumatic and
ethical aspects of his preaching, and there arose an entirely different
conception of the structures that lay at the foundation of his preaching.
The results, codified in the Enlightenment, were plain: "Everything,
however, is directed toward an effort to reduce Paul's theology and religion
to a general, ethical-rational religiosity not dependent on redemptive
facts."57
Although the clarity of the Reformers and their successors offers us
so much hermeneutical wisdom in an age of hermeneutical fads, many Reformed
Protestants especially in America have allowed these trends rather than
confessional distinctives to determine the reading and preaching of Scripture.
Parallel to the weakening of popular catechetical and liturgical distinctives
on the parish level is the weakening of a distinctly evangelical (in the
historic sense of that term) method of interpreting Scripture. It is often
moralized, exegeted in verse-by-verse isolation, psychologized, politicized,
and always with the demand for "more application"--which really means "more
Law," and not necessarily the divinely-ordained Law, in its divinely-ordained
function, but principles and helpful suggestions for daily living, which
are in fact considered "Gospel." However contemporary evangelical preaching
may sound "kinder and gentler," this confusion of Law and Gospel presents
a threat no less serious than that faced by the Reformers nearly five centuries
ago.
If we are to recover this heritage as Reformational Christians--which
is to say, if we are to recover this ability to "rightly divide the Word
of truth," we must insist upon this Reformational hermeneutic that, following
the sensus literalis, leads one inevitably to clearly understand the Law
and the Gospel and to base all of our preaching, teaching, and counseling
on the careful distinction of one from the other. Furthermore, it is to
insist upon the indicative-imperative order when treating of the moral
use of the Law in exhortation.
In this brief compass, we have omitted the discussion a variety of important
and related issues, such as the civil use of the Law and its relation to
natural law. Nor have we discussed the relationship of the Law to the conscience
and the very important subject of Christian liberty, which Calvin called
"an appendix to justification" in that one could never truly experience
the liberation announced in the Gospel while caught in a tangled web of
scruples over "things indifferent" (Institutes, 3.10.1-3; 3.19.1-16). Nevertheless,
the attempt has been to at least suggest the possibility that (a) Calvin
was in agreement with Luther on the Law-Gospel antithesis in preaching
and that (b) his emphasis on the moral use of the Law was subservient to
his concern for the pedagogical use. I hope to have demonstrated that,
far from the mere gesetz-lehrer, Calvin was an evangelical preacher par
excellence, concerned to lead the prodigals to a loving Father who has
already prepared the feast to welcome them home. And finally, I hope that
it will at least in some slight measure encourage more interaction between
Lutherans and Calvinists in their common struggle for confessional, Reformation
distinctives at a time when the reigning hermeneutic often seems to be
shallow moralism, sentimentalism, and therapeutic narcissism. For apart
from the preaching of Christ, we can only conclude with Calvin, "We shall
find angels and men dry, heavens empty, the earth barren and all things
worthless."58
Notes
1. Cf. J. B. Torrance, "The Concept of Federal Theology,"
in Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor, ed. by Wilhelm H. Neuser (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), pp.15-40. "In the 1536 first edition of the Institutes,
Calvin had followed the pattern of Luther's Short Catechism, treating first
law and then gospel (also followed, as we have seen, in Ursinus's Major
Catechism in 1562). But in the light of Galatians 3, Calvin abandons that
order and argues for the priority of grace over law--the whole Old Testament
in the larger sense of the word is 'Gospel' (2.9.2)--the good news of grace"
(p.31). This is a good example of the failure to recognize the difference
between Calvin's reference to the Law as synonymous with the Old Testament
and as one of two categories. The Law contains the Gospel in the sense
that the Old Testament contains the promise, but to suggest that "the whole
Old Testament in the larger sense of the word is 'Gospel'" is far beyond
anything that Calvin actually says and, in fact, flatly contradicts the
very section cited by Torrance. Barth, of course, merely collapsed the
Law into the Gospel.
2. Cf. Paul Helm, Calvin and the Calvinists (Edinburgh:
Banner of Truth Trust); Joel Beeke, The Assurance of Faith (New York: Peter
Lang); Richard Muller, Christ and the Decree; Post-Reformation Reformed
Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker).
3. Calvin, Corinthians I:452. "The Law" can be used in
two different senses: the eschatological, used here (emphasizing the unity
of revelation), and synonymous with "Old Testament," and the theological
(emphasizing the antithesis between word of judgment and word of promise).
In this particular quote, Calvin is obviously referring to "Law" according
to the former sense. Calvin himself acknowledges these two senses: "The
word law is used in a two-fold sense. At times it means the whole doctrine
taught by Moses, and, at times, that part of it which belonged peculiarly
to his ministry, and is contained in its precepts, rewards, and punishments"
(on Romans 10:5). Thus, the Law is filled with Gospel promises if by "Law"
one means the Old Testament, but in its special office as a theological-hermeneutical
category, there is no Gospel in the Law, nor Law in the Gospel. "Thus from
the Law they receive nothing but this condemnation for there God demands
what is due to him, and yet gives no power to perform it. But by the Gospel
men are regenerated and reconciled to God by the free remission of their
sins, so that it is the ministration of righteousness and so of life. But
by the Gospel men are regenerated and reconciled to God by the free remission
of their sins, so that it is the ministration of righteousness and so of
life," (on 2 Cor. 3:7).
4. Calvin, "The Preface to the Prophet Isaiah," in the
Pringle translation of the Old Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Baker,
1984), volume 1 of Isaiah, p. xxvi.
5. Cited in I. John Hesselink, Calvin's Concept of the
Law (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1992), p. 101
6. All New Testament references are taken from Calvin's
New Testament Commentaries published by Eerdmans, unless otherwise noted.
Calvin, Hebrews 12:19
7. Otto Weber, Foundations of Dogmatics, trans. by Darrell
L. Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981) vol. 1, p. 287
8. ibid., p. 232
9. Cf. Philip Watson, Let God Be God: An Interpretation
of the Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1947), especially
chapter five.
10. Weber, op. cit., p. 88
11. Calvin, Romans 8:15
12. Hesselink, op. cit., p. 28
13. Calvin, Institutes, 3.2.7.
14. Hesselink, op. cit., p. 30
15. B. B. Warfield, Calvin and Augustine (Philadelphia:
Presbyterian and Reformed,1980), pp. 175-176. B. A. Gerrish also writes,
"It is particularly striking how often Calvin simply identifies believing
in God with recognizing God's fatherhood," Grace & Gratitude: The Eucharistic
Theology of John Calvin (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993), p. 66.
16. Calvin, Galatians 3:10
17. ibid., Galatians 3:19
18. ibid., Romans 3:21
19. Hesselink, op. cit., p. 158
20. Calvin, Institutes, 2.7.4.
21. ibid., 3.11.17
22. ibid., Hosea 6:1
23. ibid., Romans 10:5
24. ibid., John 5:23
25. ibid., John 1:16
26. ibid., Romans 10:4
27. ibid., Romans 10:8
28. ibid., Institutes, 2.7.12.
29. ibid., Baker edition of Calvin's Commentaries, John,
vol. 2, p. 140
30. ibid., John, vol. 1, p. 217
31. ibid., Galatians, p. 108
32. ibid., Exodus 24:5
33. The Isaiah 53:11 reference is cited by Hesselink,
op. cit., p. 212 end note 188 and is found in the Calvini Opera, 35,668,669;
ibid., Institutes, 2.7.7.
34. ibid., 2.9.4. Further, in his explanation of rewards
against Rome, Calvin exegetes the story of the rich young ruler (Mt.19:17)
in a strictly Law-Gospel manner. The intention was not to merely exhort,
but to cause the man to see that he had not truly kept the Law. "With a
clear voice we too proclaim that these commandments are to be kept if one
seeks life in works. And Christians must know this doctrine, for how could
they flee to Christ...?" But Jesus did not always deal this way with inquirers,
since "elsewhere he comforts with the promise of grace without any mention
of the law others who have already been humbled by this sort of knowledge"
(3.18.9).
35. ibid., Four Last Books of Moses, vol.1, p.327
36. ibid., 316
37. ibid., III:197
38. ibid., Selected Works, Henry Beveridge, ed., vol.
2 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983)
39. ibid., Institutes, 2.7.12.
40. Hesselink, op. cit., p. 11
41. ibid., p. 13
42. ibid., p. 16
43. Calvin, 2 Corinthians 3:7
44. Luther, Weimar Edition, 10 III, p.285
45. Calvin, Institutes, 2.7.12.
46. Theodore Beza, The Christian Faith, trans. by James
Clark (Lewes, England: Focus, 1992), pp. 40-51
47. Calvin, Institutes, 2.7.2.
48. ibid., Galatians 4:24
49. Weber, op. cit., p. 126
50. Zacharius Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism,
trans. by G. W. Willard (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, reprint
of 1852 edition), pp. 2-3. It is also prominent in his Major Catechism
of 1562.
51. Johannes Wollebius, Compendium Theologiae Christianae,
in Reformed Dogmatics, edited and trans. by John W. Beardslee III (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p.75. Cf. Francis Turretin, Institutes
of Elenctic Theology, trans. by G. M. Giger and ed. by J. T. Dennison,
Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1994), esp. pp. 200 ff..
51. Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith: A Survey of
Christian Doctrine(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), p. 93
52. Leon Morris, for instance, states, "The whole function
of the law is to bring people to Christ," New Testament Theology(Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), p. 51; cf. Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline
of His Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), especially his section
46 on the tertius usus legis, which is affirmed in a thoroughly christocentric
manner (pp. 278 ff.): "This also puts an end to the 'legalistic' view of
life....Over against this, however, stands the fact that the whole of the
law and the whole of life must be understood in the light of the salvation
revealed with Christ, and that insight into the will of God for concrete
life situations is no less dependent on faith in Christ, being led by the
Spirit, and the inner renewal of man than on the knowledge of the law."
Cf. Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings
of Geerhardus Vos, ed. by Richard Gaffin, Jr. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian
and Reformed, 1980). The support of the redemptive-historical approach
is also seen in John Murray: "The word 'law' should be regarded as referring
to law as commandment demanding obedience and applies to all law which
falls into this category." It is true that the Decalogue is the most succinct
expression. "But it does not provide us with the antithesis between 'law'
and 'promise' in terms of the argument" outlined by Paul in Romans 4, The
Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), p. 229
53. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1979), pp. 612-613.
54. ibid. Calvin warns even against grounding one's assurance
of justification from the degree of one's conformity to the Law, since,
as he says, it is easy to gain comfort when we compare ourselves to others,
but "directed toward the sun, stricken and numbed by excessive brightness,
our vision feels as weak as it did strong in gazing at objects below....Therefore,
we profit nothing in discussing righteousness unless we establish a righteousness
so steadfast that it can support our soul in the judgment of God." And
that righteousness is ours by imputation alone (Institutes 3.12.2, 3.13.3).
55. Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), p. 216.
56. ibid., pp. 13-21. Thus, "This theology is fundamentally
Christology. The Whole Pauline doctrine is a doctrine of Christ and his
work; that is its essence" (p.21).
57. Calvin, John 5:23.
Dr. Michael Horton is the vice chairman of the Council
of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and is associate professor
of historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in California.
Dr. Horton is a graduate of Biola University (B.A.), Westminster Theological
Seminary in California (M.A.R.) and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford (Ph.D.). Some
of the books he has written or edited include Putting Amazing Back Into
Grace, Beyond Culture Wars, Power Religion, In the
Face of God, and most recently, We Believe.
.
©1998
- 2001 Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals
