A Preliminary Aspect of Calvin’s Epistemology

A PRELIMINARY ASPECT OF CALVIN'S EPISTEMOLOGY ARTHUR C. CocHRANE A COMPLETE exposition of Calvin's ·epistemology would involve a consideration of the reformer's doctrine of revelation , including the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Word of Go.d, and the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and then of his doctrines of Holy Scripture and Church Proclamation. In this study we are merely concerned to show how Calvin distinguished between the Christian knowledge of God and bf His will and all natural knowledge of God. Complete agreement does not prevail among scholars concerning this preliminary ·aspect of Calvin's epistemology. Emil Brunner has taken the position that Calvin teaches that we can know God's wisdom and omnipotence, His righteousness and goodness, in nature, but not H is forgiving mercy;1 that the revelation in nature far from being rendered superfluous by the scriptural revelation fi~st acquires its validity from scripture; and that the natural revelation is clarified and expanded by scripture, scripture serving as a magnifying-glass for the former.2 This relation, says Brunner, is especially true of the knowledge of the divine will, of the law and the ordinances of nature. "We know God's law in reason and in conscience. T his· lex naturae is in content identical with the c lex scripta, even if the lex scripta is necessary ·in order to make the (so to speak) faded scripture of the !ex naturae perfectly clear again."3 To this Karl Barth has replied that, although Calvin spoke of a duplex cognitio Domini from creation and in Christ, whenever he spoke of a natural knowledge of God from creation, he only said what Romans 1: 19ff.; 2: 14£.; Acts 14: 5£.; 17: 24f. have said about it; that he never ascribed to the heathen or to Christians a second source of revelation beside the Holy Scriptures, and that his theology was fundamentally exposition of scripture and not anthropology, not historical and natural philosophy as well.4 Calvin taught, says Barth, that the possibility of a real knowledge of the true God from creation by the natural man is an objective possibility with God but not a subjective possibility with man.5 'Natur und Gnad~ (2nd ed., 1935), 25. !ibid., 25. 'ibid., 26. •"Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner," in Thto/ogischt Exiumz htult, No. xiv, 41f. 'ibid., 42. 382 A PRELIMINARY ASPECT OF CALVIN'.S EPISTEMOLOGY 383 The possibility which man actually possesses is to know and ~to worship the gods 9f his own heart.8 Barth contends that according to Calvin the knowledge of God in Christ includes in it a real knowledge of the true God in creation.7 He admits, however, that one will not find in the Institutes an express rejection of the temptation to look for a pre-Christian knowledge of God in an existing kernel of truth and then to align it systeni'atically with the Christian knowledge of God under the heading of a preparation or the like. In order. to understand that this would be an impossible procedure for Calvin,.one must keep before one's eyes his doctrine of Christ, of the enslaved will, of justification, and (above all) the fact that in his controversies with ancient philosophies he abstained from such systematic arrangements, and consistently spoke of the theological ineptitude of the natural man.8 Such are the positions of the two men in relation to Calvin's epi~temology. The controversy, which has already been translated from continental to English..,speaking countries, can be best allayed by an examinati~n of the .Calvin texts themselves.9 Such an examination. would seem to support the following argument : I. God bears witness to Himself as Creator and Preserver in manifold manifestations , chiefly in man himself but also in nature and history. 2. Man should know God by means of these testimonies of God in himself and in nature and in history. For these testimonies are knowable to mart in principle. 3. Although in principle God is knowable and wants to be known by means of His testimonies in creation, man by his own guilt is completely blind in regard to the knowledge of God...