Abstract

This chapter examines the fixed position of the believer with his trust in and presence inside divine Eternity versus the doubts with regard to confidence within the practice of faith. To bring to the fore the relevance of Calvinian particularity, the article discusses two voices in the debate on Calvin's theology that make a claim on how Calvin's notion of faith can offer assurance for the believer. After locating the two sides of the debate, a suggestion is put forward about how the relation between eternity and reassurance in Calvin's theology can be seen not only as doctrinal content but as a linguistic charge to theological language as well. For an example of such a "charge", the author takes a look at Henry David Thoreau's Walden. By reading Walden as a project that attempts to communicate the charge of eternity that can be read in a text, it is demonstrated how the notion of literary voice can help to decode theological texts that grapple with the double danger of dogmatism and self-referentiality implied by the oft-repeated slogan sola fide (faith alone).

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