“God’s glory is corrupted by an impious falsehood whenever any form is attached to him.”
In Section I of Chapter XI of Book I, John Calvin argues against any pictorial representation of God. He is here specifically rejecting any use of images in the worship of God. He says, “God himself is the sole and proper witness of himself.” In his previous sections he had made the point that the Spirit of God through the use of the Word of God makes known to man who God is truly. Therefore the Spirit opens mans mind and heart to know the Scriptures in order that he man know God truly. Calvin says the law explicitly forbids making any image to communicate the likeness of God after making it clear that He is the true God and to be worshiped only. He says, “By these words he restrains our waywardness from trying to represent him by any visible image, and briefly enumerates all those forms by which superstition long ago began to turn truth into falsehood.” Men everywhere in all places have sought to take what is created and compare this to their own idea of who or what God is, but as Calvin goes on to say, “God does not compare these images with one another, as if one were more suitable, another less so; but without exception he repudiates all likenesses, pictures, and other signs by which superstitions have thought he will be near them.”
Calvin devotes a long section to this subject, seventeen pages with fifteen sections, so in today’s reading I have only begun to scratch the surface. However, I do want to give some reflection on what he has said thus far. Calvin is living in the cultural context of the Renaissance period and iconoclastic Roman Catholicism. The Renaissance period contributed much beauty to Western Europe and especially in the church. However some of this beauty was at the expense of violating the second commandment. The Roman Catholic Church had venerated art form and imagery that represented God in the worship of the triune God. Therefore this cultural and church practice needed to be evaluated through the authoritative Word of God. I believe this is what Calvin is doing in this section of the Institutes as he deals with the knowledge of God the Creator.
The key in Calvin’s thought is his holding to the law of God to reveal the will of God for how we are to know Him. Man, because of sin, is wayward in his thoughts about the true God, and the certainty of man falsely representing God with visible imagery is inevitable. But God’s explicit command is not only about protecting man from gross sin, it is about the upholding of the glory of God. Man, as Calvin as already argued, may know something of God from the general revelation of Himself through His creation, and know even more specifically about Him through His special revelation, the Word. However, in both of these cases it is God who is making Himself know as he wills. Therefore when man uses the creation to attempt to image forth the truth about God he is detracting from who God is by using that which comes from God and is not God himself, and this leads to venerating the image made after that which is mortal rather than exalting the immortal invisible God. So Calvin is right, God’s glory gets corrupted by our thoughts and depictions in form. Therefore we are in need of God to reveal Himself to us as He wills, and this He has done in His Son. The Lord Jesus Christ is the radiance of His glory and the exact imprint of His nature, and though no one has ever seen God, the One and Only God, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known. As Jesus says, “Whoever sees me sees him who sent me.” Therefore we must see and worship God through Jesus Christ but not in earthly images from the imaginations and handiwork of men.
No comments:
Post a Comment