A steady diet of thinking on the Biblical truth concerning God’s infinite and spiritual essence and triune nature would nurture and mature a church that is starving herself on her own imagining of God. As John Calvin says, “The Scriptural teaching concerning God’s infinite and spiritual essence ought to be enough, not only to banish popular delusions, but also to refute the subtleties of secular philosophy…For he [God] so proclaims himself the sole God as to offer himself to be contemplated clearly in three persons. Unless we grasp these, only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains.”
In chapters 11 through 13 Calvin opens the door ever wider to his theocentric thinking. As I have again begun to walk through this door, peering into the biblical realities he unveils my longing for the glory of God grows deeper and my delight in the God of our salvation heightens. As Jesus tore the woman of Samaria away from her narrow view of God and what that means for worship , so Calvin causes us to look into the infinite nature of the triune God that we may be torn away from our own flitting thoughts about God to the true biblical reality of God that will bring us to trust him in worship.
Calvin writes of God’s nature as being immeasurable and spiritual in section 1 of chapter 13. He is here referring to the infinite essence of God revealed to us by the Scripture. God is infinite and spiritual dwelling in the heavens and yet far above the heavens, but also fills the earth with his glory. Calvin says, “Surely, his infinity ought to make us afraid to try to measure him by our own senses. Indeed his spiritual nature forbids our imagining anything earthly or carnal about him.” It is true that God bends toward his creatures to assist us in our thinking about him by assigning anthropomorphisms to himself saying that he hears or sees, has hands and feet. However, this is not to make God like man, but to “accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity.” For Calvin the infinite spiritual nature of God revealed to us by God’s Word is a sure remedy to our idolatry where we seek to make a god after our own imagining. T.F. Torrance reflects on Calvin’s thoughts this way, “God is not imaginable. All the images we invent are idols of the mind, products of our own imagination, for God ever remains like himself and is not a spectre or phantasm to be transformed according to our desires…True knowledge is objectively derived and cuts against speculations and imaginations of the human mind.” But for Calvin the infinite essence of God’s nature revealed in the Bible cannot be properly understood apart from his revealed triune nature.
“But God also designates himself by another special mark to distinguish himself more precisely from idols. For he so proclaims himself the sole God as to offer himself to be contemplated clearly in three persons. Unless we grasp these, only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God.” If God is so infinite in love to condescend to us and make himself known in his eternal Word as one God in three persons, then we should strive with all our mind, soul and strength to know him as he has revealed himself so that our thoughts and affections toward him are true according to his triune nature. Whether we begin in creation and see him making man after his own image, traverse redemptive history in the old covenant seeing the Godhead condescending to his people Israel, or see the Father, Son and Holy Spirit acting for the redemption of Jew and Gentile from all eternity and into the present, our minds are filled with his glory and the flitting thoughts of an unknown God are banished. Calvin’s theocentric thinking opens the door for a believer to shut the door on man centered imaginations of God and walk in worship toward in him in spirit and truth.
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