“Beyond the Sphere of Our Judgment”: Calvin and the Confirmation of Scripture -- By: W. Robert Godfrey

Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 58:1 (Spring 1996)
Article: “Beyond the Sphere of Our Judgment”: Calvin and the Confirmation of Scripture
Author: W. Robert Godfrey


“Beyond the Sphere of Our Judgment”:
Calvin and the Confirmation of Scripture

W. Robert Godfrey

[This article is dedicated to my friend and colleague, Robert D. Knudsen, in recognition of his distinguished contributions to the cause of Reformed apologetics in the tradition of John Calvin and Cornelius Van Til.]

John Calvin was preeminently a pastor and teacher of the Word of God. He was devoted to studying the Scriptures and applying them faithfully to the people of God. He manifested this devotion in his preaching and lecturing, his commentaries and treatises, and also in his greatest work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. He stated that the key purpose of the Institutes was “to prepare and instruct candidates in sacred theology for the reading of the divine Word.”1 He believed that a clear theological system would aid the student in the study of the Bible. He was convinced that in the final edition of the Institutes in 1559 he had accomplished this goal to the best of his abilities: “I was never satisfied until the work had been arranged in the order now set forth.”2

This final edition began with an inquiry into the question of knowledge. As William Bouwsma has put it, “The first nine chapters of Book I constitute a kind of epistemological introduction to the work as a whole, as they consider the possibility and the processes of the knowledge of God before proceeding to its content.”3 Calvin was not interested in a formal, philosophical epistemology. Calvin was not interested in developing a philosophical system. He was interested in the fundamental religious questions: how can I know myself, and how can I know God? He believed that these questions were interconnected. One can know neither oneself nor God except by knowing both in relation to one another.

Calvin began his analysis of these questions by asking, how can I know God. He argued that God could be known in nature, but that sinful man could only know God clearly through the Scriptures. The Bible is essential for the sinner to know God.

What is Calvin’s doctrine of Scripture? One might assume that Calvin’s doctrine of Scripture would be easy to summarize and evaluate in light of Calvin’s well-deserved reputation as a clear and incisive thinker. But

surprisingly, that is not the case. T. H. L. Parker has written, “Calvin’s concept of Scripture as the Word of God presents probably the most difficult problem in all his theology, one on which much has been written and about which ther...

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