conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

calvin post six - he's a humanist, people!

Here are some things I have been thinking about for my thesis...

Regarding Calvin and scriptural hermeneutic: How humanist was he? Calvin expresses some understanding of cultural relativism, but to suggest the same degree of cultural relativism that exisits in some theological/socio-anthropological circles today would be inappropriate. His read of scripture straddles a line between cultural specificity (a better way to speak of Calvin's thinking as not to confuse it with our own) and scriptural literalism. Calvin seems to appreciate Chrysostom's commentaries because the Church Father is not inclined to fall into fiurative or allegorical interpretations of the scriptures. And yet, Calvin wants us to recognise that the Fathers, like Chrysostom, were responding to specific issues facing the church, had a different facility with the language (Greek or Hebrew) and were accostomed to different customs, thus their practices and interpretations would differ. He even says the same of Paul regarding Paul's desire to keep men's hair short in 1 Corinthians. Calvin will say that this must be Paul's custom. Nothing is intrinsically wrong with long or short hair.

So, for me, lest I digress even further, what does this mean for Calvin's thinking about liturgical practice? What cultural concerns will he allow to reamain "merely" cultural and which will he deem of scriptural prescription? This will color how one composes the anaphora, for example. Does one come from a culture accostomed to great rituals, with majesty, pomp and circumstance, or does one come from a culture where simplicity is the cultural ideal? Or is there somthing that Calvin suggests scriopture says about all this?

Where this continues to be interesting is in Calvin's use of rhetoric in his own interpretation. Bouwsma states it in this way:

But his rhetorical Christianity is most profoundly apparent in his emphasis on Scripture as everywhere accomodated by God's decorum to human comprehension: God speaks to us of things "according to our capacity for understanding them, not according to what they are." Taking into account the "diversity of times" annd "diverse ways of learning," The Holy Spirit always "accomodates itself to our infirmnity." This had strong egalitarian implications; it means that God not only wants to instruct learned clergy [les grands clercs] and people who are very subtle and have been trained in school, but wishes to accomodate to even the roughest common people [les plus rudes idiots qui soyent]. (p. 124 Bouwsma)

Bouwsma is pushing this line hard. The strength of Bouwsma's argument is his deep grasp of the humanism that was extant during Calvin's time and Calvin's seeming willingness to employ its tools, rhetoric chief among them. He continues:

But God also accomodates his word to human beings in all ages, including the wisest and most cultivated. Otherwise it would be "impossible for God to make us feel his power [vertu] without annihilating and destroying us [nous abysmer du tout]" If God "whished to speak his own language," Calvin asked, "would mortal creatures have been able to bear it? Alas, no. How then has he spoken to us in Holy Scripture? He has stammered [bagaye]." He has presented himself "like a nurse who will not speak to a child in the same way as to a man but keeps in mind the child's capacity." God must "descend to us that we may mount to him."(p. 125 Bouwsma)

It would seem that Christ had rhetoric in mind when he taught in parables. This is the greatest gift God can give. This, for Calvin, is the incarnation found in scripture. Scripture is in itself a humbling of God's self. The sacrament's too have this aspect of "rhetorical communication" to them.

Rhetorical communication, he insisted repeatedly, is God's only way of revealing himself to human beings; we know nothing of God except through his revelation in Christ, who "represents and exhibits to us whatever is useful to be known about the Father." This is why the sacrament in which God is present shows how "our merciful Lord, according to his infinite kindness, accomodates himself to our capacity." In short, "whenever our mind seeks God, unless it meets Christ it will wander, restless and confused, until it wholly fails."(p. 125)

One possible temptation may be to relegate Calvin to the realm of "Enlightenment Thinkers" and forget him after reading this. Simply, does Calvin emply scripture as he sees fit, allowing his own ego to dictate what scripture says? Is he so wedded to his own understanding that there is no room for the divine to peek though or is faith a simple thinking exercise? Certainly not. The above passage rescues Calvin from this fate. He is, after all, a sacramentalist. The seeming dualism between rhetoric as revelation and mystery as revelation is brought together with Christ, the Logos (sermo?) turned the Incarnate Rhetoric. The tool, rhetoric, brings God to earth so that we may hear God's word in our own tongue, through our own lives. It is the greatest of mysteries how this happens, but that it happens is undenyable for Calvin. It is through Christ that any and all mystery exists.

Posted by tripp at March 22, 2004 02:47 PM