Calvin's Two Liberties

An observant reader of John Calvin’s Institutes will have noticed that the Reformer discusses the interesting and important question of Christian liberty in two places. The first is in Chapter 19 of Book III, appropriately entitled 'Of Christian Liberty’, where he is dealing with soteriology and is at this point concerned with the consequences of justification. One of these consequences is freedom, freedom from the keeping of any law, whatever its shape and size, for  justification. The second time he discusses Christian liberty is in Chapter 10 of Book IV ‘On the Power of Making Laws’ dealing principally with the church, and the root error of Roman Catholic Church in imposing on the Christian laws of its own making, but also dealing with civil society which make law for human good.

Christian freedom in the church and in the state

Calvin’s approach is the same in both cases. Justified sinners possess liberty over the many things that  are neither commanded nor forbidden by God, indifferent matters. This is a two way freedom, hence 'indifferent'. The freedom to exercise to and claim the right to wear what coloured polo-shirt you should wear, but also not to insist on always wearing your favourite Postman-Pat Red. The rich may live in luxury, but they have liberty not to. Those who like a drink may enjoy one, but it is also a part of their liberty for them to abstain. And so on. ‘Indifference’ rather than 'liberty’ emphases that the expression of freedom may go either way.

Even though the State is a divinely-ordained its laws are not divine laws, as are those which constitute the church, and which regulate its life. This is a rather surprising result, when you think of it. The church is not free to make new laws, but the state is. Are we free to disobey the state? The matters over which the state legislates may be indifferent as far as the law of God is concerned. The law of God neither commands nor forbids the imposition of a 30 mph limit.  But it must be obeyed nonetheless. Its laws ought to be kept conscientiously unless they flout the commands of God.

Having the Anabaptists in mind, no doubt, Calvin is quite exercised by this point of conscientiously obeying the powers that be, that the Christian should 'internalise' his obedience of a law that is not a divine law, when it is enacted by an institution ordained by God. He notes that Paul teaches (Rom 13.5) that one must respect the state-law, not only for God’s wrath’s sake (because there  is a punishment for non-compliance), but also for conscience’s sake, though it may be purely human, and may carry with it all sorts of awkwardness and inconvenience. (And even though, in his day, the proceeds of taxation may be used to fund military conquest.)  Keeping the law should be a matter of inner integrity. (Calvin also cites I Tim.1.5) 

So concerned is Calvin to insist on this point that the more observant reader of the Institutes will recognize that Calvin reproduces verbatim (or almost so) his treatment of the church and society in Book III in his discussion of this point in Book IV.  For those who wish to check this, consider the language of III. 19. 16, and its verbatim repetition in IV.10 .4. (I wonder if a part of the reason is that Calvin thought that some of his readers would be inclined the skip parts of Book III, moving to the more political themes of Book IV?)

So Christian liberty has nuances to it.   Conduct respecting  ‘things indifferent’ is not to be indulged or flaunted,   and the Christian as a respectful citizen is to keep the laws of men, because they are made law by a God-given power.

Hence a law is said to bind the conscience, because it simply binds the individual, without looking at men, or taking any account of them. For example, God not only commands us to keep our mind chaste and pure from lust, but prohibits all external lasciviousness or obscenity of language. My conscience is subjected to the observance of this law, though there were not another man in the world…..’ (III. 19. 16).

This is rather different from the modern view of liberty according to which we can do what we like provided that it does not harm others. Or from the attitude of those who seem never get over the novelty of having been emancipated from Fundamentalism, and whose clothes tend to smell of tobacco and booze as a consequence.

As regards the church and liberty, Calvin’s treatment is a robust account of what is these days called the ‘spirituality of the church’. The Christian, made free by Christ, has a spiritual liberty, which must be safeguarded and preserved unimpaired. The governance of the church is quite different from the governance of the state. The church is to be structured and ruled by the revealed word of God.  All his commands and only his commands are to inform Christian preaching and to sensitise the Christian’s conscience. This also – paradoxically, it may seem at first – is to be understood as a Christian freedom, freedom from the impositions of men. Rome burdens the conscience of worshippers with newly-invented obligations. Even though Calvin has the excesses of the Papal church in mind his argument is a perfectly general one, covering churchly impositions of any kind.

Freedom and the Two Kingdoms

We can see from this that Calvin’s treatment of liberty is within the overarching structure of his teaching on the two kingdoms,  the church and the state, explicitly so:

Therefore, lest this prove a stumbling block to any, let us observe that in man government is twofold: the one spiritual, by which the conscience is trained to piety and divine worship; the other civil, by which the individual is instructed in those duties which as men and citizens, we are bold to perform.  To these  are commonly given the not inappropriate names of spiritual and temporal jurisdiction, intimating that the former species has reference to the life of the soul, while the latter relates to matters of the present life, not only to food and clothing, but to the enacting of laws which require a man to live among his fellows purely,  honorably, and modestly. We may call the one the spiritual, the other the civil kingdom. Now these two, as we have divided them, are always to be viewed apart from each other. (III.19.15)

The two are each divine jurisdictions, though they operate differently, and do not have equal importance. Each should give rise to conscientious action on the part of the Christian. So it is not the case that the first is God’s kingdom, the second the godless, purely secular ‘world’. The second a divine jurisdiction too.

The two kingdoms and Christian activity

In the dust raised by the current renewed appreciation of the Reformed doctrine of the two kingdoms, through the work of David Van Drunen and others, it is sometimes asked, in adopting the doctrine of the two kingdoms, what becomes of the divine cultural mandate? In the hands of Abraham Kuyper and the neo-Calvinists, this mandate has become the work of the kingdom, as distinct from the church, and part of the Christian's endeavour to transform society by promoting Christian this and that:  Christian education, politics, art, literature, care for the environment, and so on. This has become a familiar theme, some being sanguine about the prospects of such transformation, stressing the place that such endeavours have as an expression of God's 'common grace', others from the same stable stressing the 'antithesis' between Christian cultural endeavours and those of the secular world.  These attitudes have no more than the status of  private opinions, the relevant attitudes and actions  being neither commanded by the word of God as a part of Christian worship or conduct, nor required by the state.

To add 'cultural transformation' to Christ's command to his first disciples to go into all the world and preach the gospel, would (in Calvin's view)  jeopardise Christian liberty, and no doubt we could add that it would be to privilege the educated middle-class Christians over their blue-collar fellow believers. A command, or a kind of culturally-correct pressure on Christians to transform society, could amount to a new law, and if it came to that it would infringe the spirituality of the church and the liberty of Christians. 

But one might think of such ambitions as a matter of Christian liberty within  society. If someone thinks that what they paint is 'Christian painting', then fine. There ought to be nothing to stop them painting in this vein, whatever they take Christian painting to be. Like choosing to paint the new baby's bedroom pink. Neither kind of painting is commanded or forbidden so neither the colour of the baby's bedroom nor the painting of a 'Christian' still life is a God-given requirement of Christian discipleship. Each may be done to the glory of God. As may sweeping a room. (I Cor. 10.31)

So, the two liberties -

In respect of life in the Church, freedom from the observance of man-made traditions or activities which a person is required (by some religious or other 'authority') to keep.

In respect of Society, freedom to do (or not to do) matters indifferent, neither forbidden nor commanded by God, and otherwise to be conscientiously obedient to the law of the state, except when such obedience would be a sin.

'Experimental' - or 'experiential'?

It has been customary since the seventeenth century to use the word ‘experimental’ to characterize a certain kind of teaching and preaching. To those who support the use of the word, experimental preaching is a good thing.  It is how preaching should be. Besides being exegetically well-founded in Scripture, and its doctrine biblical, and set in the context of the whole counsel of God, the experimental preacher should  place it within the theology of the whole of the Bible, and its manner and its applications should be ‘experimental’. A preacher well-versed in the practice of making such applications came to be known as a ‘experimental divine’.

This phrase, ‘an experimental preacher’, has come to be thought quaint, and potentially misleading. For – the thought is – what has scientific experimentation  to do with the life of God in the soul of man? It may even be suggested that the word ‘experimental’ must have changed its meaning in the intervening years. It seems now to mean that an experimental preacher is one who makes experiments in the pulpit, trying out various ideas on his congregation.

It’s now becoming usual to think that the word ‘experimental’ is an old-fashioned word for ‘experiential’, and that such a preacher is making reference to ‘religious experience’, ‘contextualising’ it appropriately, making it relevant to the experiences of the people.

But experimental preaching is neither of these things. It is not  a quaint and out of date reference to natural science, or ‘the science of the mind’, nor has it to do with trying out ideas on the congregation to see if some doctrine has relevance to young mothers or to grumpy old men.  Nor with religious experience in some general sense covering, say, the experience of revival, of levitations and glossolalia, of out of the body experiences, or mysticism.

What is it then?

Experimental preaching has to do with testing. A scientist puts his theory to the test by devising experiments on the relevant substances or events. He may as a result have his hypothesis confirmed, modified and he may, sadly, have to abandon it. (It is not a good idea for a scientist to develop bonds of affection with a theory. He must try to test his theory to destruction. A  certain ruthlessness is implied. A scientist who looks only for confirmations of his theory is not doing his job.)

Nevertheless ‘experimental’ suggests testing, and a preacher who follows the contours and sensibilities of the New Testament must inevitably be an experimental preacher. For the New Testament contains not only doctrines, delivered in various ways by its writers, but also accounts of the impact that the doctrines have and are to have (and sometimes, the impact they are not to have) on the inner life (motives, feelings, self-understanding) and on the conduct of the hearers.  The way that doctrine is ‘delivered’ in Scripture includes some aspect of the Good News and then, in addition, some story about the way it was received in this congregation or that.  That’s one important difference between the New Testament and Berkhof’s Systematic Theology (for example) important though that book is as a masterly delineation of doctrines. There is more to the New Testament than this, though not of course less that this. With doctrine should come ‘use’ and ‘application’, characteristic of Puritan preaching.

In his Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 R.T. Kendall refers to English experimental theology (and explicitly not ‘experiential’) to refer to a strand of English Puritanism, and I think he was correct to stick to the term, for the reasons given,  and to link it explicitly with the testing of the self by the word of God.(9) But whether ‘experimental  predestinarianism’ forms a distinct tradition, as he claims, a tradition distinct from  that of ‘creedal predestinarianism’ is another matter. (80) For one thing, experimental preaching covers more than the matter of the establishing of personal assurance, embracing the whole life of the life of faith. For another thing the Westminster  Confession of Faith (a ‘creed’, surely) does not simply provide a compendium of doctrines as normative for Christian belief, such as the so-called ‘Apostles’ Creed’, but goes  beyond this in including the normative religious and moral states that a hearty belief in a doctrine calls for. Not only is doctrine normative in the ‘creedal’ sense, its normativeness  extends  to what Scripture holds is the proper impact of belief on life.

So  the Chapter on Providence includes these sentiments

The most wise, righteous and gracious God doth often-times leave for a season his own children to manifold temptations, and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover to them the hidden strength of corruption, and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they may be humbled; and to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for sundry other just and holy ends.  (V.V.)

Plenty of material here for ‘experimental’ preaching and experimental religion. The Chapters of the Confession almost without exception follow the ‘doctrine’ + ‘use and application’ style characteristic of Puritan preaching, in which the uses were not invented by the preacher, but taken from Scripture. Here’s the example from the chapter on good works (XVI) discussing the relation between justification and conduct.

Their [believers’] ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that they may be enabled thereunto, besides the graces that they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit, to work in them to will and to do of his good pleasure: yet are they not hereupon to grow negligent, as if they were not bound to perform any duty, unless upon a special motion of the Spirit; but they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them. ((XVI.III)

So ‘experimental’ preaching means preaching that is testing, preaching that directs the believer to self-examination and action, not preaching that is dry or academic in tone or content.  Nor preaching that is ‘experiential’ (in some generalized sense). Such preaching ought not to be some exotic, occasional exercise, but rather part of the staple diet of the Christian church, by which the wheat is separated from the chaff, and the believer is established in the faith that works by love. ‘Experimental’, not merely ‘experiential’.  We should save the term from the lumber-room, and give proper emphasis to it

God, both Impassible and Impassioned

We saw in the earlier post that Dr Rob Lister in his newly-published God is Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion,  adopts a ‘duality model’ of the divine nature and activities. God apart from creation is timelessly eternal, but upon creating the universe he ‘enters’ our universe and becomes temporal, in the same sense as we are, and as a consequence may interact with men and women in time. It was objected that this is seriously at variance with the classical theism of Christian tradition, including the Reformers and Reformed Orthodox and their Confessional positions. (Dr Lister believes that this tradition largely anticipates his own position. I doubt this, but we shall not consider these historical questions at this point, and no promises!) The problem with this proposal is that it leads to a basic hiatus in theism, since it generates a series of contradictions.

In this post I turn attention to the consequences of this duality for ‘A Theology of Divine Emotion’. Note that Dr Lister uses two terms of God, ‘impassible’ and ‘impassioned’. The first refers to God in se, eternal God. In his eternality, God is impassible. He is (or becomes) impassioned in re, according to the author, in the following carefully-qualified sense: God is subject to passion only in the sense that he voluntarily allows himself to have passions. He does not have passion otherwise. He can never be ‘overtaken’ by the onset of a mood or passion. In play here is Bruce Ware’s idea that besides God’s ontological immutability, his necessary immutability, and then that God is immutable in the sense that he resolves to be so. (Bruce A. Ware, ‘An Evangelical Reformulation of the Doctrine of the Immutability of God’ Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, (1986), God’s Greater Glory, 140f.)

So the second term, ‘impassioned’, refers to God’s activity in time, God in re, his voluntary responsiveness to his creation, and especially to his covenant people. (See the discussion of these very points in Ware, God’s Greater Glory, 134f.)

I agree with Dr Lister that an adequate account of God’s Christian theism must involve both his transcendence and his immanence. Otherwise  either deism or pantheism. So (Lister goes on) ‘divine passion’ must include both these elements, God’s essential impassibility an aspect of his transcendence, and his passionate engagement with his creation, and particularly with his covenant people, an aspect of his immanence. But to achieve this we do not need to go to the lengths of supposing a duality in God with respect to time, or with respect to space.

Some of the case for God’s duality in respect of time is taken by him from an account of his two-fold account of space. God transcends space, but also he enters space (and this expression does not refer to the Incarnation, or not exclusively to the Incarnation, as one might think). Lister says

We may begin this theological reflection [on God’s relation to time] with a glance at another instructive and parallel doctrinal duality, namely, God’s relationship to space. On this point, it is very common for Christian theologians to understand God as both nonspatial in himself and omnipresent within his creation. That is to say, Scripture readers recognize that though God is present (indeed omnipresent) within his creation, this does not diminish the fact that, in himself and apart from creation, God transcends spatial existence and limitation. His intrinsic spacelessness therefore does not preclude his acting within space. It is not within the purview of creation to lock its Creator – who transcends space in himself – out of creation. (227) (At such points he closely follows Bruce Ware, God’s Greater Glory, 134 f.)

So there are divine dualities in respect of time, these dualities having their precedent in God’s relation to space and being modelled on it.

But God does not ‘enter into relationship with the world’ as you and I may enter the room. In entering the room we enter the space of the room, and leave the space outside the room. But I do not see that to give an account of God’s relation with his creation we need to think of him in a similar fashion.  

Greater clarity is needed here, at a central focus of Lister’s discussion. For in discussing God’s relation with time Lister notes the view of William Lane Craig, according to which God is eternal apart from the creation, and then upon the creation, he is temporal. That is, there is a kind of ‘successiveness’ in God and time: eternal ‘until’ the creation, and temporal thereafter. Lister notes the difference between Craig’s view and the ‘duality’ view of Frame and Ware which he follows, as ‘slightly different’,  and goes on to say that he finds this view ‘compelling’ (226-7 footnote 25).  But these two views, the ‘successiveness’ view and the ‘duality’ view are very different.  (I discuss Craig's view at greater length in Chapter 12 of the Second Edition of Eternal God (OUP, 2010))

The second point has to do with a difficulty that Lister has with the classical view, or at least with one understanding of that view. Contrasting my own view with his in a short excursus Lister says,

At the junction of eternality and divine condescension, Helm argues that the accommodated revelation of God in Scripture is given to make to appear as though God were relating to his people in time, when in fact he is not. When addressing the reason for accommodated revelation, Helm himself states that it “is because God wishes people to respond to him that he must represent himself to them as one to whom response is possible, as one who acts in time.’ ….I disagree that the particular purpose  is to make himself appear ‘as one who acts in time’ and ‘as one to whom response is possible’. (The quote are from ‘The Impossibility of Divine Passibility’ in The Power and Weakness of God, ed. Nigel M, de S. Cameron, Edinburgh Rutherford House, 133-34)

Notice the quotation that Lister provides is not a defence of God appearing to be but not being, but of a God who by his eternal decree reveals himself in his creation little by little. He may act in this fashion in order to promote and ensure the response of faith, for example, or to test men and women in other ways. So I go on to say, in the passage cited by Dr Lister, ‘If that dialogue is to be real and not make-believe, then God cannot represent himself as wholly impassible, for then dialogue would be impossible’. (134) It is not make-believe for God to express anger or delight in time, any more than it is when God represents himself as one high and lifted up, wearing a robe whose train filled the temple (Isaiah 6). Each kind of action is one of condescension, in which in order to evoke an appropriate response from his people God represents himself to them as  angry on that occasion or as enthroned on that occasion. Why does God go to these lengths? Part of the answer must be that in these ways he teaches his people about themselves, about their needs and his grace in their lives.

These are the actions of the one eternal, timeless God who as the covenant-partner of his people represents himself first as doing or being one thing, and then another, and then another. His glorious goodness is ‘refracted’ in time according to his purposes for his people and with respect to others.  This involves the ‘little by little’ revealing of his will or purposes to those in time and space mentioned in the last post. In many cases these purposes are in order to test them: as with Abraham, or Moses, or Hezekiah, or Jonah, or Paul. In order to grasp this we need to see that the timeless God may will appearances of himself in timely fashion, in successive changes and responses, now this and then that. So God does not enter time in respect of his essence, nor does he enter the world as one might enter a room, not even in the Incarnation in which he takes to himself a human nature, but his power and grace reach to each corner of his creation as he sees fit, and little by little through time.  Such an arrangement is of course beyond our wit to understand, but it is not manifestly incoherent. More importnat it expresses and coheres with many a Scriptural narrative.

This takes us back to impassibility. God is able to represent himself as angry, or compassionate, or faithful, because in his glorious essence he is not impassive or indifferent in character, but eternally impassioned, and so never overcome with passion. (Here I use the same term as Lister, ‘impassioned’, but to refer to his eternal essence. God is eternally impassible and yet impassioned. Lister himself recognizes these differences in the usage of the term.(161)) With these resources God is able to express first this passionate state and then that passionate state as part of this process of teaching and disciplining his people, drawing out their faith in his promises and strengthening them in so doing.

So I agree with Dr Lister that God is both impassible and impassioned. But on this  understanding these terms do not refer to God’s ‘duality’, however understood, but both together are true of the one eternal, all-glorious God.   He is eternally, in himself, both impassible, not being subject to moods or swings or surges of any kind, and impassioned, fully caring and concerned, and capable fo expressing such 'impassions' in time.

The oddity is that in more than one place Dr Lister reveals sympathy with such an outlook. For example he quotes Ware as stating that ‘the contingent emotions of God are new expressions of what are, in God eternally, fixed emotional properties…’ (225-6) and Frame as stating that ‘God’s eternal decree does not change, it does ordain change. It ordains a historical  series of events….’.(239) But for some reason he does not see (nor perhaps do some others) that these views do not require a ‘duality model’,  but are easily integrated into the classical view.