Calvin on Faith Message
Consider Calvin's definition of Christian faith:
"Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit" (John Calvin, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. from the 1559 Latin ed. by Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols., in Library of Christian Classics, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), Book III, Chapter 2, Section 7).
This is a precise definition. Each phrase contributes something important. It is striking that Calvin defines faith as “knowledge.” Moreover, it is “a firm and certain” knowledge. It is something that we know, and it is something that we know surely and with great confidence. This represented a major change from the medieval catholic church. That church had taught that faith was not at all a matter of knowing but instead only a matter of believing and feeling, even believing what could not be known, and therefore a matter of believing what that church said to believe. Calvin rejected that as nonsense. He insisted instead that faith is a matter of what we can know, not merely of what we believe or how we feel. Still today, there are people who portray faith as a matter of believing, and feeling good about, that which we cannot know. But what comfort would that be? How saving could that be? Of what personal or pastoral value would that be? How surely could we believe, and therefore how comforted could we be, by that which we do not and cannot know?
Not only is faith “a firm and certain knowledge,” but also it is a knowledge “of God’s benevolence toward us.” The very content of our knowledge is that God is good toward us. It is not only knowledge that God is or that God exists. It is additionally and specifically the knowledge that God wills our good. Such knowledge is, in fact, salvation. Thus we see again the importance of knowing in contrast to not knowing, or ignorance. To be ignorant of God’s grace and mercy would be to be hopelessly lost. To know God’s grace and mercy is to be saved. So it is that we continue to emphasize the importance of the life of the mind as a major component of Christian life and faithfulness; we continue to emphasize the importance of education and reading; we continue to emphasize the importance of studying and learning the content of the Scriptures.
How do we know of God’s benevolence? Faith is “founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ.” The knowledge of God’s benevolence is not a general knowledge. It is not available by looking out at the world. It is not available by searching within one’s heart. Instead, the knowledge of God’s benevolence is a very specific knowledge, and its foundation is “the truth of the freely given promise in Christ.” We know that God wills our good because, and only because, Jesus Christ tells us so. We know that God wills our good because, and only because, Jesus Christ paid the price for our sin in his death on the cross and promised to us in his place the good that he deserved. This is not ignorance. This is not a warm feeling. This is very specific and well grounded knowledge of God’s good will for us.
Moreover, this knowledge is “both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Again, this is not a generally available knowledge, and it is not even a knowledge available to pious seekers. This knowledge depends upon divine revelation to our minds and divine sealing upon our hearts. That is to say, as all Protestants know, we are saved by grace alone. If we were smart enough or good enough to attain this knowledge ourselves, we would not need God’s grace and we would not even need to be saved. But we are not smart enough, and we are not good enough. We need help, and that help is grace. What that grace, that act of God in the Holy Spirit, does in us is to give to us the gift of faith, both (a) knowing in our minds that God wills our good and then, because and only because we already know it, also (b) believing also with all our hearts that God wills our good. Such knowledge is the faith through which alone we are saved.
Such an understanding of faith as knowledge and as a gift from God, in Christ, and through the Holy Spirit stands over against the skepticism that some have today about the possibility of knowing God through revelation and also stands over against the bizarre confidence others have about knowing God through many other ways, such as introspection, politics, and so forth. According to Calvin, our knowledge of God depends upon God’s own initiative in revealing himself in Jesus Christ as recorded in the Scriptures and as illuminated, or opened to us, by, as well as being impressed upon us by, the Holy Spirit. Apart from that, we have nothing.
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