Truth
Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, July 25, 1999
Olevian’s Epitome
We learn from an epitome by Gaspar Olevian of Calvin’s famous book, Institutions, that in it Calvin deals with:
- the knowledge of God, which leads to a blessed immortality and
- the knowledge of ourselves.
Calvin tackles these two subjects starting from the Apostles’ Creed, which consists of four parts, relating to:
- God the Father,
- the Son,
- the Holy Spirit, and
- the Church.
The argument is: Mankind was created righteous, but then totally spoiled themselves. They cannot save themselves by good deeds however many they do, but can freely find salvation in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Having thus been saved they regain the gift of righteousness until they die, and start to be sanctified, the process advancing daily till resurrection of their bodies when it is perfected. All this is so that the mercy of God may be celebrated in heaven throughout eternity!
Calvin is considered a great theologian, and one of the founders of Protestantism. These Institutes of the Christian Religion written in 1536 are still revered by Protestant Christians. Yet you only have to read this summary to realise what a load of bunkum it all is. The phonyest medium could hardly come up with such outlandish tripe. Yet it is still valued by all these students at Protestant seminaries.
Immortality: The Bait of Christianity
The bait of Christianity for the Christian is clearly shown here. It is immortality. Calvin says it is obtained by knowledge of God—a curiously Gnostic sounding expression—which Calvin can teach you on the assumption of the Apostles’ Creed, the truth of which there is absolutely no evidence in fact.
Furthermore, there is no need of it and even Calvin’s brilliant theology is useless because, he tells us it is not learned at school, but every one is self-taught it from the womb. Nice one, Calvin! He was a very clever man so perhaps he was taking the rise out of all those who were reading and believing this stuff. Starting with an unproven and false premise can lead you anywhere at all, but it is not true, and Calvin himself seems to be telling us it is all worthless.
It is baffling why any intelligent person should read lengthy theological texts that begin with purely arbitrary beginnings. No doubt everyone of Calvin’s persuasion thinks the starting point is not purely arbitrary, but they rarely want to take the proof further back, and when they do they fall back on even earlier arbitrary beginnings like the gospels.
Oh, hang on. That’s what Calvin meant. You cannot learn it in school because we are all depraved but we can learn it from those that God has chosen to mirror his perfection! There you are—people like the apostles, and, though he wouldn’t claim it, Calvin himself, later believers might say.
Anyway, God can communicate his message through these mirrors with the hope that some of the depraved might recognize them. Actually he must be quite pleased that millions, even billions, do. Considering that elsewhere in the holy book, the mirrors say that few will be called, it must be quite gratifying.
Adam and Eve
The argument here begins with Adam and Eve, a sweet myth which can only be construed as true in the broadest of metaphorical interpretations. It is plain there never was nor could have been any primeval pair of humans like Adam and Eve. We know this from science and we know the origins of the myth—it is found in Babylonian mythology and it is from Mesopotamia that the Jews took it.
Adam and Eve are, however vitally important to the internal logic of Christianity because the primeval pair brought original sin into the world. Man has no means within himself, by which he can escape from guilt, and God’s curse of death on him. On the contrary every thing that proceeds from man is sinful.
Calvin also gives us dissertations on the image of God, free will, and original righteousness. And so we come to the doctrine of Divine Providence.
This continuation is worse: mankind can never be saved. They are incapable of working out their own cure by thinking a good thoughts, or doing what is acceptable to God. Mankind, by sinning, forfeited the privileges conferred on them at their creation, so recourse must be had to Christ the Mediator, who, though the eternal Son of God had to become human to secure salvation for everyone.
To be saved is another myth which can be traced to the Essene Jewish belief in a kingdom of heaven on earth which the Christians adopted and distorted. As Christianity came from Judaism, Calvin, like all Christian theologians is at pains to show why the Jews’ route to “salvation” through obeying God’s law was insufficient.
But the route substituted is so bizarre no one with a remaining brain cell, least of all anyone believing in an omnipotent god, could possibly believe it. It is a lot more credible that a lot of fakers and confidence tricksters decided to take advantage of the gullible to make a fast denarius. Today their heirs are still making bucks out of it after 2000 years.
Calvin rightly sees that Jesus had the roles of prophet, priest and king, like Moses and Samuel—the characteristics of the Essene saviour.
Calvin expounds the creed relating to Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, a mythology which is readily explained in terms of his naïve followers’ expectations of the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom on earth which Jesus taught but which proved false.
The Third Day
Jesus taught that those who followed him would be saints, perfectly holy people who would be resurrected into the kingdom of heaven on earth on the third day. Jesus’s corpse disappeared and the naïve followers thought he had been thus resurrected as the first of the saints or the first fruits. Consideration of these simple misconceptions persuades Calvin that Christ rightly and properly merits divine grace and our appreciation for saving us. But if there were no Adam and Eve to introduce “sin” into the world why does anyone have to be saved?
This philosophy has no objective of encouraging anyone to exert their mentality to change their ways from bad ones to good ones. Goodness does not matter! Just find salvation in Christ through the Holy Spirit which ingrafts Christ into people just as a gardener might graft a tree, then anyone however wicked they might be will be righteous through the gratuitous gift of the Holy Ghost. No wonder some of the cruellest and greediest people in the world have been Christians.
Besides that, the person in Christ also becomes daily holier and holier until they are resurrected. It is hardly any wonder that people once flocked to be Christians, nor that many still believe such lies. Yet despite them, the Christians still felt it necessary for a thousand years to torture anyone who took a different view. All those people believing that they are getting holier by the minute might reflect on the millions of people Christians—all of them presumably getting holier by the minute—murdered.
Of course, the saved had to desire repentance, the requirement of John the Baptist when he baptised his followers. Both he and Jesus were of the same Essene sect of apocalyptists and repentance is still demanded of Christians before baptism, despite the baptism of Jesus being supposedly different from that of John. It never was, at least as far as Jesus was concerned, but Christians from Paul on made it different to distinguish themselves from the original followers of Jesus and John.
Calvin discourses on justification—a mystery of the Holy Spirit—and on prayer, before turning to the reward believers get for holiness and righteousness—resurrection. According to Calvin, it is resurrection of the body not merely of the spirit into a transcendental place.
It is easy to see why this bit of dogma has been fully abandoned by most Christians, though many rejected it even at the outset. It is so plainly nonsensical that even the Romans could not accept it, let alone today’s scientifically trained generations.
And what is the purpose of it all? It is so that God can be celebrated in heaven for being a merciful chap? Do they really believe all this?
Trivial and Self-Indulgent
Calvin’s advocation of knowledge of ourselves sounds an admirable idea, but one which no one today could take seriously except in the most trivial and self indulgent way. It does not mean having an hour with a trick-cyclist three times a week, as wealthy American might think!
Amidst all this is a quite incomprehensible doctrine that purports to explain why it is that people who are totally depraved can be saved at all and why some are not, despite the ministrations of the Holy Spirit. The answer is the eternal election of God, would you believe?—of course you would, you’re a Christian. You believe all of this, without question!
We humans are no good apart from the good that God bestows on us and that only shows through acceptance of the gospel—and a few other things like the creed, the sacraments, communion and the rest of the Church’s malarky. Calvin explains how the Holy Spirit calls us effectually from spiritual death and preserves the Church—it is baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
From all this lot, administered by a caste of priests who, through God’s blessings, usually are well fed even when their flocks are dying of starvation, the faithful can find their eternal life in the midst of eternal death. Of course, the faithful can only get to know it is a scam when they die. It is the perfect scam!
In conclusion, Calvin blesses all the civilian governments that allow the church to practice as it does in its selfless task of saving the wicked. The church from its earliest times in Rome has taken this view, and the governments of the Empire and afterwards have always been grateful for this blessing. Since plenty of them have been gross tyrannies, it shows up Calvin and the church as being cynically opportunist throughout.
Budding theologians have to trudge through four books of many chapters each to get through this quagmire. Since they are plainly dedicated and determined, I suggest they study another difficult and challenging subject but one which is useful. Any one of the sciences would do.
