What follows is a five-part series by my good friend Mike Vendsel based on a paper that he presented this past weekend at the Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference in Philadelphia.   Mike holds a Master of Arts in Philosophy from the Univ. of Dallas and a Master of Arts in Religion from Westminster.  Currently, Mike is an adjunct professor of philosophy at La Salle Univ. and is applying to a number of doctoral programs in philosophy and theology. 

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By Michael Vendsel

When mention is made of John Calvin’s theology, people may think of arid theological systems emphasizing predestination and determinism. That image is hard to maintain, however, when one reads Calvin’s treatment of the authority of Scripture, where he eschews rational arguments in favor of what he calls “the internal testimony of the Spirit”, some sort of inner operation of the Holy Spirit by which Christians are assured that the Scriptures are from God. But while this claim may excuse Calvin from charges of arid rationalism, it seems to suspend the authority of Scripture on nothing more than subjective feelings, and it also seems to overlook the fact that one could appeal to a deep internal sense of assurance in support of almost anything.

In what follows, I hope to address some of these concerns by placing Calvin’s doctrine of the internal testimony in context, both the context of his own thought and of the broader Western intellectual tradition. I will argue that he connects the assurances that come from the internal testimony of the Spirit with certain aesthetic features of Scripture, and that he sees those aesthetic features as having significant evidential value. I will go on to argue that in doing so he navigates a path between both rationalism and blind faith, and that he participates in a significant pre-modern tradition concerning the relationship between beauty and truth. 

The locus classicus for the doctrine of the internal testimony is Book I, chapter 7 of the Institutes. Book I deals with the knowledge of God the Creator, and chapters 1 through 5 describe the way that knowledge is revealed in creation. In chapter 6, however, we are told that the revelation in creation goes unrecognized because of sin, and that therefore Scripture is necessary. This naturally leads to the questions about the nature and character of Scripture which occupy chapter 7.

As chapter 7 begins, Calvin is eager to point out that Scripture’s authority lies entirely in the fact that it comes from God. Since God is Holiness and Truth Itself, it is impossible for Him to lie or be mistaken, and so Scripture, if it is God’s word, will be utterly incapable of being false. As such, it does not stand in need of verification or accreditation from anything external to itself. As he puts it, “When that which is set forth is acknowledged to be the Word of God, there is no one so deplorably insolent - unless devoid also both of common sense and of humanity itself - as to dare impugn the credibility of Him who speaks.”[1] Elsewhere Calvin speaks of this as the self-attestation or self-authentication of Scripture. 

But how do we know that Scripture has indeed sprung from heaven so as to be self-authenticating? The Catholic answer, of course, was and continues to be the authority of the church. But if this were the case, Calvin says, it would mean that there was a point at which human confidence in the Word of God would have been suspended on the contingent outcome of a human decision. In his words, “As if the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the decision of men!”[2] Additionally, he cites Ephesians 2:20, which says that the church is built on the foundation of the prophets and apostles. He argues that if prophetic and apostolic testimonies are foundational to the church, then they must antedate its authority.

If these criticisms were persuasive, one might try instead to construct rational, philosophical, or scientific arguments, but Calvin says that arguments of this sort can never produce the sort of assurance Scripture is meant to have. That is not to say that there are not arguments for Scripture - “if we wished to proceed by arguments,” he writes, “we might advance many things that would easily prove.”[3] Whatever was advanced, however, would come short of providing certainty - the possibility of having overlooking something or having made a mistaken inference would always be real. Fallible human reason cannot generate infallible arguments.

The only thing that is infallible is God’s Word, and so the only way we can have infallible assurance is if God’s Word itself identifies God’s Word. To put this another, less circular way, infallible confidence in God’s Word can only be achieved by the assurances of God Himself. This is the foundation of Calvin’s doctrine of the internal testimony of the Spirit.  “If we desire to provide in the best way for our consciences,” he writes, “that they may not be perpetually beset by the instability of doubt or vacillation…we ought to seek our conviction in a higher place than human reasons, judgments, or conjectures, that is, in the secret testimony of the Spirit.”[4]

Notes

[4] Ibid, 78