Calvin's Belief In The Plenary Inspiration Of The Bible.
I cannot attempt to follow him in his vast work, to discuss his
interpretations of gospel facts and words, and his deductions
from them. Calvin's books, his life, and the Church established
by him, show that the system which he founded was both strong and
compact, wanting neither in logical accuracy nor in practical and
available power. For more than three centuries it has embodied
the faith and regulated the lives of many millions of Christians
in France, Switzerland, Holland, Scotland, England, and America.
In spite of its imperfections it is, on the whole, one of the
noblest edifices ever erected by the mind of man, and one of the
mightiest codes of moral law which has ever guided him. I will
only pause here to notice two of Calvin's doctrines, which I look
upon as grave errors, opposed, in my opinion, to the true spirit
of Christianity, and at the present time out of harmony with the
intellectual and social progress of the human race.
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The earliest complaints and attacks made by the reformers were
called forth by assertions of the authority and infallibility of
the pope. Luther was the first and mightiest, as he was also the
most impetuous leader of the assault. Calvin followed in the same
path; but he looked upon the work of demolition as almost
completed, and his own special work was to replace the authority
and infallibility of the Church by the authority and
infallibility of the sacred monument of divine revelation--that
is, to put the Bible in the place of the Pope: everything in the
name and in virtue of the Bible, nothing in opposition to or
without the Bible. This was Calvin's fixed idea, and the supreme
law of the Church which he established.
The extent and success of his work sufficiently prove that he
discerned the needs and religious instincts of his age. Calvin's
reformed Church at once took up an important position which it
has now occupied for three centuries. Catholicism and
Protestantism may continue their long struggle, but they cannot
underrate each other's strength; they have both survived many
reverses; they live on in spite of many faults, and at the
present time they are both face to face with the same enemies.
Both are now impelled by reason and commanded by necessity to
acknowledge their faults and to recognise the cause of their
reverses. In so far as the future is in the hands of man, their
future depends on the extent to which they have attained the
clearness of vision which belongs to long life and experience.
I am a Protestant, and for that very reason I intend to speak
exclusively of Calvin's errors and faults as a Protestant
reformer.
When he proclaimed the absolute infallibility and universal
authority of the Holy Scriptures, he failed to recognise the true
object and meaning of the divine revelation which they contain.
It is a revelation, which refers to the relation between man and
God, the duties of man towards God and towards his fellow-men.
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This is indicated from the very beginning by the nature of the
subjects treated of, and it is confirmed by the Decalogue and the
Gospel. I may quote here some of the reflections which I have
already published on this subject, for day by day I find that
they represent my thoughts more accurately. Like Calvin, 'many
pious and learned men uphold the plenary inspiration of the Holy
Scriptures; they assert that not only the thoughts but the words
in which they are clothed are divinely inspired--every word on
every subject, the language as well as the doctrine. This
assertion seems to me to indicate a deplorable confusion, giving
rise to profound misconceptions as to the meaning and aim of the
sacred volume, and causing its authority to be very seriously
compromised. God never intended to teach men grammar by a
supernatural process, and he no more intended to teach them
geology, astronomy, geography, and chronology than grammar. Not
on these do the rays of divine light fall, but on the relation of
man to his Creator, and on the laws of his faith and life. God
dictated to Moses the laws which regulate the duties of man
towards God and towards his fellow-man; he left it to Newton to
discover the laws which govern the universe. The inspiration of
the Sacred Volume relates not only to religion and morality, but
to religion and morality alone, and apart from any mere human
science.
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'I have read the Bible over and over again, with the greatest
care, with no intention either of criticizing it or apologizing
for it, but with the single aim of learning to understand its
character and meaning aright. The more I have advanced in this
study, and have been able to live as it were in the Bible, the
more clearly have I apprehended two contemporaneous facts, a
divine fact and a human fact, which are at the same time entirely
distinct and closely connected. In every part of the Bible I find
God and man: God, a real and personal being, not affected by any
external incident, and in whom there is no change, always the
same and immoveable though the centre of universal movement, and
Himself giving this unprecedented definition of Himself, "I am
that I am;" and man, an incomplete, imperfect being, subject to
change, full of flaws and contradictions, of lofty instincts and
degrading tendencies, inquiring and yet ignorant, capable of good
and evil, and able to attain perfection in spite of his
imperfection. Throughout the whole Bible we see God and man,
their union and their antagonism: God watching over man and
guiding him; man sometimes accepting and sometimes rejecting the
influence of God. If I might be allowed to use such an
expression, I would say that the Divine person and the human
person are brought face to face with each other; we see them
acting on each other, and influencing events. We see the
education of man after his creation, the education of a religious
and moral being, neither more nor less. At the same time, whilst
God elevates he does not transform mankind; he created man
intelligent and free; he illuminates the laws of his spiritual
and moral life with a Divine light; but he leaves him to struggle
with great dangers and much peril, until he learns the right use
of his intellect and will. And at every period, in all
circumstances, even whilst he still continues to influence him,
God takes man just as he finds him, with all his passions, vices,
weakness, error, and ignorance, just what he has made himself,
and is making himself every day, by the good or evil use of his
intellect and his will. This, I say, is the Bible, and its
history of the relations between God and man.
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'What a striking contrast is brought out in this history, and yet
what a close and strong bond between those whom I scarcely dare
to call the two performers! In no tradition or poetical
invention, in no religious mythology does God appear so exalted,
so pure, so free from all the imperfection and disquietude of
human nature, so immutable and serene, so truly God as in the
Bible. On the other hand, among no people, in no historical
narrative or document is man portrayed as more violent, more
barbarous, more brutal, more cruel, more prone to ingratitude and
rebellion against God, than among the Hebrews. Nowhere else, and
in no other history does the distance seem so great between the
divine sphere and the human region--between the sovereign and his
subjects. And yet the Israelites never separate themselves from
God. In spite of their vices and evil passions they always turn
again to the Lord, and always acknowledge his law and his
government, even at the very time that they violate the one and
rebel against the other. God is, however, nowhere manifested as
so solicitous with regard to man--at the same time so exacting
and so sympathetic; he does not change a man at one stroke, and
by a single act of his sovereign will; he watches all his
short-comings, his weakness and his errors, but never forsakes
him; he holds the torch of Divine light always before his eyes,
and never loses his interest in the destiny of mankind.
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Religion and morality are the subjects which not only
predominate, but which are exclusively presented in the sacred
volume: nowhere else have the aspirations and labours of human
science held so insignificant a position in human thought and
society; God, and the relation between man and God,--this, and
this only, occupies every page of the Bible.
'I do not hesitate to affirm that science, with its special and
manifold subjects, astronomy, geology, geography, chronology,
physical science, historical criticism, all are foreign to the
plan and design of the Holy Scriptures. The study of science is
the work of the human intellect, and of the human intellect
alone: science is a fruit that ripens slowly, and is only brought
to perfection by the intellectual labour of many generations. If
then, in addition to those facts which are expressly declared to
be miraculous, you find statements and assertions in the Bible
which are in opposition to the established truths of science, do
not be astonished or dismayed; it is not the word of God on these
subjects; it is the language of the men of that age, and it
accords with the measure of their knowledge, or rather of their
ignorance; it is the language which they spoke, and in which it
was necessary to speak to them if they were to understand what
was said.
'The fact is so simple that I am astonished that it should be
necessary to assert it: in all times and places, among all
nations and in every age, there are spontaneous instincts, and
common aspirations and ideas in matters of religion and morality,
which not only clothe themselves, as it were, in the same
language, but have the power of making their language
intelligible to all those to whom it is addressed, in spite of
the difference which there may be in their several degrees of
education and civilization.
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But we meet with nothing similar in purely scientific matters;
the majority of men see and speak, not in accordance with the
facts of science, but according to appearances; and they
understand, or do not understand, they listen, or do not listen,
just in so far as they have any knowledge of science, or are
ignorant of it. What would the Hebrews in the desert have said,
or the Jews who gathered round the Apostles, or the savages of
Polynesia addressed by the first Christian missionaries, if they
had been told that it is the earth which revolves round the sun,
and that the earth is a spheroid, inhabitable and inhabited at
the opposite points of its circumference? What more natural and
inevitable than the agreement of the language of Scripture with
the imperfect knowledge which men possessed of scientific
subjects, even although the light of Divine inspiration was, at
the same time, shed upon the laws which govern the spiritual and
moral nature of human beings?
'No one admires and honours science more than I do: the study of
science is one of man's highest vocations, but it has nothing to
do with the relation between man and God, and the influence of
God upon man. God is not a lofty philosopher who reveals
scientific truths to men in order that they may have the noble
pleasure of contemplating and disseminating them; the search for
these truths is a purely human labour. The divine work is grander
and more complicated, and it is essentially practical.
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That which all men and every man needs and craves, the most
ignorant as well as the most learned, that which humanity demands
from God is the knowledge of those religious and moral truths
which ought to influence the soul and life, and in accordance
with which the life of the future will be regulated. God meets
this requirement of the whole human race; and the Bible is
addressed to all that they may be saved by leading a new life,
not that they may be well taught in matters of science.'
[Footnote 64]
[Footnote 64: _Meditations sur la Religion chrétienne,_
vol. i. p. 151; vol. iii. p. 27.]
If Calvin had lived in the nineteenth century I am inclined to
believe that his clear and vigorous intellect would have
preserved him from falling into this error of attributing
universal infallibility to every word contained in the Bible, and
that he would have recognised the aim and the true tendency of
those Divine revelations of which the Bible is so noble a
monument. Even a hundred years after his death the labours of the
great critics of the seventeenth century, of Richard Simon,
Bayle, and John Leclerc, would have helped him, by the clear
light which they threw on this question, and would have shown him
how to shield the Christian faith effectually both from improper
attacks and from the legitimate discoveries of human science. The
domain of science is not the same as that of Christian faith, nor
are they equal; the very aim of revelation has been to enunciate
truths, and to shed a light into the soul which no amount of
scientific labour would have sufficed to procure. This is the
real and true character of the Bible; it is from this that all
its authority proceeds, and by this, at the same time, that the
limits of its sphere are defined.
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