Knowledge of God Universal, and Universally Corrupted

 Well, it’s been a busy and exhausting 38 hours in the “house down the lane,” so I was unable to get the blog posted yesterday.  Here, at last, are some thoughts on chapter 4, please feel free to send your comments on this very important chapter. 

Calvin has argued that God has caused all men to have a knowledge of Him, a sense of Him which, unhindered by sin, is adequate to produce a religious devotion, an earnest reverent affection.  It is altogether sufficient for this and hence sufficient for the blame and condemnation of any who, receiving this revelation, refuse to render to Him the response of pious love.  So why is it that nobody does so?  That’s right, nobody does so, unless liberated by regenerating grace, but that will come later.  For now, Calvin is arguing that this knowledge is “stifled or corrupted, ignorantly or maliciously.”  So here are two reactions, stifling and corrupting; and two reasons, ignorance and malice. This is a very important fact.  Many people exposed to these doctrines take some kind of perverse refuge in their depraved inability.  “How can you blame people for not being believers?  They can’t help it.”  Calvin’s answer: they are not innocent in their unbelief because the testimony to God in and around them is stifled or corrupted.  Let’s check it out.

 

First, remember what he is talking about—a “seed of religion.”  Do not mistake this for the “seed” you read about in such biblical verses as 1 John 3:9, or the seed in the parable of the sower, which is the message of the gospel.  No, this seed is a metaphor for “the sense of God.”  He calls it a seed of religion because of the tendency this sense/knowledge would have to cause religion to grow in the soul and life of a person.  Furthermore, if you are going to understand Calvin you have to get completely out of your head the idea that “religion” is a bad thing.  In recent years “religion” has got a bad rap, as something which men do “reaching up” to gain God’s favor as opposed to the gospel which is God reaching down to save man.  Now this very chapter of the Institutes will show that this is very often the case, but as such it is false religion as opposed to true religion.  Yes, this is a great chapter for setting this matter strait.  Just quit thinking of “religion” as bad and think of it as “response to God.”  Therefore, whether it is bad or good will depend on whether it is the response God wants or otherwise.

Calvin’s position is that man, as fallen and not regenerate, always chooses the wrong response.  Here is how he explains it.   First, men do not “cherish (the seed) in their hearts” or permit it to “grow into maturity.”  There is plenty of scripture to back him up in this.  For instance, Paul’s sermon in which he tells the Athenians, “For we are also his offspring. Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and device of man,” Paul is providing an example of this which the Athenians ought to have reasoned for themselves, that God is Spirit, and to worship him carnally to worship Him as if He is a God we can control or please with carnal rites and ceremonies is to worship him in a kind of guilty careless ignorance and whatever worship is rendered is nothing but superstition. Note the following—

 I mean not to insinuate that their excessive absurdity frees them from guilt; for the blindness under which they labour is almost invariably accompanied with vain pride and stubbornness. Mingled vanity and pride appear in this, that when miserable men do seek after God, instead of ascending higher than themselves as they ought to do, they measure him by their own carnal stupidity, and neglecting solid inquiry, fly off to indulge their curiosity in vain speculation.

“Instead of ascending higher than themselves.”  This is what Paul is accusing the Athenians of doing, worshipping a god who is, in fact, lower then themselves.  It is also what people today always do when they invent God in their minds and worship the God they invent there.  People never imagine the God of the Bible, and most, if you describe the biblical God to them will respond, “My God would not be like that.”  No, he wouldn’t, but what makes your unbelief so blameworthy is that you hold on to it despite the fact that the God-given sense of deity tells you that the God who is is greater than you can create or control.  Now, here’s the thing—while they may “worship” this self-invented God most devoutly and sincerely it does them no good.  As Calvin says so well, “With such an idea of God, nothing which they may attempt to offer in the way of worship or obedience can have any value in his sight, because it is not him they worship, but, instead of him, the dream and figment of their own heart.”  How contrary to popular thinking is that!

In paragraph 2 he talks about something else which continues to be common.  We might call it “practical atheism;” when people say they believe in God, and may sincerely believe in some god, but do not allow that belief to make any difference to them so that they may as well be saying, “God does not know,” or “God does not care,” or “God does not interfere with man but leaves man to himself,” or something like that.  Note, Calvin rightly puts the finger on the true root of this atheism, they “stifle the light of nature and intentionally stupify themselves” because they are “hardened in a daring course of sin.”  How many have you known who once made professions of faith but who now are skeptics, openly arguing for atheism, or, if not for atheism, at least for a kind of god who does not care.  

It may be helpful at this time to say a word about Epicureanism.  This philosophy, which was mentioned in the previous chapter had received a bit of a resurgence during the Renaissance.  Perhaps this was due in part to the influence of one of the pioneers of the Renaissance, Lorenzo Valla, who was an advocate of it.  It was one of the major philosophical influences in the ancient world of Greece and Rome.  Epicureans were even among the Athenian philosophers who Paul addressed in the words quoted earlier.  I mention this because the basic beliefs of Epicureanism are the foundation of so much of modern life.  Like many today, they were not true atheists, but the god or gods they believed in had made the world and left it alone not to be controlled by gods or destiny, but not controlled at all, subject only to chance.  They were naturalistic materialists, believing, like Democritus, that everything there is is made up of atoms and there is no soul, and hence, no afterlife, no heaven, no judgment, no hell.  Had they been exposed to it, they would have embraced Darwinian evolution and their theme song would have been John Lennon’s “Imagine.”  Consequently, since this life is all there is, they lived for pleasure; not for dissipation which would result in pain, but for the controlled indulgence of “the good life.”  Now much of what Calvin is opposing in this chapter is the result of this revival of Epicureanism, a world view which, of course, had been introduced in the garden of Eden.  Of people thinking like this, Calvin says, “they do not disown [God’s] essence, they rob him of his justice and providence, and represent him as sitting idly in heaven,” and concludes,

Nothing being less accordant with the nature of God than to cast off the government of the world, leaving it to chance, and so to wink at the crimes of men that they may wanton with impunity in evil courses; it follows, that every man who indulges in security, after extinguishing all fear of divine judgment, virtually denies that there is a God.

He goes on to show the effect of this, which we so often see, that these practical atheists become actual “scorners,” who ridicule the God of the Bible in the most arrogant and abusive ways and, as he says, “their prevailing state of mind in regard to him is brutish oblivion.”

Of course, not all are practical atheists, snuffing out the seed of religion by satisfying themselves with an Epicurean world view of absentee gods.  No.  Others give expression to it not by humbly seeking the God who has revealed Himself, but by zeal in their self-created religion.  Again, sincerity and zeal makes it right.  Witness the ways that people respect zealous and sincere advocates of most any kind of religion, as if God must be pleased with such strong devotion.  No, says Calvin:

 It is easy to see how superstition, with its false glosses, mocks God, while it tries to please him. Usually fastening merely on things on which he has declared he sets no value, it either contemptuously overlooks, or even undisguisedly rejects, the things which he expressly enjoins, or in which we are assured that he takes pleasure. Those, therefore, who set up a fictitious worship, merely worship and adore their own delirious fancies; indeed, they would never dare so to trifle with God, had they not previously fashioned him after their own childish conceits.     . . . .  “No religion is genuine that is not in accordance with truth.”

  Next, Calvin says, “Those whose inclinations are at variance with the justice of God, knowing that his tribunal has been erected for the punishment of transgression, earnestly wish that that tribunal were overthrown.”  This is another case of people defending a self-centered theology which, in effect, denies the God of the Bible because their own lusts, desires, or as Calvin puts it, their “inclinations,” are for those things which they know are forbidden by the God of the Bible.  They would be happy for there to be no God, for it would give them freedom to sin.  So, rather than deny themselves their own sinful ways by repentance, they deny God His justice, often by ridiculing the idea that there is in God a will to punish evil.  

On the other hand, some, cannot convince themselves of this, and, as Calvin says, “Perceiving that they are always within reach of his power, that resistance and evasion are alike impossible, they fear and tremble.” What do they do?  They “have recourse to some species of religious observance.”  As he will explain further later on, this is the reason for the false religion in the world.  He does not think much of it, saying, “it is easy to infer how much this confused knowledge of God differs from that piety which is instilled into the breasts of believers, and from which alone true religion springs.”

One of the most important portions is at the end of the paragraph when he concludes this chapter.  The bottom line is, all the false religion in the world is due to, and proof of, the sense of Deity which all men have.  As he says,

Still, however, the conviction that there is some Deity continues to exist, like a plant which can never be completely eradicated, though so corrupt, that it is only capable of producing the worst of fruit. Nay, we have still stronger evidence of the proposition for which I now contend, viz., that a sense of Deity is naturally engraven on the human heart, in the fact, that the very reprobate are forced to acknowledge it. When at their ease, they can jest about God, and talk pertly and loquaciously in disparagement of his power; but should despair, from any cause, overtake them, it will stimulate them to seek him, and dictate ejaculatory prayers, proving that they were not entirely ignorant of God, but had perversely suppressed feelings which ought to have been earlier manifested.

So, here is an answer for you whenever someone tries to dismiss Christianity by saying there are so many religions in the world.  Yes, there are, because every one of them is responding to the inescapable revelation God has made of Himself.  And then you can show them that none of those religions work to solve the problem that now exists between man and God.  Only Christ does that.  

I have one question regarding paragraph 4.  Why do you pray?  How and when do you approach God?  How do thoughts about God affect you?  Okay, that is three questions, but they aim at one thing, which is, do you delight in God because He is good, approaching Him with a holy loving fear, or would you be just as happy if you could have the world free from evil but without God?