Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Institutes of the Christian Religion (text only) Revised edition by J. Calvin,H. Beveridge > Status Update

The topic before us now is the Triune nature of God. (1) Before embarking on such a weighty and difficult endeavor as touches on the very essence of the Divine Being and therefore ventures on such fearfully Holy ground, two revealed aspects of God should be closely guarded to sober our gross imaginations and curb the impudent and frivolous speculations of which our darkened, insensible minds are so prone. These aspects of His essence are His immensity, by which He cannot possibly be measured by the finite human mind, and His spirituality, which "forbids us to indulge in carnal or earthly speculation concerning Him."

By refusing to humble themselves and thereby losing sight of these important restraints, theologians and philosophers have brought no end to their stupid, fanciful, and damnable fabrications. Two examples: The Manichees, in denying His immensity, have by the measure of their own rationality conceived of two first principles, and thus blasphemously made the Devil equal with God. The Anthropomorphites, in denying His spirituality (because God often speaks of His hands, feet, eyes, heart, etc.), are easily refuted. "For who is so devoid of intellect as not to understand that God, in so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children? Such modes of expression, therefore, do not so much express what kind of being God is, as accommodate the knowledge of Him to our feebleness. In doing so, He must, of course, stoop far below His proper height."

(2) First, let it be understood that "the essence of God is simple and undivided, and contained in Himself entire, in full perfection, without partition or diminuation." But when the apostle calls the Son, "the express image of His person" (Heb 1:3), "he undoubtedly does assign to the Father some subsistence in which He differs from the Son." So we are taught that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (which will be proved shortly), "each distinguished by His Own peculiar properties" but there is no distinction or multiplication of essence between Them. The Latin Western Church, often utilizing "persona" instead, nevertheless are in complete agreement with the Greeks on this point.

(3) Many excessively fastidious disputes have been fought quibbling over particular words on this matter, but the point shouldn't be which terms are used but what is meant by those who use them. As long as the words used are "kept in reverent and faithful subordination to Scripture truth, used sparingly and modestly," then they can aid in teaching and understanding Scripture's doctrine.

For all too often, (4) those who carp at the words, "Trinity" and "person," are not doing so in good faith, but rather are heretical calumniators attempting to evade the plain teaching of Scripture by their quibbling. Ambiguity of expression being a kind of hiding place, these "slippery snakes escape by their swift and tortuous windings if not strenuously pursued and, when caught, firmly held."

Arius cheerfully agreed that Christ was God, even the Son of God, pretending to concur with others. "But meanwhile, he ceased not to give out that Christ was created and had a beginning like other creatures." Thus the ancient church fathers pressed him to use the word "homoousios" ("of the same substance") as well, which he tellingly would not do. "That little word distinguished between Christians of pure faith and the blasphemous Arians." Next came Sabellius, who confessed the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but then "sang another note, that the Father was the Son, and the Holy Spirit the Father, without order or distinction." To protect the flock against his tortuous unitarian craftiness by the simple open truth taught in Scripture, the worthy doctors of the church began to insist upon the word, "Trinity" ("three in one").

Indeed, (5) it would be better if these terms had no need to exist provided all could be agreed that "The Father, Son, and Spirit are one God, and yet the Son is not the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but that each has His peculiar hypostatis." Such would have saved much unnecessary infighting among good, orthodox men in the early church, who interchangeably and often confusingly used many terms to express the same truth.

This "should be an admonition to us not instantly to dip our pen in gall and sternly denounce those who may be unwilling to swear to the terms which we have devised. When what is true is confessed without equivocations we dwell not on words. But I was long ago made aware, and, indeed, on more than one occasion, that those who contend pertinaciously about words are tainted with some hidden poison; and therefore it is more expedient to provoke them purposely than to court their favor by speaking obscurely."

To say nothing more of words, (6) "by 'person,' I mean a subsistence in the divine essence, related to the other two but distinguished from them by incommunicable properties. By subsistence we wish something else to be understood than essence." In accordance with the Logos being "with God," and, immediately after, "was God" (John 1:1). In these "incommunicable properties" "relation is distinctly expressed" because each considered in and by themselves are properly called God, but the Father, for example, is truly the Father because of His distinct relation with the Son.

My thoughts: I resonate strongly with Calvin's final thoughts on the use of exact theological language (quoted at length above). We shouldn't be so scrupulous as to uncharitably force others to use terms that do not appear in the Bible, and yet, many (but certainly not all) teachers who take issue with specific terms do so to purposely remain vague so that they may smuggle in foreign doctrines. It is very necessary when teaching (especially the Bible!) to always explain what you mean and not to court the approval of heretics through purposeful vagueness.

This is especially true that genus of teachers I call "story-teller theologians." They'll often begin by stating they don't like some particular term (Trinity, person, hypostatic union, immutability, penal substitutionary atonement, inerrancy, sufficiency of Scripture, etc.), and then, instead of defining anything concrete themselves, they just start telling anecdotal, adjacent stories of how the term or the ideas behind it were misused, or how it hurt or confused them or someone they knew, or how they met a really good person once who disagreed. One is (intentionally) left in a cloud of deconstruction. If a "Bible" teacher refuses to be clear and precise up front, then I have little patience for them nowadays.