Warfield on Calvin's Doctrine of Natural Revelation

Warfield’s essay summarizing Calvin’s “Doctrine of the Knowledge of God” is important in two respects. One, in this small portion of the essay, Warfield gives us a complete and thorough summary of Calvin’s doctrine of natural revelation. Although some feel this is more Warfield’s understanding than Calvin’s, I think it rather obvious from Warfield’s careful citations of Calvin, the supposed wedge between the two is more imagined than real. Two, when Warfield develops his notion of general revelation as the necessary backdrop and context for special revelation (in his essay, “The Biblical Idea of Revelation,” reprinted in his famous Inspiration and Authority of the Bible), he draws heavily upon Calvin’s view.

This essay was originally published in The Princeton Theological Review, vii. April, 1909, 219-325. It has been reprinted in Calvin and Augustine (P & R 1956), 29-130; and Warfield, Calvin and Calvinism, vol 5., in the Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (Oxford Edition, 1931), 29-130. The essay can also be found here in its entirety: Calvin's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God

We are to contemplate God in his works . . .

The vigor and enthusiasm with which Calvin prosecutes his exposition of the patefaction [manifestation]of God in nature and history is worth emphasizing further. [Calvin] even turns aside (Institutes I.5.9) to express his special confidence in it, in contrast to a priori reasoning, as the "right way and the best method of seeking God." A speculative inquiry into the essence of God, he suggests, merely fatigues the mind and flutters in the brain. If we would know God vitally, in our hearts, let us rather contemplate Him in His works. These, we shall find, as the Psalmist points out, declare His greatness and conduce to His praise. Once more, we may observe here the concreteness of Calvin's mind and method, and are reminded of the practical end he keeps continually in view. So far is he from losing himself in merely speculative elaborations or prosecuting his inquiries under the spur of "presumptuous curiosity," that the practical religious motive is always present, dominating his thought.

But as Warfield points out, Calvin is convinced both of natural revelation’s force and its limitations

[Calvin’s] special interest in the theistic argument is, accordingly, due less to the consideration that it rounds out his systematic view of truth than to the fact that it helps us to the vital knowledge of God. And therefore he is no more anxious to set it forth in its full force than he is to point out the limitations which affect its practical value. In and of itself, indeed, it has no limitations; Calvin is fully assured of its validity and analyses its data with entire confidence; to him nothing is more certain than that in the mirror of His works God gives us clear manifestations both of Himself and of His everlasting dominion (Institutes 1.5.11).

As true as they are, the theistic proofs flounder due to human inability and sinfulness

But Calvin cannot content himself with an intellectualistic contemplation of the objective validity of the theistic argument. So dominated is he by practical interests that he actually attaches to the chapter in which he argues this objective validity a series of sections in which he equally strongly argues the subjective inability of man to receive its testimony. Objectively valid as the theistic proofs are, they are ineffective to produce a just knowledge of God in the sinful heart. The insertion of these sections here is the more striking in that they almost seem unnecessary in view of the clear exposition of the noetic effects of sin which had been made in the preceding chapter (ch. iv.) - although, of course, there the immediate reference was to the notitia Dei insita [the ingrafted knowledge of God], while here it is to the notitia Dei acquisita [the aquired knowedge of God]. 

Our bankruptcy of the natural knowledge of God is not due to its ineffectiveness but to our sinfulness

Calvin therefore teaches with great emphasis the bankruptcy of the natural knowledge of God. We must keep fully in mind, however, that this is not due in his view to any inadequacy or ineffectiveness of natural revelation, considered objectively. He continues to insist that the seeds of religion are sown in every heart (Institutes 1.2.1); that through all man's corruption the instincts of nature still suggest the memory of God to his mind (I. v. 2); that it is impossible to eradicate that sense of the deity which is naturally engraved on all hearts (Institutes 1.4.1); that the structure and organization of the world, and the things that daily happen out of the ordinary course of nature, that is under the providential government of God, bear a witness to God which the dullest ear cannot fail to hear (Institutes 1.5.1 3, 7, and 2.4.1); and that the light that shines from creation, while it may be smothered, cannot be so extinguished but that some rays of it find their way into the most darkened soul (I. v. 14).

God does not leave himself without a witness

God has therefore never left Himself without a witness; but, "with various and most abundant benignity sweetly allures men to a knowledge of Him, though they persist in following their own ways, their pernicious and fatal errors" (Institutes 1.5.14). The sole cause of the failure of the natural revelation is to be found, therefore, in the corruption of the human heart. Two results flow from this fact. First, it is not a question of the extinction of the knowledge of God, but of the corruption of the knowledge of God. And secondly, men are without excuse for their corruption of the knowledge of God. On both points Calvin is insistent. 

The “Seed of Religion” remains but is corrupted

[Calvin] does not teach that all religion has perished out of the earth, but only that no "genuine piety" remains (Institutes 1.4.1): he does not teach that men retain no knowledge of God, but no "certain, sound or distinct knowledge" (Institutes 1.5.12). The seed of religion remains their inalienable possession, "but it is so corrupted as to produce only the worst fruits" (Institutes 1.4.4). Here we see Calvin's judgment on natural religion. Its reality he is quick to assert: but equally quickly its inadequacy - and that because not merely of a negative incompleteness but also of a positive corruption. Men have corrupted the knowledge of God; and perhaps Calvin might even subscribe the declaration of a modern writer that men's religions are their worst crimes.

The “dark colors” men form—even Plato

Certainly Calvin paints in dark colors the processes by which men form for themselves conceptions of God under the light of nature, or rather, in the darkness of their minds, from which the light of nature is as far as lies in their power excluded. "Their conceptions of God are formed, not according to the representations He gives of Himself, but by the invention of their own presumptuous imaginations" (Institutes 1.4.1). They set Him far off from themselves and make Him a mere idler in heaven (Institutes 1.4.2); they invent all sorts of vague and confused notions concerning Him, until they involve themselves in such a vast accumulation of errors as almost to extinguish the light that is within them (Institutes 1.4.1); they confuse Him with His works, until even a Plato loses himself in the round globe (Institutes 1.4.11); they even endeavor to deny His very existence (Institutes 1.5.12), and substitute demons in His place (Institutes 1.5.13). Certainly it is not surprising, then, that the Holy Spirit, speaking in Scripture, "condemns as false and lying whatever was formerly worshiped as divine among the Gentiles," nay, "rejects as false every form of worship which is of human contrivance," and "leaves no Deity but in Mount Zion" (Institutes 1.5.13). The religions of men differ, doubtless, among themselves: some are more, some less evil; but all are evil and the evil of none is trivial. 

No excuse for our corruption of the knowledge of God

Are men to be excused for this, their corruption of the knowledge of God? Are we to listen with sympathy to the plea that light has been lacking? It is not a case of insufficient light, but of an evil heart. Excuses are vain, for this heart-darkness is criminal. If we speak of ignorance here, we must remember it is a guilty ignorance; an ignorance which rests on pride and vanity and contumacy (Institutes 1.4.1), an ignorance which our own consciences will not excuse (Institutes 1.5.15). What! shall we plead that we lack ears to hear what even mute creatures proclaim? that we have no eyes to see what it needs no eyes to see? that we are mentally too weak to learn what mindless creatures teach? (Institutes 1.5.15). We are ignorant of what all things conspire to inform us of, only because we sinfully corrupt their message; their insufficiency has its roots in us, not in them; wherefore we are without excuse (Institutes 1.4.1; 14-15). Our "folly is inexcusable, seeing that it originates not only in a vain curiosity, but in false confidence, and an immoderate desire to exceed the limits of human knowledge" (Institutes 1.4.1). "Whatever deficiency of natural ability prevents us from attaining the pure and clear knowledge of God, yet, since that deficiency arises from our own fault, we are left without any excuse " (Institutes 1.5.15).