Wednesday feature column: "Institutionalized"

   Not only has post frequency dropped off recently, but I completely missed Saturday's installment of the round-up.  Which may be for the best, as I hadn't really happened upon anything fascinating that week anyway.  However, making up for this somewhat, I am launching a Wednesday evening tradition here at Notes that I will be calling "Institutionalized", wherein I will go over a passage from Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, and talk a little bit about it.  With no further introduction necessary, today's passage comes from the second book, "Of Christ the Redeemer".

"The saying of John was always true, 'whosoever denieth the Son, the same has not the Father' (1 John 2:23).  For though in old time, there were many who boasted that they worshiped the Supreme Deity, the Maker of heaven and earth, yet as they had no mediator, it was impossible for them to truly enjoy the mercy of God, so as to feel persuaded that He was their Father.  Not holding the Head, that is, Christ, their knowledge of God was evanescent; and hence they at length fell away to gross and foul superstitions, betraying their ignorance, just as the Turks in the present day who, though proclaiming, with full throat, that the Creator of heaven and earth is their God, yet by their rejection of Christ, substitute an idol in his place."  II.6.IV


   It has often been said that the Institutes are a book in which the ink appears not yet dry, and the number of times one can find things relevant to our day and time continually astonishes.  In chapter Six of the second book, Calvin has just given a brief overview of the various administrations of the Covenant of Grace, including Abrahamic, Mosaic and Davidic, and illustrated the need for the people of God for a Mediator, whether in the types and shadows of the sacrificial system, or the prophesied reign of the future seed of David.  Calvin states that this need of a Mediator was so central to the understanding of Israel, that although it was obscured by the machinations of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus assumed its importance.
    Calvin concludes that this centrality of the Mediator, and Christ's exclusive claim to that office of Mediation, is the background to 1 John 2:23.  He ends chapter Six with the Biblical death blow to two common intellectual ailments of postmodernity: firstly, the idea that Christ is one acceptable path to God among many, and secondly, the idea that Rabbinical Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, worship the same God.  Wheaton faculty protestation and Vatican II posturing to the contrary notwithstanding, to seek the Father without the Son is, for Calvin, the substitution of an idol in the Father's place.

~JS