Chapter 2, Sec.s 4 and 5 (pp. 35-42 in D&P).
Scripture Cited in Calvin Ch 2, Sec.s 5-6 (ESV)
Bible texts cited in the D&P translation for Sec.s 5-6, and carrying forward key citations from our prior week’s studies is given in the pdf below:
Deeds Not Creeds?
A theme of our time, and perhaps all time, is the devaluation of authority and specifically, under various categories, devaluing also the foundational truth from such authority, namely: doctrine, “bible,” theology, creeds and confessions, etc. This is a broader topic than ours here but prevailing view is often expressed by: “deeds not creeds.” Such might be more bluntly expressed as “scents not words,” scents as in following any smells of interest emitted by one’s own interests and spacetime environment.
Such admonition then devolves further in various forms that what one does, one’s moral / ethical code(s) of life, is more meaningful than any “doctrine” (or, apparently, even worse: “creed”). Because? Well, there’s another common phrase that “doctrine divides,” meaning, in essence, such could lead to conflict or even division (yes, indeed) when the only thing that is truly important is how we all behave, get along, help our fellow human, heal the planet, and so forth.
Another variant (there are so many, but all from the same source) is “love is love,” or “you have to follow your heart.” (Prov. 28:26 says something about this: One who trusts in his own heart is a fool, But one who walks wisely will flee to safety. ESV)
Underlying such views is the belief that there can exist a true morality not underpinned by an ultimate reality founded in God’s Law and Holiness. But humans, do not like to be solitary, nor unanchored, so arises the need to establish an alternative morality / ethic, and find fellow travelers who hold the same, or vice versa; either way ‘works.’
One of the dangers of reading only Calvin’s Little Book is that it can appear to be about “deeds not creeds.” This impression can occur because, as discussed previously, such Little Book is little for a reason: it is an extraction from his four substantial volumes (“Books”), which were published as The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Specifically the Little Book is just Calvin’s Chapters 6 through 10 of his Book 3 of the 80 chapters comprising the Institutes.. So, what we know as his Little Book, is embedded in a major book of “doctrine,” that has been so recognized since its publication (final edition was 1559). It stands along with one or two others as the crowning books on Christian systematic theology which is as “doctrine” as one can get.
But, we should remind ourselves, Calvin, as all the Reformers and later Puritans and still later true scholars of the faith, were also about “deeds,” doing, living out the Christian Life. As we saw in Weeks #1-3, Calvin himself claims that the Scriptures fulfill for us the necessity of a “model” (framework) of the mature Christian Life. So the Little Book is indeed about that important subject. But underneath there was and is, “the doctrine.” We will see later in our studies how important it is to look back in Calvin’s Institutes to get key background teaching to understand certain practical issues being addressed. To an extent we have done exactly this previously in looking back to his Book 3 on the subject of “regeneration” which idea is expressed by Calvin in the very first sentence of the first chapter of the Little Book (where “regeneration” was translated there by D&P as “God’s work” as we discussed).
Spiritual Gifts and Self-Denial
These two Sections, 5-6, deal primarily with spiritual gifts but in the context of self-denial, not the full expression of the doctrine of such gifts themselves. So, what then, is the connection with self-denial?
Two Essentials Regarding Spiritual Gifts
Calvin addresses two primary points about such gifts: their true origin (source) and their ultimate purpose (telos). So, first, it is essential to know and keep in mind, that gifts are special enablements given by God to his children, and, so, they are another element of our continuing reference to “The Image of God.” Second, these gifts are for the primary purpose (telos) of serving and so blessing the community of people that God seeks to affect. Gifts to each of us from God are His Doing for His Purpose, which ultimate Purpose is to exhibit His Glory in manifold ways and situations, including most obviously, within the community of fellow believers.
What are our individual responsibilities as gift-recipients? Much could be said about recognition of the gifts themselves, their development / maturation, realizing full potential of and in them, etc. Calvin’s concern, and ours, here, is focused on the necessary aspect of “self-denial” in relation to the possession and use of such gifts.
As Calvin develops in his Chapter 2 and again further in Chapter 3, “self” is the old, fallen self, not yet fully extinguished as to existence even in a regenerated believer, and so is part of a Christian’s day-to-day reality yet in this life. As a recipient of such gifts we all too readily think of them as belonging to ourselves, much like finding some cast-off valuable perhaps as received by an inheritance. Once we see something as “ours,” we naturally lean toward a perspective of self-sovereignty of whatever has been given. But the Scriptures make clear, as Calvin makes clear, we are not the end purpose (telos) of God’s gift but an agent of God, in the most humble way, to affect others for the glory of God, the Great Giver. For this to happen even at all, let alone well, “self” has to be denied, something exceedingly difficult to do, and delicate to navigate when doing, particularly with the more public gifts which naturally draw attention to its human agent.
Calvin reminds us, by his cited Bible texts as given in the pdf above, that we are to think of gifts as something like the astonishing enablements of various organs or parts of human body. We are all overwhelmingly sentient beings with extraordinary capabilities by the faculties endowed for sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, and capabilities for outward expression of speech, creations of the hand, and mobility of legs, and all the internal ‘overhead’ automated functions of breathing, digestion, life sustaining heart pumping, and (there’s more, much more) the mental processing of all the conscious and unconscious process control functions, memory, and reasoning. All of this works as an integrated whole, as a network, as a system. No one element would have any meaningful existence or function separate from being connected and live-‘wired’ to all the others. The connection to self-denial, then, is this: no human, or other being, could function if each part operated by some hyper-sovereignty whereby it ‘works’ only when it ‘feels’ like doing so or ‘works’ in a purely organ-preferring way. To have such a body would be, literally, disintegration leading to chaos and ruin.
1 Corinthians 13
One of the best loved chapters in the NT, and most misunderstood and misapplied, is the so-called “Love Chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13. Its poetic beauty has been used in countless wedding ceremonies even in non-Christian contexts and beliefs. But, alas, this chapter has nothing, as in zero, to do with marriage ceremonies, though of course the commendations to “be patient,” “be kind” is generally and universally good advice and should be, part of every driver’s license training manual and test exam, and some thousand other contexts.
As discussed elsewhere, context is extremely important to grasp what the Scriptures teach. So, 1 Cor 13 sandwiched between two adjoining chapters on the subject of gifts is most-reasonably understood as also speaking to gifts. Further, there is nothing in 1 Cor 13 providing any context for applying its admonitions to marriage or wedding ceremonies, so its use in that regard is, in my view, teaching error.
Now let us look at 1 Cor 13:5 cited by Calvin, and the verse that precedes it, in the pdf directly below:
The text shown in the pdf above is in interlinear form where each word of the ESV translation has below it five lines beginning with the “Lemma” of the original Koine Greek word from which manuscript form the ESV was translated, next the transliteration of the Lemma (meaning that insofar as possible an English alphabet equivalent is substituted for each letter of the Greek alphabet in the shown lemma), then the transliterated “root” word from which the lemma may have derived (if it is not itself its own root), the CODES that are used by Logos software to tell us the specific grammatical job the word does in the sentence, and finally the Greek Strong’s G number which allows us to find many resources on additional nuances of meaning of the word, and where else in the Bible the Koine word occurs, regardless of how it is translated.
Note that verse 5 has four “not’s” (Strong’s G3756), though the ESV, regrettably, translates two of them as “or” which preserves the sense but, likely was chosen to read more smoothly. The base meaning of such word, “ou” as shown transliterated, is simply “not!” Preceding verse 4 is shown in the left upper corner and also contains two more uses of exactly such “not!” word.
A further ‘fix’ to the translation is that in verse 4 there is no word “and” between “patient” and “kind;” so it would read in a literal translation as follows: “Love is patient kind”…. Again the ESV opted for smoother reading. I think seeing the direct pairing as these words occur in the mss is helpful because it suggests that they are one, a unity, as the chief characteristic of what “love” is. Then all the six following “not’s” further refine what such word pair look like in the real world of life.
Further as shown the word for “kind” is more than an attitude, but an action, a help.
Galatians 6:10
Self-denial has a broader application than only (though importantly) having to do with spiritual gifts. Calvin points us to Galatians 6:10, given in the pdf directly below:
Because verse 10 begins with “so then,” I’ve also shown the preceding verse for context.
Here are some observations on this passage:
- The Koine word “pros” occurs twice, translated “to,” but which word carries the weight of “toward,” namely that of a directed vector than a general trend or leaning. In some Biblical contexts it carries the weight of “face-to-face” which may not be fully meant here. But this does raise the question of our electronic age whether to “do good” can be adequately ‘done’ by texting and email only, as we are increasingly inclined to do.
- The word “opportunity” is translated from one of two common Koine words relating to time: chronos and kairos. The first is more “clock time,” and is the root of our word “chronometer” (literally, time-measure). The latter, our word here, is more about opportunity. So the text isn’t suggesting when one has “time” to “do good,” but more about “the opportunity” of so doing.
- Now let’s deal with “everyone,” which translates a very very common Koine word “pas” (or “pan,” both mean the same, but the slight spelling difference is like our indefinite article forms “a” and “an,” just two ways of ‘saying’ the same thing). “Pas” (“pan”) means “all,” but “all” is always bounded by context. “Pas” rarely, if ever, means “all” in the sense of “universality,” namely every and any possible example. Because this verse is in the concluding chapter of Galatians it is especially important to consider what has been expounded in the prior chapters and verses. Shown in the top right of the above pdf is Gal. 3:27-29 which captures the essence of Galatians on this matter, namely: that the distinctions we may naturally or historically or religiously have had (were we Galatians at that time, or behaving as such, presently), has been wiped out because, in Christ, we are “all” one, as children of Abraham, who is now the father of both a racial line of people and the people of faith in Messiah (Christ).
- The particular emphasis of doing good is on the “household of faith.” In our culture, “household” has a wide semantic range and much of it does not overlap the the root meaning of the Koine word from which it was translated (oikeios). As shown in the definition given on the pdf, the word strongly suggests an intimate familial relationship, usually multi-generational, living together, and frequently working together particularly in agricultural or ranching contexts. Metaphorically, then, it pictures all of us of the faith of Christ, identified with Him (“baptized” from 3:27) being of one family, regardless of where we may put our heads down at night.
- Finally, let us consider the important word “do,” or actually two different Koine words in Gal. 6:9-10 for “do:” poieo (vs. 9) and ergazomai (vs. 10). The base definitions for each word is as shown. Here is perhaps a useful way of understanding the distinction of meaning. If a football coach were to ask one of his lineman what he assignment was or is on some particular play, the lineman could simply say: “block x,” where “x’ might be the defensive end or tackle. “Block x” would be “poieo,” namely what is to be “done.” Alternatively, the lineman could have replied: “fight with x, and push x with all the energy I’ve got to make an opening for our running back.” That would be the word “ergazomai,” (and which makes for a happy football coach). The root of this word is “ergon” (as shown) and from this in modern times was chosen as a unit system of energy (the “erg”). It carries the weight of action, movement, making something happen, bringing into existence, at the cost of some effort, perhaps a lot of effort.
Stewards, Stewardship
The D&P translation has multiple occasions to use the word “steward” (see three examples on D&P p. 37). This was their translation of Calvin’s Latin word “administrati,” obviously related to “administrator.” The ESV translation of the Calvin cited text of 1 Peter 4:10 also has the word “steward.”
Well, “steward” is not an everyday term these days and may even be misconstrued by the first syllable “stew” might be expressing inner frustration (which is not the case). Below is the etymology of “steward” that will be helpful to our understanding:
Old English stiward, stigweard “house guardian, housekeeper,” from stig “hall, pen for cattle, part of a house” (see sty (n.1)) + weard “guard” (from Proto-Germanic *wardaz “guard,” from PIE root *wer- (3) “perceive, watch out for”). …The sense of “officer on a ship in charge of provisions and meals” is first recorded mid-15c.; extended to trains 1906. This was the title of a class of high officers of the state in early England and Scotland, hence meaning “one who manages affairs of an estate on behalf of his employer” (late 14c.). Meaning “person who supervises arrangements” at a meeting, dinner, etc., is from 1703.
Source here:
An interlinear pdf of 1 Peter 4:10 is directly below:
Let us observe the following with regard to the above:
- The passage has the root word “chairo” twice, once in the third row, “has received a GIFT,” and once in the bottom row, “of God’s varied GRACE.” This text is telling us that what we have received, a gift, is what we freely give to others, grace (a gift expressed freely, without cost, or drama). That is what “stewards” of God’s gifts do.
- We have here two words relating to to exercise or giving of God’s gifts: “diakoneo” and “oikonomos” (one a verb used as noun, translated “serve,” and the other a noun, “stewards”). The first word is clearly the origin of our word “deacon,” a traditionally used word in churches. The second word is another form of “oikos” which we considered in Gal. 6:10 above, but here combined with “nomos” having to do with distribution as shown in the definition of the above pdf. These two words together give us the sense of what we are to do with whatever has been given to us on behalf of the body of Christ.
- Although in the present culture of local church assemblies, the word “deacon” is freighted with honor, organization chart priority, importance. One is thus ‘elevated’ to become a “deacon” in our modern times. As shown in the definition above, that is not the basic meaning. On the contrary, it is closer to being designated servant such as a “table waiter.” It is a humble position of a servant of the provision of God’s gifts, in this context.