Below are resources for our initial study in Calvin’s Little Book, Chapter 1. All page references are to the Denlinger & Parson translation (D&P).
An overview of Calvin’s Little Book
The below pdf is a graphic of the relation of Calvin’s Little Book to his Institutes. It also shows the three parts of Ch 1 of the Little Book.
The Chapter Headings of Book 3 of Calvin’s Institutes
Given below is the table of contents of Book 3 of Calvin’s Institutes showing the chapters that comprise the Little Book.
An illustration of the noteworthiness of Calvin’s Institutes, from an image of one annotated page of a last 15th Century book having been offered for sale. As will be discussed, the below shown page, on the right hand side, begins Chapter 2 of the Little Book.
We will be examining these two pages in the Weeks when we are at that point in Ch 2 of the Little Book. The underlining from the scholar-owner of that book makes for fruitful thought to us now some 550 years later.
The first sentence of Calvin’s Little Book
First sentences can be very important. With Calvin in particular, who is such a succinct writer, every word in this opening passage is significant to all the points he will make later. Below is pdf of this opening sentence in various translations:
The D&P translation reading “work of God” was their seeking to avoid confusing the reader at the opening of the Little Book by a literal translation of Calvin’s text. The word Calvin used was “regeneration.” In the original context of Book 3 of the Institutes, this word made perfect sense because Calvin had developed the doctrine of regeneration throughout Book 3. This is summarized in the pdf below:
Regeneration
One of the fundamental truths of Bible is that there is life out of death. Going back to the beginning of the beginning, God told Adam that the price of disobedience within the bounty of the Garden of Eden was death.
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Genesis 2:15-17, English Standard Version
We know what he chose. What we also know is that Adam’s choice was as the federal head for the human race. So that, as the Scriptures day, all in Adam die. All die.
For as in Adam all die
1 Cor 15:22a, English Standard Version, ESV
We are all in Adam’s character and carry his death within each of us, the very thing that we most-shrink from, loss of being. But such death was not then for Adam, nor for us, immediate extinguishment of physical, biological life. That inexorably comes to pass; one of out one dies. And the difference between the longest and short living humans is significant to us not yet physically dead, but looking back over the sands of time to some prior century’s burial ground, how significant was that difference between the death of a child and an old man? Really? Measured by a 1000 elapsed years, or more, any difference is a mere handbreadth in time. And so will our death be, whenever it occurs, to some generation looking back 1000 years from now (if our space-time lasts so long). The numbers that bound the “dash” on our gravestones will have no significance then.
But there is a much greater death that affects ever living being ever microsecond of its existence both within space-time, and so will be forever, that is a death to our connection with our Creator God, which Adam once knew, and lost, and we have never known, as we have always been “lost,” by our physical birth.
To see God, that is to have any capacity to apprehend God, requires a second birth, a new kind of birth, a birth from being in a state of spiritual death from the very moment of birth to a state of being alive unto God.
3 Jesus answered him [Nicodemus, the man who came to see Jesus by night], “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Gospel of John 3:3, English Standard Version (ESV)
Regeneration is the word of that new birth: “re” is a prefix that means “again,” and root of the word is the source of our English word “genus” (specie) and “generation” (life, creation).
Calvin’s point, which is Scripture’s point, is that nothing begins in the Christian life before “Life” itself and that such life is a creation, one could say re-creation, by God Himself, as it is only He who can raise the dead to new life. No man resurrects himself, either physically or spiritually. The dead do nothing but decay. It is the one who is living who has the capacity to shows the outward signs of life.
The previous citation above from 1 Corinthians was not the complete thought. The verse ends with the greatest possible promise:
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
1 Cor 15:22 (the entire verse), English Standard Version, ESV
In the Week’s that follow, the state of being regenerated unto life with God will be a recurring framework.