Calvin Against the Papists: Holy Scripture as Self-Authenticating Witness in Apostolic Deposit
Catholics and other high church traditions often assert, contra the Protestant Reformation principle of sola scriptura, that the Church and her tradition itself establishes the authority of Scripture; thus on this logic, the Church and the Church’s tradition is the ultimate authority for the Christian rather than Holy Scripture. They argue that because it is the Church’s recognition of what in fact Scripture is, i.e. what the canon is, that by virtue of this the Church itself has primacy in a theory of authority vis-à-vis the Christian; that the Church itself serves as the magister in the Christian’s life rather than Holy Scripture.
John Calvin, among the foremost of the Protestant Reformers, counters this sort of “logic” with his conception of Scripture’s ability to be autopistis (i.e. self-authenticating). He thinks his doctrine of Scripture from pneumatological considerations, and the role he sees the Holy Spirit taking in providing the inner-witness and basis for Scripture’s ontology vis-à-vis God and his communication to the ‘faithful’ of who He is. More pointedly, Calvin’s logic reposes on the idea of what has been called the ‘Apostolic Deposit’, and the idea that the Apostle’s themselves spoke (and wrote!) as they were moved by God the Holy Spirit. The connection between their proclamation and the Spirit’s in-spiration is inextricable to Calvin’s argument about the priority of Scripture over against the Church; and the same Spirit’s inner-witness to the believer’s heart, in regard to the veracity of Scripture as God’s Word, indeed. He writes in his 1541 French version of his Institute:
But such liars are easily refuted by a single word from St. Paul, who testifies that “the church is supported on the foundation of the prophets and apostles.” If the teaching of the prophets and apostles is the foundation of the church, that teaching must first be assured in order for the church to begin to appear. And they cannot cavil that, although the church originated there, nevertheless it is uncertain which books should be attributed to the prophets and apostles unless the church gives judgment. For if the Christian church from the beginning was founded on “the writings of the prophets and the preaching of the apostles” (Eph. 2[20]), wherever this teaching is found it must have been approved before the church was, since without this teaching the church could never have been. So it is madness and lies to say that the church has such power to judge scripture that it can authorize according as it pleases how much certainty scripture can have. For that reason, when the church receives and approves scripture it does not authenticate it, as if it had previously been doubtful or unsure. But since, according to its duty, the church recognizes scripture to be the truth of its Lord, it reveres scripture without delay.[1]
Calvin rightly argues that the Apostles and Prophets, and their teaching and its Dominical source, chronologically and thus logically precede the inception of the Church. If so, as Calvin maintains, the Church can only ‘come under’ and thus not be ‘over’ Scripture and its reality in the Lord, who is the Christ. Papists and the like, even today, stumble at this, and argue just the opposite. But this is only because they have frontloaded their thinking with an ecclesiology that conflates the extension of the Church with the extension of God’s incarnation in Christ; i.e. they conflate the Church with Christ Himself, thus making the ground of Scripture’s reality, not Christ alone (solo Christo), but Christ and the Church. The Papist confuses the body for the Head, thus making the Head’s reality self-same with the body’s; but this is only to prolongate the incarnation, when in truth, the incarnation of God in Christ is only calling for a participatory understanding, such that the body remains distinct from the Head, insofar as the creature is distinct from the Creator, the Lord.
[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition, trans. by Elsie Anne McKee (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 38–9.
