(trust, confidence) comes from the Latin “fiducia.” Fiducia is a term of jurisprudence: it designates the act whereby a person transfers a property to another without securing a written receipt from him; he thus presumes that the other person is trustworthy and will give back the property, although that person is not bound by any formal commitment. The “fiducia,” for instance, is used in Roman law, for a nominal sale: the nominal seller must have confidence in the nominal buyer who could, if he is not of good faith, legally keep the fictitiously received property. To have all “confidence” in God, therefore, will mean: to entrust this blessing which is our life to the good will of God without any material promise on his part. We only have His word, only the confidence in His given word. We have given ourselves to him, so to say, in an unconditional surrender (à corps perdu) and it is up to him that we keep faith. We can do nothing to force him into giving back this gift entrusted to him. But we trust him to care for it. God alone can be the object of such a “fiance,” such a total, absolute, complete trust. There are other “trusts,” for example between this and that man, or between a man and his ideals; but no one except God deserves all our “trust” and no one is entitled to claim it from us. It would be erroneous on our part to put our whole “trust” in anyone other than God. For God alone deserves it, as He also demands it. “Trust” is then the essence of faith. Remember the first question of the Heidelberg catechism: “What is thy only comfort in life and death?—That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but being belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”• The constant happiness and strength and security of the faith rest in this realization: I am in God’s hands, and it is good that I am not in my own but in His hands. I have “trust” that God disposes better of myself than I could.
But Calvin does not stop at defining “trust” as the condition of all our knowledge of God. He now examines how we can win this “trust” (Questions 9–12).
QUESTION 9. How is this done?—When we know Him to be mighty and perfectly good.
It is unnatural to us, it is not inherent in us to have this trust. These two things are essential: that we should know God as both almighty and all-good. We must know whether He is so mighty that our property is in good hands and whether He is so good that this property is better off there than with us.
QUESTIONS 10–11. Is this enough?—Far from it. Why?—Because we are unworthy that He should exercise His power to help us, or for our salvation show us how good He is.
Supposing even that there exists an almighty and all-good being, it is not yet certain that we might and could put in him all our trust. “We are unworthy.” In other words: we cannot enjoy his almightiness and his all-goodness. It might be that this power and even this goodness could turn against us. The relationship between God and man, for Calvin, is then not simply one that unites a big being to a small one, an infinite being to a finite being. There is a personal rapport, there is a question of worthiness of the one unto the other. It is a moral and not only a physical relationship. The events that have come to pass between these two beings show that there was unworthiness on our part.
QUESTION 12. What then is needed further?—Just that each of us should affirm with his mind that he is loved by Him, and that He is willing to be his Father and the Author of his salvation.
To this moral unworthiness of man corresponds the love of God. But no more than our unworthiness is God’s love a description, a sort of natural history of our relations with him. It is a question of a history, of something which has come to pass in time, of a relationship of will and love: God loves, God wills—this is how Calvin expresses himself. There is will, there is love—this is how a philosopher would express himself. With the latter, truth is abstract; with the former it is an historical reality.
With Questions 13 and 14, Calvin examines how we can arrive at the certitude that God loves us.
QUESTIONS 13–14. Where will this be apparent to us?—In His word, where He reveals His mercy to us in Christ and testifies of His love towards us.
Then the foundation and beginning of faith in God is to know Him in Christ? (John 17:3)—Quite so.
Calvin clearly indicates the origin of our knowledge of God’s love. Note well: it is not a question of a general and abstract and philosophical knowledge, not a question of a treatise on the love of God in nature or on love in general; all this, all these abstract ideas are a piece of paper, a great noise, only ideas. The Gospel, on the contrary, tells us about realities. The task of theological reflection and of preaching does not begin at all with abstract ideas, but with the reality of God’s action. The love of God is not an abstract quality of God’s; it is an act: God takes to heart our misery. In Jesus Christ, He declares His mercy unto us and puts this mercy to work, and there is no mercy towards us outside Jesus Christ.
Here it is almost impossible for us not to run against our philosophical habits of mind. We indeed say, “Why could God’s love not reveal itself otherwise?” May it not be that Jesus Christ is at most an intermediary who tells us about God’s love, and afterwards becomes useless? In so thinking, we avow ourselves sons of the whole theological generation of the last two centuries, from J. F. Osterwald down to our time: according to that theology, Jesus Christ merely reveals to us an idea, the love of God, which we could have by ourselves. Between man and God there lies a fundamental relation: the adoration, the service of God. But who is God? What is that service? It is that which we are not told. It already smacks of Oxford Group ideas … God is supposed known. Jesus Christ comes only afterward, and at bottom we do not very well see why.
For Calvin, on the contrary, Jesus Christ holds a central position. There is not an “essence” of God’s love that one could know as such, and then a “manifestation” of such a love whose eminent representative is Jesus Christ. No distinction is made between the principle and the person, between the message and the messenger. Jesus Christ is what he brings forth. He is the mercy of God, he is the love of God, he is the open heart of God. By knowing Jesus Christ, we then have this “trust” we talked about above. It is not only a possibility, it is a reality: “Therefore since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God” (Rom. 5:1). In the presence of Jesus Christ there no longer is any other alternative but to “trust” in Him.
REMARK I. On the Precedence of “Trust.” The first point consists in reliance on the good will of God. You realize how fitting it is to be cautious when one asserts the stiffness and severity of Calvin. Precisely it is Calvin who begins with the Creed, and not with God’s demands upon us, as revealed in the law. Calvin does not begin by saying to us: This is what you should be! He begins by saying: We are enabled to put our whole life in God’s hands through Jesus Christ. And this life has been put there by this same Jesus Christ. We have this “trust” (which is far from saying merely: let us have this “trust”).
REMARK II. On the Authority of the Word. To “trust” in God is not taking a chance, leaping into the darkness, or gambling and betting. For the Word of God is the very revelation of God, and the revelation of God is the demonstration of God. On the basis of that demonstration we have this “trust”—a “trust” that is not out of whimsey but an act of true wisdom.
REMARK III. On the Conjunction of God’s Almightiness and All-goodness. Nothing is more frequent than to speak, on the one hand, of our knowledge of God’s almightiness (nature, various events) and, on the other, of our knowledge of His goodness (Jesus Christ). There would thus be an almightiness of God which has nothing to do with his allgoodness, with the Christ. And there would be a goodness of God which is not almighty. It must rather be understood that almightiness and all-goodness are united in Christ. A good many errors of the religious life come from their separation.
