now comes back to the knowledge of God (Questions 6–7).
QUESTION 6. What then is true and right knowledge of God?—When He is so known, that His own proper honor is done Him.
The knowledge of God is not absolute, abstract knowledge, a knowledge important in itself. It is not knowledge for its own sake. This is such knowledge as has a direction, which is good for something, which has thus no value in itself, which does not have, or no longer has, a law of its own. “So to know God as to give Him honor”: this knowledge has no value except that of its object, its task, its goal: to honor God. In itself it is nothing more than a service, and yet is all the more important because it does not have its importance in itself, but tends towards a goal that surpasses it: the honor of God which consists in glorifying Him.
So then, it would be absurd to speak of “Calvinistic intellectualism” with regard to the first Question. For the knowledge of God is not a self-satisfying science that might allow us to cut an important figure. It is a service that allows us to honor God.
QUESTION 7. What is the right way of honoring Him?—To put all our trust in Him; to study to serve Him all our life, by obeying His will; to call upon Him, whenever any need impels us, seeking in Him salvation and whatever good things can be desired; and lastly, to acknowledge Him with both heart and mouth to be the only author of all good things.
Once again: the knowledge of God is not a knowledge that leaves us untouched; it draws us along. God takes us into His service. He does not leave us as we were, and He does not let us “know” Him as though we were independent. He becomes All for us.
Calvin expounds in four points the right way of honoring God:
1. to put all our trust in Him; 2. to study to serve Him all our life, by obeying His will; 3. to call upon Him, whenever any need impels us, seeking in Him salvation and whatever good thing can be desired; 4. to acknowledge Him with both heart and mouth to be the only author of all good things.
These four points correspond to the four parts of the catechism and actually constitute its foundation:
1.On the Articles of the Faith. The content of the confession of faith calls for the response of man, his confidence in God, his faith, his “trust” (fiance) in God. Faith then is not only a state of the soul. It is an act founded upon the certainty of God’s declaration.
2.On the Law. The law calls for the response of man, his service.
3.On Prayer. Here we learn how to “call upon” God in all our necessities.
4.On the Sacraments. Here, Calvin expounds how the sacraments are the God-ordained means for the sincere and visible witness of our faith and our service.
The catechism, as an exposition of the Revelation, gives us the object of knowledge. But this catechism ought to be accepted and considered as the true and right manner in which to accomplish our task and to actualize our human existence as God has intended it.
REMARK I. On the Glory of God and the Glory of Man. We must stress—even if it seems “dangerous”—that the glory of God and the glory of man, although different, actually coincide. There is no other glory of God (this is a free decision of His will) than that which comes about in man’s existence. And there is no other glory of man than that which he may and can have in glorifying God. Likewise, God’s beatitude coincides with man’s happiness. Man’s happiness is to make God’s beatitude appear in his life, and God’s beatitude consists in giving Himself to man in the form of human happiness. In this relationship between God’s glory and man’s glory, God’s beatitude and man’s happiness, we must note that God always has precedence: our glory is founded upon His glory; our happiness is founded upon His. God remains ever independent, master and sovereign. Man is only a servant. God gives, man receives. In other words, man cannot find in himself some divine thing and raise it into a god, or set up into divine beatitude some happiness he fancies by himself. Again in other words, man does not deserve what God gives him by pure grace.
God then is essentially love and grace. His mercy unto man is not merely an accidental thing: it is the essence of the divine heart.
God does not exist without this will to encounter us, to make us live and participate in Him. That is His steadfastness.
Now we come to the very crux of the matter: all we have said of God may only be said in the framework of the Christian knowledge of God. Apart from the relation between God and man such as it exists in Jesus Christ, all that we said would be equivocal and dangerous and even false. What was said about the relations between divine beatitude and human happiness, between the glory of God and the glory of man is then not an abstract truth: it is the explanation of the basic theses of Christology. What we say concerning the relationship of God and man, we say it in Jesus Christ. It is first in Christ that there is coincidence of divine glory and human glory. It is in him that the encounter between divine beatitude and human happiness takes place. There is no humanity “in relation to God” that was not first realized and prefigured in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, true God and true man, this coincidence is realized, and with him rests our hope for a real humanity. Not by ourselves, but insofar as we are members of the Body of Christ—and thus only—we are men according to God. In order to avoid the misfortune of mankind’s being lost because it does not fulfill the meaning of its creation, in order to be man, in order to fulfill the true humanism, then we must believe in Jesus Christ. There is no humanism without the Gospel.
REMARK II. On the Precedence of God. The four parts we have distinguished in Question 7 are answers to God’s revelation. That is to say, there is no “a priori” human knowledge of God, there is no absolute theology. There is only, there can be only, a relative theology: relative to God’s revelation. God precedes and man follows. This act of following, this service, these are human thinking concerning the knowledge of God. Consequently in theology it will positively be necessary to refuse to accept any philosophical theory as a norm of theology. There is only one norm and it is: God who speaks. Not that we should not philosophize at all! We may—a little. There is choice irony on God’s part which tells us: Since you have philosophy in you, well, then, have it and do your best with it. On the condition, however, that when you have to make a decision between your philosophy and some requirement of the faith, you always make sure that the subject precedes and human thought follows. On the condition that your philosophy does not keep you from “following.” Calvin and Luther were Platonists enough. Later on, in the seventeenth century, everybody became Aristotelian. However, that did not keep these theologians from being faithful. But in the eighteenth century, they took to philosophizing without mincing words, and theology was no longer referred primarily to its subject, to God’s revelation, but to such and such philosophy. They did not follow any longer; they wanted to begin all by themselves.
REMARK III. The Four Calvinistic Absolutes. It would be interesting to compare the other parts of Calvin’s catechism with the four absolutes of the Oxford Group. Let us merely point out that all those of Calvin refer to God first, and only in the second place to man. God gives Himself to us as the object of trust and obedience, of request and praise. Then he demands these responses from us and enables us to present him with them, for our glory and happiness.
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION: THE “TRUST”• IN GOD
Questions 8–14
QUESTION 8. Now to consider these things in order
