Recently I reviewed Bruce Gordon's biography of John Calvin. This post is part three of a short series of snippets from the book.
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“All the reformers distinguished between the Bible and the Word of God, or Gospel. Scripture contains ‘perfect doctrine,’ which is God’s revelation, but it is not itself the Gospel” (p.104).
References:
Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven [Conn.] and London: Yale University Press, 2009).
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
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4 comments:
Mike,
Does Gordon offer any quotations from Calvin's writings on this distinction? I would be interested in reading where Calvin makes this distinction. In Book 1, Chapter 6, of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, for example, no such distinction exists. Calvin seems to use "Scripture" and "Word of God" interchangeably.
-Joel
Hi Joel, I didn't get a chance to look this up for you last night. Will do so tonight. I'm also looking forward to listening to White's take on the Servetus affair. I'll let you know my thoughts afterwards.
Mike
Gordon's only reference is to John Calvin and the Grounding of Interpretation by Holder, p.142. Happily, Google Books (link below) offers us p.142, but unfortunately not p.143.
I think Gordon's point is that Calvin held a distinction between the Bible and the gospel, but he confuses his point by throwing in the phrase "Word of God."
I do think that many of the references to "the word" in the Bible refers first and foremost to "the message" or the gospel, not the Scriptures.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=iOxwYnW4EjwC&pg=PP1&dq=%22john+calvin+and+the+grounding+of+interpretation%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false
Mike,
Thanks for the trouble of digging deeper into this. I agree that "word of God" often refers to the message.
In hindsight, perhaps I did misread Gordon.
-Joel
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