What pure eyes could see: Faith, creation, and history in John Calvin's theology. (Volumes I and II)

This study traces the development of Calvin's understanding of faith between 1536 and 1559 and locates the exegetical underpinnings of Calvin's views. Chapter 1 focuses on the discussions of faith in the editions of the Institutes from 1536-1550. These show that Calvin's notion of faith evolves from an understanding of faith as fundamentally trust to a definition of faith as knowledge. In specifying this noetic description of faith, Calvin includes a fiducial element and defends the certainty of faith's assurance of salvation. He also portrays faith as a kind of perception and restricts its view proper to God's saving activity. Chapter 2 establishes the fundamentally Pauline character of this idea of faith by analyzing the treatment of faith in Calvin' s commentaries on Paul's epistles (1540-1556). Faith in the commentaries on Paul's letters is multifaceted but focused clearly on the questions of salvation, justification, and certainty. Chapter 3 shows that this "Pauline" view of faith shapes and is to some extent shaped by Calvin's interpretation of other New Testament texts: Hebrews (1549), James (1551), 1 John (1551), and the Gospel of John (1553). In these texts, Calvin perceives challenges to the certainty of faith or to faith as the sole and instrumental means of justification. He resorts to Paul to resolve conflicts between the texts' implications and his theological assumptions. Chapter 4 illustrates how Calvin, in his exegesis of the Psalms (1557), expands and enriches his understanding of faith. The Psalms allow Calvin to view faith in the immediate context not of redemption but of providence. In this context, Calvin explicates the idea of a "providential faith" that is both an outgrowth of saving faith and is in its own way christocentric. Chapter 5 returns to the Institutes (1559) to argue that the new organization and content, especially in Books 1 and 3, suggest a twofold notion of faith. Saving faith in Jesus Christ, the incarnate word of God, becomes the basis for a faith directed toward God's providence, which seeks, with the aid of scripture, to discern God's glory in nature and history. Together these two dimensions of faith, which correspond to Calvin's duplex cognitio Domini, constitute piety.