Week XV we will be reading Chapters 11 - 14 of Book 2
Here are the Audio links
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
A longer overview of John Calvin's theology taken from the Institutes of the Christian . This is a summary form, by Dr. C. Matthew McMahon.
PREVIEW OF CHAPTER 11
The Old Testament differs from the New in five respects: 1) there was a representation of spiritual blessings by temporal blessings. The earthly promises corresponded to the childhood of the church in the Old Covenant; but were not to chain hope to earthly things. 2) The truth housed in the Old Testament was conveyed by images and ceremonies. In the absence of the reality, it showed an image and shadow in place of the substance, where the New Testament reveals the very substance of truth as present. 3) The Old Testament is literal where the New Testament is spiritual. Here we see the Old Testament is the ministry of condemnation, for it accuses all the sons of Adam of unrighteousness, while the New Testament is the ministry of righteousness because it reveals God's mercy, through which we are justified. 4) There was the bondage of the Old Testament and in contrast to the proclaimed freedom of the New Testament. Scripture calls the Old Testament one of “bondage” because it produces fear in men's minds; but the New Testament, one of “freedom” because it lifts them to trust and assurance. 5) The Old Testament has reference to one Nation, and in the New Testament there is reference to all Nations. Until the advent of Christ, the Lord set apart one nation within which to confine the covenant of His grace, but in the fullness of time, God was revealed as the reconciler between Himself and all men and called the Gentiles as well.
PREVIEW OF CHAPTER 12
It was necessary for the Mediator to be God as well as Man. Only He who was true God and true man could bridge the gulf between God and ourselves and not by simple necessity but by divine decree. The reason is that man and God could only come together in this way.
The Mediator must be true God and true man for He must restore men to God's grace—and this is something only the Son of God Himself could do. Only a human being can atone for the sin of the human nature of Adam’s posterity. Our Redeemer had to be both God and man to swallow up death and to bring life.
Only He who was true God and true man could be obedient in our stead, for a fallen man could never accomplish this. It was only the perfect obedience of Christ to the Father's will that could overcome our disobedience. Christ, the Son of David, overcame death for us in this way. The purpose of Christ's incarnation was our redemption the proof of which is manifested in the testimonies of Scripture.
Would Christ have also become man if Adam had not sinned? No. Osiander is wrong when he believes that Christ would have become incarnate to show His love for men, even if Adam had not sinned. This line of thinking overthrows the eternal decreed plan of God. But Osiander's doctrine of the image of God is what drives him to believe this, for he believes man was created in God's image—the pattern of the Messiah to come and thus infers that if Adam had never fallen, Christ would still have become man. Osiander is overthrown in that without an immutable decree concerning the incarnation of the Son, God is become a liar, and that if Christ had not been born as First Man (not as Redeemer) everything would have been tied to historical contingency—this is in opposition to Paul's teaching on the first and second Adam and the doctrine of imputation.
PREVIEW OF CHAPTER 13
Christ truly and actually took upon himself the nature of a man. Proof of Christ's true manhood is contrary to the heretical teachings of Menno Simons, the Marcionites and the Manichaeans. Scripture, though copiously asserts the reality of Christ's incarnation. It is easily shown that Marcion and Mani both demonstrate Scriptural twisting in order to prove Christ was no human. They have a wrong interpretation of “Son of Man”, and a wrong interpretation of statement that Christ received human, not an angelic, nature. They rather turn into a form of universalism instead of the Scriptural reality of the incarnation. The whole controversy surrounding this is resolved by Gen. 3:15—that the seed of woman will crush the serpent's head. This means that we must acquire victory through Christ, and that Christ was begotten of mankind.
Some of them say that Christ simply used Mary to descend into this earthly realm, not that He became human. This, though, distorts the idea surrounding the term “seed” of Abraham. Paul, on the other hand, understands this in the sense of literal, biological descent from Abraham. When Matthew says that Christ was begotten of Mary he does not mean that the virgin was a mere channel through which Christ flowed. He is true man, but he is also true God.
The question arises - could the Word be confined within the narrowness of an earthly body? The “extra-Calvinisticum” states, “the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin's womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously Filled the world even as he had done from the beginning!”
PREVIEW OF CHAPTER 14
We must explain, helpfully, how the two natures of Christ reside together in one person. There is a duality in this sense as well as a perfect unity. “The Word was made flesh” means that the Son of God became the Son of man, not by confusion of substances, but by unity of person. The best human analogue of this mysterious union is that of soul and body. Some characteristics of the body and of the soul are distinct from one another, other parts are in common, and others are capable of being transferred. But it should be noted that two diverse underlying natures make up the one human person. The interchange between the human and divine natures is called the communicatio idiomatum. The unity of the person of the Mediator is proven by the Scriptures demonstrating that both natures at once comprehended in the same person of the Son.
There are those who attempt to overthrow the incarnation because of certain heretical ideas. The two natures may not be thought of as either fused or separated. Nestorius taught a double Christ (the natures were pulled apart). Eutyches taught a unity of person destroying one nature or the other (the natures are commingled). Servetus supposes the Son of God to be a figment compounded from God's essence, spirit, flesh, and three uncreated elements. He denies the God-man, holding that before Christ came in the flesh there were only shadow-figures in God which were made plain only when the Word truly began to be the Son of God. In answer to all of these we assert the traditional view of the church: that the preexistent Logos, eternally God's Son, took human nature in a hypostatic union (and Scripture proves that Christ is Son according to both natures).
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