As I showed in Part 1 of this series, not only Calvin, but various Protestant sects argue for the sixty-six-book canon of Scripture on explicitly and undeniably gnostic grounds.
In this article, I will show just how thoroughly gnostic Calvin’s argument is by examining his Institutes of the Christian Religion, in which he doubles down on his claim that the means of knowing the correct canon of Scripture is the “inward illumination” and “secret testimony of the spirit.”
In addition to this, he also disclaimed the need for the witness of others (i.e., the Church) to any particular canon of Scripture. He wrote as follows in Book 1, Ch. 7, §5 of the Institutes:
Let it therefore be held as fixed, that those who are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit acquiesce implicitly in Scripture; that Scripture, carrying its own evidence along with it, deigns not to submit to proofs and arguments, but owes the full conviction with which we ought to receive it to the testimony of the Spirit.
Enlightened by him, we no longer believe, either on our own judgment or that of others, that the scriptures are from God; but, in a way superior to human judgment, feel perfectly assured—as much so as if we beheld the divine image visibly impressed on it—that it came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God.
Not only does knowing the correct canon come through an “inward illumination” of the “secret testimony of the spirit,” but this “illumination” is taught “in a way superior to human judgment.” Note once more the sleight of hand: Calvin simply labels the judgment of the Church as to the canon “human judgment,” but his own judgment he labels the “inward illumination” of the Holy Spirit. Yet he has made zero argument for why we should believe that his “inward illumination” is from God, whereas the judgment of the Church is a merely “human judgment.” The devil truly is in the details, all of which Calvin assumes rather than argues for.
Calvin thereby not only claims that the knowledge of the canon comes in a gnostic fashion, but has locked the individual inside his own ego—an ego superior to all external witness and authority. The canon is no longer a public revelation imparted by God by means of duly authorized representatives (i.e., apostolic authority), as the Christian faith had always been understood to be. Rather, it is an “inward illumination” that requires no witness from others, no duly authorized representative, and no public testimony to its veracity. Quite contrary to many of his claims about the necessity of ecclesial authority (which was virtually always his personal authority), and its role in speaking for Christ, when it comes to the canon of Scripture, Calvin argues like a Gnostic and maintains his ground like a Gnostic.
What can justify this? Apparently just the word of Calvin, and his purely subjective conviction that he (and those who agree with him) are “enlightened” by God.
Incidentally, whereas Calvin claims that only the elect receive this “inward illumination,” many of those who agree with him on the canon (other Protestants) vehemently disagree with him on other doctrines he claims are necessary for salvation. One wonders why God would give an “inward illumination” to the “elect” to know with perfect and unchallengeable certainty the canon of Scripture, but not the actual doctrines it supposedly taught. Calvin never addresses such blatant incoherence.
The next few sentences of the same section make his gnostic approach even clearer:
We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgment, but we subject our intellect and judgment to it as too transcendent for us to estimate. This, however, we do, not in the manner in which some are wont to fasten on an unknown object, which, as soon as known, displeases, but because we have a thorough conviction that, in holding it, we hold unassailable truth; not like miserable men, whose minds are enslaved by superstition, but because we feel a divine energy living and breathing in it—an energy by which we are drawn and animated to obey it, willingly indeed, and knowingly, but more vividly and effectually than could be done by human will or knowledge.
Hence, God most justly exclaims by the mouth of Isaiah, “Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he” (Isa. 43:10).
This is a remarkable statement from a man who claimed to be “reforming” the Church.
First he disclaims entirely the need for arguments—“proofs or probabilities,” as he says—a strange assertion for a man writing a treatise hundreds of pages long explaining why his particular doctrines should be believed. He asserts that his conclusion is based on truth that is “too transcendent for us to estimate.” Upon what basis does he claim this? We don’t know. He denies that he owes anyone any arguments.
But he then proceeds to make one: his sixty-six-book canon of Scripture is correct because he and those of his persuasion “have a thorough conviction” that it is “unassailable truth.” Those who disagree with them are enslaved to “superstition,” he claims. He and his followers, on the other hand, are not merely certain of their conviction, but “feel a divine energy living and breathing” in the canon they have identified—a remarkable appeal to what can only be described as a sort of physical sensation.
The fact that so many Christians throughout the ages had included other books in the canon of Scripture never seems to enter Calvin’s mind. These great saints could no doubt, likewise, claim to experience “an energy by which [they] are drawn and animated to obey it [Scripture], willingly indeed, and knowingly, but more vividly and effectually than could be done by human will or knowledge.” Yet they often believed that the canon of Scripture included seven additional books that Calvin excluded.
So which one is right? Those with the stronger “thorough conviction that, in holding it, we hold unassailable truth”? But even by this “standard,” would not the conviction of so many centuries of saints—especially martyrs—count on the scale far more than that of just Calvin, who was just one man at the head of a small sect, who did not die a martyr?
Calvin concludes his “argument” as follows:
Such, then, is a conviction which asks not for reasons; such, a knowledge which accords with the highest reason, namely knowledge in which the mind rests more firmly and securely than in any reasons; such in fine, the conviction which revelation from heaven alone can produce. I say nothing more than every believer experiences in himself, though my words fall far short of the reality.
I do not dwell on this subject at present, because we will return to it again: only let us now understand that the only true faith is that which the Spirit of God seals on our hearts. Nay, the modest and teachable reader will find a sufficient reason in the promise contained in Isaiah, that all the children of the renovated Church “shall be taught of the Lord,” (Isa. 54:13). This singular privilege God bestows on his elect only, whom he separates from the rest of mankind. For what is the beginning of true doctrine but prompt alacrity to hear the Word of God? And God, by the mouth of Moses, thus demands to be heard: “It is not in heavens that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart,” (Deut. 30:12, 14).
God having been pleased to reserve the treasure of intelligence for his children, no wonder that so much ignorance and stupidity is seen in the generality of mankind. In the generality, I include even those specially chosen, until they are ingrafted into the body of the Church.
Isaiah, moreover, while reminding us that the prophetical doctrine would prove incredible not only to strangers, but also to the Jews, who were desirous to be thought of the household of God, subjoins the reason, when he asks, “To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Isa. 53:1). If at any time, then, we are troubled at the small number of those who believe, let us, on the other hand, call to mind, that none comprehend the mysteries of God save those to whom it is given.
The gnostic nature of Calvin’s argument could not be clearer, as he applies it not only to the canon of Scripture, but to the Christian faith itself. It bears a disturbing resemblance to religious and secular ideologies of succeeding centuries that disavowed the need for reason, argument, and logic to defend their positions.
Calvin speaks of “knowledge in which the mind rests more firmly and securely than in any reasons”—a gnostic claim that cannot be countermanded.
Calvin describes this knowledge: “Every believer experiences in himself.” So now “experience” is the criterion of dogmatic veracity—just not, apparently, the “experience” of countless generations of Christians over the preceding 1,500 years that contradicts him. And who can ever contradict that which is experienced “in himself”? No one.
Calvin says to whom this knowledge is given: “This singular privilege God bestows on his elect only, whom he separates from the rest of mankind . . . God having been pleased to reserve the treasure of intelligence for his children.” So once again, every one of the countless Christians and saints who identified a different canon from Calvin are apparently not among the “elect” or the “children” of God—not among those “specially chosen”—even while those who apparently qualify are at the same time at odds with Calvin on many other doctrines.
Should Calvin or those who follow him be disturbed at how few have ever believed anything like what he proposes? No, he says, because “none comprehend the mysteries of God save those to whom it is given.”
Calvin has thus sealed himself and the “elect” of his sect off from not only the Christian public witness of apostolic authority from the first century onward, but from argument, reason, and logic, all while very selectively appealing to a set of subjective experiences, namely those of his sect.
It is impossible to imagine anything more circular and gnostic than this. Calvin claims that God reveals the canon only by an inward illumination of the individual, and then he locks the ego of that individual in a self-sealed container that has no need to appeal to any other witness, testimony, or authority, satisfied in the assertion that God speaks directly to him, but the perennial witness and authority of the Church is mere “human judgment.”
Is anything like this found in Christian history? For that matter, is anything like this found in Scripture?
The answer to both is a firm “no.” With respect to the canon, Calvin has invented his own religion in order to guarantee that he arrives at his own conclusion, and that religion is nothing less than a revival of a novel form of Gnosticism under a veneer of Christianity.
Ready for one more? We will wrap up the case against gnostic Calvin next week.