Augustinianism in Calvin and Bonaventure

By Gordon R. Payne

109 James Court, Glenview, Illinois 60025

How is John Calvin to be understood?[1] Is he to be interpreted on the basis of a single doctrine, such as predestination or sanctification, from which his theology is ordered or deduced? Is he to be considered as a precursor of a later philosophy such as Neo-Kantianism or later theologies such as those of Barth and Brunner? Even more fundamental, is the understanding of Calvin to be controlled by the application of categories of contemporary thought? Is Karl Barth right, and must Calvin be interpreted on the basis of Barth’s “idea that theology is determined by its object”?[2] even though it reduces Calvin’s teaching to an attempt to “speak about an object which is not an object”?[3] If the efforts of interpreters of Calvin, “who are led to study Calvin in the light of contemporary emphases,”[4] are reduced to “endeavors to explain the contradictoriness of Calvin’s theology by reference to its object,”[5] must that result be considered a “solution”[6] to the problem of the interpretation of Calvin? Is this the basis on which Herman Webber’s “psychological presuppositions about schizophrenia in a Frenchman”[7] can be refuted?

Before indicating the religious and philosophical basis on which Calvin must be read, a few preliminary observations frequently overlooked are in order. John Calvin was not an innovator or restorationist—he was a reformer. On the basis of his quotations alone, he can be proven to have distinguished between the Catholic Church and the church of Trent, It is a sad fact that little attention has been paid to Calvin’s “library.” A large number of his over 2,000 quotations from Augustine, for instance, are not located in Augustine’s writings. No attempt has ever been made to locate allusions to other fathers and the schoolmen as a necessary aid to understanding and interpretation. Second, Calvin must be read in the light of his exegetical and philosophical heritage. He cannot be understood in terms of Kantianism and the critical devaluation of the Scriptures. Least of all is he to be understood in terms of the irrationality of the “new Hermeneutics.”

Where, then, is Calvin to be located theologically and philosophically? The answer is that he is the heir and follower of the Augustinian tradition flowing from Augustine through Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Auvergne, Bonaventure, Thomas Bradwardine, Gregory of Rimini and John Wycliffe. Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Aquinas, important though he is, was not the dominant figure of later medieval scholasticism, and, when the conflict arose between the traditional teachings and the “New Pelagianism” of the followers of William of Ockham, the opposition came from the Augustinian adherents of electing grace.

The thesis that Calvin was an Augustinian can only be established by a comparison with the thought of earlier Augustinians. On the surface, the least fruitful comparison of Calvin with an earlier thinker would seem to be that with John of Fidanza, known as St. Bonaventure, Cardinal and Franciscan General. Such is not the case as will be shown. As Augustinians, they shared a common outlook and many more details of thought than might be expected.

First, however, we must define theology. According to Thomas Aquinas, theology is a speculative science with God as its object, having as its first principles articles of faith drawn from the Bible, from which other truths may be probatively argued to.[8]

According to Duns Scotus, theology is a practical science furnishing man contingent truths to direct his will in becoming and doing good.[9] According to William of Ockharn, theology is an atomistic collection of propositions (each a separate habitus) drawn from the Bible and the teaching of the Church.”[10] However differing in their definitional content, all these viewpoints share one common feature. They presume that theology is a body of objective knowledge which can be acquired by anyone having the requisite intellectual equipment. The atheist seminary professor is a real possibility.

One of the real difficulties in interpreting Augustinianism is the fact that it is a complex of differing elements, all of which must be held in mind if the interpretation is to be faithful to the writer. Neat one-sentence definitions cannot be expected. The following attempt at a definition reflects this difficulty.

According to Bonaventure, theology is a (I) wisdom, (II) revealed in the “Book of Nature,” (III) the “Book of the Soul,” and (IV) supremely and authoritatively in the “Book of the Scriptures,” (V) none of which can be accurately “read” by man who is “blind” and “twisted”[11] by original sin, unless enlightened through grace, finding (VI) certitude in faith, (VII) informing the affections, (VIII) taught by Christ, the only teacher. For Bonaventure, the non-Christian theologian is a contradiction in terms! Each element of Bonaventure’s conception of theology will be taken up seriatim and compared with Calvin.

I. Theology Is a Wisdom

Wisdom (sapientia) is a term with a variety of meanings. For Bonaventure, its proper meaning is the knowledge of God according to piety.[12] Calvin, in the first sentence of the Institutes, defines the entire subject of his work as a “wisdom.” In its second chapter, Calvin broadens “the knowledge of God” to include not only the “notion that there is such a Being,” but to also include “piety.” Both Bonaventure and Calvin are in agreement that theology is not merely an intellectual enterprise, but necessarily includes a way of worship and life.

It should be noted that Bonaventure has a more restricted definition of wisdom as the experimental knowledge of God. This wisdom arises out of the intimate union of God and the soul and can be characterized as a kind of “tasting.”[13] This wisdom is not innnediately accessible but comes only after the wisdom of the knowledge of God according to piety has been acquired.[14] The way to this wisdom lies “through the most ardent love of the Crucified, just as formerly Paul taken up into the third heaven was transformed in Christ.”[15] It is questionable that Calvin would follow Bonaventure as far as this. On the other hand, Calvin did strongly emphasize the union of the believer and Christ in love.[16] In this connection, it should be noted that Calvinistic Puritans such as Thomas Manton and Thomas Goodwin did not deny the possibility of the “mystic experience” and Goodwin is considered by Bouyer in his great History of Spirituality as a “mystic”! Here is another of the many areas of Calvin studies open to investigation.

II. Revealed in the “Book of Nature”

Fundamental for Bonaventure is the fact that the Trinitarian God created ex nihilo the universe, resulting in the external partial diffusion of the infinite goodness of God.[17] This creation is a graded ladder to God—in other words, the creation can be described as the “great chain of Being.” Every created thing, including mankind, bears the mark or vestiges of the Creator.[18] As signs, they point to the power, wisdom, and goodness of God.[19] Our knowledge or perception of God’s attributes is not immediate, but mediate, in that “We behold God in the mirror of visible creation.”[20] While creation points us to God, that is not its primary purpose, since “Things are made for the glory of God, not to acquire it or amplify it, but to show and communicate it.”[21]

According to Bonaventure, created things have an aesthetic value—they are beautiful! Every beautiful and good thing is from the goodness of God; if some things are flawed, what appears evil in them is from another cause.[22] However, the beauty of the creature is dimmed when one looks at the incomparably greater beauty of Him from whom all other beauty proceeds.[23] Finally, let it be noted that the “Book of Nature” was written and published by God; it does not cease to be a “book” even though no man can or does read it.

Equally fundamental is the creation for Calvin’s theology. Book 1 of the Institutes is devoted to “The Knowledge of God as Creator,” followed by Book 2 which treats “The Knowledge of God, the Redeemer in Christ.” The only reason which can be assigned for the Creation is the goodness of God.[24] As Calvin says: “We know that it was for man’s sake the world was made at all, and endued with fertility and plenty; and in proportion as we are nearer in the ladder of existence to God, He shows us more of his goodness.”[25] God has given us, throughout the whole framework of this world, clear evidence (“lineaments”)[26] of his eternal wisdom, goodness, and power.[27] “There is nothing so obscure or contemptible, even in the smallest corners of the earth, in which some marks of the wisdom and power of God may not be seen.”[28] “Clearly, then, this world is called the mirror of divinity.”[29] “The world was no doubt made that it might be the theatre of the divine glory.”[30]

Not even Bonaventure rivals Calvin in his praise of the beauty of God’s creation. Two of many possible examples follow. The world is a “beautiful machine.”[31] “The Architect of the heavens excites admiration and the Maker of the human body with its connection, symmetry, and beauty deserves admiration.”[32] Whatever is not beautiful in the world is not from God. As Calvin says, with reference to the existence of fleas and other noxious insects, “there is some deformity of the world, which ought by no means to be regarded as in the order of Nature, since it proceeds rather from the sin of man than from the hand of God.”[33] God must not, of course, be equated with “Nature” or “confounded with the inferior course of His works.”[34] For Calvin as for Bonaventure, the “Book of Nature” is a real, continuing revelation of God. The Christian must let the “world become his school if he rightly desires to know God.”[35] Calvin quotes Augustine to the effect that being incapable of comprehending God, “and fainting, as it were, under His immensity, we must take a view of His works, that we may be refreshed with His goodness.”[36]

As can be seen, Bonaventure and Calvin, as Augustinians, are in agreement with regard to the main outlines of the “Book of Nature.” There are, however, differences, two of which are worth noting. While Calvin is content to speak of the marks of God in the created things, Bonaventure, as is usual with him, has a detailed classification of them as traces or vestiges, image, and similitude.[37] This occurs because of their difference in the interpretation of Gen 1:26. The Vulgate has “Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram”; Calvin translates “Faciamus hominem ad imaginem, secundum similitudinem nostram.” In effect, Calvin’s translation reflects his exegetical decision that imago and similitudo are Hebraistic repetitions of the same thing.[38] For Bonaventure, image is the expression of the Trinitarian Maker in intellectual souls (men) and in spiritual souls (angels). Similitudo is God’s expression in sanctified or deiform souls, the ultimate goal of the Christian. A second difference appears throughout. Bonaventure, influenced by Greek trinitarian speculation mediated through the Pseudo Dionysus, adopted a “dynamic” doctrine of the Trinity in contrast to the “relational” doctrine set forth by Augustine, which was adopted by Calvin.[39] In this, and not here alone, as shall be seen, Calvin is more Augustinian than Bonaventure. Bonaventure freely sees trinitarian references in created things while Calvin is hesitant. Whether Calvin should not have seen more trinitarianism in view of his acceptance of the traditional appropriation of Origin to the Father, Wisdom and Counsel to the Son, and Power to the Holy Spirit,[40] is a question worthy of investigation.

III. Revealed in the “Book of the Soul”

To set forth adequately Bonaventure’s teaching with regard to the “Book of the Soul” would require an extended treatise on epistemology and psychology. Only a few salient views can, therefore, be touched upon.

The Soul is a created immortal substance, having its own form and spiritual matter, and, as having the powers of memory, intelligence, and will, being one in essence and trine in power, it is an image of the Trinity. It is the image of God in the full sense of that concept. It is ordained to the felicity of beatitude (Union with God). The powers of the Soul are reducible to will and intellect (understanding).[41]

The Soul knows the external world through the five external senses, which it retains through memory, combines and sorts through imagination. By its faculty of intellect or understanding it discerns truth through reason, rejects evil through the irascible appetite and desires good through the concupiscible appetite.[42]

The Soul knows itself and what is in itself, apart from the senses.[43] Further, “God is not known through sense-received species; rather, an awareness of God is naturally inserted in us.”[44] The knowledge of the Soul is not a product of itself. It is dependent on God and brought about by the operation of the Uncreated Light.[45] This light of God “is inaccessible to us, but, nevertheless closer to the soul than it is to itself.”[46] “All things are true and ordained to express themselves through expression of that Supreme Light; since, if it ceases to shine into us, things cease to be true.”[47] All true knowledge in the arts and sciences, as well as of God, depends on God and can and should be traced back (reduced) to him.[48]

Calvin’s teachings with respect to the “Book of the Soul” are in close accord with Bonaventure. For Calvin, the Soul is a created immortal substance and is “the proper seat of the image of God.”[49] Calvin does not follow unreservedly Bonaventure in finding that the image of God in man is “trinitarian” on the basis of Augustine’s distinction of the powers of the Soul as memory, intellect, and will. In his Commentary on Genesis, Calvin acknowledges that there “is something in man which refers to the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit,” but that claim “ought to rest on a firmer basis than such subtleties” as Angustine’s speculations in his De trinitate and De civitate Dei, which, however, may be read by “any reader, having leisure, [who] wishes to enjoy such speculations.”[50] In the Institutes, Calvin states that the “speculation of Augustine is far from being solid, that the soul is a mirror of the Trinity, because it contains understanding, will, and memory.”[51] In arriving at this negative view, Calvin is influenced by the fact that in the Bible the powers of the Soul are reducible to understanding and will, just as Bonaventure held.[52] The endowment of the Soul with the powers of understanding and will was to enable man “to ascend even to God and eternal felicity.”[53]

Calvin’s treatment of the operations of the Soul, even in regard to the process through which knowledge of the external world is arrived at, can be paralleled almost verbatim in Bonaventure.[54] Both hold to the classic Augustinian position.

According to Calvin, the Soul possesses knowledge which is not dependent on the bodily senses.[55] “In our minds, we form conceptions of the invisible God, to which the body is not at all competent.”[56] “The human mind, even by a natural instinct, possesses some sense of a Deity.”[57] Both Bonaventure and Calvin have been misunderstood as holding that there is in man an “innate idea of God,” which can be intuited directly, and, as a result of which, God becomes an object of man’s knowledge. Both Bonaventure and Calvin, however, by the use of “awareness” and “sense” indicate that the knowledge of God is mediated through the effects of God within man and in the works of God outside man, and has its source in the intellect’s reflection and not in its intuition. Calvin, no less than Bonaventure, employs the metaphor of light as symbolizing the nature of man’s knowledge as derived from God. God’s light to even pagans is the foundation of the truths in physics, logic, mathematics and other arts and sciences.[58] That light is, of course, the partially extinguished original light bestowed on man.[59] Hence, the arts and sciences as dependent on God should not be claimed as man’s achievement. They are to be traced back to God, so that we “do not defraud God of his praise.”[60]

The foregoing comparison of Bonaventure and Calvin with regard to the “Book of the Soul” should not be considered as exhausting the possibilities of finding parallels. However, it should be noted that Bonaventure, as usual, goes well beyond Calvin in depth and detail of treatment.

IV. Supremely Revealed in the “Book of the Scriptures”

No theologian has ever had a higher opinion of the authority, breadth of scope, and sufficiency of the Bible than Bonaventure. The Prologue to the Breviloquium and Books 13–19 of the Collationes in Hexaemeron should be the subject of a book length exposition rather than the following sketch of Bonaventure on the Bible.

1. Why is there a necessity for the “Book of the Scriptures” in addition to the “Books of Nature and the Soul”?

But when man had fallen, since he had lost knowledge, there was no longer anything to lead creatures back to God. Hence the Book of the World became as dead and destroyed. It was necessary that there be another book to enlighten it, to interpret the metaphors of creatures. Such a book is Scripture…. And so Scripture has the power to restore the whole world toward the knowledge, praise and love of God.[61]

2. Bonaventure’s Book of Scripture included the Apocrypha.[62]

3. The Scriptures are divine in origin, “for the whole of Scripture is the heart of God, the mouth of God, the tongue of God, and the pen of God.”[63] The Scriptures “originated, not in human research, but in divine revelation coming from the Father of Lights.”[64] Where philosophy and science differ from the Bible, philosophy and science are in error.[65]

4. The reading of the Scriptures requires divine illumination. “It is impossible to enter Scripture with a view to studying it if one has not, beforehand, the infused faith of Christ, as this is the light, the door and even the basis of all Scripture.”[66]

5. The Bible has imbedded in it structured meanings which furnish the basis for its interpretation. While the kernel—faith in God and Christ—is the basis for the salvation of both the Old Testament faithful and the Christian, the Bible is a progressive revelation reaching its climax and finality in its full disclosure in the New Testament. Whoever practiced the Old Law with implicit faith in God and Christ already partook of the spirit of the New Testament.[67] The progressive nature of revelation and its finality in the New Testament are beautifully expressed by Bonaventure as follows:

Holy Scripture is like an immense river: the farther it flows, the greater it grows by the addition of many waters. Scripture first consisted only of the legal books…. and at last the Gospel teachings spoken by the lips of Christ incarnate, set down in writing by the evangelist, related by the holy apostles. And when there were added the revelations which the Spirit, descending upon them, taught us through their means, the apostles thus instructed in all the truth by the Spirit, according to God’s promise, could teach the Church of Christ the whole truth of salvation, and, by completing Holy Scripture, extend the knowledge of Truth.[68]

In the New Testament, the spirit and the letter coincide; the New Testament is “spiritual.” How, then, does one read the Old Testament?

First, the literal text of the Old Testament must be understood. Literary forms must be looked to in determining the literal meaning.[69] It may not be possible to determine the meaning of all texts. In that case, “it is better to doubt piously than to define presumptuously.”[70] First, one must study, and have the text at the tip of one’s fingers, and then understand what is said by the words.[71] The text must not be considered in isolation, since any single passage of Scripture depends on some other.[72] The Holy Spirit does not give spiritual understanding unless man understands the literal sense.[73]

Having determined the literal sense of the Old Testament passage, the reader then is in a position to consider its spiritual (theological) meaning. However, in determining the spiritual meaning, the reader is limited to what the literal meaning of the passage allows.[74] There are three kinds of “spiritual meanings”: (1) Allegory pertains to the meaning of things done—doctrinal instruction; (2) tropology pertains to the things that the Christian should do—ethical teaching; (3) anagogy pertains to the meaning of things to be done or events to occur—eschatology.[75] It should be noted that Bonaventure is far from the excesses of “allegorizing” indulged in by Origen based on his contempt for the letter of the Old Testament. In fact, Bonaventure states that there is no point in seeking a spiritual meaning when the words clearly teach some element of faith or morals.[76] It must be admitted that Bonaventure’s theory is better than his practice, since, under the influence of the Fathers, he occasionally goes to some excesses in finding “spiritual meanings.”

6. The interpretation of the Scriptures is not to be pursued in isolation from other Christians. First, man should study Sacred Scripture, in the letter and the spirit; then the original writings of the Fathers, giving priority to Sacred Scripture over them.[77] Thirdly, to be consulted with extreme caution are the “summas of the masters, because error is sometimes found in them. Thev believe they understand the original writings of the Fathers, but they do not understand them; they even contradict them.”[78]

Space forbids further exploration of Bonaventure’s teachings on Scripture. An intriguing area for study is the fact that for Bonaventure the Bible is not merely the source from which faith draws articles to be believed, but becomes food for both the intellectual and for the affective parts of the Soul.[79]

To facilitate the comparison between Bonaventure and Calvin, the same subject references will be followed.

1. Calvin devotes a whole chapter of the Institutes to prove that the Scriptures are necessary to man, despite the presence of the “Book of Nature” and the “Book of the Soul.”[80] “The human mind is unable, through its imbecility, to attain any knowledge of God without the assistance of his sacred word.”[81] “In order to enjoy the light of true religion, we ought to begin with the doctrine of heaven; and that no man can have the least knowledge of true and sound doctrine, without having been a disciple of the Scripture. Hence originates all true wisdom when we embrace with reverence the testimony which God hath been pleased therein to deliver concerning himself.”[82] Thereby “God hath, in his providence, particularly consulted the true interests of mankind in all ages.”[83]

2. Calvin’s Bible does not include the Apocrypha, but for a long time he used it as a secondary authority. For example, after quoting from Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, while conceding that he “would not urge the authority of these writers strongly,” he states that “they ought to have some weight, if not as canonical, at least as ancient pious writers strongly supported.”[84] He also quotes as authority Baruch.[85] In his later writings, he does not use the Apocrypha. Calvin’s position seems closer to that of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England than to that of the Westminster Confession.

3. Much fruitless ingenuity has recently been expended by those who would like to enroll Calvin in their camp as seeing the Scriptures as merely a witness to the “Word of God” rather than the Word of God. For Calvin, in the Scriptures, “God opens his own sacred mouth.”[86] Several times, he states that the Bible was dictated by the Holy Spirit.[87] In his comment on 2 Tim 3:16, Calvin deals directly with the nature of the Scriptures. It is a “settled point that the Law and the Prophets are not a doctrine delivered according to the will and pleasure of men, but dictated by the Holy Spirit.” Calvin further excludes the “human” erring element by his statement that “they only uttered what they had been commissioned from heaven.” Niesel, who, not surprisingly, fails to quote from this comment of Calvin, raises the spectre of Bibliolatry.[88] Undeterred by the possibility of posthumous reproach by Niesel, Calvin states “that we owe to the Scriptures the same reverence which we owe to God; because it has proceeded from Him alone, and has nothing belonging to man mixed with it.” In this, Calvin follows not only Bonaventure, but also the Fathers and the “sounder schoolmen,” to use Calvin’s own phrase. It is on the basis of the letter of the Bible that Calvin condemns the errors of philosophy and science.[89]

4. The close connection between the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit and the Bible in Calvin is well known:

Our minds are filled with a solid reverence for the word, when by the light of the Spirit we are enabled therein to behold the Divine countenance; and, on the other hand, without the least fear of mistake, we gladly receive the Spirit, when we recognize him in his image, that is, in the word.[90]

The Holy Spirit has no independent witness or teaching; all is contained in the Bible:

The children of God, while they are sensible that, exclusively of the Spirit of God, they are utterly destitute of the light of truth, yet are not ignorant that the word is the instrument, by which the Lord dispenses to believers the illumination of his Spirit.[91]

Furthermore, the Holy Spirit does not only “authenticate” the Bible, but our eyes are “veiled and shut” so that we cannot read the Bible, “until God, by the invisible grace of his Spirit, open them.”[92]

5. For Calvin, as for Bonaventure, the subject of the Old Testament, as well as the New Testament, is Christ and the salvation in Christ that the fathers of the Old Testament share with believers after the coming of Christ.[93] The clarity of the revelation of Christ and his salvation increases from Moses to the Prophets and attains its final form in the New Testament.[94] “The Old Testament is literal…. the New Testament is spiritual.”[95] Like Bonaventure, Calvin holds that the spirit and letter coincide in the New Testament. There is, therefore, no problem in interpreting the New Testament.

How does Calvin interpret the Old Testament? Unfortunately, Calvin did not set forth explicitly his “rules of interpretation” as did Bonaventure. However, his interpretational approach to the Old Testament is easily discoverable in his Commentaries. First of all, the literal sense cannot be supplanted in favor of an “allegorical” interpretation such as Origen indulged in. For example, the garden of Eden was a literal garden and “there is no need for some to have resorted to an allegorical sense, because they never found in the world such a place as is described by Moses.”[96] On the other hand, Calvin finds an allegorical teaching in the sense of Bonaventure when he states that:

Moses intended to teach man that he was formed by God, with this condition, that he should have dominion over the earth, from which he might gather fruit, and thus learn by daily experience that the world was subject unto him.[97]

An example of Bonaventure’s tropological sense in Calvin is Calvin’s comment on Exod 1:12, where he says that

this passage is especially intended to console the believer, that he may be prepared to take up his cross more patiently; since God is sufficient to supply the help, to which the wrath of the wicked must finally yield.

Examples of Calvin’s use of “spiritual meanings” in expounding the Old Testament can easily be multiplied. Neither Calvin nor Bonaventure would have accepted the modern “historical-critical” exegesis of the Bible in which the meaning of a passage is limited to what the critic imagines an ordinary man of the time, unassisted by the Holy Spirit, might have intended.

Another parallel with Bonaventure is Calvin’s willingness to find Christ in the Old Testament. Calvin took seriously Christ’s word in John 5:46 that “Moses wrote concerning me.” Calvin follows Augustine and Eucherius in holding that the tree of life in Gen 2:9 was a figure of Christ. Calvin would not have disapproved of Bonaventure’s meditation on the life of Christ, entitled Lignum vitae (The Tree of Life). For Calvin, Jacob’s ladder is a figure of Christ, for

the similitude of a ladder well suits the Mediator, through whom ministering angels, righteousness and life, with all the graces of the Holy Spirit, descend to us step by step.[98]

Another example of Calvin’s willingness to find figurative meanings in the Old Testament is his concession that Noah’s ark was an image of the Church, although he disagrees with Augustine’s overly detailed allegorical application in his City of God.[99]

6. No more than Bonaventure did Calvin believe that the interpretation of the Bible was the affair of an isolated scholar. Calvin, once again, did not systematize his method, but his practice exactly follows the prescription of Bonaventure. First, the Bible itself, which is to be read in the light of a critical examination of the Fathers. Even a cursory glance at the Institutes with their numerous citations of the Fathers makes plain that Calvin no less than Bonaventure held the Fathers in high regard, but no less than Bonaventure he also accorded the Bible priority. Thirdly, we have what Calvin refers to as the “schoolmen,” who are Bonaventure’s “masters.” Of them, as Bonaventure, Calvin is ordinarily critical, although he recognizes that they are not without value, since there is a class of “sounder schoolmen,”[100] whom he sometimes cites with approval.

There is no greater defect in contemporary Calvin scholarship than its failure to take the interaction between Calvin and the Fathers seriously. For Calvin, the authority of the Fathers was such that he could write in his Psychopannychia that if Melito of Sardis’s treatise On Body and Soul were “extant, our present labour would be superfluous.”[101] Particularly significant is the contemporary failure to notice that Calvin virtually incorporated into the Institutes Basil the Great’s Hexaemeron and Ambrose’s derivative Hexaemeron, whose authors he describes as “holy men.”[102] Basil’s sermons on the creation are not only biblical but include a sophisticated philosophical treatment, which can in no way be reconciled with Neo-Orthodox Kantianism.

V. Sin—Its Consequences and Remedy

As has been seen, according to Bonaventure, the “Book of the Scriptures” was furnished to man because he had lost the ability to read the “Book of Nature” and the “Book of the Soul.” This is the consequence of sin, since

by turning away from the true light to a changeable good, man and all his descendants were by his fault twisted by original sin which infected human nature in a twofold manner: the mind with ignorance and the flesh with concupiscence. So that man blinded and twisted sits in darkness and does not see the light of heaven, unless grace comes to his aid.[103] 

What was deformed through the evil of sin, He (Jesus Christ) recreates by reforming it through the habits of grace and righteousness; what was bound to penalty He recreates by absolving it through fully adequate satisfaction: indeed, He restores us by sustaining for us the penalty in His assumed nature, and by infusing into us reforming grace which, because it links us with its Source, makes us members of Christ.[104]

However, grace is not irresistible; the concurrence of man’s free will is required.[105] Even though grace is the gift of the Holy Spirit and is the remedy for sin, it may be refused or disregarded.[106]

It is apparent that here Bonaventure is departing from Augustine. He knows nothing of prevenient electing grace. In fact, his huge Commentary on the Sentences does not have even one question on predestination. A shadow of that doctrine remains in that sanctifying grace is not given to everyone, who belongs “to the throng of perdition” and, “therefore, more souls are reproved than are elected, in order to show that salvation is by special grace, while condemnation is by ordinary justice.”[107] Surprisingly, Augustine’s influence is still strong enough to lead him to quote the statement dubiously attributed to Augustine that “grace is related to free will as a rider to his mount.”[108] On Bonaventure’s own theory, however, “grace” is a poor rider who cannot mount his steed unless the horse consents and even, when mounted, cannot control the horse. As Calvin remarked, “the obscurity and corruption of Lombard’s Sentences”[109] led Bonaventure, among others, towards the semi-Pelagianism of Trent.

On no topic has the distortion of Calvin’s balanced Augustinianism been greater than with reference to sin and its consequences, and no topic has been more fully and systematically discussed by Calvin. It is not possible to do much more than refer to some of the highlights of Calvin’s teachings set forth in the Institutes.[110]

First, Calvin explicitly states that he is following Augustine in holding that

the natural talents in man have been corrupted by sin, but that of the supernatural ones he has been wholly deprived…. [Man was] deprived of those supernatural endowments, which had been given him for the hope of eternal salvation…. Such are faith, love to God, charity towards our neighbors, and an attachment to holiness and righteous. All these things, being restored by Christ, are esteemed adventitious and preternatural; and therefore we concluded that they had been lost.

Man’s reason (understanding)

by which man distinguishes between good and evil, by which he understands and judges, being a natural talent, could not be totally destroyed, is partly debilitated, partly vitiated, so that it exhibits nothing but deformity and ruin,

although

some sparks continue to shine in the nature of man, even in its corrupt and degenerated state, which prove him to be a rational creature and different from the brutes…. The will, being inseparable from the nature of man, is not annihilated; but it is fettered by depraved and inordinate desires, so that it cannot aspire after anything that is good.[111]

Is man, then, “totally perverse” as T. F. Torrance would have it?[112] Calvin distinguishes between the “understanding for terrestrial things,” “which relate entirely to the present life, and are in some sense confined within the limits of it,” and “celestial things,” which are “the pure knowledge of God, the method of true righteousness and the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom.”[113]

Among the “terrestrial things” is, first, the understanding “that all associations of men ought to be governed by laws” and there is no man “who does not conceive in his mind the principles of those laws.” Even though the

human mind halts and staggers even when it appears to follow the right way, yet it is certainly true that some seeds of political order are sown in the minds of all. And this is a powerful argument, that in the constitution of this life no man is destitute of the light of reason.[114]

Next “follow the arts, both liberal and manual,” in which men “have an energy and facility not only in learning, but also in inventing something new in every art, or in amplifying and improving what they have learned from their predecessors.” This proves

that men are endued with a general apprehension of reason and understanding, for which every one for himself ought to acknowledge it as the peculiar favor of God.[115] 

Whenever, therefore, we meet with the heathen writers, let us learn from that light of truth which is admirably displayed in their works, that the human mind, fallen as it is, and corrupted from its integrity, is yet invested and adorned by God with excellent talents.[116]

Civil polity, philosophy, logic, medicine and mathematics are mentioned among the gifts of the ancient heathens to us.[117] More correctly, they are not the gifts of the heathen, but are rather “the most excellent gifts of the Holy Spirit, which for the common benefit of mankind. He dispenses to whomsoever he pleases.”[118]

To sum up:

Were anyone to object and say, that the image of God in human nature has been blotted out by the sin of Adam, we must, indeed, confess that it has been miserably deformed, but in such a way that some of its lineaments still appear. Righteousness and rectitude and the freedom of choosing what is good, have been lost; but many excellent endowments, by which we excel the brutes, still remain. He, then, who truly worships and honours God, will be afraid to speak slanderously of man.[119]

Already quoted above is Calvin’s statement that Christ restores the gifts lost through sin to man. “The remedy is Divine grace, by which the depravity of nature is corrected and healed.”[120] Calvin summarizes Augustine:

By the gratuitous mercy of the Lord, the human will is converted to what is good, and, being converted, perseveres in it; and the first direction of the human will to that which is good and its subsequent constancy, depend solely on the will of God and not on any merit of man.[121]

In view of Bonaventure’s departure from Augustine already noted, the question arises as to whether Calvin was the heir and follower of Augustinianism in contrast to a direct and sole reliance on Augustine. That Calvin indeed was a follower of Augustinianism can be shown by a little spade work into Calvin’s sources for the following statement:

Hence, again, we perceive that the distinctions of relative and absolute necessity, as well as necessity of consequent and of consequence, were not without reason invented in the schools.[122]

These distinctions are again endorsed by Calvin in his On the Secret Providence of God.[123] To whom does Calvin refer? These distinctions are briefly set forth in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae.[124] However, a much fuller treatment is to be found in Gregory of Rimini’s Commentary on the Sentences. Gregory, as did Calvin, limits the distinctions to God’s salvific activity, and rejects speculation such as Thomas Aquinas engaged in.[125] There is another tie between Calvin and Gregory of Rimini. In his Secret Providence of God, Calvin divides causation into “immediate and mediate.”[126] Gregory uniquely uses this terminology in arriving at a similar position with Calvin.[127]

Gregory of Rimini, the “Doctor Authenticus,” is not as well known as he should be, in view of the fact that in opposition to the growing semi-Pelagianism, he set forth and defended positions on free will, grace, absolute predestination to salvation and reprobation, and sin identical to those espoused by Calvin. Further, theology for Gregory, as for Calvin, is limited to what is contained in the Bible and speculation is not to be indulged in about God, other than as Creator of this world.[128]

It is almost a certainty that a full comparison of Gregory and Calvin would establish the probability of an influence on Calvin by Gregory, thus proving that Calvin is the heir and follower of Augustinianism. Such a study would not be without value for the interpretation of Calvin. For example, much has been made about Calvin’s “predestination in Christ” as constituting a limitation or “amelioration” of his clear teaching on predestination. That, for Calvin, predestination is a corollary of his doctrine of providence is shown by the fact that the distinctions discussed above are used by Gregory in conjunction with his treatment of predestination, while Calvin uses them in connection with his doctrine of providence.

VI. Faith and Its Certitude

Bonaventure’s treatment of faith is, as usual with him, complex. A full explanation would require much more space than the following sketch. Properly speaking, faith is an illumination by God of the mind and soul which moves man to believe.[129] Belief is an act “under the guidance of a light that conforms our intellect to the divine knowledge.”[130] It is important to note that we do not directly apprehend the divine knowledge itself; we rather are furnished with a perspective from which we see things from God’s standpoint. Something “simple” like God’s knowledge is beyond our powers, and, therefore, the object of faith must be something composed.[131] For example, we believe not only in the Incarnate Word (a composition), but also in historical incarnation at a definite point in time (a second composition).[132] The object of faith, is, therefore, articles of faith, expressed in propositions.[133]

Bonaventure uses the distinction between “implicit faith” and “explicit faith.” Implicit faith has two objects—God and Christ.[134] In these are contained in essence all the other articles of faith, which are the objects of explicit faith.[135] It should be further noted that implicit faith as such does not develop, but in the form of explicit faith it becomes more particularized. The possibility of explicit faith is the basis permitting the individual theologian to “progress” to greater knowledge.[136]

The certainty of faith rests on the fact that it is caused by God’s illumination, which, however, is not knowledge. Where, then, does faith look to obtain knowledge? Faith is directed to the Bible, which has been given us for (1) the commendation of the grace of the Holy Spirit; (2) “the introduction of faith”; (3) “the disclosing of wisdom which is found in it alone”; and (4) “the restoring of salvation, which is in it alone, since there is salvation in no other science.”[137] God gives the illumination of faith which finds its object in the God-given “Book of the Scriptures,” in which alone is found wisdom and salvation.

Bonaventure would be misunderstood if it were thought that faith was limited to a bare assent. As always with him, an affective response in love combines with the act of the intellect. “A faith is more certain when it knows more clearly and assents more lovingly.”[138]

It is not surprising that Calvin devotes a long chapter of the Institutes to faith,139 in view of “the ambiguous signification of the word ‘faith.’“[140] As a foundation, Calvin defines faith as

the certain and steady knowledge of the Divine benevolence towards us, which being founded on the truth of the gratuitous promise in Christ, is both revealed to our minds, and confirmed to our hearts by the Holy Spirit.[141]

In these days of existential “encounters,” it is important to emphasize that for Calvin faith is knowledge—not a mindless feeling.

There are two operations of the Spirit in faith, corresponding to the two parts of which faith consists, as it enlightens and as it establishes the mind. The commencement of faith is knowledge; the completion of it is a firm and steady conviction, which admits of no opposing doubt.[142]

For Calvin, as for Bonaventure, faith finds its content in the Bible:

Faith has a perpetual relation to the word, and can no more be separated from it, than the rays from the sun, when they proceed.[143] 

Faith is a knowledge of the will of God respecting us, received from his word. And the foundation of this is a previous persuasion of the Divine veracity; any doubt of which being entertained in the mind, the authority of the word will be dubious and weak, or rather it will be of no authority at all.[144]

Faith, however, is especially directed to the promises in the Bible:

When we assert, therefore, that faith rests on the gratuitous promise, we deny not that believers embrace and revere every part of the Divine word, we point out the promise of mercy as the peculiar object of faith.[145]

Calvin has his own version of Bonaventure’s “implicit-explicit faith” distinction. Implicit faith is a “docility connected with a desire for improvement.”[146] Calvin uses the story of the nobleman (John 4:50–53) to illustrate his use of the distinction. The nobleman “first, esteemed as an oracle what he had heard from the lips of Christ; but, afterwards he devoted himself to his authority to receive his doctrine.”[147] Further, for Calvin, faith is not static: “We ought to be continually improving by progressive advances.”[148] Consequently,

since ‘all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ,’ whom faith possesses, faith is justly extended to the whole summary of heavenly doctrines, with which it is inseparably connected.[149]

The correspondence between Bonaventure and Calvin is close, They are in agreement as to the nullity of the Tridentine distinction between implicit and explicit faith.

At this point, it must be noted that Bonaventure never considers the question of justification by faith. In this regard, he is a follower of Peter Lombard and not of William of Auvergne, Bernard of Clairvaux and other Augustinians. As Calvin summarized the position, Peter Lombard laid “a twofold foundation of hope; the grace of God and the merit of works.”[150] This will be further clarified in the next section.

VII. Informing the Affections

The wisdom which is theology would be but partial if it did not pertain to the will or affections as well as to the intellect or understanding. For Bonaventure, this wisdom which informs our affections has its foundation in Christ: “We do not come to this door [Christ] unless we believe in Him, hope in Him and love Him.”[151] Faith, hope and charity are “the three theological virtues, by which the soul is purified, enlightened, and perfected.”[152] They have their immediate origin in God’s gift of sanctifying grace, in addition to which is also “given to man an uncreated Gift, the Holy Spirit, to possess whom is indeed to possess God himself.”[153] There also flow from this grace the four cardinal virtues,[154] the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit,[155] and the Beatitudes.[156] It is the duty of the Christian (theologians included) to cultivate by good use these gifts for salvation. The scheme is saved from pure Pelagianism by the proviso that sanctifying grace depends on a prior gift of “gratuitously given grace.”[157] This is, in effect, the Tridentine conflation of justification and sanctification.

What relationship can, if any, exist between Calvin’s “justification by faith alone” and this contrary teaching? The answer is that only in a very qualified sense did Calvin believe in justification by faith “alone.”

The following aspect of Calvin’s theology has been much neglected:

[Paul calls Christ] our sanctification, by which he means, that we who are otherwise unholy by nature, are by his Spirit renewed unto holiness, that we may serve God. From this, also, we infer, that we cannot be justified freely through faith alone without at the same time living holily. For these fruits of grace are connected together, as it were, by an indissoluble tie, so that he who attempts to sever them does in a manner tear Christ in pieces. Let therefore the man who seeks to be justified through Christ, by God’s unmerited goodness, consider that this cannot be attained without his taking him at the same time for sanctification, or, in other words, being renewed to innocence and purity of life….

Observe, on the other hand, that these two offices of Christ are conjoined in such a manner as to be, notwithstanding, distinguished from each other.[158]

Far from Calvin is the near blasphemy of Luther’s Peccate fortiter. For Calvin, there is no justification without sanctification and, conversely, no sanctification without justification.

It was, therefore, quite consistent with his theology and, in fact, demanded by his theology, that Calvin inserted chaps. 6–10 in Book 3 of the Institutes, which has been many times separately published under the title, Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life.[159] The contents of this directory of the Christian life has sparked much controversy.[160] Ritschl apparently found it close to the ascetic ideal of the Franciscans. This evaluation has been discounted without any attention being paid to Franciscan writings. One of the more interesting opuscula of Bonaventure is his Epistola continens viginti quinque memorialia (Letter Containing Twenty-five Things to Remember), addressed to an unknown friar.[161] Except for paragraphs 13 dealing with reverence to Mary and 14 dealing with the selection of a “father” or spiritual director, most of it could be inserted into Calvin without anyone being the wiser. Another of Bonaventure’s opuscula deserves to be noticed—De regimine animae (On the Government of the Soul), addressed to Blanche, daughter of St. Louis, King of France.[162] The similarities to Calvin are much greater than the dissimilarities in these “counsels of perfection.” It requires little reading to see that Calvin took the position that “counsels of perfection” were the rule for the average Christian. Does this make Calvin a “Catholic”? The answer is yes, but not a Tridentine Roman Catholic. An easy proof, applicable to the question of the training of the affections, is the almost totally ignored fact that Calvin expressed qualified approval of ancient Augustinian monachism. Calvin devotes the entirety of chap. 13 of Book 4 of the Institutes to a careful separation of contemporary monachistic abuses from the monachism of Augustine. Further, Calvin was not ignorant that “Holy Bernard,” whose writings are so frequently cited by Calvin with approval, was the founder of the great Cistercian reform.

It is, therefore, clear that the wisdom which is theology for both Bonaventure and Calvin entails the training of the affections. Differing as they do, since Bonaventure departs from justification by faith, it, nevertheless, remains remarkable that for both Calvin and Bonaventure, the content of the wisdom which trains the affections is almost identical.

VIII. Taught by Christ

Christ cannot be separated from theology or the theologian. One of the key doctrines of Bonaventure is “Christus tenens centrum in omnibus”—Christ occupies the center in all things. The first book of the Collationes in Hexaemeron is devoted to proving that Christ, because “in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”[163] is the center point in “the metaphysical, the physical, the mathematical, the logical, the ethical, political or juridical, and the theological orders.”[164] Most pertinent is Bonaventure’s great sermon: Christus unus omnium magister (Christ the One Teacher of All).[165] The entire sermon is, as usual with Bonaventure, extremely concentrated and dense in its matter, and so is not easily summarized. A few quotations will point the direction of his thought:

It is impossible to arrive at the certain revelation of faith except through the coming of Christ into the mind. 

All authentic Scripture and all the preachers of Scripture are related to Christ who comes into the flesh, for He is the foundation of the entire Christian faith. 

He is the foundation for all authentic doctrine, whether apostolic or prophetic, according to both Laws, the Old and the New.

Moreover, Christ “teaches rational knowledge in as far as He is the Truth.” His teaching is not merely limited to theology, but extends to “scientific knowledge” of all things. In this connection, it is interesting to note that the possibility of epistemological certitude for man finds its warrant in the human nature of Our Lord. In contrast to the Christomonism of Barth and others, Bonaventure is proof that Christocentrism in no way implies adherence to some form of irrational, anti-cognitive theology.

For Calvin, as for Bonaventure, Christ is the center. A few from many possible quotations follow:

The whole of our salvation, and all the branches of it, are comprehended in Christ.[166] 

We would have no benefit from preaching…did not Christ himself, the internal teacher, by his Spirit, draw to him those who were given him by the Father.[167] 

Nothing shall we find, I say, above or below, which can raise us up to God, until Christ shall have instructed us in his own school.[168]

It should be unnecessary to state, if it were not for the frequently made statement that “Calvin is not interested in doctrines,” that doctrine is taught in Christ’s school, particularly in view of the fact that the Institutes is organized on the basis of, and in effect is a commentary on, the Apostles’ Creed.

Both Bonaventure and Calvin are in agreement that theology is the teaching of Christ, the Only Teacher. Since the cognitive element in theology is a matter of controversy today, it is most appropriate to set forth the Augustinian position as to the relationship between theology and philosophy which was shared by both Bonaventure and Calvin. As has been noted above, Christ is the single source of truth. Truth is, therefore, one—not multiple. “Religious truth” and “scientific truth” must, therefore, agree. Supreme truth is only to be found in the Bible, since as Calvin puts it, the Bible has “proceeded from God alone, and has nothing belonging to man mixed with it.”[169] Therefore, any proposition, scientific, philosophical, or aesthetic, which contradicts the Bible is false. On the other hand, philosophical activity, within limits, is proper and beneficial to man. As Bonaventure puts it, “Philosophy is a way to other sciences; who wants to stop in it is overtaken by darkness.”[170] The subject matter of philosophy is limited to what Calvin calls “terrestrial things.”[171] As Bonaventure expresses it: “Philosophy is concerned with things as they are in nature, that is, in the soul through innate or acquired knowledge.”[172] Philosophy for both Calvin and Bonaventure is the “handmaiden of theology” (ancilla theologiae).

The Augustinian position that theology based on the Bible is ultimate and controlling truth is the direct opposite of Kant’s Religion Within the Bounds of Pure Reason. The adoption of the supremacy of philosophy over theology has progressively shrunk Christianity into ever narrower compass. Ritschl located Christianity in a floating system of values having no real existence either in heaven or earth. Barth reduced Christianity to an ineffable encounter with a Christ, whose historicity is suspect, in some way generated through a human writing (the Bible) filled with error. Bultmann finds the person Christ superfluous in a system which reduces Christianity to an “event” which in some really miraculous fashion gives him a feeling of “authenticity.” The latest enthusiasm of unbelief is the Heidegger-Gadamer attack on the very possibility of objective truth by a perverse theory of “meaning.” In essence, it is the triumph of ultimate skepticism. It is beyond question that both Bonaventure and Calvin, as Augustinians, would have denied the right to our contemporary shining lights in “theology” to call themselves Christians.

Conclusion

It has been the purpose of this article to present the real John Calvin without “reading back into him” later philosophical and theological developments. A start has been made in interpreting him in accordance with the Fathers whose writings he considered worthy of respectful consideration. It is certain that a final interpretation of Calvin must await the detailed study of his predecessors among the Fathers and the schoolmen, with whom he engaged in dialogue. However, it is submitted that enough has been shown in the comparison between him and Bonaventure to leave it indisputable that he was a consistent Augustinian, and that only in the light of that school of theology and philosophy can his real opinions be determined. Further, it is clear that Calvin read in this light is consistent. What modern writers such as Niesel, Torrance, Parker, Quistorp, and others regard as contradictions in Calvin are only evidences that Calvin was not the Neo-Kantian Barthian which they have attempted to portray him as.

Finally, is the real John Calvin relevant for us? The answer to that question depends on the answer to the real question for our times: “Is the Christianity of the Bible relevant?”

Notes

1. Cf. Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956) 9–21, for a survey of the conflicting and mutually destructive contemporary approaches to the interpretation of Calvin.
2. Ibid., 17.
3. Ibid., 18.
4. Ibid., 19.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid. This is Niesel’s own position. He neglects to inform us how an “idea” which according to him we owe solely to Barth can have any relation to the thought of John Calvin.
7. Ibid., 14.
8. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (Cambridge: Blackfriars, 1964–76) 1a.1.7-8.
9. John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio (in vol. 1 of Opera omnia [ed. Carolo Balié; Civitas Vaticana: Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1950- ]) Prol., 5.
10. William of Ockham, Scriptum in librum primum Sententiarum, Ordinatio (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: [Franciscan Institute], 1967) Prol., 12.
11. Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum (ed. P. Boehner; Works of Saint Bonaventure 2; St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1956) 1.7: “Ita quod excaecatus homo et incurvatus.” Boehner translates incurvatus as “bent down”; see C. T. Lewis and C. Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879) 931, for the translation “crooked.”
12. Bonaventure, Commentarii in quattuor libros Sententiarum (hereafter Comm.; in Opera theologica selecta [ed. min., 4 vols.; Quaracchi: Colegii S. Bonaventure, 1934–49]) 3.35 u. 1.
13. Ibid., 3. dub. 4.
14. Bonaventure, De reductione artium ad theologiam (hereafter De red.; ed. Sr. E. T. Healy; Works of Saint Bonaventure 1; St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1955) 26.
15. Itinerarium, prol. 3.
16. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries (hereafter Comm. with biblical ref.; 22 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979) 1 Cor 6:17.
17. Bonaventure, Comm., 1.2.1.1, fund. 1–3 & ad 4.
18. Bonaventure, Breviloquium (hereafter Brev.; in vol. 2 of The Works of Bonaventure [tr. Joss de Vinck; Paterson, N.J.: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1960- ]) 2.12.1–2.
19. Itinerarium, 1.14.
20. Ibid., 2.1.
21. Bonaventure, Comm., 2.1.2.2.1 ad 3.
22. Ibid., 2.1.2.3.2.
23. Bonaventure, Soliloquium (in vol. 3 of Works) 4.5.
24. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (hereafter Inst.; tr. John Allen; Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, n.d., orig. 1813) 1.5.6.
25. Comm., Ps 147:9.
26. Inst., 1.5.6.
27. Comm., Heb.”:3
28. Ibid., Ps 19:1.
29. Ibid., Heb”:3.
30. Ibid.
31. Inst., 1.5.5.
32. Ibid., 1.5.2.
33. Comm., Gen 2:2.
34. Inst., 1.5.2.
35. Comm., Gen (Argument).
36. Inst., 1.5.9.
37. Brev., 2.12.1.
38. Inst., 1.15.3.
39. Ibid., 1.13.19.
40. Ibid., 1.12.18.
41. Brev., 2.9.
42. Ibid.
43. Bonaventure, Comm., 2.39.1.2.
44. Ibid.
45. Bonaventure, Quastiones disputata de sctentia Christi, 4.24; taken from George H. Tavard, Transiency and Permanence: The Nature of Theology According to St. Bonaventure (Franciscan Institute Pub., Theology Series, 4; St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1954).
46. Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexaemeron (hereafter In Hex.: in vol. 5 of Works) 2.10.
47. Comm. 1.8.1.1.1 and 4.
48. De red., largim.
49. Inst., 1.15.2.
50. Comm., Gen 1:26.
51. Inst., 1.15.4.
52. Ibid., 1.15.7.
53. Ibid., 1.15.4.
54. Ibid., 1.15.6.
55. Ibid., 1.15.5.
56. Ibid., 1.15.2.
57. Ibid., 1.3.1.
58. Ibid., 2.2.16.
59. Comm., John 1:5.
60. Inst., 1.5.5.
61. In Hex., 13.12.
62. Brev., Prol., 6.
63. In Hex., 12.17.
64. Brev., Prol., 2.
65. Sermo II-Dominica tertia Adventus, tr. with a commentary by Zachary Hayes, What Manner of Man? (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1974).
66. Brev., Prol., 2.
67. Comm., 3.40.1.
68. Brev., Prol., 4.
69. Ibid., Prol., 6.2.
70. Comm., 4.8.2 dub. 1
71. In Hex., 19.7.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., 19.8.
74. Comm., 3.3.1.1.3.
75. Brev., 4.1.
76. Ibid., 6.1–3.
77. In Hex., 19.5.
78. Ibid., 19.11.
79. Ibid., 17-18.
80. Inst., 1.6.
81. Ibid., 1.6.4.
82. Ibid., 1.6.2.
83. Ibid.
84. Psychopannychia, in John Calvin, Tracts and Treatises on the Reformation of the Church (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1958) 3.424.
85. Ibid., 484.
86. Inst., 1.6.1.
87. E.g., ibid., 1.18.3.
88. Niesel, Theology, 36.
89. E.g., Inst., 1.15.6.
90. Ibid., 1.9.3.
91. Ibid.
92. Comm., Ps”9:18.
93. Ibid., Gen (Argument).
94. Inst., 2.11.5.
95. Ibid., 2.11.8.
96. Comm., Gen 2:8.
97. Ibid.
98. Ibid., Gen 28:12.
99. Ibid., Gen 6:14.
100. Inst., 3.14.11.
101. Tracts and Treatises, 3.427.
102. Inst., 1.14.20.
103. Itinerarium, 1.7.
104. Brev., 5.3.3.
105. Ibid., 5.3.4.
106. Ibid., 5.3.1.
107. Ibid., 1.9.7.
108. Ibid., 5.3.6.
109. Inst., 3.11.15.
110. Ibid., 2.2.12-25.
111. Ibid., 2.2.12.
112. Thomas F. Torrance, Calvin’s Doctrine of Man (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1957) 83–115.
113. Inst., 2.2.13.
114. Ibid.
115. Ibid., 2.2.14.
116. Ibid., 2.2.15.
117. Ibid.
118. Ibid., 2.2.16.
119. Comm., Jas 3:9.
120. Inst., 2.3.6.
121. Ibid., 2.3.14.
122. Ibid., 1.16.9.
123. In Calvin’s Calvinism (tr. Henry Cole; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1950) 235.
124. 1a.19.3&6 ad 1.
125. Super primum et secundum Sententiarum (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute 1955, orig. 1522) 1.46-47.
126. Calvin’s Calvinism, 230f.
127. Super primum, 1.45.1.
128. Ibid., Prol., 1.4.
129. St. Bonaventure’s Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity (tr. Zachary Hayes; St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute. 1979) 1, concl.
130. Comm., 3.24.1.1 ad 3.
131. Ibid., 3.24.1.3.
132. Ibid., 3.25.1.1.
133. Ibid., 3.24.1.3.
134. In Hex., 8.12.
135. Ibid.
136. Comm., 3.25.2.3.
137. In Hex., 14.7.
138. Comm., 3.25.2.3.
139. Inst., 3.2.
140. Ibid., 3.2.13.
141. Ibid., 3.2.7.
142. Comm., Eph 1:13.
143. Inst., 3.2.6.
144. Ibid.
145. Ibid., 3.2.29.
146. Ibid., 3.2.5.
147. Ibid.
148. Ibid., 3.2.19.
149. Ibid., 3.2.13.
150. Ibid., 3.2.43.
151. Itinerarium, 4.2.
152. Ibid., 4.3.
153. Brev., 5.1.4.
154. Ibid., 5.4.5.
155. Ibid., 5.5.
156. Ibid., 5.6.
157. Ibid., 5.4.5.
158. Comm., 1 Cor 1:30.
159. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1952.
160. Heinrich Quistorp, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Last Things (London: Lutterworth Press, 1955) 51–54.
161. Bonaventure, Opuscula: Second Series (vol. 3 of Works) 247–263.
162. Ibid., 239-246.
163. See Col 2:3.
164. In Hex., 1.11.
165. Tr. with a commentary by Hayes, What Manner of Man?
166. Inst., 2.16.19.
167. Ibid., 3.1.4.
168. Comm., Gen (Argument).
169. Ibid., 2 Tim 3:16.
170. Bonaventure, Collationes de donis Spiritus Sancti, 4.12; takes from Tavard, Transiency.
171. Inst., 2.2.13.
172. Brev., Prol., 3.2.