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Reading tradition as pedagogy in Calvin and Augustine: the case of election
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2019
Abstract
In colloquial English the word ‘tradition’ tends to be understood as a noun referring to a more-or-less static set of propositions, often used to define the identity of the particular group that accepts them. This article seeks to challenge this convention by defending an older, more fluid sense of traditio that is not only found in but formative of a variety of major Christian theological sources. The argument draws especially on Jean Calvin, his preferred theological authority Augustine and briefly the New Testament itself, showing that each demonstrates a fundamental interest in Christian teaching as participation in divine pedagogy. Using the doctrine of election as a case study, I argue that this pedagogical framework evidences a dynamic conception of traditio as tradere, or a discourse on how human beings faithfully participate in what is properly a divine giving-and-receiving. This conception of tradition as pedagogy is commended for both its theological and its critical merit.
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References
1 ‘Tradition’, Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edn (Oxford: OUP, 2015).
2 The OED citations for the second theological definition of ‘tradition’ are primarily from Protestant sources during and after the sixteenth century.
3 See e.g. Blumenberg, Hans, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Gordon, Peter E., ‘The Idea of Secularisation in Intellectual History’, in Whatmore, Richard and Young, Brian (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Intellectual History (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), pp. 230–47Google Scholar.
4 In my view, these authors’ arguments – especially those of Weber and Löwith – are often interpreted in an oversimplified way.
5 Carl Schmitt's Political Theology is a good example of this kind of argument. Schmitt argues that a fairly static account of divine absolutism shares the (also fairly static) structure of political sovereignty.
6 This is a common critique, but perhaps one of the most famous iterations of it is found in Erasmus’ diatribe against Luther's version of Augustinian soteriology. For that exchange, see Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, ed. and trans. E. Gordon Rupp et al. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969).
7 Max Weber offers the most famous and influential version of this argument in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Stephen Kalberg (Oxford: OUP, 2011 [1904–5]). For other treatments of Weber's argument and overall approach, see MacKinnon, Malcolm H., ‘Part I: Calvinism and the Infallible Assurance of Grace: The Weber Thesis Reconsidered’, British Journal of Sociology 39/2 (June 1988), pp. 143–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gorski, Philip S., The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For some approaches to the relationship between incarnational chosenness, predestination and racism, see Carter, J. Kameron, ‘An Unlikely Convergence: W. E. B. Du Bois, Karl Barth, and the Problem of the Imperial God-Man’, New Centennial Review 11/3 (2011), pp. 167–224CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Griffin, Paul R., ‘Protestantism and Racism’, in McGrath, Alister E. and Marks, Darren C. (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Protestantism (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 357–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 For a helpful treatment of the relationship between scriptural interpretation and doctrine in Calvin's work, see Ward Holder, R., Calvin and the Grounding of Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 2006)Google Scholar.
9 Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. McNeill, John T., trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), pp. 3–5Google Scholar. With the exception of prefatory material, all subsequent citations of the body of the Institutio will be given parenthetically according to the convention of book/chapter/section.
10 The series of arguments Calvin gives for God's existence attest to the full range of faculties to which Calvin is willing to appeal for evidence. While Calvin eschews any kind of formal proof for God's existence, he appeals to reason via empirical and historical evidence of human failing and the prevalence of idolatry, or the impulse to worship (Inst. 1.1.2, 1.3.1); to human desires and perceptions (1.4.4, 1.51); to the possibility of human advancement in learning (1.5.2); to the observation of the human person in body and soul (1.5.3, 1.5.5); and to inexplicable experiences of kindness and generosity (1.5.8). As the human learns to recognise the marks of God's glory, she is encouraged to make use of all of these faculties in relation to graciously revealed mediations.
11 The particular quote is taken from 2.6.1, where Calvin provides a summary of the duplex cognitio originally laid out in Inst. 1.1–6, highlighting not only the importance of Christ the mediator as the second part of the twofold knowledge, but the effect of the preaching of the Word. Here, he not only presents the central importance of scripture, but prescribes a particular choreography for its proper use.
12 The 1560 Olivétan Latin edition presents this passage as 1.5.12.
13 According to this logic, it is imperative that the scriptural witness be understood to found the church, preceding it not only historically but also ontologically. The church exists as it performs the activity of receiving and passing on the divine witness. As Calvin will make clear much later in book 4, the church's ongoing presence must be understood as contingent on its perpetual reception of the apostolic preaching that witnessed to Christ – a reception that takes place through the repeated practices of preaching the Word and administering the sacrament according to Christ's institution (Inst. 4.1.9).
14 For more on Plato's Meno and the Eristic Paradox, see Fine, Gail, The Possibility of Inquiry: Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus (Oxford: OUP, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 For Plato, the paradox is solved by the theory of the recollection of the forms.
16 This reading of Augustine's theory of signs in De doctrina is informed by the following treatments: Darrell Jackson, B., ‘The Theory of Signs in St. Augustine's De doctrina christiana’, Revue des études augustiniennes 15 (1969), pp. 9–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jordan, Mark D., ‘Words and Word: Incarnation and Signification in Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana’, Augustinian Studies 11 (1980), pp. 177–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lootens, Matthew R., ‘Augustine’, in Gavrilyuk, Paul L. and Coakley, Sarah (eds), The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge: CUP, 2011)Google Scholar; Mackey, Louis, Peregrinations of the Word (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stock, Brian, Augustine the Reader: Mediation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Williams, Rowan, ‘Language, Reality, and Desire in Augustine's De Doctrina’, Journal of Literature and Theology 3/2 (1989), pp. 138–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Note that the reference to ‘faith, hope, and love’ recalls the parallel structure of the Augustinian Enchiridion’s more doctrinally oriented strategy of teaching.
18 Williams, ‘Language, Reality, and Desire’, p. 141.
19 De doctrina 1.7. This theme also suffuses the Confessiones, which were written directly after Augustine left off writing De doctrina (to which he returned and completed later). For example, in book 5, he contrasts mere knowledge of nature with the more dynamic and integrated knowledge of piety: ‘When I hear of a Christian brother, ignorant of these things, or in error concerning them, I can tolerate his uninformed opinion; and I do not see that any lack of knowledge as to the form or nature of this material creation can do him much harm, as long as he does not hold a belief in anything which is unworthy of thee, O Lord, the Creator of all. But if he thinks that his secular knowledge pertains to the essence of the doctrine of piety, or ventures to assert dogmatic opinions in matters in which he is ignorant – there lies the injury’ (5.5).
20 De doctrina 1.94.
21 Jordan, ‘Words and Word’, p. 179.
22 For other accounts of Calvin's views on signification and its relation to Augustine's theory of signs, see Wandel, Lee Palmer, ‘Incarnation, Image, and Sign: John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion and Late Medieval Visual Culture’, in Melion, Walter S. and Wandel, Lee Palmer (eds), Image and Incarnation: The Early Modern Doctrine of the Pictorial Image (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 187–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Evans, G. R., ‘Calvin on Signs: An Augustinian Dilemma’, Renaissance Studies 3 (1989), pp. 35–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 It is significant that Calvin signs the preface not only with a citation of Augustine, but one with significant content: ‘I count myself one of the number of those who write as they learn and learn as they write’ (Inst., preface, 5).
24 This accords with Richard Muller on piety: ‘Calvin continually exhorts his readers to piety and consistently criticizes authorities and teachings that stand in the way of piety or of the teaching of piety (doctrina, exercitia, or stadium pietatis), but he never describes what he is doing as a form of piety. Piety was to be conjoined with ‘teaching’ or ‘doctrine’ (doctrina): Calvin did not understand it as an exercise separable from his teaching, preaching, and debating.’ See his Unaccommodated Calvin (New York: OUP, 2001), p. 107.
25 In an especially vivid passage, Calvin writes that the scriptural writers teach us to see clouds not only as water vapour but also as divine chariots, and lightning bolts not only as electricity but also as divine messengers (Inst. 1.5.1).
26 I discuss Calvin's sacramental signification in greater depth in my article, ‘Calvin and the Two Bodies of Christ: Fiction and Power in Dogmatic Theology’, Political Theology 19/5 (2018), pp. 439–56.
27 I noted at the beginning that this doctrine, perhaps more than any other, has been used to mark and identify the ‘Calvinist tradition’. This is problematic for a number of reasons, two of which I address in this article: namely, because it is doubtful from a close reading of the text that Calvin subscribes to such an understanding of tradition (much less under his own name) or that he construes election as the kind of static mark that can serve as an external identifier. There are other reasons, however, that this is problematic, and the most important that I do not explore here have to do with the historical hybridity of Reformation-era doctrines and the hybridity of Reformed thinking itself. Richard Muller has done more than any other scholar to make this case, and for an articulation that covers both criticisms of the ‘Calvin vs. the Calvinists’ tendency and problematic readings of Calvin's (and more broadly Reformed) soteriology, see Muller, Richard A., Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012)Google Scholar.
28 Augustine's later soteriological writings are devoted to the problem of reception, with his motivation for forwarding a predestinarian account defended by his frequent citation of 1 Corinthians 4:7: ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’ In Grace and Free Choice, for example, Augustine will argue that knowledge is bound up with desire, and the question has to do with the end to which desire is directed. Is the desire to master the terms of salvation, or to receive a good will from the only one who is qualified to bestow such a will? (77). Along these lines, it is also noteworthy that Augustine's arguments for receptive desire constantly foreground the activity of prayer. See Grace and Free Choice in Answer to the Pelagians, IV: To the Monks of Hadrumetum and Provence, ed. John E. Rotelle (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999).
29 Jordan, ‘Words and Word’, especially pp. 177–9 and 196.
30 A compelling account of Augustine's pedagogy and its influence across the Latin tradition is found in Mackey, Peregrinations of the Word.
31 The five ways (Summa Theologica, 1.2.3) work not to disclose the essence of God (which is impossible) but to orient the reader intellectually in relation to a God whose existence is prior and whose essence is inaccessible. Bonaventure's itinerary both begins and ends with the shattering imposition of the seraph over the crucifix – an ending that is especially significant for how it turns, and even shatters, the reader who has spent the bulk of the itinerary learning to refine perceptions and conceptions in order to elevate the soul to God, returning the pilgrim to the site of the body as if from another vantage point.
32 Anselm, Proslogion 1.
33 Ibid.
34 Anselm, Proslogion 2.
35 De doctrina 1.7.7; see also Jordan, ‘Words and Word’, p. 196.
36 This reading is informed by ch. 3 of Mackey's Peregrinations.
37 Anselm directed the ‘Reply on Behalf of the Fool’ to be included perpetually with the Proslogion, alongside Anselm's own reply. With the inclusion of Gaunilo's reply, the text is accompanied by the condition of its own failure, or by the possibility that the divine name will not necessarily enact the turning of the subject. For Gaunilo, Anselm's argument fails when the language of ‘that than which a greater cannot be conceived’ is approached as a concept unrelated to the subject, or objectively external to the subject's own constitution. From such a standpoint, the concept is a mere thing among other abstract things that does not refer without a contextual act of force. As mere language, it has only a conventional claim on being, and as long as the being-of-God-in-particular cannot be objectively disclosed and related to the language, the argument fails. The argument's very success thus turns on the perpetuity of the gap between sign and signified. This is a gap that Anselm thinks can only be closed performatively: when the subject is turned in her relationship to words and things more generally, coming to know herself fundamentally as related to everything else by virtue of a language invested in being. According to Mackey, the argument is not designed to add anything new, such as disclosing a stable and transcendent signifier. Rather, it facilitates ‘a perpetual pilgrimage through the differences of language that sunder sign from being and delay until eternity the advent of presence’, while also gesturing toward the worthiness of the pilgrimage itself (Mackey, Peregrinations, p. 107).
38 Muller writes that Calvin's election ‘is preeminently a demonstration of God's gracious will in Christ shown forth in calling, justification, and sanctification’. Muller, Richard A., Christ and the Decree (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1986), p. 25Google Scholar. I see my argument as fundamentally in line with this characterisation, albeit recasting structural-pedagogical terms derived from Augustine.
39 For some classic treatments of Calvin's duplex cognitio, see Dowey, Edward A. Jr, The Knowledge of God in Calvin's Theology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952)Google Scholar; Parker, T. H. L., The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God: A Study in the Theology of John Calvin (London: Lutterworth, 1962)Google Scholar; and, more recently, Muller, Richard A., ‘“Duplex cognitio dei” in the Theology of Early Reformed Orthodoxy’, Sixteenth Century Journal 10/2 (1979), pp. 51–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 To read both how and why Calvin emphasises Christ's incarnate humanity as crucial to what makes Christ the sole and central mediator, see especially Inst. 2.12. Calvin places Christ in relation to other signifying forms of God-given mediation in 2.7–11.
41 Because the chapters on election come at the end of the book (followed only by a short treatment on the life everlasting), they assume a structural resonance to the loci that close the previous two books: namely, providence and atonement. In book 1, providence moves Calvin's argument from the claim that God is Creator to an account of how God's power shines ‘as much in the continuing state of the universe as in its inception’ (Inst. 1.16.1). In book 2, atonement moves Calvin's argument from the claim that Christ is the redeemer and fulfilment of divine mediations to an account of how Christ redeems (Inst. 2.16). Then, in book 3, Calvin focuses on the work of the Spirit, which literally doubles as the discourse on how human beings receive the grace given by God as Creator and Redeemer.
42 This language recurs in book 4, when Calvin uses it to quell excessive metaphysical speculation over the sacraments, writing that it is better to ‘experience than understand’ how Christ is joined to us through material elements. See Inst. 4.17.32. It may also be a legible call back to Anselm's fides quaerens intellectum.
43 To be clear, my best judgement is that Calvin does at times overstep the epistemic boundaries he also places around the discourse – perhaps an unfortunate consequence of polemic.
44 E.g. in Predestination of the Saints, Augustine writes, ‘If God produces our faith, working in a marvelous manner in our hearts in order that we believe, need we fear that he cannot do the entire work? And does a human being, for this reason, claim for himself its first parts in order that he might merit to receive the last parts from God? See whether one achieves anything else in this way but that the grace of God is somehow or other given in accord with our merits and that in that way grace is no longer grace (Rom. 11:6). For in this way it is paid back as something owed, not given gratuitously. It is, after all, owed to one who believes that his very faith be increased by the Lord and that the increase in faith should be the reward of the faith already begun.’ See Augustine, Predestination of the Saints in Answer to the Pelagians IV, ed. John E. Rotelle (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1997), p. 152. Augustine's concern here is for the disposition of the human person – what position is most advantageous to quell pride and encourage faith and gratitude.
45 This also accords with the epistemology Augustine adopts in his later writings, where desire functions clearly as a prerequisite for knowledge, both in the cases of right knowledge and error. See The Spirit and the Letter in Answer to the Pelagians I, ed. John E. Rotelle (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1997), esp. pp. 183–5.
46 Calvin repeatedly indexes proper knowledge to its use and benefit to the life of the believer. For a selection of references, see Inst. 1.1.1, 1.2.1, 1.5.9, 1.16.3, 3.20.1–3, 4.1.1, 4.16.9, 4.17.10. Brian Gerrish highlights this element of Calvin's thinking in the following way: ‘To be sure, it would be a setback for our understanding of [Calvin] if we then imagined an opposition in his mind between truth and usefulness, or between theological understanding and practical piety. While he was not interested in useless truth, it would never have occurred to him that a doctrine could be useful if it was not first of all true.’ See Gerrish, B. A., Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993), pp. 17–18Google Scholar.
47 One can note the thread of references, not least in Calvin's discussion of providence, to the light emanating from the divine Word that exists temporally and ontologically prior to created light. See e.g. Inst. 1.6.1 and 1.13.13. It is worth noting also that this represents an important distinction between Calvin and more Platonically and Neoplatonically influenced writers before him. As my colleague Dr Michael Motia puts it, for those following Plato and Plotinus, participation suggests that one is ‘held in being by that which created and sustains you’. For Calvin, who maintains ontological distinction between God and the world and a robust use for both human faculties and practices of signification, participation suggests something like being a part of what's going on – participating in a game or a performance. I'm indebted to Dr Motia for many conversations on this topic.
48 Emphasis added.
49 I am confident in calling this the crux of the locus not just because it is climactically positioned at the beginning of the fourth and final chapter; and not just because of the (putative) force of the pedagogical argument I am advancing here; but more fundamentally because it is the part of the argument that visibly ties to the theme of book 3 as a whole, concerned with ‘The Way in Which We Receive the Grace of Christ: What Benefits Come to Us From It, and What Effects Follow’.
50 This is a citation from Augustine's De correptione et gratia, ch. 46.
51 Calvin, in fact, repeatedly distinguishes the saving call from social-recognisable marks of favour. See e.g. Inst. 3.23.10 as well as his discussion of suffering in 3.8.1.
52 Emphasis added.
53 Emphasis added.
54 There is a longstanding debate over whether Calvin rejects the ‘practical syllogism’, an anachronistic name for the idea that assurance of salvation is provided by the presence of a perceptible mark in an individual life. I've argued here that the ground of assurance is found in the orientation to the call and the actions that follow from it, which I take to be more or less in line with the position that Calvin does allow the syllogism, not as a syllogism per se, but as a set of movements that connect christology to call, justification and sanctification. For a recent discussion, see Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition, ch. 8. For more on Calvin's approach to certainty in the context of other early modern intellectuals and his emphasis on the affective dimensions of faith, see Schreiner, Susan, Are you Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era (New York: OUP, 2011)Google Scholar, particularly pp. 66–77.
55 As I noted in the introduction, I see this impulse as misdirected on multiple levels.
56 An earlier version of this article was given at the American Academy of Religion, Christian Systematic Theology Unit panel on the concept of tradition in November 2017. I am grateful to Junius Johnson and Holly Taylor Coolman for articulating the prompt and organising the panel, and for the helpful feedback I received from other participants.