Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-29T02:21:35.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - The person of the Mediator

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Stephen Edmondson
Stephen Edmondson
Affiliation:
Virginia Theological Seminary
Get access

Summary

Jesus said: “You believe in God, believe also in me” (John 14:1). It is “wonderful,” Calvin comments, that Christ would place faith in the Father before faith in himself, against the expected logic. Since Christ is the lively image of the Father who has descended to us that we may ascend to the Father, he continues, it would have made more sense if Christ had argued that the disciples “ought to believe in God since they had believed in Christ.” We come to God having begun with Christ. But Christ was pushing toward a different conclusion:

For all acknowledge that we ought to believe in God, and this is an admitted principle to which all assent without contradiction; and yet there is scarce one in a hundred who actually believes it, not only because the naked majesty of God is at too great a distance from us, but also because Satan interposes clouds of every description to hinder us from contemplating God. The consequence is, that our faith, seeking God in his heavenly glory and inaccessible light, vanishes away.

Christ begins his final instructions to his disciples in John's Gospel in the same place that Calvin began his Institutes, with the sense inherent in all persons that we are called to faith in God, but that we are cut off from God both by our finitude and by the barriers that Satan can erect because of sin.

Type
Chapter
Information
Calvin's Christology , pp. 182 - 219
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×