Indirect Faith

I am a fan of Calvin's writings. Though I am not a Calvinist myself, I am drawn to his style and the way he subtly zeros in on the spiritual truth. He is a much stronger writer than many who consider him to be an ally.

Although Calvin is making doctrinal points in this passage, he is not without attention to the task of edification. Consider the following passage:

We grant, indeed, that so long as we are pilgrims in the world faith is implicit, not only because as yet many things are hidden from us, but because, involved in the mists of error, we attain not to all.

The highest wisdom, even of him who has attained the greatest perfection, is to go forward, and endeavour in a calm and teachable spirit to make further progress. Hence Paul exhorts believers to wait for further illumination in any matter in which they differ from each other (Phil. 3:15). And certainly experience teaches, that so long as we are in the flesh our attainments are less than is to be desired.

In our daily reading we fall in with many obscure passages which convict us of ignorance. With this curb God keeps us modest, assigning to each a measure of faith, that every teacher, however excellent, may still be disposed to learn. Striking examples of this implicit faith may be observed in the disciples of Christ before they were fully illuminated.

We see with what difficulty they take in the first rudiments, how they hesitate in the minutest matters, how, though hanging on the lips of their Master, they make no great progress; nay, even after running to the sepulchre on the report of the women, the ressurection of their Master appears to them a dream.

As Christ previously bore testimony to their faith, we cannot say that they were altogether devoid of it; nay, had they not been persuaded that Christ would rise again, all their zeal would have been extinguished. Nor was it superstition that led the women to prepare spices to embalm a dead body of whose revivial they had no expectation; but although they gave credit to the words of one whom they knew to be true, yet the ignorance which still possessed their minds involved their faith in darkness, and left them in amazement.

Hence they are said to have believed only when, by the reality, they perceive the truth of what Christ had spoken, and not that they then began to believe, but the seed of a hidden faith, which lay as it were dead in their hearts, then burst forth in vigour.

They had, therefore, a true but implicit faith, having reverently embraced Christ as the only teacher. Then, being taught by him, they felt assured that he was the author of salvation: in fine, believed that he had come from heaven to gather disciples, and take them thither through the grace of the Father. There cannot be a more familiar proof of this, than that in all men faith is always mingled with incredulity.

The Institutes. Book III. Chapter II.

Here are some aspects of this passage that caught my attention.

First, Calvin writes: "In our daily reading we fall in with many obscure passages which convict us of ignorance." A key phrase here is "fall in". This phrase accurately expresses the gravity of the word and how it desires to pull us into it. Calvin is telling us the Bible should be read daily and we should pay attention to the way it intends to speak to us personally. An honest heart reads the Bible saying, "Hey, that sounds like my life."

This is in direct contrast to his opponents, the scholastics, who held the Bible at arm's length. They did this so they could pass it around easily in the form of rhetoric and ideas without needing to bother with the details of examining how to relate to it. They made it easy to look down on the disciples for their shortcomings while forgetting their own.

Second, consider this enigmatic sentence: "... Faith is implicit, not only because as yet many things are hidden from us, but because, involved in the mists of error, we attain not to all."

The word implicit means 'implied' or 'indirectly expressed'. When Calvin calls faith 'implicit' he means that it doesn't happen as a direct result of outward events. It is rather an inward thing that we cannot see in another person directly.

Calvin asks, 'Why doesn't faith happen directly? Well it's not just because we don't know everything. It's also because we live by pathetic expectations.'

Jesus explicitly told the disciples he would be handed over to sinners and die and he would later be brought back to life again. When Jesus died (and even as early as his capture) the disciples seemed to give up on Christianity.

What's important here is Calvin isn't shaking his head saying, "Those selfish turkeys." And he's not saying, "If only they had been more educated like those scholastics ...". He's saying, "Those guys had trouble accepting the beautiful message of the gospel ... just like all of us."

Thirdly Calvin notes at the end of the chapter: "In all men faith is always mingled with incredulity."

In other words Calvin is saying, 'Show me a person who faithfully trusts God and I will show you an unfaithful person living with doubt.' Faith is not a trite thing to be easily won over. As one Danish writer once put it, it is not a thing easy to gain and surpass but a task for a lifetime.

In conclusion -and I do believe Calvin is with me on this one- the command to have faith is so foreign, so alien to our human understanding that we need God to come into our hearts and win us over to the life of faith. Although I do not believe God forces His faith upon us, it is something we need to be on board with Him about.

Also faith is not something we can 'show off' and boast about. No one else really knows how much faith we have (and how much we don't have) except God. So we should strive to trust God in the way that is pleasing to him and to often examine our hearts.