From Then To Now: Calvin's Hermeneutical Bridge

By Merwyn S. Johnson

John Calvin's use of the Bible was so powerful in sermons, commentaries, and theology because of the necessary step he takes to bridge the time gap from the ancient Scriptures to his audience in 16th Century Geneva. When the interpreter takes this step, the words of the Bible convey the Word of God authentically to contemporary people. For Calvi

• Language: English
• Publisher: In Christ Supporting Ministries
• Release date: Feb 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781733514231

Merwyn S. Johnson

Born: Annapolis, Maryland, when father on staff at U.S. Naval AcademyLived: many different parts of the U.S. and SwitzerlandEducation: University of Virginia (BA); Union Presbyterian Seminary VA (BD cum laude, Th.M. Biblical Studies); University of Basel, Switzerland (D.Theol. Systematic Theology); Case Study InstituteWork: Minister at Staunton VA and Birmingham ALTeaching: Stephens College, Columbia MO; Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Austin TX; Erskine Theological Seminary, Due West SC; Union Presbyterian Seminary, Charlotte NC.Married to wife Beverly for over 50 years; three children, seven grandchildren.

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Previous Publications

Bedrock for a Church on the Move. Charlotte, ICSM, 2019.

Case Studies in the Life and Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fourth Edition, Charlotte, 2016.

Resource Materials for the Study of Christian Theology and Ministry, Charlotte, 2016.

Locke On Freedom: An Incisive Study of the Thought of John Locke, Austin, 1978.

The Idiom of Scripture, Leviticus 18:5, and Theology—at a Time of Paradigm Shift, in Bulletin of Biblical Theology (August 2017).

Gospel and Law in the Theology of Karl Barth, in The Westminster Handbook to Karl Barth (Westminster John Knox, 2013).

Justification and Sanctification in Calvin’s Theology, in Reconciliation and Transformation (Reinhardt Verlag, 2009).

The Three-Legged Stool: Pietism and Post-modern Theology, in Theology Between East and West (Wipf and Stock, 2002).

Calvin’s Ethical Legacy, in The Legacy of John Calvin: Calvin Studies Society Papers 1999 (CRC Product Services, 2000).

Calvin’s Significance for Evangelism Today, in Calvin Studies V (Richmond, 1990).

Calvin’s Handling of the Third Use of the Law and Its Problems, in Calviniana: Ideas and Influence of John Calvin (Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1988).

From Then to Now: Calvin’s Hermeneutical Bridge.

Copyright © 2022 by Merwyn S. Johnson.

All rights reserved.

Published by In Christ Supporting Ministries,

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Cover picture of the Rakotz Bridge, Kromlau, Germany, copyright © iStock.com/DieterMeyrl; licensed for use here.

First Edition.

ba 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Johnson, Merwyn S. (1938-)

From Then to Now: Calvin’s Hermeneutical Bridge.

ISBN 978-1-7335142-2-4

ISBN 978-1-7335142-3-1 (e-book)

1. John Calvin (1509-1564).

2. Bible/Scripture.

3. Biblical interpretation/hermeneutics/historical typology.

4. Reformed theoology.

This book is dedicated to my sister,

Carolyn Miree Johnson Crawford (1932-2021),

a child of God

whose life made a major impact

on all around her.

From Then to Now: Calvin’s Hermeneutical Bridge.

Contents

Dedication

Thank You

Abbreviations for Versions of the Bible

Preface

Introduction.

Section 1. Calvin and the Hermeneutical Circle: The Broader Issue of Biblical Interpretation.

Section 2. Calvin and the Literal Sense of Scripture.

2.1 Augustine and the Spiritual Sense of Scripture.

2.2 Spiritual Meaning and the Four-Fold Pattern of Exegesis..

2.3 Calvin’s Path Beyond the Quadriga.

2.4 The Parameters of Historical Typology for Calvin.

Section 3. Calvin and the Rhetorical Study of Scripture.

3.1 Calvin and Rhetoric.

3.2 O. Millet: Literary Typology vs. Historical Typology.

3.3 Sources and Influences for Calvin’s Hermeneutic.

Section 4. Historical Typology in Calvin’s Sermons, Commentaries, and Theology.

4.1 The Sermon on 2 Samuel 7:12-15.

4.2 The Sermon on Matthew 5:5-7.

4.3 The Commentary on Romans 4:17.

4.4 The 1959/61 Institutes 2.9-11.

Section 5. Calvin’s Hermeneutic in Calvin Scholarship.

5.1 Setting the Tone.

5.2 Calvin in Context.

5.3 Calvin and a Return to Timeless Truth.

5.4 Other Independent Studies of Calvin’s Hermeneutic.

5.5 Overall.

Section 6. Calvin’s Hermeneutic: Summary and Fresh Directions.

6.1 Learnings from Calvin.

6.2 Further Reflections and Directions for Study.

6.3 The Light Calvin Brings to the Modern Christian Church.

Addenda.

A. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica. Pt I, Q 1, Art 10.

B. Calvin’s Sermon on 2 Samuel 7:12-15.

C. Calvin’s Sermon on Matthew 5:5-7.

D. Calvin’s Commentary on Romans 4:17.

E. Calvin’s 1559/60 Institutes, Bk 2, Chapts 10-11.

Index

About the Author

Thank You

My editors, The Rev. Sarah J. Kromer and The Rev. Danette Osborne-Smart, have been indispensable to this project. At every turn they have read successive drafts, asked probing questions, pointed out the gaps, and given solid, constructive feedback. Their steadfast expectations for clear evidence, sound arguments, and cogent English are manifest in the presentation of this material from Calvin, to whose best insights they are also devoted. Readers of the book will want to thank them as much as I do. The eagle eye of Chris Buchanan has also been important to catching typos and rough spots. Any shortfalls or ambiguities remain mine, of course.

Abbreviations

For Versions of the Bible Used

Biblical quotations are usually ascribed to one of the versions listed. The author’s direct translations from the Hebrew or Greek text of the Bible are so indicated. Quotations from the Bible are set apart by italics, not by quotation marks. Abbreviations for individual books of the Bible are those used by the RSV, NRSV, and NIV.

RSV Revised Standard Version

New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006.

NIV New International Version

New Jersey: International Bible Society, 1984.

Preface

This book requires very little in the way of prefatory remarks. What began as the chapter of a book on John Calvin quickly became a book of its own. When I realized the gravity of the subject and the depth of what I was finding in Calvin, the book became too important to bury as one chapter among others.

The heart of the book is a study of John Calvin’s approach to Scripture, Section 4. By approach to Scripture I mean not only Calvin’s high view of Biblical authority but also what makes the Bible authoritative when it is read and interpreted as the Word of God at the center of human life and human community. In such matters Calvin was, it turns out, at the cutting edge for his time. He approaches Scripture across a specific hermeneutical bridge known as historical typology, opening doors at a critical time in the history of the Church. That alone would make a study of his approach to Scripture valuable.

Calvin’s approach to Scripture has received concentrated attention over the last 50-60 years. My perception of this attention, however, is two-fold. First, the scholarship has set forth a lot of dots about Calvin’s approach to Scripture but has not connected them, especially where historical typology is concerned. This book attempts to connect the dots. Second, the scholarship too often functions with blinders on, putting modern assumptions about Biblical interpretation in the way and blurring what Calvin actually saw quite clearly, especially concerning the issue of hermeneutics and the search for spiritual meaning. This book attempts to address some of those blinders.

As it turns out—now that this study has reached the point of a larger conversation—Calvin’s approach to Scripture has an importance that goes beyond Calvin. In the midst of a paradigm shift for the Christian Church, for American culture, and for world history, the issues with which Calvin was wrestling look and feel remarkably current. Letting Calvin speak with his own voice may help us find our own way through this dark and difficult terrain.

We in our time, as for Calvin in his time, and for the people of the Bible in their times, all yearn to see things more clearly in God’s Presence, with Jesus Christ (God-with-us) at the center. Amazingly, God’s Word as Scripture gives us a window on that Living Presence. The Spirit of God Who moves us to seek that Presence also opens up bridges for us to cross over ... from our time to other times and back again. So, today, God’s Light illumines all things with forgiving love, and grants us the joy of walking with God, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1), at this very moment of our lives. As the Psalmist puts it, in thy light do we see light (36:9, RSV), and thy Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my pathway (119:105, RSV).

—Merwyn S. Johnson, Charlotte, NC, February 5, 2022

Introduction To

From Then to Now: Calvin’s Hermeneutical Bridge

In Calvin’s hands the ancient Bible came alive for his contemporaries. Karl Barth highlights one of John Calvin’s greatest accomplishments with these words:

How energetically Calvin, having first established what stands in the text [of Scripture], sets himself to re-think the whole material and to wrestle with it, till the walls which separate the sixteenth century from the first become transparent! Paul speaks, and the man of the sixteenth century hears.¹

This book is about what John Calvin does to bridge the time gap between living Christians and Jesus Christ as he is portrayed in the Bible from of old. Establishing that bridge, in the power of the Spirit, is essential to the Bible as the Living Word of God and to Jesus Christ as the Living Lord.

By the 16th Century, living Christians could no longer ignore the sense of historical distance between one set of unique people, circumstances, or events and another. As a person of the 16th Century, Calvin takes the stance of a person within the community of his own time and place. He uses the pronouns we or us in all his primary utterances, whether sermons, commentaries, or the Institutes. Calvin’s identity with his community stands out in the opening line of the Institutes, dating back to 1536: "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves."²

Utterly identified with his community in time and place, Calvin faced the heavy pressures on life in the 16th Century and his own turbulent life story³ with the urgent questions:

• How can Jesus’ words become our words, the circumstances of his life become the circumstances of our lives, the issues of his life become our issues?

• How indeed can Jesus Christ and the Gospel in his name be contemporaneous with us who live in an entirely different time, place, and setting 1500+ years later?

This study aims to show what Calvin is doing when he bridges that time gap, namely, that historical typology is Calvin’s hermeneutical bridge from then to now. Calvin not only establishes a faithful, effective way to render the Bible and Jesus Christ contemporary to himself and his audience. He also departs from his predecessors in the Church at two vital points, first, where they bridge the historical gap with a timeless truth approach to the Bible, and second,where they separate the spiritual from the literal sense of Scripture.

Calvin built his practice of ministry and his theology around his approach to Scripture. That means historical typology informed everything he did at the time of the Reformation. Calvin’s approach to Scripture endures today, illuminating modern discussions over the Bible and its functional authority in the life of the Church.

This book takes five steps to elaborate historical typology in Calvin’s approach to Scripture. Section One reviews the hermeneutical circle and where Calvin fits into it. Historical typology is, in fact, one of several approaches to Scripture. The Greek word for hermeneutics (ἑρμηνεύτικος) simply means having to do with interpretation, and it properly covers the whole process of interpreting a written document. The term applies to the interpretation of laws and art as well as religious texts.⁴ Only by seeing where historical typology ties into the broader issue of Biblical interpretation, or hermeneutics, will we see clearly that Calvin is departing from the timeless truth approach of his predecessors, such as Augustine (in the Early Church) and Aquinas (in the Medieval Church). Luther also departs from the timeless truth approach, but not with historical typology. Sorting out their respective points of departure is crucial to understanding what distinguishes Calvin’s hermeneutic before, during, and after the Reformation.

Section Two takes up Calvin dealing with the inherited problem of separating the spiritual from the literal senses of Scripture. Early Christians took the literal meaning seriously, in order to reach a different, higher meaning—something mystical, capable of lifting us into the world of the divine. They did this by highlighting the metaphors in the text of Scripture or the spiritual allegories they perceived lay behind the text (2.1). Over the centuries the practice of distinguishing the spiritual from the literal sense of Scripture settled into a method of interpretation known as the Quadriga (2.2). With a hermeneutic of historical typology, Calvin avoids separating the literal from the spiritual meaning of the Bible altogether. Section Two covers Calvin navigating the Quadriga and arriving at historical typology (2.3, 2.4).

Section Three counters the claim that Calvin’s approach to the Bible is based on the critical categories and techniques of classical rhetoric, e.g., from Romans such as Cicero and Quintilian. Rhetoric was at the center of Calvin’s formative education, and typology—not yet historical typology—is a category of classical rhetoric (3.1). Olivier Millet (1992) argues that rhetoric defines Calvin’s approach to Scripture (3.2). Engaging Millet, Section Three asserts that Calvin’s hermeneutic of historical typology embraces but exceeds rhetoric (3.2, 3.3).

Section Four presents moments where Calvin talks about and interprets the Bible in terms of historical typology. The section examines two sermons (4.1, 4.2, printed in full as Addenda B and C), a selection from his commentaries (4.3, see Addendum D), and where he discusses historical typology in the Institutes (4.4, see Addendum E). In these places Calvin is speaking with his own words. After Sections One, Two, and Three remove the hedges, Calvin’s hermeneutical bridge from then to now, historical typology, stands out.

Section Five reviews Calvin scholarship dealing with Calvin’s approach to Scripture over the last 60 years. The field divides into four groups: those who seek to locate Calvin in his historical context (5.2), those who place him back into the timeless truth spirituality from which he was trying to depart (5.3), those who read Calvin through the lens of rhetoric (5.4 and Section Three), plus several other, independent studies (5.4). These groups overlap to some extent, and the studies uncover many crucial elements pointing to Calvin’s approach to Scripture. The field almost universally misses Calvin’s hermeneutic, however, because Calvin scholars tend to interpret Calvin through their own hermeneutic instead of his historical typology. The issues discussed in Sections One, Two, and Three entail how our own approaches to Scripture keep us from connecting the dots for an accurate picture of Calvin’s approach to the Bible.

Section Six draws the study together (6.1) and projects directions for further discussion (6.2), especially where Calvin is concerned. As it turns out, the issues faced by Calvin at the heart of the 16th Century Reformation reflect very closely the issues faced by the American and Western Christian churches in the early 21st Century (6.3). Calvin still has much to say to us today.

---

¹ Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 7, from the Second Preface, dated 1921. With these words paying homage to Calvin, Karl Barth signals his own remarkable venture into hermeneutics.

² Cited as revised in 1539, from Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed John T. McNeill, trans Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 1.1.1., p. 35. Italics added.

³ For the watershed moments in Calvin’s life and times, see the concise biography by T.H.L. Parker, John Calvin: A Biography (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1975); plus the insights and review of literature by Heiko A. Oberman in Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvin’s Reformation (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen Noord-Hollandsche, 1991).

⁴ In a modern classic of hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer covers all three fields, in Truth and Method, 2nd revised edition (New York: Continuum Books, 2004. German original in 1960, 1965.).

Section One.

Calvin and the Hermeneutical Circle: The Broader Issue of Biblical Interpretation.

This section considers where Calvin and historical typology fit into the larger issue of Biblical interpretation, or hermeneutics. The larger issue is a circle of interpretation (see Diagram below) from the interpreter at the present moment (Arc 1), to the tools and method of inquiry (Arc 2), to the text as the interpreter sees it (Arc 3), to the crucial transfer of the meaning of the text in its original location back to the present moment (Arc 4). Arc 4 is often called the hermeneutical principle or the hermeneutic for short. This final step, from then to now, returns to the place from which it all began, the present moment (Arc 1). Interpreting a Biblical text takes place when the interpreter, moved along by the Spirit, traverses the whole circle.

Arc 1 (we here and now) is where the interpreter stands, at the beginning of the effort and at its end. The interpreter is firmly planted in her own time, place, and setting. From this vantage point she launches into the task of interpretation and then returns back to this vantage point to bring the meaning of a passage to bear on life today. At Arc 1, personal devotional reading is anchored in the present moment, both going around the circle and returning, seeking to make sense of one’s life with the help of a Biblical text. Likewise at Arc 1, professional sermon design and construction—usually for preaching in a community gathered for worship—entails both going around the circle and returning, to expound a given text for a modern-day audience and situation. But the circle of interpreting Scripture is more than just articulating its meaning for oneself or a contemporary audience (Arc 1).

Arc 2 (exegesis, now to then) covers the steps we take to get at the literary-grammatical sense of a Scripture passage in its own time, place, and setting. Over the centuries, scholars have amassed some amazing study tools and techniques— called exegesis—to do just that. Mastering these tools takes energy and expertise, but interpreting Scripture involves more than just using study tools and techniques.

Arc 3 (the text, them then and there) deals with the simple, direct meaning of the text at the point of its origins. The concern here is for what was happening, or meaningful, or powerful to the author and/or the people in their own time, place, and setting. Getting to this point requires an extraordinary effort to understand another person in their own language and let their thoughts, feelings, and experiences guide ours for a moment. The same thing is going on in every human conversation, but the transposition is especially poignant when dealing with the ancient text of the Bible. Yes, the book in my hand is the same as the one written by an ancient author. But translated into English (or some other language), the book is no longer in the Greek and Hebrew tongue of its authors. Yes, the book in my hand is readable and accessible, but the people are distant in time, perspective, technology, and life experiences. These differences cannot be overlooked. Calvin did not overlook them in his approach to the Bible. Here, too, interpreting Scripture involves more than just the text at the moment of its origin.

Arc 4 (hermeneutic, then to now), like Arc 2, is a bridge between Arcs 1 and 3, albeit moving in the other direction. Just repeating the text or an exegesis of the text is not enough. At Arc 4 the question is, variously, What continues the same from then to now? What is our take-away now after encountering the text then? What is the vital meaning to be transferred from them, the Biblical authors, to us, the modern audience? The point at which the words of the Bible become our words involves a transformation of meaning at one end into meaning at the other end, hence the question, what bridge-point makes it so?

Diagram: The Hermeneutical Circle¹

Modern hermeneutics can be grouped into eight approaches to the bridge of Arc 4:

i. the timeless truth of human experience with God;

ii. the timeless truth of rational propositions about salvation; [list continued on next page]

iii. re-living the timely experience of God’s mercy to sinners;

iv. re-living the timely identity of relationship with God;

v. the common point-of-reference—God;

vi. the common point-of-reference—humanity;

vii. an historical typology of God acting then and now; and

viii. a literary typology of God’s Word speaking then and now. Probably only four of these eight hermeneutical

bridges for Arc 4 were active at the time of the Reformation, and we will discuss them in greater detail as this essay unfolds. Briefly, the timeless truth variations (i and ii) assume that truth is unchanging from one time to another. That is to say, assuming that