This discussion with these notes were presented in the PhD seminar “Apologetic Method and History” (2025) at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is divided into four books. The first three books follow the Apostle’s Creed formula: Father, Son, and Spirit. While the fourth looks at the church. These are broad distinctions, because all four topics are intertwined throughout each book. This review and discussion-guide looks at the first book and further narrows to focus on four apologetic points: A universal starting point for understanding God and man; issues around hell and the problem of evil; Calvin’s view of Roman Catholicism and authority; and finally, Calvin’s apologetic of trust.

A Universal Starting Point

For Calvin, we cannot truly understand ourselves until we first have “contemplated the face of God” (I.1.2). Our “innate pride” keeps us from seeing the “clear evidence of our injustice, vileness, folly, and impurity” (I.1.2). And “we cannot aspire to him in earnest until we have begun to be displeased with ourselves” (I.1.1). This is similar to the idea John the Baptist expresses when he said: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Or, perhaps, a bit more on the nose, the words of Jesus: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). This, Calvin refers to as “knowledge.” He is not referring to the larger philosophical category of knowledge but to special revelation. Later in his second book he makes the distinction between natural or “inferior” knowledge and higher, spiritual knowledge. In the case of the former, he does not reject advances in science or medicine, for instance, even though they may not come from Christian practitioners (II.2.16). But spiritual knowledge can onlycome from a spiritual source. And while Calvine does not tease out the (implicit) logic here, it holds: Natural things require natural senses, and natural senses can be tested. Likewise, spiritual things require spiritual senses (that is, the Holy Spirit), and, as the apostle John writes, this too can be tested.¹ The spiritual things of this argument are special revelation. “It is one thing to perceive that God our Maker supports us by his power, rules us by his providence, fosters us by his goodness, and visits us with all kinds of blessings, and another thing to embrace the grace of reconciliation offered to us in Christ” (I.2.1).

Throughout the Institutes he has two recurring adversaries he writes against. The first is the Roman Catholic church (RCC from here on).² The second is the epicureans, who—much like the later Deists—believed that God is distant and inactive in his world.³ What both of them have in common (as, perhaps, many others do, as well) is their seat of authority. For Calvin, the epicureans take authority from God because everyone, in their own mind, “has had his own God” (I.5.12). The RCC also takes that power, but gives it instead to the Pope. Though coming at it from different angles, each position elevates themselves in their ability to have true knowledge about God apart from special revelation. What is interesting about these two dialogue partners is that one represents insiders (RCC), while the other represents outsiders. Nevertheless, Calvin’s assessment is the same: special revelation is the only source of true knowledge.

Discussion

1. From Calvin’s point of view, would an apologetic method like Gary Habermas’s “minimal facts” approach (a form of evidentialism) be possible? For context, the minimal facts approach seeks to find several key facts about Jesus’s death and resurrection that are agreed to by the vast majority of all relevant scholars. Many of these scholars not Christians. Habermas’s approach is to show from these common belief sources that the resurrection is the only reasonable conclusion. However, to a similar topic, Calvin writes: “it is foolish to attempt to prove to infidels that the Scripture is the word of God. This it cannot be known to be, except by faith” (I.8.13).
2. Would the classical method be more compatible?

On Hell and Evil

For Calvin, it is a given that everyone, everywhere has a concept of God imprinted inside them.⁴ For this reason, each man “may be condemned by their own conscience when they neither worship him nor consecrate their lives to his service” (I.3.1). And so, from here, follows the doctrine of Hell. Calvin does not spend much time on this directly,⁵ but it is a natural companion to his discussions about God’s sovereignty. And on that, Calvin writes: “by withholding government, it makes God the ruler of the world in name only, not in reality. For what, I ask, is meant by government, if it be not to preside so as to regulate the destiny of that over which you preside?” (I.16.4). And so, Calvin is clear (here and elsewhere) that Hell is neither a passive byproduct nor a fictitious theology.⁶ Rather, God is sovereign to do with his creation what he pleases.

When considering the distinction between God’s (alleged) permissive will and perfect will—to put it in more modern terms—Calvin writes that this distinction is an invention of men, “for the carnal mind can scarcely comprehend how, when acting by their means, he contracts no taint from their impurity” (I.18.1). And “therefore, whatever men or Satan himself devise, God holds the helm, and makes all their efforts contribute to the execution of his judgments” (I.18.1).

The perennial question which follows then is: How then do we understand evil if God is actively behind everything? Calvin frames the problem this way: “It seems absurd that man should be blinded by the will and command of God, and yet be forthwith punished for his blindness” (I.18.1). In the end, Calvin appeals to a both-and view, where a man can be liable for the evil in his heart and God can also use that to accomplish his ends. Quoting Augustine, it is the motive which separate a man’s guilt from God’s goodness (I.18.4).

What Calvin does not discuss is how these two ideas can cohere. As David Alexander and Daniel Johnson write, while popular (evangelical) culture of the last twenty years has seen a surge in Calvinism, the academic side has not seen this, and, according to them, it has been the opposite.⁷ Questions like the problem of evil are one of the principles reasons for this. How do we not pin sin to God if God is the ultimate cause behind everything, including sin?⁸ One solution is to consider what the counter-reformation RCC theologian Luis de Molina proposed: middle knowledge. Very briefly, there are three kinds of knowledge: On the one end is natural knowledge, which includes things like 2 + 2 = 4; while on the other end is free knowledge, the things that God chooses to make happen.⁹ Then, in between those is middle knowledge. This is the idea that there are counterfactuals, or facts “which state how possible creatures would freely act if in various circumstances.”¹⁰ Some Calvinists have taken this route to find a philosophically satisfying way to harmonize Calvin’s position here.¹¹

Discussion

3. From a Calvinist point of view, how can we resolve the problem of evil? Is this a weak point for Calvinism or simply a misunderstood point?
4. Do you see any compatibility with middle knowledge and Calvinism?

The Papacy and Authority

This is, perhaps, what Calvin’s Institutes is most known for. While he does not name a particular pope, he sees the entire office as antichrist.¹² Ultimately, the question is one of authority. “Nothing, therefore can be more absurd than the fiction, that the power of judging Scripture is in the church, and that on her nod its certainty depends” (I.7.2). Rather than using any kind of external or philosophical proofs here, Calvin leaves Scripture to be its own defense: “The highest proof of Scripture is uniformly taken from the character of him whose word it is” (I.7.4).

The issue is an epistemic one. How do we know that it is these books here, and not those over there, that belong in the cannon? It is, he notes, a “great insult to the Holy Spirit” who has “guarantee[d] that they have come down safe and unimpaired to our times” (I.7.1). His intent is to show that the Scripture can indeed stand on its own. But anyone who has studied the history of the New Testament cannon will readily admit that the church did not produce a full list until the fourth century. This, of course, is not to argue that the question of which books belonged in the canon were all up in the air until that time.¹³ Rather, it is simply to note that such a list may not have been self-evident from day one. Calvin, on the other hand, seems to imply that what is and is not Scripture is that clear.

Calvin, like many of the other reformers, were interested in just that—reforming, or restoring, the areas where the RCC had gone off track. For Calvin, revolution was not the goal. Rather, he saw a remnant within the larger body (“the renovated church” [I.7.5]). “We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgments, but we subject our intellect and judgment to it as too transcendent for us to estimate” (I.7.5). In this, we see clearly that the errors of the RCC were in his sights.

Discussion

5. In his critique of the RCC, did he over-correct? For instance, does he devalue local church leadership in his attempt to dispel the Pope of his power? What of the collective church’s resources, like scholarship, that individual church members can lean into?
6. Some of the ways Calvin argues are uncomfortably close to how Mormonism, for instance, has argued. While these are clearly more than differences of degree, how do we walk a church member through this?

An Apologetic of Trust

In the penultimate chapter of his first book, Calvin discusses the outworking of his doctrine of God’s providence. How he builds this out provides an interesting apologetic. To begin with, “all things are divinely ordained” (I.17.1). This is not meant to be combative but comforting. For it is “his supreme authority regarding his will as our only rule of justice, and the most perfect cause of all thing” (I.17.2). Often times, it seems, apologetic conversations around Calvin and his view of God’s sovereignty are in defense of Calvin’s views. But I see this chapter as a strong apologetic in itself. Considering the pastoral element of God’s providence, Calvin writes: “God has been pleased to conceal from us all future events that we may prepare for them as doubtful, and cease not to apply the provided remedies until they have either been overcome, or have proved too much for all our care . . . the providence of God does not interpose simply; but, by employing means, assumes, as it were, a visible form” (I.17.4). A good father knows exactly what his children need. And even in our dark days, when “whatever an enemy wickedly committed against us was permitted, and sent by his righteous dispensation” (I.17.8). And finally:

For as he justly shudders at the idea of chance, so he can confidently commit himself to God. This, I say, is his comfort, that his heavenly Father so embraces all things under his power—so governs them at will by his not—so regulates them by his wisdom, that nothing takes place save according to his appointment; that received into his favor, and entrusted to the care of his angels, neither fire, nor water, nor sword, can do him harm, except insofar as God their master is pleased to permit (I.17.11).

What Calvin describes here is not theology of malice, but of love. Even though God is right to damn any or all of his creation—they, we, are his after all—Jesus still came as a man and died on the cross to save us. That is what is central when we look at the New Testament. What Calvin does here is to combine these two thoughts. Or, to put it another way: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10a).

Discussion

7. Can you see this “apologetic of trust” working for an external audience (those not in the church)?
8. How central should an apologetic of trust play in our own apologetics?

Additional Bibliography

Secondary Reading

Bush, L. Russ III. Classical Readings in Christian Apologetics: A. D. 100-1800. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 1983.

Dulles, Avery Cardinal. A History of Apologetics. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005.

Forrest, Benjamin K., Joshua D. Chatraw, and Alister E. McGrath, eds. The History of Apologetics: A Biographical and Methodological Introduction. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Academic, 2020.

Further Reading on Specific Topics

Alexander, David E. and Daniel M. Johnson, eds. Calvinism and the Problem of Evil. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016.

Kuyper, Abraham. Lectures on Calvinism. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994 [1931].

Laing, John D., Kirk R. MacGregor, and Greg Welty, eds. Calvinism and Middle Knowledge: A Conversation. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2019.