Calvin on the Psalms

Hello dear readers! I hope that you still read these newsletters in any case. I was just mentioning the other day that between welcoming another baby into the world and sitting through Hebrew exams, it has been far too long since I have written anything. Behind the scenes, I migrated this blog to a new hosting provider, and just realized that in so doing I lost my most recent post on Calvin's approach to the Psalms. So, as a special welcome back treat, and as a way of celebrating finally being finished with Hebrew, I have re-written that post and am sharing it with you all again in the hopes that it finds you well and cozy this Winter season. For what it is worth, I think this version of the post is better than the previous one anyway. There is something about letting your writing settle for a bit that allows it to ripen and all that. Without further ado, here it is once more. Blessings, Chris

Recently, I picked up a new translation of the 1541 French edition of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. Unlike the later editions in which he seems constantly angry, this one was written during Calvin's "happy years" in Strasbourg while he was ministering to French refugees. So, it is more pastoral and less polemical in tone. While I do not consider myself a Calvinist, I had to read Calvin in seminary and have found that his writings bring a sharp clarity to my own thinking, especially when I disagree with him – which I often do.

My interest in Calvin was also renewed recently when I read that the prominent 20th century Swiss theologian Karl Barth (a controversial figure in his own right) had this to say about him:

Calvin is a cataract, a primeval forest, a demonic power, something directly down from Himalaya, absolutely Chinese, strange, mythological; I lack completely the means, the suction cups, even to assimilate this phenomenon, not to speak of presenting it adequately.

What I receive is only a thin little stream and what I can then give out again is only a yet thinner extract of this little stream.

I could gladly and profitably set myself down and spend all the rest of my life just with Calvin.

Karl Barth, Revolutionary Theology in the Making: Barth-Thurneysen Correspondence 1914-1925, trans. James D. Smart (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1964), 101.

For my own part, I find that Calvin is helpful because he has a way of writing that makes it very easy to notice when I disagree with him. And yet, it is not always easy to explain why or to come up with a satisfying alternative theological explanation. Calvin is a great systematizer, and the one thing we can say of his thought is that it is at least easy to understand, and it all fits together in a complete package.

So, I have been reading through Calvin again. And, as is often the case, the more I read the man himself, the less I see a resemblance to the later -isms promoted in his name. I'm no longer sure, for instance, that Herman Melville's criticisms of Calvinism in Moby Dick would apply to Calvin himself. In any case, if any of this does make you want to engage Calvin's writings for yourself, I think this new edition probably represents him at his best.

One issue Calvin addresses in this little tome is the fact that many of the Psalms contain proclamations of innocence.

For example, they say things like this:

Preserve my soul, for I am innocent. (Ps 86:2)

Or this:

His eyes are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their pleas. (Ps 34:15)

Or this:

Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the innocence within me. (Ps 7:8)

Again:

Hear, O Lord, my righteousness; you have tried my heart and visited it by night, and no iniquity has been found in me. (Ps 17:1, 3)

Again:

The Lord will reward me according to my righteousness, and will repay me according to the purity of my hands, for I have kept to the right path and have not turned away from my God. (Ps 18:20-24)

Again:

Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in innocence. (Ps 26:1)

Now, if you are like me, it often happens that you are all too aware that you are not perfectly righteous, but are in fact a sinner. So, when you see the psalmist claiming that he is righteous, you cannot help but be skeptical. Is the author simply profoundly lacking in self-awareness? How can he say such things with integrity?

If you have ever wrestled with this issue while reading the psalms, then you are not alone. Whatever one may say of other aspects of Calvin's theology, I find his reading of these troubling verses a balm for the soul.

In short, Calvin notes that when the psalmist says he is innocent, this is with respect to a specific matter in his life, not the whole of his life. The psalmist is saying, in effect, that the other guy really did hit my car, and not the other way around. But he is not saying he is without sin entirely. As Calvin puts it, in these psalms, "believers do not ask for the whole of their life to be examined. Instead, they lay before God some particular cause" (III.17.14; trans. Robert White).

Calvin's argument for this reading is based on the fact that if God did judge the whole of our lives, then of course no one could claim perfection. "That is something no one has ever had, or ever will have" (III.17.14). I found this forthright statement of honesty here quite refreshing.

But really, even the psalmists themselves admit this. Just consider Psalm 143:

Lord, do not enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no one living will be justified. (Ps 143:2)

This text – a favorite of Augustine's by the way – basically makes the argument that God should not judge me because everyone else is bad too. Thus, if God were to smite me, then he would have to smite everyone else too. And then there would be no more humans left to worship him. (So please don't smite me, God!)

It would thus make no sense for the psalmist to proclaim innocence with respect to his entire life. Especially for psalmists like David, we would all know he is full of it.

To Calvin's point, though, I would further add that, in general, interpreting statements like these in Scripture too literally risks missing the big picture.

Somewhat ironically, historically speaking it has tended to be the heretics who approach Scripture overly literally. It was the arch-heretic Arius who objected to the use of homoousian ("same substance") in the creeds because that term wasn't in the Bible. Yet that phrase is what preserved the orthodox doctrine of the trinity (a term which also isn't in the Bible).

Similarly, the heretic Pelagius and his pupil Celestius interpreted statements of innocence in the psalms at face value to imply that we can attain perfection in this lifetime – and by our own efforts, no less. They were given a thorough spanking by Augustine, whom we mentioned earlier.

To these Pelagians we say with Augustine (and Treebeard), "now don't be hasty!" For the sober fact, noted by Calvin, is that "the best and most perfect position which we can have in this life is simply to advance day by day" (III.17.14).

So, I would say that these psalms reveal a real risk in so-called literalist or biblicist approaches to Scripture that leave no space for metaphor and the like. A literalist approach, in any case, is certainly not how the Church Fathers or Apostles approached Scripture (see Galatians 4:24).

And in fact Calvin does hint at a deeper way of reading these psalms. These statements of innocence can be read through a figural Christological lens.

In short, these statements of innocence are true of us insofar as they refer to us as we are in Christ. In other words, God sees Christians as innocent because when he looks at us, he sees us wrapped in the innocence of his beloved Son (III.20.10).

On Calvin's reading of the psalms, then, God does not answer my prayers because I am good, but because he is good. And that is an encouraging thought.

Shalom שׁלום, friends.