Spectacles for Dim Eyes

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. PSALM 119:105

If God has written His glory across the whole creation, why do we need a Bible? Calvin asked that question himself, and his answer is one of the best-loved images in the Institutes. Old people, he says, and those with weak sight, may be shown a beautifully written book, and they will see that there is writing on the page, but they can hardly make out two words together. Give them spectacles, and they begin to read clearly. So it is with Scripture. It gathers up the confused knowledge of God that is otherwise in our minds, scatters our darkness, and shows us plainly the true God (Institutes 1.6.1).

Why we need the spectacles

The image is modest, and its modesty is the point. Calvin does not say that creation is silent. He is sure that the world is a dazzling theatre of God’s glory, as the next chapter will show. The problem is not with the light but with our eyes. Sin has so dimmed our sight that we see the glory and yet do not see it. We turn it into idols, or into nothing at all. We need help to read what is written everywhere.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse. ROMANS 1:20

So God, in His kindness, did not leave us to guess. He opened His own mouth. He spoke to the patriarchs, gave His law through Moses, sent the prophets, and at last spoke by His Son, and He caused His word to be written down so that it would not be lost or corrupted. Scripture is not a rival to creation. It is the lens through which creation can be read aright, and much more besides: it alone shows us God as Redeemer in Christ.

God speaking

Behind this lies Calvin’s high view of the authority of Scripture. Its authority, he says, does not come from the church, as if the church could lend it credit. It comes from God, because God is its author. In the sermon All Scripture Is Given by Inspiration, preached on 2 Timothy 3:16, he makes the point with force. The prophets, he says, were not to be believed because Moses was a great man or Isaiah was eloquent. They were instruments in the hands of God. They spoke nothing of their own; it was God who spoke by them.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. 2 TIMOTHY 3:16

He draws a searching practical conclusion. “The holy scripture will be lifeless, and without force, until we know it is God that speaketh in it.” We may read the Bible as a history of mortal men, he says, and feel nothing at all. Everything changes when we understand who is speaking. In another sermon in the Ochorus library, on Enduring Persecution for Christ, he puts the same thought more beautifully: “If we would think that in reading Scripture we are in the school of angels, we would be far more careful and desirous to profit by the doctrine which is propounded to us.”

The inner witness of the Spirit

But how do we know that God is speaking? Calvin’s answer is one of his most important contributions to Christian thought. There are good reasons to trust the Bible, he says in Institutes 1.8 — its antiquity, its majesty, the fulfilment of its prophecies, the plainness and power of its style, the way it has been preserved through persecution, the blood of the martyrs who died for it. He sets them out at length. And yet he insists that none of these proofs, on their own, can produce a settled faith. They are helps, not foundations.

The foundation is the secret witness of the Holy Spirit (Institutes 1.7). The same Spirit who spoke through the prophets must enter our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what God commanded. Scripture, Calvin says, is self-authenticating: it carries its own evidence, as plainly as white things show their colour or sweet things their taste. But only the Spirit can open our eyes to see it.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 1 CORINTHIANS 2:14

This is why Calvin could be so confident without being rationalist. A believer does not need to be a scholar to be sure of God’s Word. The simple Christian reading the Gospels in her kitchen, and finding Christ speaking to her there, has the same ground of certainty as the learned doctor. In his sermon on All Scripture he calls it the infinite goodness of God, that He seals His truth in our hearts and makes us feel its power.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. JOHN 10:27

The whole Scripture, and nothing added

Two practical consequences follow, and Calvin presses them both hard.

First, we must receive the whole of Scripture, not just the parts we like. In the same sermon he says that “we must not pick and cull the scripture to please our own fancy, but must receive the whole without exception.” Calvin’s own ministry was the proof of his sincerity. He preached straight through book after book of the Bible, Old Testament and New, including the hard and the obscure passages, and he wrote commentaries on almost all of it.

Second, we must add nothing to it. This was the heart of Calvin’s quarrel with the church of his day. He believed that human traditions had buried the Word of God, and that consciences had been bound by rules God never gave. The sermon on All Scripture is full of sharp words against the traditions of Rome, and the modern reader will find some of them hard to hear. But the principle beneath them is sound: in matters of faith and worship, the church has no authority but that which it receives from God’s Word.

Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar. PROVERBS 30:5–6

God stooping to speak

One more thing must be said, because it shows the tenderness beneath Calvin’s high doctrine. He believed that when God speaks to us in Scripture He accommodates Himself to our weakness. He speaks as nurses speak to little children, lisping so that we can understand (Institutes 1.13.1). He describes Himself with eyes and hands and a changing mind, not because He is like that, but because we could not grasp Him any other way. In his sermon God Will Have All Men to Be Saved Calvin says it plainly: if God should speak according to His majesty, His speech would be beyond our comprehension and would utterly confound us. The Bible is God bending down.

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. PSALM 103:13–14

That is why Calvin read the Bible with such reverence, and why he wanted every Christian to read it. Its purpose, as he says in the same sermon, is not to make us clever. “The word of God is not given to teach us how to talk, to make us eloquent and subtle, but to reform our lives, that the world may know we are the servants of God.”

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Before you next open your Bible, stop and remind yourself who is speaking. Ask the Spirit to open your eyes.

2. Name a part of Scripture you usually avoid. Begin reading it this week, asking what God is saying there.

3. Consider where you have allowed a human rule or custom to bind your conscience as if it were God’s Word.

4. Think of a passage where God has spoken to you with unmistakable force. Thank Him for the inner witness of His Spirit.

5. Ask one honest question of your Bible reading: is it making me cleverer, or is it reforming my life?

A PRAYER

Lord God, my eyes are dim, and I cannot read Your glory rightly by myself.

Thank You for the spectacles of Your Word, and for stooping to speak to me as a father speaks to a child.

Send Your Spirit to bear witness in my heart that it is You who speak, so that I may hear with reverence and obey with joy.

Keep me from picking and choosing, and from adding my own inventions. Let Your Word reform my life, that the world may know I am Your servant. Amen.