John Calvin and the Holy Trinity

[Hatikvah]

While most Protestant traditions continued with the Western Church’s view of the Trinity, John Calvin appears to have his own take on the doctrine. The source that I’ll be citing from can be found here. Calvin re-adopts the traditional Augustinian teaching of the Son coming from the Father and the Holy Spirit from both of Them. The cited source has scholar Gerald Bray’s understanding of Calvin’s ideas on the Trinitarian Persons:

If one gives primacy to the one divine essence, and reinterprets the divine Persons in philosophical terms, as tended to happen in the Middle Ages, one’s concept of God becomes philosophical rather than devotional.

Calvin further maintained that the relationship between the Persons are personal, voluntary, and not the results of natural causation. Calvin, being Calvin, had some anxiety about the Nicene phrase “God from God” because he was, as the source says,

He was in controversy with heretics who made the Son inferior to the Father, but the phrase ‘God from God’ does not do this, unless misinterpreted. On the contrary, it emphasises that the Son is ‘God from God’. [Italics are in the original text]

Calvin, in fact, veered close (or, worse yet, perhaps he did) to denying the eternal generation of the Son from the Father as we understand it:

Calvin seems unable to bear the thought that the Son derives his divine being from the Father, and yet, understood as an eternal and personal relationship, it is what the New Testament appears to teach, in harmony with the Creeds. One can call this, if one wishes, subordinationism, but it is a subordinationism without any of the degrading connotations which Arians and Unitarians attached to the idea.

Concluding, Calvin believed the traditional Nicene-Athanasian language to be derogatory to the Son and His Godhood:

What Calvin here expresses in a guarded fashion, he expressed much more boldly in his controversy with Peter Caroli, in which he declined to affirm (though without denying them) the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, and even mocked the characteristic Nicene language – ‘God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God’.** He evidently regarded this as derogatory to the Son, because [it was] treating his divinity as derived (though eternally derived) from the Father.**

I encourage you to discuss and comment on John Calvin’s doctrine of the Trinity and to go into more depth.

 

[MichaelP3]

While most Protestant traditions continued with the Western Church’s view of the Trinity, John Calvin appears to have his own take on the doctrine. The source that I’ll be citing from can be found here. Calvin re-adopts the traditional Augustinian teaching of the Son coming from the Father and the Holy Spirit from both of Them. The cited source has scholar Gerald Bray’s understanding of Calvin’s ideas on the Trinitarian Persons:

Calvin further maintained that the relationship between the Persons are personal, voluntary, and not the results of natural causation. Calvin, being Calvin, had some anxiety about the Nicene phrase “God from God” because he was, as the source says,

Calvin, in fact, veered close (or, worse yet, perhaps he did) to denying the eternal generation of the Son from the Father as we understand it:

Concluding, Calvin believed the traditional Nicene-Athanasian language to be derogatory to the Son and His Godhood:

I encourage you to discuss and comment on John Calvin’s doctrine of the Trinity and to go into more depth.

I grew up Reformed.

Not that I ever even heard of Calvin until I was 16, but that’s not the point. I also did profess the Apostles, Nicene and Athanasian Creed since I can remember. I never actually studied the guy, most Protestants like to give Luther the glory so I really don’t know.

Just wanted to state my personal experience although I didn’t know much then.

 

[Vico]

While most Protestant traditions continued with the Western Church’s view of the Trinity, John Calvin appears to have his own take on the doctrine. The source that I’ll be citing from can be found here. Calvin re-adopts the traditional Augustinian teaching of the Son coming from the Father and the Holy Spirit from both of Them. The cited source has scholar Gerald Bray’s understanding of Calvin’s ideas on the Trinitarian Persons:

Calvin further maintained that the relationship between the Persons are personal, voluntary, and not the results of natural causation. Calvin, being Calvin, had some anxiety about the Nicene phrase “God from God” because he was, as the source says,

Calvin, in fact, veered close (or, worse yet, perhaps he did) to denying the eternal generation of the Son from the Father as we understand it:

Concluding, Calvin believed the traditional Nicene-Athanasian language to be derogatory to the Son and His Godhood:

I encourage you to discuss and comment on John Calvin’s doctrine of the Trinity and to go into more depth.

Calvin uses Augustine and Athanasius to support his statements in the Institutes 1 Ch.13, (19. How the Three Persons not only do not destroy, but constitute the most perfect unity) where he concludes his discussion saying:

Therefore, when we speak of the Son simply, without reference to the Father, we truly and properly affirm that he is of himself, and, accordingly, call him the only beginning; but when we denote the relation which he bears to the Father, we correctly make the Father the beginning of the Son. Augustine’s fifth book on the Trinity is wholly devoted to the explanation of this subject. But it is far safer to rest contented with the relation as taught by him, than get bewildered in vain speculation by subtle prying into a sublime mystery.

ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.toc.html