Calvin’s Foundation of Knowledge

Calvin starts with the knowledge of God — and quite appropriately so. All knowledge must be founded upon a knowledge of God. Without this important foundation, all the rest of our knowledge is context-less and void.

Calvin’s decision to start here is a sharp reminder of the proper location for our focus. We are constantly tempted to avoid starting here. We want to skip the step of starting with God’s knowledge because we want to get to the point. We want to understand nuclear physics first; we’ll get to God later. Such an approach is wrong-headed. We’d end up worse than we began.

The disastrous alternative is to seize knowledge for ourselves. Take Eve in the Garden. The serpent encourages Eve to grasp morality (i.e., the knowledge of good and evil) without receiving it from God. Instead of focusing on God as the source of knowledge, our first parents skip ahead and seek full knowledge on their own. They presume to know good and evil apart from God and a knowledge of Him. The results are disastrous.

Every other question comes back to this one. Calvin can’t indulge in a discussion of, say, the atonement of Christ without first explaining the Father, Son, and Spirit. A discussion of the sacraments would be meaningless without first discussing the knowledge of God. It is entirely appropriate to begin the Institutes with this discussion.

So I am encouraged by Calvin’s point of origin — encouraged and exhorted to always build by every source for knowledge upon the foundation of what God has revealed of Himself. Unlike Adam, we should seek the knowledge of God at the beginning, and from God Himself.