Day 11 — Institutes I.4.§3 [직강]

Yesterday Calvin prosecuted the open atheist. Today he turns on a quieter defendant — the superstitious worshipper, the man who shrugs and says, "At least I have some religion, some zeal; surely that counts." Calvin's answer is brutal: zeal aimed at a god you invented is not worship, it is mockery dressed as worship. True religion has an external standard — the will of God — and God is "no spectre or phantom, to be metamorphosed at each individual's caprice." Reshape him to your taste and you are no longer worshipping God; you are adoring "the dream and figment of your own heart." The section closes with two witnesses: Paul (pagan worship = ignorance of God) and Lactantius ("No religion is genuine that is not in accordance with truth").

Grammatically, today is concession-and-condition day — the archaic machinery Calvin uses to grant a point and then demolish it. Track three engines: the -soever concessive, the inverted counterfactual, and the whether … or of indifference.

Today's 3 Big Points — mark them now:

1. "how + ADJ + soever (it may be)" = "however + ADJ" — a concessive (archaic): "how preposterous soever it may be" = no matter how absurd it is.
2. Inverted counterfactual "had they not …" = "if they had not …": "they would never dare … had they not previously fashioned him." The if is deleted; had jumps to the front.
3. "It makes little difference whether … or …" + "by + V-ing": "whether you hold … one God, or a plurality … since, by departing … you have nothing left but an … idol." Indifference frame + a causal-means gerund.

Three points. Lock them in. Now read.

In this way, the vain pretext which many employ to clothe their superstition is overthrown. They deem it enough that they have some kind of zeal for religion, how preposterous soever it may be, not observing that true religion must be conformable to the will of God as its unerring standard; that he can never deny himself, and is no spectra or phantom, to be metamorphosed at each individual’s caprice. It is easy to see how superstition, with its false glosses, mocks God, while it tries to please him. Usually fastening merely on things on which he has declared he sets no value, it either contemptuously overlooks, or even undisguisedly rejects, the things which he expressly enjoins, or in which we are assured that he takes pleasure. Those, therefore, who set up a fictitious worship, merely worship and adore their own delirious fancies; indeed, they would never dare so to trifle with God, had they not previously fashioned him after their own childish conceits. Hence that vague and wandering opinion of Deity is declared by an apostle to be ignorance of God: “Howbeit, then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.” And he elsewhere declares, that the Ephesians were “without God” (Eph. 2:12) at the time when they wandered without any correct knowledge of him. It makes little difference, at least in this respect, whether you hold the existence of one God, or a plurality of gods, since, in both cases alike, by departing from the true God, you have nothing left but an execrable idol. It remains, therefore, to conclude with Lactantius (Instit. Div. lib 1:2, 6), “No religion is genuine that is not in accordance with truth.”

Nine sentences. A verdict, the proof from reason, then the proof from Scripture:

[VERDICT]   the "I have some zeal" excuse is overthrown                  (S1)
[STANDARD]  true religion = conformed to God's will; God ≠ reshapeable    (S2)
[CHARGE]    superstition mocks God while trying to please him            (S3)
[MECHANISM] it clutches what God scorns, drops what God commands         (S4)
[ROOT]      fictitious worship = adoring one's own fancy (self-made god)  (S5)
[PROOF-1]   Paul: pagan worship = ignorance of God (Gal 4:8)             (S6)
[PROOF-1b]  Paul: Ephesians "without God" while ignorant of him (Eph 2:12)(S7)
[COROLLARY] one god or many — leave the true God, only an idol is left    (S8)
[SEAL]      Lactantius: no religion is genuine unless it is true          (S9)

Examiner's Eye: the trap field is the standard. Calvin's claim (S2) is that religion is measured by an external, fixed rule — the will of God — not by the worshipper's sincerity or zeal. An option that says "Calvin allows that sincere zeal makes a religion acceptable to God" reads the section exactly backwards: zeal without truth is precisely what he is overthrowing (S1, S9). Second snare: S8's indifference clause. It makes little difference whether one God or many does not mean Calvin is indifferent to monotheism — it means that once you depart from the true God, the count is irrelevant: one false god or many, you are left with an idol either way.

Star scale: ★★★ exam-critical, conquer it. ★★ know the structure. ★ one point and move.

Formula 1 — how + ADJ + soever (it may be) = however + ADJ (concessive):

... , how + ADJ + soever (S may be), ...
"some kind of zeal for religion, how preposterous soever it may be"
= however absurd that zeal may be

⚠️ soever fuses to how — it is NOT a separate noun. Modern equivalents: however ADJ (S may be) / no matter how ADJ. A test option that reads it as "in some way" or "somehow" misses the concessive force. Drill: He clings to his rite, how worthless soever it may be, as though zeal could excuse error.

Formula 2 — inverted counterfactual: had + S + p.p. = if + S + had + p.p.:

Main (would/could + V) , had + S + (not) + p.p. ...
"they would never dare ... , had they not previously fashioned him ..."
= ... if they had not previously fashioned him ...

⚠️ When if is deleted from a past-counterfactual, had fronts to the head of the clause. Don't read fronted had as a question. Restore the if to test meaning. Drill: Men would not trifle with God, had they not first shrunk him to their own size.

Formula 3 — "It makes little difference whether … or …" + "by + V-ing" (means/cause):

It makes little difference whether X or Y, since, by + V-ing, ...
"... whether you hold one God, or a plurality ..., since, by departing ..., you have nothing left but an idol"

⚠️ The indifference frame is scoped by at least in this respect — it concedes irrelevance for ONE point only, not in general. by departing = "because you depart / through departing" (causal-means gerund), not "while departing." Drill: It makes little difference whether the idol is gold or clay, since, by forsaking the living God, you keep only a lie.

The argument of §3: sincerity is not the standard — truth is. This section answers the perennial alibi, "At least I have some religion." Calvin's structure is announced in the chapter's own section-heading: "No pretext can justify superstition. This proved, first, from reason; and, secondly, from Scripture." The reason-proof runs S2–S5 (religion has an unerring external standard, God's will; reshape God to taste and you adore a figment). The Scripture-proof runs S6–S9 (Paul: vague theism = ignorance of God / "without God"; capped by Lactantius). Note the steady drumbeat from §1: false worship is not a lesser honour rendered to God but no honour at all — it terminates on the dream and figment of the worshipper's own heart.

The "forge of idols" in seed form. S5's diagnosis — they would never dare so to trifle with God, had they not previously fashioned him after their own childish conceits — is the kernel of one of Calvin's most famous later phrases: the human mind as a perpetual forge of idols (I.11.8). The order is the doctrinally crucial part: the inward re-making of God precedes and enables the outward irreverence. Idolatry is not first a matter of statues; it is first a matter of a falsified concept of God. (Guardrail: Calvin is not yet treating images and the second commandment — that is I.11. Don't import it here; here the target is the mental idol behind invented worship.)

Why "vague theism" counts as atheism. S6–S7 lean on Galatians 4:8 ("when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods") and Ephesians 2:12 (the Ephesians were ἄθεοι, "without God," atheoi, while ignorant of him). Calvin's exegetical claim is sharp: in Scripture, to know God wrongly is to be without God. There is no neutral, half-credit deism. This is the biblical backbone under S2's "unerring standard."

Lactantius, the "Christian Cicero." S9 closes with Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones — itself a model for Calvin's own Institutio. The borrowed maxim, "No religion is genuine that is not in accordance with truth," fuses the reason-proof and the Scripture-proof into a single criterion: truth, not zeal, is the test of genuine religion. The later reception runs straight to Barth's polemic against "religion" as human self-projection and to Reformed worship's regulative principle (worship God only as he has commanded) — but those are downstream; here Calvin's point is simply the criterion itself.

1. Galatians 4:8 — quoted in S6. "Howbeit, then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods." Greek τοῖς φύσει μὴ οὖσι θεοῖς (tois physei mē ousi theois) — "to those that are by nature not gods." Calvin uses it to equate vague knowledge of God with no knowledge: hazy theism is, biblically, idol-service.
2. Ephesians 2:12 — quoted in S7. "without God" = ἄθεοι (atheoi) in the world. The very word "atheist" applied by Paul to people who did have a religion — they simply lacked the true God. This is Calvin's strongest lexical proof that wrong worship = godlessness.
3. Romans 1:22–23 — behind S5. The mind that changes the glory of the incorruptible God into an image stands under S5's "fashioned him after their own childish conceits." Calvin is still working the Romans 1 material from Day 9–10, now applied to invented worship.
4. Exodus 20:4–5 / Deuteronomy 12:32 — behind S2, S4. The "unerring standard" and "the things which he expressly enjoins" presuppose the commandment that God be worshipped as he prescribes, not as we devise — the seed of the regulative principle, though Calvin keeps it implicit here. How Calvin uses Scripture today: he builds the doctrine from Paul's own vocabulary (no gods, without God), then seals it with a patristic witness (Lactantius), letting the Bible define its terms before a system is imposed.

문제 ① 어법 — 밑줄 친 부분 중 틀린 것은?

(A) How preposterous soever their zeal may be, they deem it enough; (B) not observing that religion must conform to God's will, they trifle with him, and (C) would they not have dared so, (D) had they not first fashioned him after their own conceits.

✨ 답안 보기 (클릭)정답: (C). would they not have dared so is wrong — the main clause of a counterfactual is declarative, not inverted: it should read they would not have dared (to do) so. Inversion belongs to the if-clause, which is correctly done in (D) had they not. (A) is Formula 1 (how … soever = however, correct). (B) not observing that … is a correct participial clause. 출제 의도: Formula 2의 도치는 if-절에만 적용된다는 것 — 주절까지 도치하면 오답. 도치 위치 함정.

문제 ② 내용일치 — §3과 일치하는 것은?

(A) Calvin concedes that sincere zeal, however misguided, renders a religion acceptable to God. (B) According to Calvin, the worshipper who invents a worship ends up adoring his own fancies, because he has first remade God to fit his own notions. (C) Calvin argues that it is a matter of indifference whether one worships one God or many, even with respect to the true God. (D) Calvin says superstition openly admits that it is mocking God while pretending to please him.

✨ 답안 보기 (클릭)정답: (B) — S5 그대로: they would never dare so to trifle with God, had they not previously fashioned him after their own childish conceits. (A)는 S1·S2·S9 정면 뒤집기 — 열심이 아니라 진리(하나님의 뜻)가 기준이며 그 핑계는 "overthrown." (C)는 S8 함정 — 무관함은 at least in this respect(이 점에 한해)로 한정되며, 참 하나님을 떠난 뒤의 셈에 관한 말이지 참 하나님께 무관하다는 뜻이 아님. (D)는 S3 왜곡 — 미신은 하나님을 기쁘게 하려 애쓰면서(tries to please) 조롱하는 것이지, 조롱을 자인하지 않음. 출제 의도: 기준=진리(B), S8 무관함의 범위 한정, S3 역설.

문제 ③ 영작 — Formula 2 적용.

"그들이 먼저 하나님을 자기 크기로 줄여 놓지 않았더라면, 감히 그분을 가지고 놀지 못했을 것이다" — if 없는 도치 가정법으로 옮겨라.

✨ 답안 보기 (클릭)모범답안: They would never have dared to trifle with God, had they not first shrunk him to their own size. 출제 의도: 주절은 would (never) have + p.p. (평서·비도치), 조건절은 if를 빼고 had they not + p.p.로 도치. if they had not …로 풀어 써도 정답이나, 도치형으로 옮길 때 주절까지 도치하면 감점.

One-line summary: The excuse "at least I have some zeal" collapses, because true religion is measured by an unerring external standard — the will of God, who is no phantom to be remoulded to taste — so invented worship merely adores a self-made figment (Paul: that is ignorance of God, without God; Lactantius: no religion is genuine that is not true); and you now own the day's three engines — how … soever, the inverted counterfactual had they not …, and the whether … or … of (scoped) indifference.

Homework (10 min):

1. Structure restoration: Rewrite S5's they would never dare so to trifle with God, had they not previously fashioned him in base if-order, and mark which clause carries the inversion when if is dropped.
2. Composition: Using Formula 1 (how … soever), write one sentence: "그 예배가 아무리 진지할지라도, 진리에 맞지 않으면 하나님을 조롱하는 것이다."
3. Preview: Tomorrow is I.4.§4 — Calvin presses the final charge against corrupted knowledge: the wicked think of God against their will, dragged into his presence, feeling only "servile fear." First words: "To this fault they add a second…"

Where we stopped: Book 1, Ch. 4, §3 끝 (Ch. 4 거의 마무리). 다음은 Book 1, Ch. 4, §4 (Day 12).