Day 18 — Institutes I.5.§6 [직강]

For three sections Calvin has been taking the cosmos apart and showing God in every gear — the heavens (§2), the human microcosm (§3), the soul's powers turned into weapons by the ungrateful (§4–5). Today he sums up the first half of the demonstration. §6 is the conclusion of "the first class of God's works" — the ordinary course of nature — before §7 turns to the second class (his providence over human affairs). Watch what Calvin extracts from creation here: a triad of attributes. From the works we read God's power (the thunder-and-sea showpiece of S3), from power we are led to his eternity (S7, the aseity argument), and behind it all his goodness (S8–9, the only cause of creation, and the spring of our love). Power → eternity → goodness. Mark that spine; the whole section hangs on it.

And do not miss the sharp ecclesiological note buried in S6: this method … is common both to those within and to those without the pale of the Church. The pagan astronomer and the believing peasant read the same book of nature. That is the glory and the limit of natural knowledge — a line Calvin has been walking since §1: the evidence is universal, but (recall §3) it does not by itself convert. Keep that guardrail in your pocket.

Grammatically, today is rhetorical-superlative day and aseity-clause day. Three engines:

Today's 3 Big Points — mark them now:

1. Negated comparative = superlative + verbless exclamation. "Nothing … can be more preposterous than to enjoy … and to neglect …" (S2) = "the most preposterous thing of all is to…"; and "how glorious the manifestations …" (S3) — an exclamatory clause with the verb (are) suppressed.
2. The cleft "it is X that …" wrapped in a double negative. "unless … we pretend not to know whose energy it is that by a word sustains the boundless fabric of the universe" (S3); cousin construction: "there could be no other cause than his own goodness" (S8).
3. The aseity formula: headless "that from which …" as subject + "must necessarily be." "that from which all other things derive their origin must necessarily be self-existent and eternal" (S7); plus the nominative absolute "every creature … participating in his mercy" (S9).

Three engines. Lock them in. Now read.

Let each of us, therefore, in contemplating his own nature, remember that there is one God who governs all natures, and, in governing, wishes us to have respect to himself, to make him the object of our faith, worship, and adoration. Nothing, indeed, can be more preposterous than to enjoy those noble endowments which bespeak the divine presence within us, and to neglect him who, of his own good pleasure, bestows them upon us. In regard to his power, how glorious the manifestations by which he urges us to the contemplation of himself; unless, indeed, we pretend not to know whose energy it is that by a word sustains the boundless fabric of the universe—at one time making heaven reverberate with thunder, sending forth the scorching lightning, and setting the whole atmosphere in a blaze; at another, causing the raging tempests to blow, and forthwith, in one moment, when it so pleases him, making a perfect calm; keeping the sea, which seems constantly threatening the earth with devastation, suspended as it were in air; at one time, lashing it into fury by the impetuosity of the winds; at another, appeasing its rage, and stilling all its waves. Here we might refer to those glowing descriptions of divine power, as illustrated by natural events, which occur throughout Scripture; but more especially in the book of Job, and the prophecies of Isaiah. These, however, I purposely omit, because a better opportunity of introducing them will be found when I come to treat of the Scriptural account of the creation. (Infra, chap. 14 s. 1, 2, 20, sq). I only wish to observe here, that this method of investigating the divine perfections, by tracing the lineaments of his countenance as shadowed forth in the firmament and on the earth, is common both to those within and to those without the pale of the Church. From the power of God we are naturally led to consider his eternity since that from which all other things derive their origin must necessarily be selfexistent and eternal. Moreover, if it be asked what cause induced him to create all things at first, and now inclines him to preserve them, we shall find that there could be no other cause than his own goodness. But if this is the only cause, nothing more should be required to draw forth our love towards him; every creature, as the Psalmist reminds us, participating in his mercy. "His tender mercies are over all his works," (Ps. 145:9).

Ten sentences. Exhortation (remember the one God who governs all) → the absurdity of enjoying gifts while neglecting the Giver → the power-showpiece (thunder, storm, sea) → Scripture has richer descriptions → but I defer them to chap. 14 → the method (reading God's face in creation) is shared by all men → power leads us up to eternity (aseity) → the only cause of creation is goodness → goodness should draw out our love → the Psalmist's seal: mercy over all his works.

[EXHORT]    Let each remember: ONE God governs all → owe him faith/worship   (S1)
[ABSURD]    nothing more preposterous: enjoy the gifts, neglect the Giver     (S2)
[POWER]     how glorious! — a word sustains all: thunder, storm, sea          (S3)
[SCRIPTURE] richer descriptions occur throughout Scripture (Job, Isaiah)      (S4)
[DEFER]     but I purposely omit them till chap. 14 (creation)                (S5)
[UNIVERSAL] this method (reading God's face in nature) common to all men      (S6)
[ETERNITY]  from power → eternity: the source of all must be self-existent    (S7)
[GOODNESS]  the only cause that moved him to create = his own goodness        (S8)
[LOVE]      that one cause should draw out our love; all share his mercy       (S9)
[SEAL]      "His tender mercies are over all his works" (Ps 145:9)             (S10)

Examiner's Eye: the trap field is the scope of S6 — common both to those within and to those without the pale of the Church. An option that says "Calvin teaches the knowledge of God in creation belongs only to believers / the Church" reverses him: he explicitly says the method is shared by those inside and outside the Church. (The believer's advantage lies elsewhere — in Scripture, the spectacles of §§7ff — not in exclusive access to the natural evidence.) Second trap: the direction of S7. Calvin moves from power to eternity because that from which all things derive their origin must be self-existent — an option that makes him argue from eternity to power, or that makes creatures self-existent, inverts the aseity logic (only the source is self-existent; the derived things are not).

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

Formula 1 — negated comparative = superlative (+ verbless exclamation "how + adj + subject"):

NOTHING (can be) MORE [adj] THAN X          ⟺   X is the MOST [adj] of all
"NOTHING, indeed, can be MORE preposterous THAN to enjoy … and to neglect …"
HOW [adj] (‹are›) the [subject] !            ⟺   exclamation; copula 'are' gapped
"HOW glorious  ‹are›  the manifestations …"

⚠️ Nothing can be more X than Y is a rhetorical superlative ("nothing is more X" = Y is the extreme), not a mild comparison. And in how glorious the manifestations, supply the missing are — it is an exclamation, not a noun phrase. Drill: Nothing can be more preposterous than to read God's power in the sky and yet deny the God who wields it.

Formula 2 — the cleft "it is X that …" (+ double negative "pretend not to know"; cousin "no other … than"):

… whose [N] IT IS THAT + V …                ⟺   cleft spotlighting the agent
"… whose energy IT IS THAT by a word sustains the universe"
PRETEND NOT to know …                        ⟺   make believe one doesn't recognize (double neg.)
there could be NO OTHER [N] THAN Y           ⟺   the only [N] is Y
"there could be NO OTHER cause THAN his own goodness"

⚠️ The cleft it is X that V exists to emphasise the agent X; restore the base sentence ([X] sustains the universe) to parse. No other N than Y = Y alone, an exclusive — do not read it as "some other cause besides Y." Drill: It is no created hand that holds up the heavens; there is no other architect than God himself.

Formula 3 — the aseity clause: headless "that from which …" as subject + "must necessarily be" (+ nominative absolute):

THAT [FROM WHICH all others derive] + MUST (necessarily) BE [self-existent/eternal]
"THAT FROM WHICH all other things derive their origin MUST necessarily BE self-existent and eternal"
[Subject] + [participle] …  (no finite verb)  ⟺   nominative absolute = "since [Subject] V-s …"
"every creature … PARTICIPATING in his mercy"  = since every creature participates in his mercy

⚠️ That from which … is a headless relative used as the subject — it names "the Source," and only the Source is self-existent; the derived things are not. A nominative absolute has its own subject + a participle (no finite verb): rewrite it with since/as to feel the logic. Drill: That from which every creature draws its being must itself be uncaused — all things, as the Apostle reminds us, deriving their origin from him.

Where §6 sits — the conclusion of "the first class of works." Beveridge's chapter-summary (printed before §1) labels §6 a conclusion: from what has been said, it draws that the omnipotence, eternity, and goodness of God shine in creation. So §6 is the knot that ties off the first demonstration — God read off the ordinary course of nature — before §7 opens the second class, God read off his providence in human affairs (the rescue of the miserable, the casting-down of the proud, Psalm 107 and Psalm 113). Read §6 as a summation: it gathers the scattered evidence of §§1–5 into a triad of attributes and points the mind upward. Power (the storm-and-sea showpiece, S3) → eternity (the aseity step, S7) → goodness (the sole cause of creation and preservation, S8–9). Memorize the triad; it is the skeleton under the prose.

The aseity argument (S7). This is the most technically loaded sentence of the day, and it is worth knowing what tradition stands behind it. That from which all other things derive their origin must necessarily be self-existent and eternal compresses the classical reasoning about aseity (Latin a se esse, "to be from oneself"): a chain of derived (caused) beings cannot regress forever; there must be a term that is not derived — a being that exists of itself, uncaused, and therefore without beginning, i.e., eternal. The biblical anchor is Exodus 3:14 (I AM THAT I AM — the God whose very name is Being) and Romans 11:36 (of him, and through him, and to him, are all things). Calvin is not doing speculative metaphysics for its own sake — note how fast he moves from the attribute (eternity) to the response (S8–9, love). For Calvin, knowing that God is self-existent is never the destination; it is a rung toward worship. This is the difference he drew back in §1–2 between qualis (what God is toward us) and quid (what God is in himself): he wants the eternity that fuels piety, not the abstraction that idles in the schools.

"Goodness alone" — the Augustinian spring of creation (S8). There could be no other cause than his own goodness. This is a deliberate echo of the long Christian tradition, rooted in Augustine, that God created out of no need and no external compulsion — purely from his own bonitas, the self-communicating good (bonum est diffusivum sui, "the good pours itself out"). God gained nothing by creating; the creature did not yet exist to deserve it. The only motive was goodness — which is why the only fitting response (S9) is love. Calvin's logic is airtight and pastoral at once: trace the world back to its cause, and you find not necessity, not chance, not self-interest, but gift.

The line that will be on the test — natural knowledge is universal (S6). This method … is common both to those within and to those without the pale of the Church. Here is the high-water mark of Calvin's natural theology — and, read in context, its boundary stone. Calvin freely grants that the method of reading God's perfections off creation belongs to pagan and believer alike; the astronomer outside the Church and the peasant inside it gaze at the same shadow-portrait of God's face. But remember the trajectory: §§4–5 just demonstrated that fallen men suppress and pervert the very evidence they cannot help seeing. So S6's universality is inculpatory, not salvific — it makes all men inexcusable (Rom 1:20, the chapter's drumbeat), not all men saved. This is exactly why the Institutes pivots, in I.6, to the necessity of Scripture as spectacles: the natural revelation is real, sufficient to condemn, but — because of human blindness — insufficient to convert. (Later reception: this is the seam the Barth–Brunner debate fought over. Brunner pressed S6-type texts toward a "point of contact"; Barth feared any natural theology at all. Calvin himself sits between: the evidence is genuinely there and genuinely universal, yet genuinely wasted without the Word and the Spirit. Don't let either side conscript this sentence; hold both halves.)

§6 closes on one explicit citation (Ps 145:9) but is woven through with the Bible's nature-poetry. Track the threads:

1. Psalm 145:9 — "His tender mercies are over all his works" (S10, quoted). Calvin's seal for the goodness-argument. The Hebrew raḥămîm (womb-compassion, from reḥem, "womb") roofs all his works — the universal scope that grounds S9's every creature participating in his mercy. Note how Calvin uses it: not as decoration but as the proof-text that turns the metaphysics of S7–8 back into worship.

2. Psalm 104 and Psalm 107 (behind S3). The whole storm-and-sea tableau — thunder, lightning, tempest, the sea lashed into fury and then stilled — is Psalm 104 (God who makes the clouds his chariot, who walketh upon the wings of the wind) and Psalm 107 (he commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind … he maketh the storm a calm) set to prose. The forthwith, in one moment … a perfect calm is the Psalmist's he maketh the storm a calm — and, behind it, Mark 4:39, Christ stilling the sea with a word, the New-Testament echo of the same divine energy.

3. Job 38–41 and Isaiah 40 (named in S4). Calvin explicitly flags the book of Job and the prophecies of Isaiah as the great galleries of divine-power-in-nature. Job's whirlwind speeches (the storehouses of snow, the sea shut with bars, Job 38) and Isaiah's Creator who measures the waters in the hollow of his hand (Isa 40:12) are the canonical home of S3's imagery — which is exactly why he defers them to chap. 14 (S5).

4. Hebrews 1:3 (behind S3 — "by a word sustains"). Whose energy it is that by a word sustains the boundless fabric of the universe leans on upholding all things by the word of his power. The world is held in being by an ongoing utterance, not a past act — providence as continuous speech.

5. Exodus 3:14 / Romans 11:36 (behind S7). The aseity of that from which all other things derive their origin is the metaphysical face of the divine name I AM THAT I AM (Exod 3:14) and Paul's doxology of him … are all things (Rom 11:36). Calvin reasons to the self-existent God whom Scripture names.

문제 ① 어법 — 밑줄 친 부분 중 틀린 것은?

(A) Nothing can be more preposterous than to enjoy God's gifts and to neglect him; and that (B) from which all other things derive their origin (C) must necessarily to be self-existent, every creature (D) participating in his mercy.

✨ 답안 보기 (클릭)정답: (C). must is a modal auxiliary and takes the bare infinitive — Calvin's own wording is must necessarily be self-existent, not must … to be. (Formula 3.) (A) Nothing … more … than is the correct rhetorical-superlative frame (Formula 1). (B) that from which … is the correct headless relative used as subject. (D) participating is the correct nominative absolute participle (every creature participating … = since every creature participates …). 출제 의도: 조동사 must 뒤 동사형(원형 vs. to be)을 (C)에 함정으로 깔고, 부정비교 최상급·무두 관계사·독립분사구문을 정답 분산용으로 배치.

문제 ② 내용일치 — §6과 일치하는 것은?

(A) Calvin teaches that the method of reading God's perfections off creation belongs only to those inside the Church, not to those outside it. (B) Calvin reasons from God's eternity to his power, holding that the eternal God must therefore be powerful. (C) Calvin holds that the sole cause moving God both to create all things and now to preserve them is his own goodness, which should be enough to draw forth our love. (D) Calvin argues that the descriptions of divine power in Job and Isaiah prove that creatures, no less than God, are self-existent and eternal.

✨ 답안 보기 (클릭)정답: (C) — S8–9 직역: there could be no other cause than his own goodness … nothing more should be required to draw forth our love towards him. (A)는 S6 정면 뒤집기 — 칼빈은 이 method가 교회 안과 밖 양쪽 모두에 common하다고 명시(both to those within and to those without the pale of the Church). (B)는 S7의 방향 뒤집기 — 칼빈은 power → eternity로 올라가지 그 역이 아니며, 추론의 근거는 "근원은 자존(self-existent)해야 한다"는 것. (D)는 S7의 아세이티 논리 왜곡 — 자존·영원한 것은 오직 근원이고 파생된 피조물은 그렇지 않음(S4의 Job·Isaiah는 defer되었을 뿐 그런 주장의 근거로 쓰이지 않음). 출제 의도: 보편성의 범위(교회 안/밖), 추론의 방향(power↔eternity), 자존의 귀속(근원 vs. 피조물)을 삼중 함정으로 검증.

문제 ③ 영작 — Formula 3 (aseity clause: "that from which … must necessarily be") 적용.

"모든 다른 것이 그 존재를 끌어내는 그것은 반드시 자존하며 영원해야 한다 — 모든 피조물이, 시편 기자가 일깨우듯, 그분의 자비에 참여하면서." — 무두 관계사 주어 + must + 원형 본절에, 끝을 독립분사구문(nominative absolute)으로 붙여라.

✨ 답안 보기 (클릭)모범답안: That from which all other things derive their being must necessarily be self-existent and eternal, every creature — as the Psalmist reminds us — participating in his mercy. 출제 의도: 주어는 that from which …(무두 관계사), 술어는 must necessarily be(조동사+원형, to be 금지), 꼬리는 every creature … participating …(고유 주어 + 분사 = 독립분사구문). must … to be로 쓰면 (C)함정과 동일한 오류, which all other things derive처럼 전치사 from 누락 시 관계사절 비문, 분사 자리에 정동사(participates)를 쓰면 독립분사구문 위반.

One-line summary: §6 ties off the first demonstration and points it upward: let each remember the one God who governs all and wills our faith, worship, adoration (S1), for nothing is more preposterous than to enjoy the gifts and neglect the Giver (S2); behold how glorious his power — whose energy it is that by a word sustains the universe, now thundering, now stilling the sea (S3) — descriptions Scripture multiplies in Job and Isaiah (S4) which Calvin purposely omits till chap. 14 (S5); and mark the test line: this method of reading God's face in creation is common both to those within and without the pale of the Church (S6); then the ascent — from power to eternity, since the Source must be self-existent and eternal (S7), whose only cause in creating and preserving is his own goodness (S8), which should draw forth our love, every creature participating in his mercy (S9), sealed by "His tender mercies are over all his works" (S10). You now own the day's three engines: negated comparative = superlative (+ verbless "how glorious"), the cleft "it is X that …" (+ "no other … than"), and the aseity clause "that from which … must necessarily be" (+ nominative absolute).

Homework (10 min):

1. Structure restoration: Take S7 — From the power of God we are naturally led to consider his eternity since that from which all other things derive their origin must necessarily be selfexistent and eternal — and (a) identify the subject of must … be, (b) rewrite that from which all other things derive their origin as a plain noun phrase ("the ____"), (c) state in one sentence why the Source must be self-existent (hint: infinite regress).
2. Composition: Using Formula 1 (nothing can be more X than to V … and to V), write one sentence: "하나님의 능력을 하늘에서 읽고도 그 능력을 휘두르는 하나님을 외면하는 것보다 더 앞뒤가 뒤바뀐 일은 없다." (Hint: Nothing can be more preposterous than to read God's power in the heavens and to deny the God who wields it.)
3. Preview: Tomorrow is Book 1, Chapter 5, §7 — Calvin opens the second class of God's works: no longer the ordinary course of nature but his providence over human affairs — "In the second class of God's works, namely those which are above the ordinary course of nature, the evidence of his perfections are in every respect equally clear." Watch him read God's justice and mercy off the rise of the lowly and the fall of the proud (Psalm 107, Psalm 113).

Where we stopped: Book 1, Ch. 5, §6 끝. 다음은 Book 1, Ch. 5, §7 (Day 19).