The following extract is taken from a new paperback by Paul Helm, entitled Calvin and the Calvinists (now available in the U.K., price £2.25, $4.95 U.S.). In his introduction, Paul Helm writes:

This small book is an expansion of an article, 'Calvin, Calvinism and the logic of Doctrinal Development', which appeared in the Scottish Journal of Theology earlier this year. Recently it has come more and more to be believed that Puritan theology departed significantly from, and even opposed, the theology of John Calvin. This study rejects such a view. My aim is to show that Calvin and the Puritans were, theologically speaking, as one, and thus to support the truism that Calvin was a Calvinist.

In a classic statement about faith Calvin says:

Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.¹

There are a number of noteworthy features about this definition. Calvin stresses that faith is something supernatural. It is not a natural religious instinct, nor is it (as some would say) gullibility. Faith is imparted to us by God himself, by God the Holy Spirit. Faith relies upon the promise of God, it presupposes divine revelation, and involves the use of the mind, not its disengagement. Calvin does not oppose faith and reason, for reason is necessary to understand the divine revelation. But what is more important for present purposes is what Calvin says about the relation between faith and knowledge. It is this that has aroused much interest over the years, and still prompts controversy. A number of scholars regard it as unquestionable that at this point there is a major break between Calvin and the Puritans. For in his definition Calvin appears to be defining faith in terms of knowledge, whereas the Puritans certainly did not. It is therefore important to take care to understand what Calvin is saying here, and elsewhere in his writings. What does it mean to say that faith involves assurance, or that assurance is of the essence of faith? It is not simply that saving faith involves the assurance, or confidence, that what is believed is undoubtedly the promise of God. It is rather that if a man has faith, and if faith involves assurance, then that man, in believing God's promise to sinners, recognizes that God is gracious or benevolent toward him in particular. If faith involves assurance, then all who believe must have this confidence about themselves in relation to God. If they fail to have this confidence then they cannot truly be believers. In Calvin's words, such faith is 'a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence to us' to the ones who believe.

Such faith involves more than believing in a general sense that the promise is addressed to us, it is believing that it applies to us. On this view anyone who 'believes' but lacks the conviction that, in believing, he is saved by Christ is not a true believer. It is important to recognize that Calvin is not offering a casual, throw-away view. This is part of Calvin's definition of faith.

Nevertheless, it is equally important to recognize that this short definition is not the only thing that Calvin says about faith. In order to set his definition in a broader context attention will now be paid to what he says after this definition occurs in the Institutes, and then to what he says about the knowledge of election.

Some Qualifications⤒🔗

 A little after giving the definition of faith just considered, Calvin makes the following remarks:

Unbelief is so deeply rooted in our hearts, and we are so inclined to it, that not without hard struggle is each one able to persuade himself of what all confess with the mouth: namely, that God is faithful.

While we teach that faith ought to be certain and assured, we cannot imagine any certainty that is not tinged with doubt, or any assurance that is not assailed by some anxiety. On the other hand, we say that believers are in perpetual conflict with their own unbelief.²      

The godly heart feels in itself a division because it is partly imbued with sweetness from its recognition of the divine goodness, partly grieves in bitterness from an awareness of its calamity; partly rests upon the promise of the gospel, partly trembles at the evidence of its own iniquity; partly rejoices at the expectation of life, partly shudders at death. This variation arises from imperfection of faith, since in the course of the present life it never goes so well with us that we are wholly cured of the disease of unbelief and entirely filled and possessed by faith. Hence arise those conflicts, when unbelief, which reposes in the remains of the flesh, rises up to attack the faith that has been inwardly conceived.³

It can be seen from this that Calvin qualifies his definition of faith in terms of knowledge in important ways. Having and retaining faith is part of a struggle with natural unbelief. The degree of confidence that accompanies it fluctuates.

Further, Calvin is well aware that these further remarks of his amount to an important modification of the original definition. It is not as if there is a conflict of evidence in Calvin which he does not recognize. For he says that while faith 'ought to be certain and assured, we cannot imagine any certainty that is not tinged with doubt'. So while faith ought to be assured faith, there is no such thing as perfect or total assurance, a completely doubt-free confidence that God's mercy applies to me.

But, it may be asked, if Calvin defines faith in terms of assurance, how can he allow for the possibility of faith without assurance? Is he flatly contradicting himself within a few pages, or is there a way of reconciling the different things that he says? If we take Calvin's definition of faith with which our discussion began as a definition based upon his own actual usage, then the only conclusion that it is possible to come to is that he is inconsistent. For, as we have just seen, he is sometimes happy to allow that there may be faith without assurance, and indeed that all faith is incompletely assured. And yet, if he defines faith in terms of assurance, then no one can have faith who lacks assurance. But if so, how can he say that faith may co-exist with doubt?

A clue to the answer to this difficulty is to be found in the second of the two quotations given above. Calvin's definition of faith is not a report of how the word 'faith' is actually used, either by himself or by others, but it is a recommendation about how his readers ought habitually and properly to think of faith. Supposing someone says, 'No one can live without a properly balanced diet'. This is not strictly true. In areas of malnutrition many unfortunate people live close to starvation. But while not strictly true, the assertion enshrines a recommendation. It is as if it were being said that no persons can flourish without a properly balanced diet, though they may exist without one. Similarly, Calvin is recommending to his Christian readers not to be satisfied with a degree of faith that is without assurance. There can be faith without assurance, but that degree of faith is to be sought that is accompanied by assurance.

Knowledge of Election←⤒🔗

This interpretation of Calvin's definition of faith is confirmed by what he says elsewhere in the Institutes. In Chapter twenty-four of Book Three of the Institutes, having previously set out the biblical doctrine of election, and cleared up certain misconceptions about it, Calvin deals with the thorny question of how a person may know that he is one of God's elect. Since not all men are elected, what are the signs of election? Calvin's answer is that such knowledge comes indirectly, through the preaching of the Word of God and a believing response to that preaching. Our election is not to be known by some direct revelation to our souls that we are chosen, but by the nature of our response to the preaching of the Christian gospel.

If we have been chosen in him, we shall not find assurance of our election in ourselves; and not even in God the Father, if we conceive him as severed from his Son. Christ, then, is the mirror wherein we must, and without self-deception may, contemplate our own election. For since it is into his body that the Father has destined those to be engrafted whom he has willed from eternity to be his own, that he may hold as sons all whom he acknowledges to be among his members, we have a sufficiently clear and firm testimony that we have been inscribed in the book of life (cf Revelation 21:27), if we are in communion with Christ.⁴

Such is Calvin's position, often repeated throughout his writings.⁵Christ is the mirror of election. Knowledge of election is reflected by means of a person's relation to Christ. If a person wants to know whether or not he is elect he can discover this, not by direct revelation, nor by speculation, but by enquiring 'whether He (the Father) has entrusted us to Christ, whom he has established as the sole Saviour of all his people.'⁶    

How should such an enquiry proceed? Perhaps it is possible for a person who thinks that the Father has entrusted him to Christ to conclude that he is Christ's. Hardly! For besides insisting that Christ is the mirror of election Calvin also insists that there are many people who seem to be Christ's, but are not.

Yet it daily happens that those who seemed to be Christ's, fall away from him again, and hasten to destruction. Indeed, in that same passage, where he declares that none of those whom the Father had given to him perished, he nevertheless except the son of perdition (John 17:12). True indeed, but it is also equally plain that such persons never cleaved to Christ with the heartfelt trust in which certainty of salvation has, I say, been established for us.⁷

How, then, does someone know that he is not a reprobate, that is to say, merely a temporary believer? Calvin's answer is — and surely must be — that there are signs of true, as opposed to false and temporary faith, 'signs which are sure attestations of it'. ⁸The signs that Calvin mentions include: divine calling, illumination by Christ's Spirit, communion with Christ, receiving Christ by faith, the embracing of Christ, perseverance in the faith, the avoidance of self-confidence, and fear.

So it would appear that a person may be a true believer and yet not be assured that he is one, because he has misunderstood the signs. Similarly, a person may not be a true believer, but may think that he is, because he has misread the signs. To give an illustration: Whether or not a person is forty years old at a stated time depends upon the year of his birth. If he was born in a certain year then he is forty years old. If not, then he is not forty years old. But the evidence of his being born in a certain year cannot be had directly, but only indirectly, through what his parents tell him, the evidence of a birth certificate, and so on. Similarly, Calvin says, there are indirect signs of true faith, signs upon which assurance is based.

Misunderstanding is sometimes caused by statements made about the ground of assurance. It is said, for instance, that according to Calvin, Christ alone is the ground of assurance, and that to think of the ground of assurance as within oneself is a form of salvation by merit or works. But this is based on a confusion over the meaning of 'ground'. Calvin, and indeed all the Reformers, are of course emphatic that a person's salvation is due solely to the work of Christ. But he is equally emphatic that the evidence of personal salvation is found in a person's own spiritual and moral renovation. While the believer has not to trust in himself for salvation — this would be salvation by human merit ­nevertheless he may find in himself evidence that he has trusted in Christ for salvation. While his own state is most certainly not the foundation of his salvation — Christ is the foundation — his own state may be evidence that he is in Christ, as the birth certificate is evidence of a person's date of birth.

Conclusion←⤒🔗

It has been shown that Calvin's famous definition of faith is in fact a recommendation of how the word 'faith' should be used, not a definition of how it actually is used. What he writes elsewhere about faith is consistent with this, and with the idea that true faith may exist without assurance, however spiritually undesirable this may be.

Calvin had every reason for stressing that a Christian may properly expect to be assured of his salvation, for he was writing in a situation in which the dominant teaching in Christendom, that of the Roman Catholic Church, was that assurance was unattainable.

The papists say that we must doubt it (i.e. assurance) and that we can come to God only with a hope that he will receive us; but to assure ourselves of it — that we ought not to do, for that would be too great a presumption. But when we pray to God, we must call him Father, at least if we are the scholars of our Lord Jesus Christ, for he has taught us to do so. Now, is it as a venture that we call him Father, or are we sure of it in ourselves that he is our Father? If not, then there would be nothing but hypocrisy in our prayers, and the first word that we utter would be a lie.⁹

Moreover the view that has been put forward in this chapter, that in his definition Calvin was attempting to raise the legitimate spiritual expectations of his readers, certainly accords with what is known about the condition of those for whom the Institutes was first written.

As T. H. L. Parker has expressed it:

He (Calvin) was writing for the baptized, for those who took their religion seriously, who desired to be good Christians but were disturbed at their lack of success, who above all were distressed that their religion brought them no peace of conscience. By their baptism the guilt of their inherited sin had been forgiven. But they had sinned since their baptism, making shipwreck of their faith and thus of their standing with God. Now they clung desperately to what old St Jerome called the second plank, the sacrament of penance. They were sorry for their sins, or rather, the more they were in earnest the more the realized that they ought to be sorry. They knew God to be a stern judge who would exact vengeance for their sins. They made confession, aware of the promise "whose soever sins ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven". But where was the peace that should follow? Had they confessed all their sins? Had they forgotten any? Only confessed sins are forgiven. They performed the enjoined satisfactions for their sins. They did more; they went on pilgrimages, not for a jolly Chaucerian holiday, but always seeking, always grasping after that which lay just beyond their grasp; they gave alms so far as they could afford; they practised self-denial and mortification. Meanwhile, they attempted to follow their conscience and the Law of God to the best of their ability, trusting in God's grace that he would, of his free mercy, reward them for their efforts with such an inpouring of grace as would turn their will away from sin to love God with all their being. And again, instead of the looked-for peace, anxiety: had they really striven to the utmost? They could not tell; it was impossible to know. But if they had not done what they could, God had not rewarded them. The Institutio was addressed to men suffering under the pastoral cruelty of the mediaeval church.¹⁰

Small wonder, then, that Calvin attempted to pour into such spiritual wounds the balm of a pure evangelical faith which could bring assurance of forgiveness.

Summing Up the Chapter←⤒🔗

It has here been argued that there are in Calvin's teaching the main elements of the doctrine of limited atonement. Such a doctrine does not attempt to limit the atonement in an unnatural way, or to restrict the efficacy of Christ's death, but to emphasize that Christ's death actually redeemed, and did not make redemption merely possible. Without such a definite atonement there could be no atonement at all. Calvin teaches that the death of Christ actually remitted sin, that such remission was for the elect, and that Christ intended to die for the elect. This last point may seem superfluous, but it is of major importance when assessing R. T. Kendall's misinterpretation of the position.

Christ really atoned for the elect by his death. With all the other Reformers Calvin teaches that a person enjoys the benefits of the death of Christ through God-given faith in Christ. Can such a believer know and be assured that Christ has saved him by his death? As has been shown, Calvin held that it was possible for a person to be assured of his own salvation, and normal to expect this. It was monstrous to teach that such assurance was impossible. But he recognized that saving faith is often accompanied by periods of doubt which eclipse assurance, and that even assured faith is never totally free from doubt.

Almost a century after the final edition of the Institutes appeared the teaching of the Puritans was codified in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647). It speaks of assurance in these terms:

Such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavouring to walk in all good conscience before him, may in this life be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace, and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God; which hope shall never make them ashamed ... This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties, before he be partaker of it.¹¹

Is it not reasonable to conclude, on the basis of the evidence provided in this chapter, that this teaching is, in all essentials, the teaching of Calvin himself?