Reforming Apologetics (Calvin)
Summary
This is further evidence of continuity with “medieval theologians such as Aquinas.” Arguments for the Existence of God Fesko contends that Calvin “made use of some of the traditional arguments for the existence of God and stands in continuity with the catholic tradition.” (p. 60) For example, his commentaries on Psalms 19 and 104 indicate “substantive agreement with two of the Thomistic proofs, the cosmological and teleological arguments.” (p. 63) Calvin appeals to the principle that we can trace back an effect to its cause, and thus reason from the creation to the Creator, and he grants that even some pagan philosophers such as Plato have done so. ) The picture of a Calvin who was “either hostile to or uninterested in scholastic method, natural law, and common notions, as well as the traditional arguments for God’s existence” is the mythological creation of contemporary theologians. Put simply, Fesko is using the term in a ‘thin’ sense: as he defines it, scholasticism is nothing more than methodology and terminology, with no specific theological or philosophical content. Similarly, Calvin’s remark that one can investigate “the divine perfections” by reasoning from effect to cause, and thus from the creation to the Creator, while certainly supporting the idea of natural theology in the broad sense, doesn’t really come close to Aquinas’s formal cosmological arguments with all their metaphysical apparatus. That’s why John Frame devoted an entire chapter to the issue in his book Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (P&R, 1995, ch.