Calvin’s Postmodernism

In response to my post on Calvin and the de-centered self, reader Eric Enlow of Handong International Law School in Pohang, Korea, writes:

“I liked your post on the de-centered self; I couldn’t agree any more with the central argument.

“My own sense, however, is that if Calvin deemphasizes a relational image of God, he does not affirmatively exclude it. He does not aggressively assert that ‘Imaging God has nothing fundamentally to do with engagement in the world or with other human beings.’

“Indeed, in Institutes I.15.4, he seems to teach precisely that the image of God consists in the distinct nature of human common life, in the relation of conversational understanding: ‘John confirms this [i.e. that “whatsoever has to do with spiritual and eternal life is included under image”] by other words, declaring that ‘the life’ which was from the beginning in God’s Eternal Word [interestingly, Calvin has ‘Sermo Dei’ not Verbum Dei] ‘was the light of men.’ It was his intent to praise God’s singular grace, wherein man excels the remaining living creatures, in order to separate him from the multitude because he attained no common life, but one joined with the light of understanding. Accordingly, he shows at the same time how man was created in God’s image.

“I read this to say: (1) man is distinguished from the animals by the nature of his common life, (2) because man’s common life is grounded in the light of understanding, and (3) man has this common life because of his similarity to God whose Sermo Dei is the image of man.

“So, the light of men is one with the Conversation of God and since we were made in God’s image, it requires us to achieve a distinct kind of social life through the light of conversational understanding.”