Because of John Calvin’s prestige as a great doctor of the Church attempts have from time to time been made to ‘capture’ him for some particular theological claim or agenda. Examples are Karl Barth’s appeal to Calvin in his conflict with Emil Brunner over the issue of natural theology, and Abraham Kuyper’s and Herman Bavinck’s claim that by his doctrine of common grace Calvin overturned the medieval nature - grace dichotomy or dualism.

In each case those appealing to Calvin have treated his ideas anachronistically (Each of these is discussed in Paul Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004)). In writing that book I discovered that if one uses Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae as a kind of template, then there are remarkable coincidences between Thomas’s thought and Calvin’s, even though there are obvious stylistic differences, and very little internal evidence in Calvin of a direct influence.

What does this coincidence show? At least, that Calvin was thoroughly at home in the thought world of the theology of late medievalism, taking on many of its ideas uncritically in areas where the issues of the Reformation were not at stake. Even though he had, from time to time, critical things to say of that theology, or rather of its speculative tendencies.

Here is another example of such coincidence, not discussed in the book.

Calvin’s remarks on astronomy are perhaps his best-known instance of his recognition of the intellectual boundaries between disciplines.

‘He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere’—elsewhere than to what Moses has to say about waters above the heaven.¹

Astronomers investigate with great labour whatever the sagacity of the human mind can comprehend. Nevertheless, this study is not to be reprobated, nor this science to be condemned, because some frantic persons are wont boldly to reject whatever is unknown to them. For as astronomy is not only pleasant, but also very useful to be known: it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God.²

Calvin is a theologian, concerned with what God has in fact revealed; and, consequently, he is not given to speculation or to the discussion of philosophical, medical or astronomical issues in their own right. But philosophy, as distinct from revealed theology, is legitimate, just as the study of medicine or astronomy are. Therefore, Calvin’s warnings against speculation in theology ought not to be taken to express a root-and-branch opposition to all metaphysical investigation and speculation, any more than to the practice of medicine or astronomy.

It is sometimes said that this approach to Scripture and science – not to treat Scripture as a textbook of science, but to think of the Bible’s remarks on the natural world as – from the standpoint of science – ‘accommodations’ is unique to Calvin. But note this:

Take into account, rather, that Moses was speaking to ignorant people and out of condescension to their simpleness presented to them only those things that are immediately obvious to the senses. Evryone, no matter how unschooled, can perceive with his senses that earth and water are bodies. On the other hand, all do not recognize air as being a body - even some philosophers have held that air is nothing, and refer to something full of air as empty. Therefore, Moses makes express mention of water and earth, but not of air, in order to avoid introducing something the unlearned knew nothing about. (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia 68.3)

It would be a useful exercise to take these comparisons between Thomas and Calvin further.

1. Comm. Gen. 1.6↩
2. Comm. Gen. 1.16. Calvin seems to have had a special appreciation of astronomy, just as he vehemently opposed astrology (though the term ‘astrology’ was used by him to cover both the legitimate and the bastard science). This comes out, for instance, in his 1549 A Warning Against Judiciary Astrology and Other Prevalent Curiosities, where, alongside excoriating the practice of divination, he comments positively on astronomy as the study of the planets and stars ‘which involves estimating their office, property, and power and subjugating the entire science to God’s end and God’s use’. Praise and respect for the science comes out incidentally in a number of places, including his sermons on Job: The astronomers ‘imagine things that are not in the skyes: but they imagin them not without reason: for they doo it to shewe by certain degrees and measure, the things myght be to hygh and to deepe to comprehend. Well, and have the Philosophers disputed much of this matter? Hathe God given them a greater grace than can bee beleeved, to note and marke out Gods secrets that are on hygh?’ (Sermons on Job trans. Arthur Golding (1574) (Reprinted in facsimile, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1993), 158.↩