Two or three words sum this up – certainty, immediacy, and energy. For Calvin it is as if the reader takes in the air of Scripture, of prophets and apostles, and especially  of the incarnate Son of God, by the energy of the Holy Spirit, by which the truth of scripture is known with certainty. This engagement involves not only our intellects, our minds, but out affections, our spirits. 

How are we to read the Bible or parts of it?  This is certainly a big question, and a basic one. The canonical scriptures are , it is often said, a library, and the books it is comprised of have  a varied, interesting  character. At one level sometimes hear of people who set out recipes drawn from the Bible, or develop an interest in its archaeology, or in its flora and fauna; some of its place in ancient history and culture, and especially perhaps, its setting in the culture of the middle east, Roman and Greek and so on, Babylonian and Phoenician and Egyptian, and so on.  How do all these fit into it?

Some, coming nearer, spend their talents and skills in efforts to prove or display its reliability, in an effort to provide an apology for its trustworthiness. Churches arrange evening in which they commend the Christian faith by explaining it, ‘Christianity Explained’. And coming even nearer, the Bible is read, or parts of it are, and sources of the ancient religious concepts  that are found within the covers of a Bible. Maybe some familiarities are found what the Bible contains and modern religious ideas, or perhaps its difference and uniqueness.

 All these enterprises, and others that we have not included in our list, are  to one degree or another, fascinating and learned as they are or can be. Part of the contribution to the religious quest of humanity.

 But all these ‘approaches’ to Scripture, and more we could add, neglects the basic fact that Scripture invites us to understand it as the word of God. Not only to understand it but to be engaged as that word. In fact  to engage and be engaged to its own estimate of itself. This is a way of saying that the Bible has a spiritual engagement of men and women, who have sprits that can engage with it, if our spirits are imbued by the work of God the Holy Spirit within them. And Scripture offers its content  to the deepest part of humankind.

Early on in his Institutes, Calvin says

Let it therefore be held as fixed, that those who are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit acquiesce implicitly in Scripture, that Scripture carrying its own evidence along with it, deigns not to submit to proofs and arguments, but owes the full conviction with which we ought to receive  it to the testimony of the Spirit. Enlightened by him, we no longer believe wither on our own judgment or that of others, that the Scriptures are from God; but, in a way superior to human judgment, feel perfectly assured – as much so as if we beheld the divine image impressed on it – that it came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God.  We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which we rest our judgment, but we subject our intellect and judgment to it as too transcendent for us to estimate….we  find  a divine energy living and breathing in it –  an energy by which we are drawn and animated to obey it, willingly indeed, and knowingly, but more vividly than could  be done by human will or knowledge…..(Institutes  Bk I.  ch.7. S.5.)

The The Reason of Faith; or, an Answer unto that Inquiry, ‘Wherefore we Believe the Scripture  to be the Word of God?’ (1677) Works,  ed. Goold, IV

Hereby we re taught of God, so as, finding, the glory and majesty of God  in the word, our hearts do , by an ineffable power, assent under the truth without any hesitation. And this work of the Spirit carrieth its own evidence in itself, producing an assurance  above all human judgment, and such as stands in no need of no farther arguments or testimonies. This faith rests on and is resolved into, (p.43)

The evangelical certainty of the trustworthiness and authority is of exactly the same word , and rests on exactly the same basis, as the Church’s certainty of the Trinity, or the incarnation, or any other catholic doctrine. God has declared it; Scripture embodies it; the Spirit exhibits it to believers; and they humbly receive it, as they are bound to do .(‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God p.124)

Two or three words sum this up – certainty, immediacy, and energy. For Calvin it is as if the reader takes in the air of Scripture, of prophets and apostles, and especially  of the incarnate Son of God, by the energy of the Holy Spirit, by which the truth of scripture is known with certainty. This engagement involves not only our intellects, our minds, but out affections, our spirits.

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