Cavin on Image and Word

From Zachman's Conclusion:

Far from replacing images with words, Calvin combines image and word in all aspects of our lives with God and with others. We must hear the Word of God if we are rightly to behold the symbols in which the invisible God becomes somewhat visible; but we must also behold with our eyes the goodness of God that the Word declares to us, so that the truth of that Word might be confirmed for us. Calvin will accentuate the visibility of divine self-revelation by describing the Word of God itself as a living image of God, in which the hidden thoughts of God might be beheld, even as human thoughts are represented in the language we use. When Calvin encounters a symbol in Scripture to which no Word of God is attached, such as the sacrifices of the patriarchs, or burial rites, or the exodus itself, he will nonetheless uphold the meaning and necessity of these symbols, which the godly are to consider and contemplate.

Calvin’s concern to see the self-revelation of God in terms of the combination of the Word of God that we hear and the living images of God that we behold places him squarely within the broarder catholic tradition from the time of the orthodox theologians of the early Church to his own day. Calvin combines proclamation and manifestation in an exemplary way…. Calvin also holds together the revelation of God in the truth of the Word with the manifestation of the goodness of God in the beauty of God’s works, in a way that anticipates Hans Urs von Balthasar’s attempt to do the same in our own day. We are led to union with the fountain of every good thing in God only when we hold together the proclamation of that goodness in the Word of God with the manifestation of that goodness in the beauty of the living images of God.

We have also seen that an unresolvable tension lies at the heart of Calvin’s discussion of the living images of God. Calvin insists that the symbols instituted by God truly offer and present the reality they represent, and therefore are instruments God uses to descend to us. However, he also claims that the reality being represented in these symbols must be sought in heaven, and encourages the godly to use divine symbols as ladders and vehicles by which they might ascend to God. Calvin creates this tension in order to keep the godly from confining God to the symbols of divine self-manifestation, so that we might be led from the image that we see to the God whom we do not yet see. This tension is compounded by the various reasons Calvin gives for the rejection of images of human institution in the worship of God. On the one hand, Calvin contrasts the “dead images” that humans create, which are only the image of absent things, with the “living images” instituted by God, which truly present the reality they represent. On the other hand, Calvin rejects the use of images in worship on the basis of the invisible nature of God, which cannot be represented in any symbol or image. He can at times so insist on the essential invisibility of God that he appears to undermine his whole understanding of divine self-manifestation in symbols and living images. Again, he creates this tension in order to maintain the dialectical relationship between the visibility and invisibility of God, and the presence and absence of God, which he thinks is maintained by images of divine creation but not by images of human divising. This tension is meant to lead us from the vision of God in a mirror, enigmatically, to the beholding of God face-to-face so that we never rest contented with the present state of our vision but press on to the clear vision we shall enjoy on the Last Day.

Let each of us awaken himself from his lethargy, that we may now be satisfied with spiritual felicity until God, in due time, bring us to his own immediate presence, and cause us to enjoy him face to face (Comm on Ps 17:15)

(Image and Word etc. p437-440)