Calvin's Institutes: The Doctrine of God

Vocabulary flashcards covering John Calvin's doctrine of God, divine attributes, worship, and the Trinity as presented in Book I, chapters 10-13 of the Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Sensus Divinitatis

An innate awareness or sense of divinity that Calvin explains God has planted deep within all human beings to give them an understanding of who He is.

Quid Sit Deus

A Latin scholastic phrase meaning "What is God?"; Calvin warns against this question because it seeks to speculatively probe into God's secret nature as He is in Himself.

Qualis Sit Deus

A Latin phrase meaning "What kind of God is He?"; Calvin argues this is the proper question believers should ask, focusing on how God has revealed His character toward us.

Regulative Principle

The Reformed principle of worship stating that acceptable worship is strictly defined and ordained by God in His Word, prohibiting uncommanded innovations or visual images.

Dulia

In Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology, the service or veneration given to images, saints, Mary, or Christ, which Calvin rejects as a "foolish evasion" of true worship.

Latria

The formal, sacrificial worship that Roman Catholic theology reserves exclusively for God, contrasted with the lesser reverence of dulia.

Praise of Preaching

Calvin's concept in Book I, chapter 11, asserting that through the true preaching of the Gospel, Christ is depicted before our eyes as crucified, rendering physical crucifixes and images unnecessary.

Forms of Bodies

A category of non-historical art recognized by Calvin that does not teach or admonish, but exists legitimately to afford aesthetic pleasure.

Attributes in Solution

B. B. Warfield's description of how Calvin presents God's attributes integrated within scriptural expositions (such as Exodus 34:6-7 and Psalm 145) rather than isolated into systematic categories.

Homoousios

A Greek theological term from the Council of Nicaea (325) meaning "of the same substance," used to affirm that the Son is consubstantial with the Father.

Auto-theos

A Greek term meaning "God of Himself," used by Calvin to emphasize that the Son possesses essential deity in His own right and does not derive His divine essence from the Father.

Fountain of Deity

A traditional theological expression used by Calvin to describe the Father's priority within the Trinity in terms of relational order, not origin of divine essence.

Gregory of Nazianzus

An Eastern Cappadocian theologian whose trinitarian summary delighted Calvin: "I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendor of the three, nor can I discern the three without being straightway carried back to the one."

Servetus

An anti-trinitarian opponent burned in Geneva whose theology Calvin opposed as a logically impossible mixture of Sabellianism and Arianism.

Simplification, Clarification, and Equalization

B. B. Warfield's summary of the three key characteristics of Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity, highlighting Calvin's emphasis on the full equality of the three divine persons.

Aseity

The attribute of self-existence; in Calvin's trinitarian theology, it asserts that each person of the Trinity, including the Son and Holy Spirit, exists as God in Himself.