Devotions From Calvin
From Calvin’s Institutes Book 2 Chapter XI Part 13
…But since this variety in governing the Church, this diversity in the mode of teaching, this great change in rites and ceremonies, is regarded by some as an absurdity, we must reply to them before passing to other matters. And this can be done briefly, because the objections are not so strong as to require a very careful refutation. It is unreasonable they say, to suppose that God who is always consistent with himself permitted such a change as afterwards to disapprove what he had once ordered and commended. I answer, that God ought not to be deemed mutable, because he adapts different forms to different ages, as he knows to be expedient for each.
In this section I see three lessons. God is in fact speaking down to us in order for us to understand him. As he observed in 1:13:1…
…For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to “lisp” in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.
Understanding that God accommodates us when speaking to us we recognize the second point is that God is in fact unchangeable, immutable and always consistent with his plan.
Finally the rites and ceremonies of the Children of Israel are superseded in this age of the Kingdom. Any attempt to revise these obsolete rites, either by reinstituting the original practice, adapting them to modern or postmodern sensibilities, or completely reworking them in secret rituals is in fact to worship the creature rather than the Creator.
Today the Church is called to administer the means of grace; the Word, the Sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Table, and Prayer. When a Christian combines the means of grace with a practice of Christian charity it is hard to see where you can go wrong.
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