---
title: "Commentary on Ezekiel, Volume 2"
author: "John Calvin"
translator: "Thomas Myers"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Commentaries"
section: 63 of 69
url: https://scriptura.si/works/john-calvin-commentary-on-ezekiel-volume-2/63/
cite: "John Calvin, tr. Thomas Myers, Commentary on Ezekiel, Volume 2, section 63. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/john-calvin-commentary-on-ezekiel-volume-2/63/"
---

# Commentary on Ezekiel, Volume 2

*John Calvin, tr. Thomas Myers*

Calvin on the prophet Ezekiel, volume 2 of 2.

## 63. Calvinus Judaizans an Orthodoxus?

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/john-calvin-commentary-on-ezekiel-volume-2/63/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/john-calvin-commentary-on-ezekiel-volume-2/63/#p-N

[¶0] Dissertation Second.

[¶1] “Calvinus Judaizans“ was the title of a work published at Wittemberg, A.D. 1595, by AEgidius Hunnius. It contained a sharp censure for applying to the temporal state and circumstances of the Jews those prophecies which were supposed to refer spiritually to the Christian Church. The year, however, did not pass away before David Pareus replied, under the title of “Calvinus Orthodoxus.” And all who have perused his comments on this Prophet must vindicate him from the charge of favoring Judaism, and applaud him for wisely neglecting all allegorical significations and mystical expositions. While it will be impossible to discuss the whole question of prophetic interpretation, it will be necessary to state some general views by which we ought to be guided.

[¶2] The prophecies of the Old Testament were in many instances a divinely provided introduction to the events of the New. In them we may see the outlines of the process by which God was ever educating man for ultimate restoration to His image. They contain a suggestive method of destruction by palpable signs and. wonders, which addressed the soul through their influence on the senses. Their value to the Jew was very different from that to the Christian. To the former they were the highest revelation attainable, while for us they do not reveal a single attribute or purpose of Deity which is not more fully made known through the Gospel dispensation. The Hebrew visions stand to us in the relation of porch to temple, and of dawn to day. They are to the Christian a divine first lesson-book, and contain a series of condescending instructions suited to a low stage of religious and mental life. They were specially appropriate to the people to whom they were bestowed, and of a structure and material in accordance with the dispensation to which they ministered. They were prefigurative and preformative throughout. They were preparatory and thus far excellent, but not “chiefest of all” because not permanent. Like the scaffolding, the growing blade, the finished portrait, they fail in comparison with the stately building, the ripened corn, the living person. Now Calvin avoids the extremes of the merely literal system and of the mystical allegories of the double sense. The former system treats the Old Testament as if it were all written at the same time, and every part of it addressed equally to all men. It excepts the ceremonial observances, and then considers that every sentence is reconcilable with all the rest by a spiritual process of traditionary reasoning. It is sternly opposed to all discrimination between the records of different eras; it admits of nothing gradual, variable, or local. Of the latter system we have an excellent example in the quotation just made from the comparison of Zuingle. He sees Christ and justification by faith everywhere. Not only must Hasmal — a mere color — be an emblem of the Son of God, but all who cannot receive this are branded as unenlightened. The truths which he has received through the gospel are so vividly impressed upon his soul and so thoroughly leaven his spirit, that he sees everything scriptural by this bright light of his inner man. His deficiency is of judgment, not of grace. The question thought not to be, what series of Christian doctrine can be grafted upon the cherubic emblem, but what truths it was intended to convey to the soul of the Prophet and the people, — surely not those of the Augsburgh Confession of Faith. We have to guard against a twofold error: on the one hand, a merely critical and rationalistic interpretation which never proceeds beyond the surface; and, on the other, against a fanciful exposition of figurative language, as if in every case the doctrines, the graces, and the experiences of the New Covenant were intended to be revealed to Hebrew prophets.

[¶3] Apposite, indeed, was the exclamation of the Jew, when he said of Ezekiel, “Doth he not speak parables?” He had to take a the and draw a city upon it; to shave his head, and divide the her into three significant parts; and the Jew might fairly ask, How is all this to benefit his soul? It could only do so by appealing to the spiritual principle in man’s soul. As the Prophet must eat the roll, so we must to comprehend the meaning of divine emblems, that they may become to us the bread of life. There is a husk around many a spiritual fruit, and often times a stone within it, which seems devoid of nutriment; but still this is the way in which it pleases our heavenly Father to nourish us. All signs, emblems, and sacraments of any true religion are beneficial to us only when we spiritually perceive their inward and animating grace. All that is outward in form and ceremony and machinery is only the vehicle, not the substance, of our support as God’s children, and our growth in his likeness. This foundation truth must be laid firmly as a basis for every portion of the superstructure. The carnal mind never did and never can comprehend the things of the Spirit of God. The power of understanding the meaning must come from the same Deity who sends the vision. On this broad rock of truth we may build every sound interpretation of all the figurative language of Scripture. This principle we may gather from the way in which the early Christian writers explain the symbols of Holy Writ. St. Chrysostom, for instance, treats clearly the lesson we should learn from the seraph’s taking the coal from the altar and touching the Prophet’s lips with its hallowed fire. St. Ambrose seems scarcely satisfied with the image — bread of life: he must “eat life.” “Whoso then,” says he, “eateth life cannot die. How should he die whose food is life?” “and this bread,” he adds, “is the remission of sins.” St. Augustine speaks of “angels feeding on the eternal word,” and of “men eating angels’ food.” Language like this implies the struggle of the spiritual mind to express itself fully through the medium of carnal language; and what were the Shechinnah and the Seraphim, the Urim and the Thummim, the live goat and the slain goat, but symbols receiving all their significance from the Divine truths which they conveyed to the soul? The worship of the one God through the appointed Mediator was ever the same in its hidden essence, and ever must be, while it is ever varying in its, form, according to the divers needs of our frail humanity. It is flexible exceedingly to the eye and the ear, and unchangeable only in its living spirit. All nature, organic and inorganic, has been used to illustrate it and communicate it, but this never has made, nor can make, the unseen visible. Still the question will recur, Where must we draw the line between the human and the divine in these prophetic visions? No man can draw such a line with accuracy except for himself. Let all who doubt this assertion try to divide mind from matter in the living man. Many have attempted it, and their failures remain to mark the narrow lib, its of their knowledge and the assumed regions of their ignorance. The matured Christian instincts of the cultivate worshipper will be every man’s best guide under the promised teaching of the Holy Spirit. An infallible interpreter is not for us in the flesh; the interpreting Spirit must dwell within us, otherwise we shall see nothing but the outward aspect of the gorgeous vision. The inspiration within must harmonize with that without, which is not verbal but ideal. The heaven-wrought ideas of the Hebrew Prophets protect themselves.

[¶4] We do not require either a verbal or literal theopneustia: the truths themselves by their own imperishableness defeat the mortality of the language with which they are associated. They reverberate and percolate through all the pages of the mighty record; they hide themselves obscurely in one chapter only to emerge more clearly in another; they diverge in one book only to recombine in another; so that to the sympathizing soul Scripture is ever a self-sufficing interpreter. Hence we are not careful to defend Calvin’s interpretations as faultless: theology as a science has advanced rapidly during three hundred years; and while some of his expositions have become antiquated, we still uphold him as “orthodoxus.” The law of development operates in the moral as well as in the physical universe. “Draw a cordon sanitaire,” says a modern reviewer, “against dandelion or thistle-down, and see if the armies of earth would suffice to interrupt this process of radiation, which yet is but the distribution of weeds. The secret implications of the truth have escaped at a thousand points in vast arches above our heads, rising high above the garden wall, and have sown the earth with memorials of the mystery which they envelop.”

[¶5] A second principle which we must bear in mind is, that every prophetic revelation was expressly adapted to the capacity of its original recipients. The extrinsic agency is always transitory. We of later generations learn enough if we profit by the latent and permanent essence. Hence the interpretation of the cherubim by the four evangelists is utterly untenable: and all such suppositions are indexes of a state of mind wholly incompetent to unfold prophetic mysteries. The very occurrence of hundreds of crude guesses like this, implies the necessity of submitting the prophetic emblems to some general laws of exposition. The highest criticism and the profoundest scholarship should be applied to them, that we may at once ignore all traditions which are proved to be corruptions. These prophecies presuppose a moral responsibility in the people to whom they were addressed; and hence they were fitted to awaken this feeling when dormant, to frighten it when morbidly perverted, and to animate it when righteously sensitive. Calvin’s assertion that the living creatures and the wheels imply that God by his angels guides the physical motions of the earth, the air, and the sea, (Ezekiel 1:21,) is altogether untenable. Revelation does not teach anything which human philosophy can discover. It manifests its whole aim and essence to be moral, lying in that region of our nature which is under the sway of the conscience, and the will rather than of the intellect. These emblematic visions appeal to the affections and aspirations of soul, to the energies of reverence and faith, of wonder and of love. They have to do with what is infinite and unseen, the immeasurable and the unattainable. Hence they are rather divine agencies for quickening, stimulating, and directing man’s highest nature. They assist us towards attaining a true idea of God, they show us our own insignificant vileness and littleness, and suggest the possibility of an atonement of these two. They stir up our attention to the threatenings and the promises of an Invisible Person, which can influence us only by being believed, and enforce the commands of ineffable wisdom, which can benefit us only by being obeyed. They present to our thoughts the idea of condescending mediation, the infinitely holy condescending to purify and to abide with the morally unclean. They may further imply the general providence over the chosen race, as well as the special guidance of individuals; the molding into its preordained shape all their future history, and yet not sensibly controlling the will of agents left responsible for their every action. No discoveries of science can ever interfere with such an interpretation as this, and those who adopt it need never fear the necessity for changing it when the progress of physical knowledge must lead us to alter our views of other interpretations. It, belongs to a region of our nature completely separable from that which comprehends either the niceties of language, or the laws of the physical universe. There is a wide gulf, deep and impassable, between the moral and the intellectual departments of our nature. The imperfect state of physical science at the time of the Reformation is a sufficient apology for the mistakes of reformers; but their ignorance is not pardonable in us. We need not Judaize, and yet we may be apt scholars in all Hebrew lore, and orthodox interpreters of the Sacred Word of the Most high.

### Calvin's Severity towards the Jews

[¶7] Dissertation Third.

[¶8] CALVIN’S SEVERITY TOWARDS THE JEWS.

[¶9] IN addition to the charge of Judaizing, our author has been accused of dwelling too copiously on our Prophet’s severity towards the Jews. And if we can read the signs of the times in modern publications, there is reason to fear that various delusions are abroad on this subject. There are those who treat the Jews as in the present day, so peculiarly favored by God, that they invest them with the halo of a special sanctity. Reverencing as Christians thought the designs of the Almighty in past ages, they entertain far too exalted ideas of the personal holiness of the agents by whom those designs were accomplished. Old Testament characters are too often treated as “saints,” when they have few moral or religious qualities which entitle them to that sacred appellation. And regarding the people as a body, it is scarcely possible to find anywhere worse specimens of moral culture. If we estimate responsibility according to the amount of light and guidance and privilege, then, indeed, Tyre and Sidon were far less culpable than Hebron and Jerusalem. How opposite, for instance, is their history to what might have been expected from reading the book of Deuteronomy. Instead of binding their written law “as frontlets between their eyes,” no ancient nation were so careless of its sacred books. The Hindus cling tenaciously to their shasters, while Israel utterly neglected their Mosaic code. One would have supposed that they would have been superstitiously careful of the five books of their inspired leaders. Why should they not have multiplied copies of them? Why not have constituted the Levites the authorized guardians and expounders of them? From the time of Joshua to David there is no notice of the existence of any sacred books which now belong to us: and more than this, reference is made to other records not now existing. And after Solomon’s temple was solemnly dedicated, how soon ten of the tribes relapsed into the grossest idolatry; and even in Judea, how remarkable is the occurrence in Josiah’s time. The very priests seem to have been ignorant of the existence of a written copy of the law. The unexpected discovery of one has such an effect upon the king and the people, that it led to a thorough restoration of the national worship; and you, we find a command that every king should write for himself a copy of the law from that preserved by the priests. Both kings and priests seem to have neglected their duty; and even the prophets do not charge them with this crime among others. The loss of the original autographs is never mentioned; nor have we the slightest hint of what became of the second original of the two stone-tables. During the short period of their captivity they lost their spoken language and the characters in which it was written, so that on their return they were obliged to read Hebrew through an interpreter. Was not this an unmatched instance of want of reverence for the will of Jehovah? When a nation could act with such deliberate carelessness and irreverence in various epochs, can we be surprised at their falling into the grossest depths of immoral profanity? When the divine records have been thus despised, all folly and all wickedness is possible for such a people, and both are generated with a fearful rapidity. How different, then, is their real history from what one might expect of a people chosen by the Almighty as his earthly representatives of religion before the heathen! They were miraculously trained to typify and receive the Messiah, and yet they constantly appear to be frustrating the very purpose of their choice. If we speak of the mass of the nation, they seem in every respect to have thrown away their privileges, and to have sudiously incurred God’s anger, and to have determined to brave his vengeance. Under such a view of the ancient people, no language of Calvin’s can be too strong; and it is only to obviate the consequences of modern erroneous suppositions that it becomes necessary to defend him. In stimulating the compassion of the Christian Church towards the salvation of Jews at present existing, the most fallacious views are sometimes presented of their past history and their loveliness in God’s sight. To be beloved for their fathers’ sake by no means implies ally innate moral loveliness in the conduct of those fathers; and every erroneous view of Jewish history, and every false interpretation of Jewish prophecy, does but Judaize the Christian Church, and prevent it from going onwards to perfection, by keeping it in trammels to either exploded prejudices or to unwise innovations. False views of the Jewish history are now so very common, that they naturally create a distaste for that emphatic condemnation of their conduct which prevails through these Lectures.

### On the Figurative Expressions of Ezekiel

[¶11] Dissertation Fourth.

[¶12] THE most cursory observers of Ezekiel’s peculiarities must notice the highly figurative character of his visions. The princes of Israel are whelps, their mother a lioness. A great eagle comes down with one fell swoop upon the mountains of Lebanon, and plucks off the topmost boughs of its lofty cedars. Here we have to connect what logicians call the protasis with the Apodosis, and out of the sensible similitude to ascertain the mystical explanation. The canon laid down by Glasse is of constant utility: — “In parabolis, si integre accipiantur, tria, sunt: radix, cortex, et medulla sive fructus. Radix est scopus in quem tendit parabola. Cortex est similitudo sensibilis, quae adhibetur, et suo sensu literali constat. Medulla seu fructus est sensus parabolae mysticus, seu ipsa res ad quam parabolae fit accommodatio, seu quae per similitudinem propositam significatur.” Philologia Sacra, lib. 2 pars. 1 tr. 2, sect. 5, canon 3: Lipsiae, 1725. It only is it necessary to ascertain the literal meaning of the figurative expression, but we must always proceed one step farther before we can profi, by the metaphor. The medulla — the res ipsa — is still to be discovered, and this alone it is which brings profit to the soul. We must not only comprehend the figure and its literal interpretation, but we must take one step beyond this, and comprehend what divines call the mystical sense. We may attain to the “science of correspondences” without adopting the fancies of Emmanuel Swedenborg; but what he diligently and erroneously thought we must endeavor to find. With VanMildert, in his Bampton Lectures, we use the word mystical in its true and classical rather than in its present and popular meaning; and though we have no special affection for the word: we contend earnestly with the lecturer for the idea which it expresses. This inner sense will not, from its very nature, be crippled by the details of the natural allegory. The very essence of spiritual thought is mobility and indefiniteness. The great master of Roman eloquence has wisely observed — “Non enim res tota toti rei necesse est similis sit: sed ad ipsum, ad quod conferetur, similitudinem habeat, oportet.” The same idea is expressed by Saurin in his Historical Discourses — “Non seulement il n’est pas necessaire que chacun de leur membres ait une veu particuliere, qui se rapporte directement au but de celui qui la propose: il faut meme que ce but soit en quelque sort cache sous des images etrangeres destinees a l’enveloper.” As the correct elucidation of these points is of the greatest importance, every light which can be thrown on them has its value. Bishop Warburton, for instance, in the midst of his elaborate and in-digested paradoxes, is led to discuss the nature of types and symbols, visions and figures, and he treats them with clearness, precision, and ability. He lays the foundation for their use in the compound nature of man. He shows how the Egyptians, Mexicans, and Chinese, communicated ideas through the senses by signs, hieroglyphics, and picture-writing of all kinds. He quotes Ezekiel 31 as a striking instance of well-applied metaphor: “for men,” says he, “so conversant in matters, still wanted sensible images to convey abstract ideas.” He adduces Ezekiel 24, as an instance of a parable purposely used “to throw obscurity over the information,” just as the tropical hieroglyphic was turned into the tropical symbol. He treats the “dark saying” of Ezekiel 17:2, as a riddle more involved than a parable; “for the nature of God’s dispensations required enigmas, and the genius of those times made them natural.” The course of his argument leads him to comment at full length on the celebrated vision of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37, and to discuss the logical value of the assertion, “All words that are used in a figurative sense must be first understood in a literal.” Perhaps it may be better to say, All figures of speech are intended to convey to the mind an image of something real, and they are useless to us unless we thus apprehend their literal meaning. But Warburton did not see the next step in the process of deriving spiritual destruction from the visions of the Holy Spirit of God. He was not spiritually enlightened, and failed to do more than expound the letter of Scripture. We need, besides this, the divine teaching of the Holy Spirit, that we may apprehend what Bishop Van Mildert calls, in his celebrated Bampton Lectures, the mystical sense. “The importance” says Bishop Horne, in his preface to the Psalms, “of the mystical interpretation can hardly be called in question;” “without it, the spirit and power of many passages will almost wholly evaporate.” The learned Rambach, in his Sacred Hermeneutics, (page 81,) has adduced several instances in confirmation of these observations. The spiritual man only can thus pierce through the letter, and grasp the very marrow of God’s word: the carnal mind is in this respect utterly blind, for these things are only spiritually discerned. The word mystical may seem fanatical to some, but, taken in its scholastic sense, it is easily appreciable by all who know anything of profound criticism. Rambach has justly laid it down — “Est regula theologorum, sensum mysticum non esse argumentativum.” (Just. Hem. Sac., p. 72.) It appeals not so much to the intellect as to the conscience, not to the mental comprehension, but to the heaven-born life of the soul; and if this be wanting, all argument on the point is thrown away. The spiritual interpretation may be abused, like all other good things. Cocceius, for instance, affords a remarkable instance of this error, as well as some of the Puritan Divines; but no sensible man denies the value of a possession because some are foolish enough to misuse it.

[¶13] On all sides we have to tread with the utmost caution, and may well listen to the voice of Jerome on Galatians 1. “Nec putemus in verbis Scripturarum esse Evangelium, sed in sensu. Non in superficie, sed in medulla: non in sermonum foliis, sed in radice rationis.” But even this view, truthful as it seems, may be abused; for in our own day we find the anti-materialism of the universe denied. Who would suppose, that at the close of the first half of this nineteenth century we should hear of a publication, bearing’ the ominous title, “The Anti-Materialist: Denying the reality of Matter, and Vindicating’ the Universality of Spirit?” If this were the whole title, it would not concern us here; but when it is added, “proved chiefly by a reference to Holy Writ,” with another sentence, implying that such speculations can settle the points in dispute between those who affirm and those who deny the orthodoxy of Established Churches, such assumptions cause us to sigh over the endless follies of our nature. Such reasoners first of all assume what is Holy Writ., and then apply their own previously-conceived notions to distort and derange it. The very title of such a work implies the greatest possible irreverence for the Divine Oracles; the most unjustifiable assumptions, and the most unfair contrasts. “The universality of spirit” is strictly and essentially co-existent with “the reality of matter.” Every word which we have uttered in this short epilogue is intended to uphold and illustrate such a proposition’ it is only necessary to append to it, that through material existences — as trees, cities, food, and clothing — we become capable of comprehending the wants, the nourishment, and the nature of our spiritual manhood. Suitable in every respect; is the judicious reasoning of Origen, which sixteen centuries have rather confirmed than confuted. “If ever, in reading Holy Scripture, you encounter an idea which becomes to thee a stone of stumbling or a rock of offense, accuse only thyself: doubt not that this stone of stumbling and rock of offense has an important meaning: νοήματα — food for thy mind. Begin by believing, and you shall soon find, under this imaginary source of offense, abundant utility.” He then compares the skillful interpreter of Scripture to an intelligent botanist, knowing the different uses and properties of various plants, and shows how every “holy and spiritual botanist of the word of God” will find the virtue of the word, without esteeming the slightest portion of it either redundant or superfluous. The preceding Lectures are a good illustration of the sagacious wisdom of these remarks.