3168467

American Society of Church History

Exegesis and Double Justice in Calvin's Sermons on JobAuthor(s): Susan E. SchreinerSource: Church History, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Sep., 1989), pp. 322-338Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3168467 .

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Exegesis and Double Justice in Calvin's Sermons on Job SUSAN E. SCHREINER

Medieval exegetes contributed distinguished commentaries on the Book of Job that had far-reaching influence. When, in 1554, Calvin ascended the pulpit in Geneva to deliver a series of sermons on Job, his listeners heard not only the Genevan Reformer but echoes of that medieval tradition. In Job's story Calvin saw a God whose providence held sovereign sway over nature, history, and Satan. Having undertaken these sermons, however, Calvin soon confronted Job's question: Why do the righteous suffer? Calvin did not answer Job alone. He turned to both medieval Joban commentaries and Scotist-nominalist categories to resolve this book's central issue of divine justice. But we will see that despite all these resources the exegetical difficulties posed by the text itself forced Calvin to realize that his central hermeneutical device brought with it implications with which he was ultimately uncomfortable. That device was double justice.

Briefly, the concept of double justice posits a higher hidden justice in God which transcends the Law and could condemn even the angels. This idea appears in Calvin's works before the sermons on Job but always grows out of his fascination with Job 4:18; namely, that even the angels are not clean in God's sight. In the 1559 Institutes Calvin added the concept of double justice as a further explanation of his 1539 citation of Job 4:18 (3.12.1), which proved that creaturely justice cannot satisfy the justice of God. In his 1548 commentary on Col. 1:20 he used Job 4:18 to show that even the angels stand in need of divine pardon (CO [Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia] 52:88). Calvin, then, approached his Job sermons armed with a theological insight culled from the Joban text. But when he tried to develop double justice as a hermeneutical key to the book of Job as a whole, the text led him in a direction he did not want to go. The further he progressed through the sermons, the more he worried that this canonical text might depict a God who could arbitrarily cancel the divine order of justice and act "without cause."

Not surprisingly, then, later references to double justice betrayed a growing uneasiness. In De occulta Dei providentia (1558) Job's teaching about double justice was used to protect the equity of predestination. But Calvin eagerly reassured his readers that God will not judge according to his secret justice (CO 9:310). In the 1559 Institutes Calvin recalled the message of Job as further support for the 1539 argument about the inadequacy of

Ms. Schreiner is assistant professor of theology and history of Christianity in the University of Chicago Divinity School, Chicago, Illinois.

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creaturely perfection. However, he was quick to conclude: "Therefore I pass over that righteousness which I have mentioned for it is incomprehensible" (3.12.2).1 These passages show that although Calvin never relinquished the notion of double justice, by 1558/59 his discomfort with its implication removed it to the boundaries of his theological agenda. The Job sermons are the pivotal point at which Calvin decided not to place double justice at the center of his view of providence.

He came to this decision exegetically. To date, the Job sermons have been studied thematically but not as an exegetical document. And although Bohatec, Stauffer, and Bouwsma have mentioned Calvin's concept of double justice, they have not analyzed its function in the sermons on Job as a hermeneutical device which eventually caused Calvin serious problems.2 This essay is intended as a contribution to the history of exegesis and seeks to analyze the dialectical relationship between theological presuppositions and exegetical results. It studies the Job sermons exegetically to see how Calvin used the tradition, developed double justice as an interpretive device, and grew uncomfortable with its implications.

1.

The history of exegesis requires its students to recognize that premodern exegetes approached a biblical book as a coherent whole. Therefore, their exegesis of particular verses presupposes a comprehensive preunderstanding of how the text coheres and the relation of its message to a whole host of assumed theological and exegetical convictions. Before turning to the evalua- tion of specific passages, then, we must first survey the Joban commentaries that were most influential in the Latin West, namely, those of Gregory the Great, Moses Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, and Nicholas of Lyra. All these exegetes tried to answer a cluster of questions: Why was a just man afflicted? How does one deal with the pious and orthodox statements of Job's friends? What is the purpose of the whirlwind speech?

In his Moralia Gregory presupposes that, like reality itself, Scripture consists of different levels (Epist. to Lean. III).3 On the historical level Job

1. This is not an exhaustive list. In Dieu, la creation et la Providence dans la predication de Calvin (Berne, 1978), Stauffer locates only one reference outside of the Job sermons which resembles double justice: 54th sermon on 2 Sam., SC1:473, where Calvin says that "Dieu a deux facons de commander" (p. 143).

2. Bohatec, "Gott und die Geschichte nach Calvin," Philosophia reformata (1936): 147; idem, Bude und Calvin (Bohlau, 1950), p. 280; R. Stauffer, Dieu, la creation, p. 118; W. Bouwsma, John Calvin (Oxford, 1988), p. 42. On Calvin's sermons, see Stauffer, Dieu, la creation; T. H. L. Parker, The Oracles of God (London, 1947); E. Miilhaupt, Die Predigt Calvins (Leipzig, 1931).

3. Gregory the Great, Moralia in lob, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 143 (Turnhout, 1979); Morales sur Job, Sources chretiennes 32 (Paris, 1958). See also Henri de Lubac, Exegese medievale. Lies quatre sens de l'Ecriture, vol. 2, pt. 1 (Paris, 1959-61), pp. 537-548, 586-599; P. Catry, "Epreuves du juste et mystere de Dieu. Le commentaire

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was a just man afflicted not for sin but for the increase of merit (Praef. 5.12). Constrained by verses 1:1, 1:8, and 42:7, Gregory argues that Job remained patient and humble under affliction (Praef. 3.7.13; 2.3.13). Nonetheless, Gregory admits that Job surpassed only humans in virtue; before God he could be condemned justly (32.3.3; 35.2.3-5.6). However, Gregory insists that Job's response to his scourges revealed his constant virtue expressed in his contempt for the temporal and longing for the eternal (1.25.34; 8.12.27- 13.28; 11.2.2; 12.1.4).

On the allegorical level Gregory interprets Job as Christ or the Church (Praef. 6.14). As Christ "Job" was persecuted not for his own sins but the redemption of others; Job's sufferings, therefore, prefigure the Passion (Praef. 6.4; 2.37.61). As the Church "Job's" scourges were those of the Elect, who suffer the adversities of temporal life, the persecution of heretics, and the anxieties of self-examination before divine scrutiny (3.13.25; 4.34.68; 8.8.15; 16.38.35). On the moral level Job's humility, patience, self-scrutiny, and longing for the eternal are analyzed throughout the moral level of the text (1.25.34, 36.50; 2.49.76; 5.16.33; 29.30.62-67).

According to Gregory, Job's friends also signified deeper meanings. Historically, they were men consoling a friend whose sufferings they did not understand (Praef. 5.12). Allegorically, they were heretics or, in the case of Elihu, the prideful (Praef. 6.15). Their fault lay in their inability to transcend time; seeing only "exterior reality," they could not "penetrate" to "inward truth" (20.11.20; 23.17.30). Unable to rise above history, they assumed wrongly that Job suffered for past sins. However, Gregory argues that like all heretics they mixed truth with error so that much of what they said was true but wrongly applied to Job (5.11.27-28; 11.1.1; 12.31.36). This maneuver allowed Gregory and later exegetes to explain why their words were reproved by God in the end but still valid on the moral level of the text.

Finally, Gregory sees the deeper meanings of the whirlwind speech as a response to Job's question about justice. In chapters 38 through 41 God used nature to signify the vast redemptive history of the Church. Behemoth and Leviathan symbolized the Antichrist or Satan in spite of whom God creates the Church and against whom God rages at the end of history (32.14.20- 20.51). Before the recitation of this salvation history, Job confessed his nothingness, dreaded the secret judgments of God, and remained in the "humility" of fear (32.3.3-4, 14-15; 35.2.3-6.7). In the end Gregory's Job

litteral du livre de Job par saint Gregoire," Revue des Etudes augustiniennes 18 (1972): 124-144; Claude Dagens, Saint Gregoire le Grand (Paris, 1977), pp. 201-205, 233-244. R. Wasselynck, "Les compilations des Moralia in Iob du VilIe au XIIe siecle," Recherches de Theologie ancienne et medievale 29 (1962): 5-32; idem, "Les Moralia in lob dans lies ouvrages de morale du Haut Moyen Age latin," Recherches de Theologie ancienne et medievale 31 (1964): 5-13.

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and the Church he represented found "secure rest" and the "contemplation of eternity."

Thomas leaves the "mystical meanings" to Gregory and limits himself to the literal sense of the text.4 This literal sense affirmed the immortality of the soul and the extension of distributive justice to the afterlife. It also was a response to Maimonides's interpretation of Job found in his Dux Neutro- rum.

According to Maimonides, the Book of Job is a debate about providence (3.23).5 Maimonides believes that providence is dependent on the perfection of the intellect and sees Job as progressing toward this perfection as his suffering drove him to a greater knowledge (3.18, 24). Before his trial Job knew God only by tradition. At that lower stage he imagined that happiness consisted of temporal goods, the loss of which threw him into confusion and doubt about divine justice (3.24). However, Maimonides sees Job as finally transcending this view of happiness and attaining a fuller understanding of God, which made him renounce the error of imagining God's knowledge to be like ours. In verse 42:6 Job "abhors" all he used to desire and, on the basis of that repentance, was vindicated in verse 42:7. Therefore, Maimonides subordinates the issue of justice to that of knowledge and construes Job's final apprehension as the message of the book, namely, that divine knowledge and providence are radically different from ours. According to Maimonides, one who recognizes the incomparability between divine and human providence will, like Job, bear misfortune easily (3.24).

Thomas both appreciates and criticizes Maimonides's interpretation.6 He opposes the idea that providence extends only to perfected intellects and reads Job as an affirmation of the all-encompassing nature of divine providence (9.5.119-146; 7.12.272; 7.16.363, 24.1.7). Also, for Thomas, Job affirmed personal immortality; Job's virtue, therefore, lay less in his humility than in his true doctrine of providence, which extended God's justice to the immortal

4. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super lob ad litteram, Opera Omnia, vol. 26 (Rome, 1965), cited by chapter, verse, and line. On Thomas's exegesis, see B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, 1964), pp. 292-308; P. Synave, "La Doctrine de S. Thomas d'Aquin sur le sens litteral des Ecritures," Revue Biblique 35 (1926): 40-65; H. de Lubac, Exegese medievale, vol. 2, pt. 2 (Paris, 1962), pp. 272-302. The date of Thomas's Job commentary is debated. Mandonnet and Chenu argue that it was written in the midst of the Averroist controversy and date it around 1269. Weisheipl and Dondaine, however, believe that it was written between 1261 and 1264.

5. References correspond to the Latin translation of Maimonides which Thomas read: Dux seu Director dubitantium aut perplexorum (1520; reprint, Frankfurt a.M, 1964). See also Nahum Glatzer, "The Book of Job and its Interpreters," in Biblical Motifs, Studies and Texts, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), pp. 192-220; A. J. Reines, "Maimonides' Concepts of Providence and Theodicy," Hebrew Union College Annual 43 (1972): 169-206.

6. On Thomas's critique of Maimonides, see Dondaine's discussion in the Opera Omnia, vol. 26, pp. 26-28.

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soul in the afterlife (8.3.40; 13.15.215-225; 14.6.28-61). According to Thomas, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar were reproved for their denial of immortality. Because of this denial they restricted providence to history and wrongly defended God by arguing that Job was punished for past sins (5.18.313; 7.1.13; 17.13.185; 18.18.223). (Zophar conceded, finally, the possibility of a future life.)

Like Maimonides, however, Thomas argues that the whirlwind speech convicted Job of ignorance. By describing the wonders of nature God proved the inability of reason to penetrate God's secret judgments (38.3.75-695; 39.31.326-367). But unlike Maimonides Thomas adopts the Gregorian principle that Behemoth and Leviathan represent the Devil. At that point Thomas's Job learned that humans were involved with a contest with Satan, a contest which requires Christ's help (40.18.460-485). Furthermore, while Maimonides's Job was silent before God's transcendence, Thomas's Job awaited his just retribution in the afterlife.

Lyra stands in the Thomistic tradition.7 While he expounds both the moral and literal senses of the text, Lyra's primary interest lies in the latter. Following Thomas, Lyra thinks that the Book of Job is a debate about providence. He insists that both Job and his friends believed in divine providence but disputed about the way it was administered (Praef.). Like Thomas, Lyra argues that Job was a just man who was not punished for sin but tested in contest with Satan (Praef. 1:1, 1:8). Lyra also agrees with Thomas that Job's righteousness lay primarily in his true doctrine of providence, which extended justice to the afterlife. Therefore, while Job's friends were reproved for their denial of immortality, Job was affirmed for his insistence that justice would be fulfilled in eternity (Praef. 9:28-35, 10:15, 13:16-18, 27:5-6; 42:7).

These medieval exegetes tried to combine Job's virtue with God's justice. All agreed that while Job was not punished for past sins he nonetheless recognized his own nothingness before the secret judgments of God. More- over, Gregory, Thomas, and Lyra guaranteed divine justice by extending it to the immortal soul in the afterlife. Gregory's Job rose above the vanity of earthly existence and awaited the reward of uninterrupted contemplation of God in eternity. Both Thomas and Lyra read Job as a defense of the soul's personal immortality and resolved the issue of justice by arguing that Job's immortal soul would find justice in eternity. However, all these commentators agreed that the story of Job demonstrates the vast distance between divine and human justice.

We cannot be certain exactly which medieval Joban commentaries Calvin

7. Nicolaus de Lyra, Postilla super totam Bibliam, vol. 3 (1492; reprint, Frankfurt a.M., 1971); Biblia sacra cum glossis Interlineari et Ordinaria, Nicolai Lyrani Postilla, vol. 3 (Venice, 1588). Citations are to the literal gloss. On Lyra's exegesis, see Herman Hilperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars (Pittsburgh, 1963), pp. 137-248.

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had read as he undertook his series of sermons on Job. Clearly, however, he knew both the Gregorian and the Thomistic traditions.8 He repeatedly scorned all allegorical explanations and sought to follow the "thread of the text," "note its context," and determine the "natural sense" of the passage (CO 33:272, 443; CO 34:52, 261, 370, 575; CO 35:246, 464-467).9

Following these exegetical procedures, Calvin echoes many themes from the medieval tradition. Job was a just man afflicted by God not for past sins but as a test of his patience and as a model or "mirror" for future generations (CO 33:109-110). Job's friends, Calvin agrees, uttered many truths but wrongly applied them to Job because they denied the afterlife and restricted providence to history (CO 33:609; CO 34:302, 444; CO 35:494). To these familiar themes Calvin adds the issue of noetic perception and interprets Job in terms of his recurring question: What can the human mind know about God? Calvin concludes that Job's friends were wrong not only because they denied the afterlife but because they believed that divine providence was discernible in both nature and history. Job, Calvin argues, was vindicated for believing that, although providence was revealed in nature, it was more often indiscernible in history (CO 34:68-70).

When he addresses the issue of God's justice in his treatment of Job, Calvin joins these answers to his emphasis on the inscrutability of providence. While being tested for patience, Job, according to Calvin, confronted the incomprehensibility of God's judgments. In Job Calvin sees a man driven to a more profound recognition of his own nothingness and to a deepening awareness of God's hiddenness. In his search for justice, Calvin's Job came face to face with the darker side of God. To describe this disquieting realization Calvin develops a theory of justice which draws (rather loosely) on the Scotist- nominalist vocabulary of his day: the radical freedom of God, the contingency of the created order of justice, the idea of divine acceptation, the references to God's absolute power, and the identification of God with God's justice.10

8. Calvin may have known both traditions through the 1545 edition of Lyra's work, which may have been present in the Geneva Library; see A. Ganoczy, La Bibliotheque de l'Academie de Calvin (Geneva, 1969), p. 183.

9. Kraus, "Calvins exegetische Prinzipien," Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte 79 (1978): 329-341; A. Ganoczy and S. Scheld, Die Hermeneutick Calvins (Wiesbaden, 1983), pp. 96-100.

10. The distinction between the two powers predates nominalism but became central to theological debate with Duns Scotus. In his review of Suzanne Selinger's Calvin Against Himself Robert Kingdon criticized Selinger for assuming that Calvin studied nominalist theologians. In his criticism of Karl Reuter Ganoczy argued that Reuter attributed undue influence to John Major as a source of Calvin's "nominalism." As Ganoczy showed, references to nominalist theologians do not occur in Calvin's early works or the Geneva Library. See Kingdon's review in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion 54 (1986): 191; A. Ganoczy, Le jeune Calvin: Genese et kvolution de sa vocation reformatrice (Wiesbaden, 1966), p. 190; compare K. Reuter, Das Grundverstindnis der Theologie Calvins (Neukirchen, 1963), pp. 123-172. This essay makes no claim for a sophisticated or systematic knowledge of nominalism by Calvin. The Job sermons do, however, reflect Calvin's use of nominalist themes which he may have derived from Luther or Scotus.

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By relying on these insights and on the themes of the medieval exegetical tradition Calvin explains that there is in God both created or ordinary divine justice, which is revealed in the Law (ordinaire, iustice manifeste), and divine "secret justice" (iustice cachee, secrette), which surpasses the Law and is incomprehensible to human reason. Assuming this twofold or "double justice," Calvin then interprets Job by asking how the two are related: Does God's created justice have any claim on divine secret justice? Is God free to override divine ordinary justice "without cause" (Job 2:3) and act tyranical- ly? Does Job come face to face with a God whose sovereignty is out of control ?

We now turn to specific texts to which Calvin applied his interpretive device of double justice. Decisive for both Calvin and the medieval tradition, these verses determined how the exegete would find God's justice in the midst of Job's laments. The following discussion will demonstrate Calvin's reliance on and extension of this preceding tradition as he tried to make sense out of Job's tragedy.

2.

Medieval exegetes considered the question of divine justice inseparable from the issue of Job's innocence. If Job was truly sinless, then his suffering seemed unjust. Claiming no more about himself than what was stated in verses 1:1 and 1:8, Job repeatedly asserted his righteousness in 9:15; 12:4; 13:16-18; 16:17; 23:7, 10-12; 27:5-6; 29:14-25. And always there was Job 42:7, which declared that it was Job who had "spoken rightfully" about God.

The medieval tradition struggled with these texts. Can anyone really be "perfect" or "simple" as verse 1:8 suggested? Did Job remain "perfect" throughout his suffering, especially in such verses as 3:1-23, 9:22-25, 19:6-7, and 21:7-33, where he appeared to attribute injustice to God? If Job did remain blameless, why did he repent in verse 42:6? But if he did fall into sin, Satan must have won. The text itself complicated the issue. For medieval commentators, especially Gregory, Job both claimed to be righteous and, in the following verses, confessed to be sinful: 7:20-21; 9:20-21; 14:4, 16-17; 31:33-34.

Job's claims to righteousness were also complicated for Christian exegetes by the doctrine of original sin. It was, after all, Job who uttered the traditional proof for original sin when in verse 14:4 he cried, "Who can make a clean thing conceived of an unclean seed?" Gregory concludes that Job's assertions of righteousness must be interpreted by his "confessions" of sin; although Job was not punished for sin, he was nonetheless conscious of it (4.26.53; 8.6.8; 8.33.56; 18.5.10, 17.14.30). For Gregory, when Job argued that he would be "found just," Job attributed wickedness to himself but righteousness to God (11.38.51). When he claimed that he would "pass

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through fire like gold," he was saying that suffering would purify him (16.32.39). When Job argued that he would "hold fast" to his righteousness and would not depart from his innocence, he was arging that he had not consented to those unlawful thoughts which tempted all mortals (18.5.11). Gregory then interprets verse 42:6 as Job's recognition that although he "surpassed all men by virtue of his merits, yet inasmuch as he was human, he could not possibly be without blame before the eyes of God" (35.7.9).

Thomas and Lyra repeat the Gregorian interpretation that Job suffered from original sin, confessed his sins, and attributed his virtues to grace (9.29.658-708; 13.15.228; 14.4.477; Lyra, 9:19-21, 28; 13:16-18; 14:4). Moreover, Thomas explains Job's protests regarding God's justice in such chapters as three, ten, and twenty-one by distinguishing between three types of discourse: those words spoken by Job's sensual nature, those where he disputed rationally, and those uttered by divine inspiration (39:35.370-379; compare 6.10.124). Both Thomas and Lyra agree that in verse 38:3 God criticized Job for "sinning lightly" through "incautious speech," that is, for those excessive outbursts which appeared prideful (39.34.345; 42.3.58; Lyra 42:3). In verse 42:6, therefore, Job promptly repented for his lack of reverence before God's judgments.

Nevertheless, both exegetes insist that Job always maintained his "integ- rity of doctrine"; when he asserted the "justice of his case," he referred not to moral perfection but to his correct doctrine of providence and immortality. According to Thomas and Lyra, when Job claimed that he would be "found just" and "hold fast" to his righteousness, he was referring to his correct view of providence and was awaiting his just reward in the afterlife (13.3-4.20-46; 13.18.250-295; 14.6.57; 42:7.65; Lyra, Praef. 10:15-17; 13:16-18; 27:5-6).

Calvin has no quarrel with these interpretations. He too believes that Job suffered from original sin, confessed his faults, and argued a correct doctrine of providence (CO 33:472, 661-662; CO 34:706). However, Calvin's theological anthropology causes him to have more trouble with these texts than did his predecessors. Calvin's emphasis on human sinfulness and inability of humans to merit anything coram Deo made him uneasy before those verses where Job seemed both to claim a real justice before God and to imply that God was acting unjustly. For Calvin, such statements were more than "incautious language."

Calvin argues that Job's words would be "difficult to understand" unless he referred to a twofold justice. According to Calvin, Job knew that God's ordinary justice set the standard for creaturely perfection. God freely entered into a "pact" (paction) and agreed to "accept" (accepte) its perfection and not to impute sins so that "he who does these things shall live" (CO 33:496; compare CO 33:635; 457, 497, 726; CO 34:237, 337). Calvin then explains that in his assertions of righteousness Job was referring to this "lower justice." Arguing that he had "prepared his case," that he would be "found

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just" and "hold fast to his righteousness," Job was hoping that God would return to the "half justice of the Law," and "content himself" with his "ordinary justice" (CO 33:471, 495-496; CO 34:335-338, 351).

In Calvin's view, Job was both right and wrong. On the basis of verses 1:1 and 1:8 Calvin thinks that Job was correct in arguing that God was not treating him according to his lower "'common' justice" (CO 33:634; CO 34:58, 89, 96, 618-623, 714). According to Calvin, God had a "secret intention" for striking Job, that is, as a test of his patience in contest with Satan. Although this "secret intention" was unknown to Job, it bore no reference to his sins (CO 33:471-472, 633-634; CO 34:96-97, 338, 618, 714). But Calvin thinks that Job was wrong to claim that he would "come out as gold" according to the "moyenne iustice" of the Law. In this regard Job spoke "excessively"; even Job's "perfection" could not satisfy the purity of God's Law. In Calvin's interpretation Job failed to recognize that God could have imputed his sins and chastised him justly for his offenses even against this lower, legal, or "ordinary" justice. The fact that God did not do so was due to the nonimputation of sins-but not to any perfection of Job's part (CO 33:500, 633-635, 726; CO 34:336-338, 351; CO 35:8, 105, 131-132, 449-450).

Such criticism of what Calvin saw as Job's excessive claims to righteousness protected both his theological anthropology and accounted for those passages where Job supposedly confessed his sins. Calvin insists that in his more "sober" moments Job knew that he had sinned against God's ordinary justice (C 33:464, 471-472, 633-635; C 34:351, 706, 716; C 35:55, 131). Therefore, for Calvin, Job's "perfection" refers only to a human justice, which relies on God's gratuitous accceptance and the nonimputation of sins (CO 33:456-457). Job 10:2 must be interpreted by Jeremiah 10:24: "Chas- tise me Lord but only according to measure." Calvin thinks that both Job and Jeremiah exemplify how one ought to pray that God will judge only according to the lower justice of the Law; for all of its pain this lower judgment will be less terrifying than to be hauled before the secret justice of God (CO 33:473).

3.

If Calvin had to deal only with Job's assertions that God was not punishing him according to the Law, he may not have employed the doctrine of God's secret justice. Although Job was not punished for past sins, he was not "perfect" even according to God's ordinary or revealed justice. But the texts push him further by stating that even if one were just, God could still condemn him. Here Calvin must confront those verses which state that God could condemn both the angels and the just. Was it simply blasphemy when Job said "Although I were just, I could not answer him.... If it is a matter of justice, who can enter into it with him? . . . He destroys the just and the

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wicked together.... If I wash myself with pure waters ... yet you will plunge me into the mud .... If I am just, still I cannot lift up my head"? For Calvin and his medieval predecessors, such statements recur throughout the book: 9:15, 19-22, 29-35; 10:7, 15-17.

According to the medieval tradition, such verses express the vast difference between divine and human righteousness. For Gregory, these verses show that God's justice so transcends human justice that even the saint cannot "sleep with security" in this life. Therefore, Job's cry that "If I were righteous I would not lift up my head" shows that the mind cannot presume on its own security (9.56.85). When he lamented that "If I wash myself with snow water . .. yet thou shalt stain me with filth," Job was confessing that before God's purity he was impure (9.36.57). And in verse 40:3 Gregory's Job was recalled to the secret judgments of God which, though they were inscrutable, must be considered as just (32.4.5).

Thomas and Lyra agree with Gregory. Job's statements refer only to a human, not to a divine, purity. Moreover, this human purity cannot withstand the scrutiny of God (9.19.465-507, 9.29.658-708; Lyra, 9:19-21). When Job cried that "God would stain him with filthiness," even if he were clean, he was, according to Thomas, confessing that man can claim no purity or justice before God (9.29.658-708). Summarizing the preceding tradition, Lyra writes that "in comparison to divine purity, human innocence is as darkness compared to light" (Lyra, 9:30-33).

This emphasis on divine transcendence was of course congenial to Calvin. He repeats their interpretations but applies these texts to his theory of double justice. In his search for the cause of his afflictions, Calvin's Job "passed beyond" God's Law and glimpsed the reality of God's hidden, secret justice (CO 33: 455-457, 460, 494-501, 630-634; CO 34:96, 344, 443). When Job cried "If I were just, I could not lift up my head," he was not afraid of unknown sins but was aware that even if he fulfilled the Law perfectly he could be condemned before the secret justice of God (CO 33:494-499). Even if he had "washed himself clean" God could "plunge him into the pit" because the secret justice of God condemns all human justice (CO 33:455-460) For Calvin, these texts expose the deficiency of human justice before God and, therefore, the deficiency of the Law. Although the Law is a perfect rule for living, it is still only a "median" or "half justice" before the justice of God.

The texts, however, threatened not only human but also angelic justice. What can verses 4:18 and 15:15 mean when they declare that the angels are found "perverse" and "the heavens are not clean in his sight"? On the basis of the Vulgate translation earlier exegetes interpret these passages in terms of the fallen angels. Gregory, Thomas, and Lyra agree that the references to "instability" in these verses show that because the angelic nature was mutable some angels became "perverse" while others adhered to God through grace (5.38.68; Thomas, 4.18.410-460; Lyra, 4:18, 15:15).

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Calvin disagrees, and these verses push him to the limits of transcendence. He refuses to interpret them as references to the fallen angels; Job 4:18, he argues, speaks of "vanite," not of rebellion or apostasy (CO 33:206)." Therefore, Calvin contends, even the good angels are full of vanity and incapable of withstanding the severity of God's secret justice. If God willed, God could judge the good angels "with rigor" and find them guilty, for there is "no proportion" between the infinite and the finite (CO 33:726; CO 34:96-97). Calvin emphasizes that the angels and the righteous share a common creaturely justice which is embodied in the Law and "as smoke before the infinite majesty of God" (CO 33:495-496). For Calvin, the Book of Job taught that angelic perfection is still only "accepted" by God insofar as God is "content" with the lower, median, or ordinary justice of the Law (CO 33:205-207, 457-459, 495, 633, 643, 726; CO 34:96, 337).

Therefore, in Calvin's interpretation, Job's cries that the just could be condemned were his recognition that God's secret justice could condemn the purity of the Law. In Calvin's view, Job's search for justice led him to acknowledge that "God is not so bound to the Law that he is subjected it" (CO 33:633; compare CO 34:341, 496-497, 623). If he willed, God could judge both Job and the angels according to the "extreme rigor" of his hidden justice-before which everyone would perish. Calvin describes Job's deepening insight:

But there is another kind of justice which is most strange to us, namely, if God willed to treat us not according to the Law but as he justly wills to act. The reason? When our Lord gives us his lesson in the Law, and commands us to do what it contains (although that surmounts our powers and no mortal would be able to accomplish what God commands), nevertheless, we will owe more and are obliged to him. The Law is not so perfect or exquisite as is that infinite justice [iustice infinie] of God. . . according to which he could find iniquity in his angels and the sun would be unclean before him. See, then, how there is a justice more perfect than the Law. If one accomplished everything in the Law, he could still be condemned if God wanted to use this justice. True, the Lord does not wish to use it since he accommodates himself to us and accepts and receives that justice he has commanded (CO 34:334).

4.

The Book of Job leads Calvin to a more radical and increasingly uncomfortable view of divine justice. In Calvin's interpretation, Job's sufferings drove him to distinguish between levels of justice; while the Law contained the rule of creaturely perfection, it is nonetheless an accommodated justice which lay far below the justice of God (CO 34:334). But while his theory of double justice allows Calvin to explain various passages, it also

11. Calvin's translation: "Voici il ne trouve point fermete en ses serviteurs, et a mis vanite en ses Anges." In his previous references to Job 4:18, however, Calvin cites the traditional translation.

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leaves him with a terrifying question: Can God override divine ordinary justice and judge according to the rigor of divine secret justice? Having made use of the theory of double justice, Calvin is caught. While Calvin's Job gained a deeper understanding of God's hiddenness, he was forced to the brink where he glimpsed a God who, acting "without cause," might be "playing with men like balls." Calvin's increasing discomfort becomes evident in his awareness that the distinction between an ordinary and secret justice looks suspiciously like that dreaded "nominalist" distinction between God's absolute and ordained powers.

Calvin dreads this distinction because he misinterprets the term "absolute power" to mean that God acts tyrannically. Throughout the sermons he worries that Job's God seems to have acted precisely according to such an "absolute" or, in Calvin's view, "cruel" power. More threatening to Calvin than Job's claims to justice or even God's possible condemnation of the angels is the suggestion that God is a tyrant.

Chapters nine and twenty-three worry him the most. Job protested that God afflicted him "in a whirlwind" and multiplied his wounds "without cause." "Behold," Job shouted, "he snatches away; . . . who will snatch me out of his hands? Who will say to him 'What doest thou?' ... If one proceeds by force, behold he is strong! If it is a matter of justice, who can enter into it with him? . . . He destroys both the just and the wicked together" (9:12, 15, 19, 22). And in verses 23:13-36 Job cried that God does "whatever he wishes" and confessed that he was "terrified" of this deity: "See why I am terrified of him, when I think of him, I dread him" (23:13, 15-16).

For Gregory, Thomas, and Lyra, these passages were not particularly troublesome. According to these commentators, chapters nine and twenty- three were simply further confessions by Job of his nothingness before the purity and majesty of God. As Gregory states, Job realized that even the righteous person fails before divine scrutiny (9.24.21-15.22; 15.11.50). When Job asked "Who will say unto him, 'What doest thou?' " he recognized that all God's judgments must be reverenced since they cannot be unjust (9.15.22; compare 9.25.39). Thomas and Lyra stress that, although Job was speaking "passionately," he was not "contending" with God. In their interpretations Job was showing the profundity of divine wisdom and praying for mercy (9.17.430; Lyra, 9:17-21). Regarding chapter twenty- three, Thomas and Lyra argue that Job recognized the inability of the human being to know God perfectly; since God cannot be "comprehended" God can be neither resisted nor judged (23.13.207-234; Lyra, 23:4-6, 8, 13).

In Calvin's view, however, Job is a more unlikable hero. Uncomfortable with Job's outbursts, Calvin worries that Job (who "spoke rightfully" about God) had accused God of exercising a tyrannical, absolute power. Calvin's wrestling with these texts is clear from the fact that he vascillates on this point. In some sermons he will insist that Job did not blaspheme God by

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attributing to him an "unregulated," "capricious," or "absolute power" (CO 33:437, CO 34:440-442, 441 116). But in other sermons Calvin admits that Job has finally fallen into "temptation" and has accused God of wielding such a power (CO 34:335-336, 338-342, 345, 357-360; CO 35:54-56, 131). In Calvin's sermons, Job's fear about God's "absolute power" exemplified human dread before the incomprehensibility and hiddenness of God. Com- menting on Job 23:1-7, Calvin criticizes such fear: "But let us see if Job speaks rightly. Certainly he does not, for he speaks excessively . . . Job, then, supposes that God uses an absolute power [puissance absolue] as it is called, that is, 'I am God and I will do whatever seems good to me although it has no form of justice. I will act with an excessive domination.' But here Job blasphemes God. Although the power of God is infinite, to make it 'absolute' is to imagine a tyranny in God-which is completely contrary to his majesty. Our Lord cannot be more powerful than he is just; his justice and power are inseparable" (CO 34:336).

For Calvin, the principle which protects Job's God from tyranny is the inseparability of the divine attributes. In Calvin's interpretation, Job's friends correctly warned Job not to separate God's power from his justice, wisdom, and reason, thereby imagining a lone tyrannical power in God. Such, he says, is the error of the "Sorbonne doctors" (CO 33:371; CO 34:36, 175, 335-340, 362; CO 35:59-60, 131, 144-146, 151, 154, 178, 206, 222, 315, 369, 479). But Calvin is haunted by verse 2:3, which states that God acted "without cause." He repeatedly assures his hearers that this was not true; the hiddenness or inscrutability of God's judgments does not allow us to posit a naked or absolute power in God (CO 33:104-111, 242, 372, 437-438, 650-656; CO 35:169, 479). Calvin fondly recalls Job 34:12: "God will not condemn in vain. The Almighty will not pervert the right." In verses such as these Calvin sees Elihu as reminding Job of the Scotist emphasis that "God's will is the rule of justice"; after all, Calvin insists, God's hiddenness is a secret justice, not a secret power (CO 34:98, 141, 232, 258, 362, 483; CO 35:59-60, 141, 174-176, 206).

Calvin becomes uneasy, however, when he asks whether God actually judged Job according to the purity of divine secret justice. While he argues that Job would be guilty before this secret justice, Calvin will not say that Job was punished because of his sins before this higher standard. Consequently, Calvin is forced to admit that while God can "act" according to divine justice, God cannot "judge" according to it. The reader must remember that Calvin sees Job's lot not as punishment but as a test. Every time Calvin verges on saying that Job was judged for sins against God's secret justice, he switches vocabulary and says that God "tested" Job according to "another regard," a "higher cause," or a "secret intention," namely, as a model for future generations (CO 34:335-340, compare CO 33:494-501, 633-634; CO 34:96- 98, 443, 714). Clearly, the fairness of this test was guaranteed by God's secret

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justice because God's will is the rule of justice. But while the notion of a secret justice guaranteed that Job's God always acted justly, Calvin pulled back from using this idea to justify Job's suffering as punishment before the purity of God's hidden justice. As Calvin repeatedly said, "il est certain qu'il est afflige non point comme un meschant" (CO 33:501).

Why doesn't Calvin, in his usual unblinking way, come right out and say that God applied the standard of his secret justice to Job? Such a statement would make his argument more coherent and consistent. The reason he doesn't is twofold. First, Job 1:8, in Calvin's view, precludes punishment as the cause of Job's afflictions. More importantly, however, Calvin did not want his congregation to fear an unreliable God who wQuld suddenly apply to them the divine secret justice, before which even the angels would perish. Therefore, Calvin does not want to admit that God ever did this in any historical instance, including that of Job. Calvin repeatedly insists that God will not arbitrarily break his promise to accept divine ordinary justice, not impute our sins, and begin to judge us "with rigor." Calvin warns his hearers not to "speculate" about what God "can" do but only to remember what he has promised to do: "It is not a question of what God can do but what he will do. But he does not will to act [according to his secret justice]. It is sufficient that if we regulate our life according to the Law of God, we will be reputed just before him. Certainly . . . God could be displeased with us if he wanted. He could find such perfection in himself so that everything we do would be as nothing. Not that he does this, as we have said" (CO 33:461; compare CO 33: 495-496, 499; CO 34:333-335, 337; CO 35:479).

In Calvin's view, therefore, God's secret justice serves only to assure Job that God's incomprehensible judgments and purposes are, by definition, just. But Calvin backs off from saying that God applies this standard of double justice to Job. In so doing he seeks to prevent the idea of a secret justice from being interpreted as a tyrannical "absolute power," and he promises his congregation that God will not cancel his promise to act according to his ordinary justice and suddenly haul them before the court of divine secret justice.

5.

From Calvin's exegetical struggle with Job's question about divine justice we can conclude the following:

1. The sermons show that Calvin interpreted Job with the help of the preceding exegetical tradition. While he rejected Gregory's allegorical explanations, he clearly appreciated the Thomistic interpretation. In his sermons Calvin restated a theme common in precritical Joban exegesis, namely, that Job recognized the vast difference between divine and human justice. Making this theme central to his exposition, Calvin repeatedly explained that God's

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ordinary justice, to which Job clung, could not challenge the higher, secret justice of God.

2. Calvin was careful, however, to interpret this ordinary and secret justice in terms of a dialectic rather than an opposition. In so doing he tried to distance himself from late medieval nominalist positions which he feared made God tyrannical and the created order unreliable.

Revisionist historians of the last several decades have shown that such fears misinterpreted the intention of nominalist theology.12 According to this revised assessment, the nominalist use of the distinction between God's absolute and ordained power did not render God capricious, arbitrary, or tyrannical. The concept of God's "absolute power" meant only that God was exlex, or completely free, with the exception that God could not will his own non-existence or suspend the law of non-contradiction. Nonetheless, because of the pactum of God's ordained will, God has committed himself inalterably to uphold the created order. The present orders of creation and redemption are, therefore, both radically contingent and absolutely reliable.

But when Calvin heard the term "absolute power" he imagined an inordinate power which made the hiddenness of God a frightening abyss. Calvin's thought is permeated by an awareness of God's hiddenness, as is clear in his discussions of God's inscrutable judgments, hidden will, and secret decrees, all of which recur in his interpretation of Job. The hiddenness of God is not of course unique to Calvin's thought. His reflections on the hidden justice of God reminds one of Luther's distinction between the deus revelatus and the deus absconditus. Parallels between Luther and Calvin are striking.13 Like Luther, Calvin posits a God hidden outside of nature, history, and Christ. Calvin agrees with Luther that the hiddenness of God lies at the heart of double predestination. However, the specific concept of double justice in the Job sermons refers neither to predestination nor to Christ. This is a hiddenness which lies not so much "beyond Christ" as "beyond the Law." While Calvin's thoughts on divine hiddenness are similar to Luther's, his concept of double justice may also reflect his reading of Scotus's conception of a duplex justitia.14 The "first justice" concerns God in himself while the

12. Compare Inst. 1.17.2, 3.23.2, CO 8:361, CO 9: 288-289, CO 29:126 (cited by Stauffer, Dieu, la creation, p. 138). For a history of the changing asessment of nominalism, see William J. Courtenay, "Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion," in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval Religion, ed. C. Trinkaus and H. A. Oberman (Leiden, 1974), pp. 26-59. H. A. Oberman, "Some Notes on the Theology of Nominalism" Harvard Theological Review 53 (1960): 46-76; idem, The Harvest of Late Medieval Theology (Cambridge, Mass., 1963); P. Vignaux, Justification et predestination au XIVe siecle (Paris, 1934).

13. Compare Inst. 1.15.8, 1.16.9-17.2, 18.3, CO 32:12, 151-152; Brian A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New (Chicago, 1982), pp. 131-149; Heinrich Berger, Calvins Geschichtsauffassung (Zurich, 1955), pp. 51-55, 237-240.

14. C. Balic, ed., Oxford Commentary on the Sentences, Opus Oxoniense, Opera Omnia (Rome, 1950-), 1.4 dis. 46, qu. 1.

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"second justice" refers to the needs of creation.'5 In this section Scotus raises issues like those Calvin confronts in the Book of Job: What is the relationship of the first to the second justice? Can God act beyond (praeter) or contrary (contra) to his second justice (pp. 404.5-405.6)? Is this, then, an unreliable God who acts arbitrarily?

For Scotus, these issues find expression in the questions "Can God condemn the just and bless the wicked?" or "Can Peter be damned?" Scotus, of course, identifies God's will with the rule of justice and stresses the freedom of God, whose will is not subject to external causality, themes which Calvin was to repeat. Scotus argues that the right of any creature is only relative; strictly speaking, God is a debtor only to himself. Nonetheless, Scotus does not say that God can arbitrarily condemn one who has not committed sin. He will admit that since it is not necessary to the public good that Peter be blessed, God could condemn him justly (405.5-6, 424.7). However, as Minges has shown, Scotus's God would condemn only a sinful Peter. The reason, according to Scotus, that God would not universally condemn the just is that such an act would be contrary to God's goodness, which belongs inherently to God's nature (424.7-428).

Calvin's sermons on Job do not simply reiterate Scotus's discussion. Scotus does not describe this duplex justitia as "secret" and "ordinary" and does not relate it to God's absolute and ordained powers. Nonetheless, in their discussions of the relationship between God's creaturely and essential justice, Scotus and Calvin struggle with the same issues. Like Scotus's portrayal of Peter, Calvin's Job has no strict claim on God's justice. According to Calvin, God is not so bound to the justice of the Law (which Job represents) that God is subject to it. Moreover, while Calvin admits that Job's God was acting beyond divine ordinary justice, nevertheless, divine secret justice guaranteed that everything God did was just. Most importantly, however, Calvin guarantees God's justice by appealing to the same principle used by Scotus. According to Scotus, God's powerful will is limited both by the covenant or pact and, de potentia ordinata, by God's nature, which is goodness.

Calvin appeals to these same arguments when he grounds God's reliability in God's pact and in the inseparability of God's attributes. However, as Oberman argues, the self-limitation of God's power by God's goodness applies in Scotus's thought to the potentia ordinata.16 In his Job sermons. Calvin seeks to find this self-limitation of God in the heart of the divine essence and hence tries to place God's self-limitation not only in the potentia ordinata but also to God's rule etiam extra legem. God's rule of history may

15. Scotus concludes that, in reality, there was only one righteousness or justice in God; In IV Sent. dist. xlvi. q.1. nn. 2-7. For an analysis of Scotus's discussion, see P. Minges, Der Gottesbegriffdes Duns Scotus (Vienna, 1907), pp. 120-142.

16. H. A. Oberman, Dawn of the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1986), p. 256.

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be inscrutable but is reliable because God's power cannot act contrary to God's goodness, justice, and reason. To assert an arbitrary "absolute power" in God would, in Calvin's view, "tear God's essence apart" and attribute to God an action not in harmony with the divine essence.17 For Calvin, the nature of the divine essence keeps the divine omnipotence in check.

3. Though inaccurate, Calvin's fear of the term "absolute power" reveals his central concern in the Job sermons: the search for a God who is both completely sovereign and totally reliable. While Job's God certainly satisfied the former, Calvin's appeal to the nature and self-limitation of God's essence satisfied the latter. Frankly, the sovereignty of Job's God scared even Calvin; the ruler of history cannot be a God who afflicts "without cause" or by a will "unformed" by goodness or justice. This fear of an unreliable or tyrannical God haunts Calvin's use of the idea of double justice throughout these sermons. The further he read into the text, the more Calvin saw Job facing the darker side of God's hiddenness. Just when that darkness became unbearable, Calvin quickly rooted God's freedom in God's unchangeable promises and in the inseparable nature of God's essence.

Calvin's struggle with Job calls to mind that famous rhyme by Archibald Macleish in his play J.B.: "I heard upon his dry dung heap that man cry out who could not sleep. If God is God he is not good, if God is good he is not God. Take the even or take the odd." Calvin refused to choose. He insisted that God is both God and good, both powerful and just. With his theory of double justice he promised his congregation that although the God who speaks out of the whirlwind may not be comforting or comprehensible, nonetheless, God is always just.

17. Compare Reuter, Das Grundverstandnis der Theologie Calvins, pp. 142-154, and J. Bohatec, Calvin und das Recht (Vienna, 1934), pp. 90-91.

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