John Calvin’s Concept of Divine Accommodation

You can find Michael Tinker’s article “John Calvin’s Concept of Divine Accommodation: A Hermeneutical Corrective” online.

Conclusion

Using Calvin’s concept of divine accommodation as a focal point, this study has enabled us to see and understand a number of issues of how God, who in the biblical account is a personal being and wills to communicate with his creation, does so. There are obvious barriers to a straightforward communication between the divine and the mortal. Consequently, God has had to accommodate himself to his people, in language and action, in how he describes himself and how his actions are described. He accommodates himself to ideas and social conventions, but never in contradiction to his character, only to enhance communication with his people. Nor does he do this simply in order to inform, since the barrier of our rebellion and resulting blindness have made that futile. Rather, knowledge of God consists of knowing him relationally.

Through speech-act theory we have seen how language not only communicates information (informative), but also produces effects and brings about states of affairs (performative). In the case of the divine communication with man, supremely through the incarnation, and through the testimony and application of the Holy Spirit, God has enabled man to know him in personal relationship.

What was written in the past, in the Bible, not only informs us today, and performs in causing us to react emotionally as any book might, but it also enables and brings about true knowledge of God in relationship.

On this matter, Kevin Vanhoozer helpfully writes—

Does God speak in Scripture? Calvin refers both to the majesty of God’s Word and to the divine stammering. To say that God’s word is ‘majestic’ is to say that his illocutionary acts are mighty….On the other hand, God’s mighty speech-acts are clothed in the form of human speech genres. In order to communicate with humanity, God has accommodated himself to creaturely media, to human language and literature, to human flesh and blood. God’s Word, incarnate and inscripturate, is God in communicative action….The divine speech-acts, though humbly clothed, are nevertheless, powerful enough to liberate the captive, empower the weak, fill the empty and sustain the suffering.

Calvin’s concept of divine accommodation enables us to understand how God’s mighty speech-acts work; it explains why such communication is necessary in the first instance, and then how God’s communicative action is implemented. The role of the Holy Spirit in God’s accommodating mighty speech-acts enables us to understand more fully how the perlocutionary effect is brought to bear upon us today. Scripture is more than an informative record of how God acted in the past; it is an action of God in the present.

The idea of divine accommodation, within the context of speech-act theory, enables us to appreciate more fully the diversity of literary genres in Scripture, the culturally relative nature of those various writings, and the relevance of such texts today. It helps us better attempt to gain the ‘correct viewing distance’ in our hermeneutical studies. It is our belief that Calvin’s concept of divine accommodation, coupled with speech-act theory, provides a much needed hermeneutical corrective.