Research On Calvin’s Revelation View Of Reformed Faith

"Revelation", as the foundation of epistemology of the Christian faith, is the biggest difference between theocentric religion and anthropocentric religion. The revelation view of Reformed faith John Calvin molded is different from that of the Lutherans. It is not based on the individual spiritual experience, but on self-knowledge and self-revelation of God. The word of God is its theological support and the starting point is God’s accommodation to man. Calvin’s revelation view pursues the theological trace of "fides quaerens intellec-tum"of Augustine.He regarded cognitio (Latin) as the subject of the theology, however, what Calvin constructed is not metaphysical epistemology of Augustine, but salvational epistemology. It is not a pure intellectual cognition, but with the link to "godliness", which also manifests Calvin’s consistence he sticks to for Christianity faith. For Calvin, the only channel gaining the systematic cognition originates from "revelation"of God. Therefore, revelation methodology establishes the whole architecture of his theology.In Calvin’s revelation view, there are two spheres, namely, general revelation and special revelation. The external manifestation of general revelation is from the nature, and the internal manifestation confirms with intuition.In terms of biblical data and philosophical observation, Calvin keeps more uniform position than Aquinas and Barth in the issues of essence, authenticity and utility of general revelation,that is,God gives an objective, effective and rational revelation about himself in nature, history and human nature levels through His creation and continuous providence. General revelation has been kept, but it cannot be used to construct a set of natural theology. Afterwards Calvin pointed out that because of people’s ignorance and evil, general revelation is not completely effective, special revelation will become inevitable. Special revelation mainly focuses on the individual person,who is moved by the revelation of God, receives sounds He breath, words, and the secret of His own He prepared to reveal to the individual person. Main approaches are the bible and the manifestation of incarnation of Jesus Christ.So we may gain the knowledge of God’s "existence" through general revelation, but we may gain the knowledge of God’s "nature" through special revelation. From the perspective of Calvin’s revelation view, revelation necessarily causes the response to revelation. The internal response produces religious system and external response produces cultural system. Religion and culture are looking for "value"and the truth, and the seeking itself may appear they are not the absolute truth. Moreover, existential "degeneration" continues to damage in history, therefore, religion and culture are totally polluted. In the spectrum of the five types Niebuhr discussed about "the relationship between Christ and culture", Calvin,as a conversionist, standing in the center of the spectrum, declared that the world and the culture are still under the providence of God’s holy hands and simultaneously in Christ’s salvation and compassion.He advocated degenerating culture cannot be renewed and transformed unless through God’s salvation,and then actualize the concept of "faith rooting in the culture, culture updating through faith". This is also a whole inspection of universal religious and cultural crisis in the manifestation of God’s revelation.In this case, considering and discussing the cultural significance and relevance of Calvin’s revelation theology, we aim to demonstrate that Calvin’s revelation theology in some way is the manner changing history, whether through building the foundation of new opinions and views, or clearing intellectual disabilities in development. Especially in the significance effect of the shaping of the spirit of western culture and the updating of Chinese traditional culture, as experimental indexes, we will measure the degree Calvin revelation theology influenced culture and its implication in order to further grasp the interrelation of giving revelation and accepting revelation between revelation theology and culture.