Battles on Calvin on Idolatry

Ford Lewis Battles was one of the 20th century’s greatest scholars on John Calvin. His greatest work of course was his translation of Calvin’s Institutes, published in 1960. He’s written extensively on Calvin, the Institutes, and on early and Medieval Christianity – his writings span Augustine, Boethius, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, Hugo Grotius, and more. He and Charles Miller created a computerised concordance for Calvin’s Institutes (1559 ed.).

Here’s Battle’s summary of Calvin’s view of idolatry:

… [A]n idol can be either a construct of the human mind that reduces the majesty of God and his ways of revelation to a mere shadow, or it can be a physical, palpable construction of the human hand that itself becomes an object of that worship and honor due to God alone. The one is a defect of the truth; the other, an exaggerated imitation of it. Both are false…

Page 163 of ‘Calculus Fidei: Some Ruminations on the Structure of the Theology of John Calvin’, pages in 139-178 in Interpreting John Calvin (ed. Robert Benedetto; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996).