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true liberty is only gained through trust in God and obedience to
his gracious command. No one summed up the Enlightenment
position as well as Immanuel Kant who wrote:
No generation should be bound by creeds and dogmas. It is
an offence against human nature whose destiny lies in
progress. … Mankind is in the process of coming of age,
refusing to take external authorities and judging everything
by its own understanding. 173
For Kant and the philosophers who have tread in his path, the
Reformed emphasis on trust and obedience was slavish, opposed to
true liberty and produced only ignorance based on irrational
superstition. For Kant enlightenment and liberty would only come
when creeds and dogmas were cast aside and intellectual autonomy
was gained. What was required was not trust and obedience but
doubt and pure reason.
Calvin, however, would have looked on Kant as a fool.
Doubt and autonomy was what led to human misery and bondage
in the first place. The reason for this was clear in Calvin‘s mind.
Autonomous reason deceives man by it appeals to his pride. This in
turn, led to his foolish distrust in God and tempted him to disobey.
This autonomy did not lead to knowledge but to ignorance. In the
first place, man‘s pride cut him off from God‘s revelatory Word:
the source of that knowledge by which he was to proceed towards
liberty. Secondly, man‘s disobedience caused him to lose grip of
the necessary ―bridle to control all passions: the thought that
nothing is better than to practice righteousness by obeying God‘s
commandments.‖ 174 In this manner, man‘s pride, doubt and
autonomy resulted not in enlightenment and liberty but ignorance
and subjugation. Thus, for Calvin, subservience to God, through
obedience to His Word is the sure spring of human liberty for it
allows man to appropriate all that has been made available
173 Immanuel Kant as quoted in Colin Brown‘s Philosophy & the Christian
Faith. (Downer‘s Grove, IL: IVP, 1968) p 91.
174 Institute II.1.4.