Paupertas (poverty) in John Calvin's Institutes

Abstract

This article investigates the references to and use of the term paupertas (‘poverty’) by John Calvin in his Institutes. It appears that he uses paupertas in its physical and spiritual meaning. In the physical sense, the appropriate references are expressed in compelling language and denote helplessness when faced with the demands of life. Paupertas is also embedded in the theological context of the teaching of Scripture on the knowledge of the providentia Dei. In the spiritual sense, paupertas denotes the desperate aspect of spiritual poverty (i.e. ‘unsaved, lost’) and is related to the righteousness and work of salvation of Christ. In terms of Calvin’s argumentation, it is clear that paupertas is linked to the (provided) true knowledge of God, Christ and ‘ourselves’ in terms of biblical revelation and qualification. Calvin thus reveals the landscape of reality in which the presuppositions of the popular philosophical concepts of fate, fortune, chance and other meta-historical  causes are considered meaningless. In referring to poverty, or to the victim of poverty, Calvin neither argues that the providentia Dei is a passive perpetual divine determinism nor that it is sacrificed to a temporal interim divine involvement. He cautiously upholds a reverent distance in respect of God’s knowledge. However, when considering true and credible knowledge of God, the pastor withholds nothing from the splendour of the teaching of Scripture in this regard. In his inscrutable Deitas Dei the Father of Christ is, and remains, unconditional even when poverty strikes. Instead of examining the causes of poverty, Calvin emphasises the living presence of God in terms of his relational and biblical thinking.