According to Calvin, the purpose of creation is for man to know God and to glorify him by worship and obedience. Here may be seen the foundation of Calvin’s theology of worship and of his attack on idolatry. Knowledge of God and worship of God are inseparable: One cannot come to know God without yielding some worship to Him.
Various attempts have been made to provide a neat descriptive phrase for Calvin’s principal concern in worship, but the two most commonly used are soli Deo gloria (to God alone be the glory) and finitum non est capax infiniti (the finite cannot contain the infinite). The two are interdependent. Calvin’s primary concern in his struggle against Catholic piety was to defend the glory of the God who is “entirely other,” who transcends all materiality, who is “as different from flesh as fire is from water,” and whose reality is inaccessible. …
Calvin’s attack on Roman Catholic “idolatry” is a condemnation of the improper mixing of spiritual and material in worship – an affirmation of the principle finitum non est capax infiniti. It is also an indictment of man’s attempt to domesticate God and to rob him of his glory – an affirmation of the principle soli Deo gloria.
CARLOS M. N. EIRE, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship From Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge University Press, 1986) 197, 198.
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