Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Knowledge of God and of ourselves are inseparable — and both are the gift of the Word, by the Spirit, to fallen creatures
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Institutes of the Christian Religion (Late) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Both |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Finite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Both |
| Observer · Agency | Passive |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Calvin treats time as the medium of God's providential ordering. Book 1.16–18 — "The way in which God works in the hearts of men" — is one of the clearest sixteenth-century statements of meticulous providence: God's decree precedes time, and every temporal event executes the eternal will. Time is real, substantival, linear; eternity is God's mode of being, not a denial of created time.
Space
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Calvin works within the cosmological framework of his age: finite, ordered, geocentric space, in which God is present without himself being spatial. The polemic against transubstantiation in book 4 turns partly on the distinction between Christ's physical body (in heaven, locally) and the sacramental presence (real, spiritual, by the Spirit's agency).
Matter
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Created, good, finite, and conserved by God's continuing providence. Book 1.16.2: God preserves the world by his continuing concurrence; otherwise nothing would persist. Calvin is not a deist about creation; the world continues because God continues to will it.
Observer
Institutes of the Christian Religion
The Calvinist observer is the fallen but image-bearing human creature: embodied (Calvin's soul-body dualism is moderate), plural, intellectually capable of natural knowledge of God (the sensus divinitatis, 1.3) but soteriologically passive — the will is bound, and election is unconditional. Knowledge of God comes through Scripture, applied by the inner witness of the Spirit. The metaphysical agency is unambiguously personal; moral authority is scripture, magisterially.
Energy
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Not thematised in modern terms. The Reformed doctrine of conservation — God's continuing causal sustenance of creation — is the closest analogue. Energy is substantival within creation and irreversibly entropic within fallen time, pending the renewal of creation.
Information
Institutes of the Christian Religion
God's eternal decree is the substantival informational structure of history. The Bible is the inscripturated form of the saving knowledge. Personal information is conserved: the soul is immortal, the elect persevere, the resurrection is bodily, and at the last day every person is judged according to a complete divine knowledge of their lives.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Institutes' doctrine of double predestination — that God eternally elects some to salvation and reprobates others — has been the most-contested point in the Reformed tradition since Calvin himself. Calvin treats it carefully (3.21–24), insisting on its scriptural warrant while warning against speculation, but later supralapsarian developments (Beza, Twisse) pushed the doctrine further than the Institutes themselves did. The tension between the comfort of election (book 3) and the severity of reprobation has shaped Reformed devotion ever since.