Concepts Are More Important Than Words

A few weeks ago I read this from an old southern Presbyterian: 

We Presbyterians care very little about the name Calvinism. We are not ashamed of it; but we are not bound to it. Some opponents seem to harbor the ridiculous notion that this set of doctrines was the new invention of the Frenchman John Calvin. They would represent us as in this thing followers of him instead of followers of the Bible. This is a stupid historical error. John Calvin no more invented these doctrines than he invented this world which God had created six thousand years before. We believe that he was a very gifted, learned, and, in the main, godly man, who still had his faults. He found substantially this system of doctrines just where we find them, in the faithful study of the Bible, Where we see them taught by all the prophets, apostles, and the Messiah himself, from Genesis to Revelation.

A similar train of thought surfaced in our Doctrine of God discussion of the terminology used in the creeds to describe the Trinity. Dr. Oliphint quoted Calvin himself (oddly enough) who said that the specific terminology is not what's important, but the concepts themselves, which are derived from scripture:

Now, although the heretics rail at the word “person,” or certain squeamish men cry out against admitting a term fashioned by the human mind, they cannot shake our conviction that three are spoken of, each of which is entirely God, yet that there is not more than one God. What wickedness, then, it is to disapprove of words that explain nothing else than what is attested and sealed by Scripture! (I.13.3)

If, therefore, these terms were not rashly invented, we ought to beware lest by repudiating them we be accused of overweening rashness. Indeed, I could wish they were buried, if only among all men this faith were agreed on: that Father and Son and Spirit are one God, yet the Son is not the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but that they are differentiated by a peculiar quality. (I.13.5) 

All of this has come in the context of the discussion in Hermeneutics of the word-concept distinction and related pitfalls. Dabney was unconcerned with the label, but zealous for the doctrine which he found in scripture. Calvin also was unconcerned with the specific terminology, so long as the terminology used expressed the biblical concepts (though note how well he believed the terminology and formulations we have are good ones!). Note also their preeminent concern with the truth of scripture. How this distinction relates specifically to hermeneutics, word studies, theological dictionaries, etc. will have to wait for another post.