In Chapter 13, Book One of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin writes at great length of what the Scriptures teach us about who God truly is. This is important because we can only worship God what we truly know him. And so this brings us, inevitably, to the Trinity as revealed in the Scriptures:
But there is another special mark by which he designates himself, for the purpose of giving a more intimate knowledge of his nature. While he proclaims his unity, he distinctly sets it before us as existing in three persons. These we must hold, unless the bare and empty name of Deity merely is to flutter in our brain without any genuine knowledge. Moreover, lest any one should dream of a threefold God, or think that the simple essence is divided by the three Persons, we must here seek a brief and easy definition which may effectually guard us from error.
As I wrote, Calvin writes at great length about this. I have attempted to find one paragraph that may do justice to his words. It is not easy. Calvin is not a sound byte theologian. His arguments are exhaustively detailed. They must be dealt with in order. Calvin builds them step by step. I say this because, based on my reading of Calvin thus far, the only way one can enlist him in the claim that Christians, Jews and Muslims worship "the One God" is to use soundbytes ... a few words taken out of context. But a more careful (and dare I say honest) reading of Calvin reveals that he was not an early spokesman for pluralism.
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