This Christmas break, I’ve undertaken a monumental task. I’ve been wanting to read a book of no small import, whose theological reach has extended for almost 600 years, dating back to the time of the Reformations. It is 1000 pages in length, and I’m going to try to read it in about 30 days. For the sake of characters in tweets, I will post links to my blog, on which I will daily update a running list of quotes that challenge me spiritually from John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. I expect this page to get quite long, so I will likely do one page for each of the five books that constitute the larger work.
Day 1
In Chapter 1 of Book 1, Calvin begins to give a doctrine of God, and he relates it to the doctrine of man. He uses two different analogies to demonstrate the way in which we tend to spiritually overestimate ourselves. He first likens it to a pair of eyes, which have seen only black all their days, finally witnessing something brown or even off-white; it appears most white in comparison to the blackness, though it is not purely white. Next, he relates it to looking to the earth and believing one’s eyesight to be quite sharp, then looking at the sun and realizing how inadequate one’s eyesight is to really behold something of such great brightness. Here are two extended quotes, one before the analogies and one after:
“And since nothing appears within us or around us that is not tainted with very great impurity, so long as we keep our mind within the confines of human pollution, anything which is in some small degree less defiled delights us as if it were most pure.”
“Thus, too, it appears in estimating our spiritual qualities. So long as we do not look beyond the earth, we are quite pleased with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue; we address ourselves in the most flattering terms, and seem only less than demigods. But should we once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and reflect what kind of being he is, and how absolute the perfection of that righteousness, wisdom, and virtue, to which, as a standard, we are bound to be conformed, what formerly delighted us by its false show of righteousness will become polluted with the greatest iniquity; what strangely imposed upon us under the name of wisdom will disgust by its extreme folly; and what presented the appearance of virtuous energy will be condemned as the most miserable impotence.”
DAY 2
This book is so great, and I see it being quite formative in the way I view God and go about my life with Him. God is creator, provider, sustainer, and giver of life, truth, justice, and power.
“We must be persuaded not only that as he once formed the world, so he sustains it by his boundless power, governs it by his wisdom, preserves it by his goodness, in particular, rules the human race with justice and judgment, bears with them in mercy, shields them by his protection; but also that not a particle of light, or wisdom, or justice, or power, or rectitude, or genuine truth, will anywhere be found, which does not flow from him, and of which he is not the cause; in this way we must learn to expect and ask all things from him, and thankfully ascribe to him whatever we receive.”
and I’ve placed in bold the part which struck me most here, when Calvin speaks about what this knowledge of God ought to drive us toward in our daily lives. It is his application of the knowledge he explained above:
“For how can the idea of God enter your mind without instantly giving rise to the thought, that since you are his workmanship, you are bound, by the very law of creation, to submit to his authority? that your life is due to him? that whatever you do ought to have reference to him? If so, it undoubtedly follows that your life is sadly corrupted, if it is not framed in obedience to him, since his will ought to be the law of our lives.”
All that we do should point to God, and the only way it ever can is in and through the person and work of Christ.
