John and Caroline Brand

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Calvin at 500 - Day 6

In Calvin's Institutes, calvin on January 5, 2009 at 10:09 am

1.5.1-4   The Knowledge of God Conspicuous in the Creation and Continual Government of the World (Pt.1)

Calvin, at some length, now concludes his consideration of the knowledge of God that is part of our human make up and therefore universal in its effect.   Dealing with the whole subject of General Revelation he states with great clarity the unmistakable ways in which God has made himself known through creation in general, through mankind in particular and also through providence.

1.5.1   God’s ’stamp’ is everywhere and in everything

Not only has God made himself known in every aspect and part of his creation but Calvin emphasises the benevolence of God in so doing; arguing that

“Since the perfection of blessedness consists in the knowledge of God, he has been pleased, in order than none might be excluded from the means of obtaining felicity, not only to deposit in our minds that seed of religion of which we have already spoken, but so to manifest his perfections in the whole structure of the universe, and daily place himself in our view, that we cannot open our eyes without being compelled to behold him.” (p51)

1.5.2   God’s ’stamp’  is evident to all, regardless of the level of our understanding or education

1.5.3   God’s ’stamp’ is seen in his relationship with and care for humankind

1.5.4.  Despite this vast treasure house of evidence, man in his “shameful ingratitude” and stupidity chooses to ignore the evidence that is within him and before his eyes and “inwardly suppress them” and look elsewhere and “employ the seed of Deity deposited in human minds as a means of suppressing the name of God” (p53). Man uses the very faculties with which God has endowed him and which make his superior to the rest of the created order and which so clearly testify to the existence and glory of God, to seek to intellectually rubbish the very concept of God

With a damning indictment of man’s sinful blindness, Calvin says, “Can anything be more detestable than this madness in man, who, finding God a hundred times both in his body and his soul, makes his excellence in this respect a pretext for denying that there is a God?” (p53)

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Calvin at 500 - Day 5

In Calvin's Institutes, calvin on January 4, 2009 at 8:21 am

1.4  The Knowledge of God Stifled or Corrupted

Having clearly argued for and demonstrated the  instinctive and universal knowledge of God on the part of humanity which leaves no single human being with the slightest excuse for their professed ignorance of God or their persistent unbelief and sinfulness, Calvin goes on to explain why it is that despite this all-pervasive awareness of God, in his words, “scarcely one in a hundred is found who cherishes it and not one in whom it grows to maturity.” (p46)

1.4.1   Men are god-makers.

It is truly a dreadful state of affairs and an evidence of the catastrophe of the fall that despite the inbuilt knowledge of God and the instinct for worship, rather than human kind being marked by their god-fearing way of life, “in no part of the world can genuine godliness be found”. (p46)   It is not that men and women have become irreligious, but that they have wilfully replaced the God revealed in creation and conscience with a God of their own imagination.   In a wonderfully telling phrase Calvin says that rather than rise to the worship of their superior, in arrogance and vanity man chooses to “measure him by their own carnal stupidity” (p46), ignoring the revealed attributes and qualities of God - which are unacceptable to them - and devising their own foolish version as the object of their worship.

As a result, that which they call worship is utterly unacceptable to God because it is their own concept of God that they are worshipping and not the true, eternal Being.   Man cannot be satisfied with having no god to worship; neither can he bring himself to worship the true God; so he must create for himself and by his own vanity and pride, a god in his own likeness; in effect, one as stupid as himself and then he prides himself that he is fulfilling that for which he was created - the worship of god.

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Another Calvin Link

In Uncategorized on January 3, 2009 at 11:05 am

My thanks to those who have drawn my attention to another great website which is reading and blogging through the Institutes this year.  Princeton Theological Seminary has a Calvin09 site which, on the evidence of the first posts, will be well worth following.

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