Blogging The Institutes

More arguments against Calvin's view of free will emerge. One from Ecclesiasticus which Calvin, knowing it to be of dubious authority as an apocryphal document, nevertheless patiently answers viewing these texts as "supportive" of his point of view even if they are apocryphal. Next, Luke 10:30,...

Objections still remain to Calvin's view of free will. Such as this one, raised in 2.5.13: What about the biblical passages that leave us to our own devices, such as Hosea 15:5, "I shall go to my own place, until they lay it upon their hearts to seek my face"? Calvin points out that how we...

Long before Ben Franklin said God helps those who help themselves, others said it too. This becomes another argument in favor free will, that we, through our free will, contribute to our salvation. Calvin responds, "It is pointless to require in us the capacity to fulfill the law, just because the...

The next argument in favor of free will that Calvin refutes concerns exhortations or commands. To put the matter differently: What good is any moral instruction if we are not free? In my reading of Pelagius this concern seems to drive him the most in his debate with Augustine. How can I hold people...

"The king's heart is a stream of water in the hands of the Lord, he turns it wherever he wants" (Proverbs 21:1). Calvin raises yet another difficult question, that of human freedom. He begins by stressing "God's dominion" (2.4.7). "If the king's will is bent by God's hand," Calvin understands this...

How do we make sense of evil? And, more specifically, how do we make sense of the evil that human beings perpetrate on one another? Who's to blame? If Red Skelton were here, or SNL's "Churchlady"--for younger members of the audience--the answer would come back as Satan. Or is it ourselves? Or is it...

What makes grace gracious? For Calvin, behind all grace is God's own decision: "The apostle does not teach that the grace of a good will is bestowed upon us if we accept it, but that He wills to work in us. This means nothing else than that the Lord by his Spirit directs, bends, and governs, our...

In this section, Calvin unpacks this statement: "God beings his good work in us, therefore, by arousing love and desire and zeal for righteousness in our hearts; or, to speak more correctly, by bending, forming, and directing, our hearts to righteousness. He completes his work, moreover, by...

One key Reformation teaching which both Lutherans and Reformed held in common was the pervasive and inherited corruption of human corruption. In this, Calvin was no different. He notes that the Bible "painted a picture of human nature that showed us corrupt and perverted in every part" (2.3.1); "...

Humans want to carve out some place for their own natural abilities when it comes to doings works that conform to God's law. Ethicists will sometimes talk about "natural law," an inbred standard of right and wrong that is common to all people everywhere. Calvin knows the category of natural law,...