John Calvin Quotes on God
John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (Institutio Christianae religionis, first edition 1536, definitive edition 1559) gave Reformation Protestant theology its most influential systematic exposition of the divine sovereignty. The central commitments — the absolute sovereignty of God in the works of creation, providence, and redemption; the doctrine of double predestination; the radical depravity of fallen human nature; and the corresponding utter dependence of salvation on unmerited divine grace — articulate the distinctive Reformed alternative to both Catholic sacramental synergism and Lutheran confessional theology. The framework, developed through Calvin’s pastoral and political work in Geneva and disseminated through the international Reformed network, shaped the Puritan, Presbyterian, and broader Reformed traditions and the political theology of the early modern Atlantic world.
Quotes
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“True wisdom consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”
Book 1 Chapter 1, p. 44 -
Attributed to John Calvin:
“The human heart is a perpetual factory of idols.”
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Attributed to John Calvin:
“All the blessings we enjoy are divine deposits committed to our trust.”
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Attributed to John Calvin:
“Wherever we cast our eyes, all things on which they fall are works of God.”
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Attributed to John Calvin:
“There is no part of our life and no action so minute that it ought not to be directed to the glory of God.”
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“A dog barks and stands at bay if he sees any one assault his master. I should be indeed remiss, if, seeing the truth of God thus attacked, I should remain dumb, without giving one note of warning.”
Letter 130 (to the Queen of Navarre), 28 April, 1545. -
“Now among the other things proper to recreate man and give him pleasure, music is either the first or one of the principal;and we must think that it is a gift of God deputed for that purpose'.”
Introduction, Geneva Psalter 1539. -
“God promised by the mouth of Isaiah that queens should be the nursing mothers of the church.”
Referring to (Isaiah 49:23) in a letter to William Cecil (May 1559), in Bonnet (1980), op. cit. , p. 212; also in Hastings Robinson, ed., The Zurich letters: Comprising the Correspondence of several English Bishops and others with some of the Helvetian reformers, during the early part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth , (Second Series. A.D. 1558-1602), Cambridge (England): University Press, 1845, p. -
“I cannot think such language either right, or becoming, or suitable. ... To call the Virgin Mary the mother of God can only serve to confirm the ignorant in their superstitions.”
John Calvin, [ Epistle CCC to the French church in London ], 27 September 1552; translated by Jules Bonnet, p.362