John Calvin Quotes on Knowledge
John Calvin (1509–1564), the French-Swiss reformer whose Institutes of the Christian Religion (first edition 1536, definitive Latin edition 1559) gave the Reformed branch of Protestant theology its most influential systematic exposition, opened the Institutes with the famous formula that nearly all the wisdom we possess consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. The framework treats the two as so reciprocally related that neither can be securely possessed without the other, and the parallel doctrine of the sensus divinitatis — the seed of religion implanted in every human mind — supplies the natural-theological foundation on which the subsequent appeal to scripture, properly received under the Spirit's internal testimony, builds the saving knowledge of God available only through revelation.
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 -
“Letter 130 (to the Queen of Navarre), 28 April, 1545.”
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. -
“Introduction, Geneva Psalter 1539.”
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'. -
“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. 35.”
God promised by the mouth of Isaiah that queens should be the nursing mothers of the church. -
“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 -
“John Calvin, [ Epistle CCC to the French church in London ], 27 September 1552; translated by Jules Bonnet, p.362”
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.