Week Ten Preview

Week Ten we will be reading through Chapter IV and V of Book II

 HERE ARE THE AUDIO LINKS:

 CHAPTER IV

 CHAPTER V

 

PREVIEW OF CHAPTERS IV & V 

A longer overview of John Calvin's theology taken from the Institutes of the Christian . This is a summary form, by Dr. C. Matthew McMahon.

Chapter 4: How God Works in Men's Hearts

Though men are under Satan's control as the god of this world, Scripture Shows God making use of man in hardening the heart of the reprobate.  Man stands under the devil's power willingly.  He is held by a yoke of slavery that he cannot escape from and is in bondage to.  But the question remains, what is the devil's and what is man's part in the action of sin? And does God have any role in the evil works in part ascribed to Him by Scripture?  There are Scriptural examples of how God treats the godless: the first way is to take away something they may need (Job 12:20; 12:24; Isa. 63:17).  The second way is through active hardening, such as with Pharaoh.  As Augustine says, “The fact that men sin is their own doing; that they by sinning do this or that comes from the power of God, who divides the darkness as He pleases.”  In this use of the wicked, Satan must also serve God.  God makes these evil instruments, which He holds under His hand and can turn, wherever He pleases, to serve His justice.

God's providence, then, overrules men's will in external matters, for numerous Scriptural examples demonstrate that men's minds were more subject to the Lord than ruled by themselves (Jacob's blessing on Joseph when he thought him a hea then Egyptian, Saul impelled to war by the Spirit of God, Absalom turned from Ahitophel's counsel, Rehoboam persuaded by the young men's counsel, Rahab's confession that it was God who caused nations to tremble at Israel's coming, etc.).  In each case God's dominion stands above our freedom.

Chapter 5: The Knowledge of God Shines Forth in the Fashioning of the Universe

The clarity of God's self-disclosure strips us of every excuse to reject his ways.  The daily dis closure of God in the workmanship of the universe is in tended to provide us with the knowledge of God; this is the ultimate goal of the blessed life.

God's wisdom remains secret to no one even for the uneducated, there is more than enough in the natural world to reveal to them the divine wisdom.  The structure of the human body will also do this.  Both Scripture and the pagan writers alike assert God's fatherhood over men, who as His offspring exhibit His great gifts. We must, then, be drawn to love and worship Him in return, but man turns ungratefully against God.

The confusion of creature with creator; nature is not God, but the order prescribed by God.  God as Lord of creation and giver of every gift wills that we will look to Him, direct our faith to Him, and worship.  God's sovereign sway over the life of men, for His power and wisdom are seen in His destruction of the wicked and of their works, His restoration and elevation of the humble and oppressed—both dealings being timed and tempered to the human situation.  The purpose of this knowledge of God the purpose is twofold: to arouse us to worship God and to encourage us to hope for eternal life.

The tidings of God that we gain from creation do not achieve their purpose for they are choked by human superstition and the error of the philosophers not only nations, but individual men, in the blindness of their minds, came to have their own gods.  Here the Holy Spirit rejects all cults contrived by men who corrupt pure religion by embracing their own opinions to be apostates who substitute demons for God.

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