Self-knowledge can either drive a person inward toward pride or outward toward God, and today’s readings press that tension to its breaking point. Calvin insists that the deepest knowledge of self comes not from measuring what remains after the Fall, but from being stripped bare until nothing is left but dependence on grace, exposing how even our best instincts toward truth falter into vanity without God. Augustine echoes this inward collapse by showing how grief and friendship can temporarily mend the soul while still leaving it displaced, stitched together by loves that cannot finally heal. Together, these readings refuse every illusion of moral or intellectual self-sufficiency and force the reader to face a hard truth: only when pride is burned away does humility become not weakness, but the only place where mercy can meet us.

Readings:

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Book 2, Chapter 2 (Sections 9–12)

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How do we truly know the invisible God when nature alone leaves us prone to confusion and speculation? In this reading, Calvin explains why Scripture provides a clearer portrait of God than creation by itself ever could, grounding our knowledge of the Creator in the historical account given through Moses. He rebukes arrogant curiosity about time, eternity, and creation, urging humility where God has chosen silence, and shows how the six-day creation displays God’s fatherly wisdom and care. Calvin then turns to the invisible realm, addressing angels not to satisfy curiosity, but to guard against errors that diminish God’s sovereignty or divide creation into rival powers. Throughout, he calls us away from idle speculation and back to Scripture’s plain teaching, where true knowledge leads not to pride, but to reverence, faith, and worship.

Readings: John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 14 (Sections 1–5)

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of God? In today’s reading, Calvin carefully addresses this tension by showing how Scripture speaks of the Father and the Son according to order and role without dividing the divine essence. He explains Christ’s words as Mediator, clarifies passages that seem to imply inferiority, and demonstrates that the Son’s submission belongs to His redemptive office, not to His nature. Drawing on Irenaeus, Tertullian, and the broader consensus of the Fathers, Calvin dismantles claims that early Christianity knew only the Father as God, showing instead a consistent confession of one God in three persons. The result is a sober, historically grounded defense of Trinitarian faith that guards both Christ’s full divinity and the unity of God without speculation or distortion.

Readings: John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 13 (Sections 26–29)

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In this reading from Calvin’s Institutes, Book 2, Chapter 2, Sections 5–8, Calvin turns from philosophers to theologians—and finds that many Christian writers fared little better when speaking about free will. Surveying the Schoolmen and earlier Fathers, Calvin shows how careful distinctions about grace and freedom often collapsed into confusion, ambiguity, or misplaced confidence in human ability. While acknowledging the pastoral intentions behind these formulations, Calvin presses the question that cannot be avoided: what does “free will” actually mean if the human will is enslaved to sin? Drawing especially on Augustine, Calvin argues that freedom properly understood is not autonomy but liberation—freedom granted by grace, not assumed by nature. These sections sharpen Calvin’s warning about theological language itself, showing how a single term, left undefined, can quietly undo the doctrine of grace and foster a dangerous self-reliance in the human heart.

Readings:

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, Chapter 2, Sections 5–8

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What happens to human freedom after the Fall? In today’s reading from Calvin’s Institutes, Book 2, Chapter 2, Calvin presses directly into one of the most uncomfortable questions in Christian theology: whether anything resembling free will truly remains once sin has done its work. Moving carefully between sloth and pride, Calvin critiques both pagan philosophers and well-meaning Christian theologians who tried to preserve human dignity by overstating human ability. Along the way, he exposes how easily “free will” becomes a theological placeholder rather than a carefully defined reality, showing why clarity here matters not only for doctrine, but for humility, grace, and the proper glory of God. This reading sets the stage for Calvin’s fuller account of the intellect, the will, and the depth of humanity’s dependence on divine mercy.

Readings:

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, Chapter 2, Sections 1–4

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In these closing sections, Calvin presses the doctrine of original sin to its deepest and most uncomfortable conclusion: corruption does not merely touch the surface of human desire but penetrates the very center of the soul—mind, heart, and will alike. Sin has seized not only our appetites but the “citadel” of reason itself, blinding understanding and twisting judgment so thoroughly that nothing in us remains neutral or untouched (Romans 8:7; Ephesians 4:17–18). This devastation, however, must never be attributed to God as Creator. Calvin is careful here: our corruption is natural in the sense that it is inherited, but it is not original to creation. It is an alien infection, an adventitious wound introduced by Adam’s revolt, not a defect built into human nature by God (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Thus all attempts to blame God for human evil collapse. The fault lies wholly with our degeneration, not with divine workmanship. And by clarifying this, Calvin simultaneously dismantles both Pelagian optimism and Manichaean dualism: humanity is neither morally intact nor metaphysically evil. We are fallen creatures, naturally depraved yet still creatures of God, whose only hope is not repair but re-creation—nothing less than a new nature wrought by grace (Ephesians 2:3; Romans 12:2).

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In today’s reading, Calvin presses us into a kind of self-knowledge that is painful but necessary, dismantling every form of pride so that grace alone can stand. He insists that to know ourselves rightly is not to flatter our dignity but to confront our ruin—measuring ourselves not by human judgment but by divine justice, where all confidence in our own powers collapses. From there, he traces the fall of Adam not to mere sensual excess, but to infidelity: a refusal to trust God’s word, which opened the door to pride, ambition, rebellion, and finally the collapse of the entire created order. Adam’s sin was not isolated, nor was its damage superficial; it shattered human nature itself and spread by propagation, not imitation, leaving every person born already in need of mercy. The force of Calvin’s argument is unrelenting: until we grasp the depth of our corruption, we will never understand why Christ is necessary, nor why redemption must be sheer gift rather than human achievement (Psalm 51:5; Romans 5:19; Romans 8:20–22).

Readings: John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion — Book 2, Chapter 1, Sections 1–3 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion — Book 2, Chapter 1, Section 4 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion — Book 2, Chapter 1, Section 5

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Today we reach the sobering and fitting conclusion of the First Book of Calvin’s Institutes, where divine providence is defended against its most serious objections—not by speculation, but by Scripture itself. Calvin confronts the claim that God must either have contradictory wills or be the author of sin, insisting that such objections are ultimately aimed at the Holy Spirit, who openly declares that God “has done whatsoever he has pleased” (Psalm 115:3) and that even Christ’s crucifixion occurred by God’s “definite plan and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23; Acts 4:28). The error, Calvin explains, lies in confusing God’s will with God’s command: God may will an event for righteous purposes while forbidding the sinful intentions through which it is carried out. Thus Absalom’s rebellion, Jeroboam’s rise, and Judas’s betrayal were all condemned acts that nevertheless fulfilled God’s just and unchanging counsel. Drawing heavily on Augustine, Calvin shows that God judges not merely actions, but wills—so the same deed may display God’s righteousness and man’s guilt at once. To reject this teaching because it exceeds human understanding is not humility but pride; true wisdom is to submit with reverence to what God has revealed, even when it humbles us (Isaiah 14:27; 1 Timothy 6:16).

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 18 (Sections 3–4)

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