Tuesday, March 29, 2011

As I work through Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, I marvel at the high esteem that this man held the things of God with. Unlike me, he discusses everything with a profound reverence and seriousness. In the following passage, he discusses the inseparability of the Spirit and the Word. This discussion is aimed at those 'fanatics' who would claim that the Spirit communicates to them anything that Scripture does not agree with.

... the Holy Spirit so inheres in His truth, which He expresses in Scripture, that only when its proper reverence and dignity are given to the Word does the Holy Spirit show forth His power. And what has lately been said-that the Word itself is not quite certain for us unless it be confirmed by the testimony of the Spirit-is not out of accord with these things. For by a kind of mutual bond the Lord has joined together the certainty of his Word and of his Spirit so that the perfect religion of the Word may abide in our minds when the Spirit, who causes us to contemplate God's face, shines; and that we in turn may embrace the Spirit with no fear of being deceived when we recognize him in his own image, namely, in the Word. (Institutes, 1.9.3)

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