John Calvin
John Calvin
John Calvinwas an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism, aspects of which include the doctrine of predestination and the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation. In these areas Calvin was influenced by the Augustinian tradition. Various Congregational, Reformed and Presbyterian churches, which look to Calvin as the chief expositor of their...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth10 July 1509
CountryFrance
It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.
Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, there a church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.
There is no work, however vile or sordid, that does not glisten before God.
The grace of God has no charms for men till the Holy Spirit gives them a taste for it.
A perfect faith is nowhere to be found, so it follows that all of us are partly unbelievers.
If grace acts in us, grace, and not we who do the work, but will be crowned.
God orders what we cannot do, that we may know what we ought to ask him.
Our prayer must not be self-centered. It must arise not only because we feel our own need as a burden we must lay upon God, but also because we are so bound up in love for our fellow men that we feel their need as acutely as our own. To make intercession for men is the most powerful and practical way in which we can express our love for them.
Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of His fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil.
The answer of our prayers is secured by the fact that in rejecting them God would in a certain sense deny His own nature.
The whole comes to this, that Christ, when he produces faith in us by the agency of his Spirit, at the same time ingrafts us into his body, that we may become partakers of all spiritual blessings.
Things that are seen are temporal; things that are unseen are eternal.
Pagan philosophers set up reason as the sole guide of life, of wisdom and conduct; but Christian philosophy demands of us that we surrender our reason to the Holy Spirit; and this means that we no longer live for ourselves, but that Christ lives and reigns within us (Rom 12:1; Eph 4:23; Gal 2:20).
God works in his elect in two ways: inwardly, by his Spirit; outwardly, by his Word.