Category Blogging The Institutes

Nothing to do with Calvin, just a note to say it’s great to pick up where Sean left off.  Back in Seminary we used to finish each other’s sentences in class discussions.  It’s good to see we’re still at it. …

The second part of repentance for medieval theologians was confession. Calvin starts by dismantling the Roman practice of “auricular confession,” that is, the practice of annual confession of one’s sins to his or her priest. Calvin demonstrates that the support…

After discussing what the biblical doctrine of repentance is, Calvin moves to show how medieval theologians failed to understand repentance correctly. He structures the section around the medieval division of repentance into three parts: contrition (3.4.1-3), confession (3.4.4-24), and satisfaction…

Repentance is “a singular gift of God,” Calvin notes (3.3.21). Such makes the problem of apostasy, sham repentance, and continued hypocrisy explainable. Those who wander away from the faith, who despise the Gospel, and resist the truth until their deaths…

3.3.19-20Calvin returns to the points with which he opened the chapter: how do repentance and forgiveness of sins relate? And how does repentance connect with faith? Behind these questions is his main point–against the claims of his Catholic opponents, justification…

Having unpacked the nature of repentance as a lifelong process of mortification of the flesh and vivification of the spirit, Calvin makes a distinction that would be important to his sixteenth-century world: one between the inward disposition and external actions…

Thomas Boston called regeneration ‘begun recovery’; in it, God deals with sin but does not eradicate it completely. In believers, ‘sin ceases only to reign; it does not also cease to dwell in them’ (3.3.11). One of the reasons for…

What is repentance? Both the Hebrew and the Greek vocabulary for repentance signify a turning, and this brings Calvin to his definition: ‘it is the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and…

Sometimes Scripture uses faith and hope as synonyms, joining them closely together. They have the same foundation and the same goal – to rest in the mercy of God, abandoning ourselves to him. But faith has another companion also –…

Can we be certain of our salvation? Calvin was neither the first nor the last to tackle the issue of assurance of salvation, and with profound pastoral insight he wants to show how faith and hope co-exist. He begins in…