Properly listed I should have written “Books of 2003” at the top of this page. I read the book a while ago, but only recently was I able to list the quotes from this book.
A Compend of the Institutes of the Christian Religion was given to me in a stack of books by a gentleman in our church. Jim Rooks had heard that at the time I was selling books on Ebay, so rather than donate his pile to the local Goodwill he gave them to me. I picked through the pile and recall that many of the books would be worthless to anyone but the Goodwill. I think I was able to sell two on the internet, receiving about $10 total. Then I found this book.
John Calvin? I began to salivate. How many college evenings had been spent debating the tenants of Calvinism with my roommates. I’d left Pensacola Christian College over Calvinism. Sure, I’d done my research. I read Sproul’s Chosen By God. I’d flipped through the pages of other authors who offered insights on Calvin’s thoughts. After all, though, I’d never read the man himself.
A few weeks after receiving the book I worked up the guts to begin reading it. It took me a while. Calvin is no breezy reading. This was the first real theology book I remember making it all the way through.
Woah! Some of John’s thoughts began to rock my world. In the end I recall loving almost every minute of the book. It had depth, meaning, truth. Calvin shined a light on areas of theology I didn’t even know existed. This was one of the first books I underlined, underlined, underlined.
The other week one of the girls in our Youth Group typed out all the quotations. I’ll list a few of them below, but if you follow The Institutes of Religion - John Calvin.pdf you can download the entire PDF.
But, if we once elevated our thoughts to God, and consider his nature, and the consummate perfection of his righteousness, wisdom, and strength, to which we ought to be conformed. What before charmed us in ourselves under the false pretext of righteousness, will soon be loathed as the greatest iniquity; what strangely deceived us under the title of wisdom, will be despised as extreme folly, and what wore the appearance of strength, will be proved to be most wretched impotence. (pg. 5)
Thus God by his providence restrains the perverseness of our nature from breaking out into external acts, but does not purify it within… The will, therefore, is so bound by the slavery of sin, that it cannot excite itself, much less devote itself to anything good. (pg. 49)
No comments:
Post a Comment