04.18.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction

Today's soundtrack is Julee Cruise: Floating Into the Night.

This evening, I'm reading the first chapter of John Calvin's The Institutes of Christian Religion, "The Knowledge of God the Creator."

Calvin says that there are two parts to wisdom: knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves. He says that any examination of ourselves will lead to our source, God. When we see our miserable state of fallenness, we gain knowledge of God, for we are so reminded that without God, there can be no goodness. Calvin says that "[w]e can never really seek [God] in earnest until we begin to despair of ourselves" (p. 22).

Calvin asserts that man must first look at God and then look at himself before he can arrive at self-knowledge. For only by seeing the true perfection of God will we be able to recognize the falsity of our hypocritical and white-washed "goodness"; this is why people in the Bible who became aware of God's presence were struck with awe and dismay.