Calvin on Slippery Forgetfulness

John Calvin was not only a brilliant theologian, he was also a brilliant writer. And he has wonderful little phrases peppered throughout his Institutes of the Christian Religion. One phrase in particular I find fascinating. He says, "Suppose we ponder how slippery is the fall of the human mind into forgetfulness of God." Let's take Calvin up on that.

In the opening words of Calvin's Institutes, he says, "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves." The question is, where do we begin? Do we start with God and then come down to ourselves, or do we start with ourselves and from there go up and see God? As he develops the Institutes, he does both. He looks at both God and us to understand who God is and who we are.

One of the things that Calvin tells us about our knowledge of God is that it comes to us through revelation. God's revelation is understood as coming to us in two ways: as general revelation and as special revelation. General revelation is God's revealing himself in a generic or a general way through creation and providence. Paul talks about this in Romans 1:19–20, and we see it also in the Psalms and the creation account in Genesis 1–2. General revelation is also found within us, in what Calvin calls the sensus divinitatis, or the sense of the divine, an awareness of God that we all have.

But knowledge of God as Redeemer comes to us through special revelation. What makes it special is that it is immediate and direct from God. And that special revelation has been bound together for us in the canon of the sixty-six books of the Bible. And it is ultimately through Scripture that we come to know God as our Redeemer.

Let's get back to this slippery forgetfulness that we have. In some ways, we see it in Romans 1, this knowledge of God that is clear to us both in creation and in our own conscience, that this knowledge can be suppressed and ultimately rejected. And so we see many who know God, who have a sense of the divine, but are locked in a slippery forgetfulness.

And it's not just those who don't know God as Redeemer who have slippery forgetfulness. We too, who know God as Redeemer, sometimes have a slippery forgetfulness. We forget who God is; we forget His promises to us. So, what is the remedy? Here's Calvin's answer: "We must come, I say, to the Word, where God is truly and vividly described to us from his works. While these very works are appraised not by our deprived judgment but by the rule of eternal truth. If we turn aside from the Word as I have just now said, though we may strive with strenuous haste yet, since we have got off the track we shall never reach the goal." Calvin reminds us to get back on track and go back to the Word.