John Calvin (know to his boyz as J-low as in like a worm) was a Protestant Reformer. He was convinced that the sinful human consciousness was an “idol factory.” For him, the church was not immune to this sinful impulse. Because of this Calvin was fond to quote semper reformanda, a motto that reminds of the need for the church to seek renewal according to God’s Word. In this quote, Calvin calls for vigilance, because when the people of God pull up to the bar there poison of choice is idolatry. We have been bit by the idol bug, and thus need to constantly call our hearts and minds into the Divine Supreme Court, where God is judge, to be scrutinize by His wisdom and Word. J-Low writes:
Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols. After the Flood there was a sort of rebirth of the world, but not many years passed by before men were fashioning gods according to their pleasure . . . Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God. To these evils a new wickedness joins itself, that man tries to express in his work the sort of God he has inwardly conceived. Therefore the mind begets an idol; the hand gives it birth.[1]
End Note
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[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 108. In other translations, see: Book 1, Chapter 9, Section 8.
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