Calvin - Knowledge Without the Gospel

This time we see Calvin explain that when the apostle makes hearing the beginning of faith he is only describing the “usual economy of dispensation”. Calvin continues to add “True Knowledge” to the process which is not found in the scriptures. We then see that this “True Knowledge” is “by internal means, by the illumination of the Spirit, without the intervention of preaching”.

 

John Calvin [a.d. 1509-1564]
BOOK FOUR - CHAPTER 16 - SECTION 19

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.vi.xvii.html

 

19. But faith, they say, cometh by hearing, the use of which infants have not yet obtained, nor can they be fit to know God, being, as Moses declares, without the knowledge of good and evil (Deut. 1:39). But they observe not that where the apostle makes hearing the beginning of faith, he is only describing the usual economy and dispensation which the Lord is wont to employ in calling his people, and not laying down an invariable rule, for which no other method can be substituted. Many he certainly has called and endued with the true knowledge of himself, by internal means, by the illumination of the Spirit, without the intervention of preaching.”

 

This is exactly as the Gnostics teach “To achieve salvation, one needs to get in touch with secret knowledge”.

This is once again contradictory to what the scriptures teach us as to being born again. For nowhere in the scriptures will you find that you need any type of “Knowledge” as a prerequisite of salvation, but instead the scriptures are clear that it is Faith/Belief and the Word of God that makes us children of God and Born Again.

 

John 1:12-13
12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

 

I Peter 1: 23
23 for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.

 

Calvin continues with.

 

John Calvin [a.d. 1509-1564]
BOOK FIRST - CHAPTER 6 – SECTION 6

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.iii.vii.html

 

Hence the Psalmist, after repeatedly declaring (Psalm 93, 96, 97, 99, &c). that superstition should be banished from the world in order that pure religion may flourish, introduces God as reigning; meaning by the term, not the power which he possesses and which he exerts in the government of universal nature, but the doctrine by which he maintains his due supremacy: because error never can be eradicated from the heart of man until the true knowledge of God has been implanted in it.

 

So here we see that Calvin teaches again that knowledge must be implanted.

 

I could stop here for the case is closed. Calvin believed and wrote very clearly that is was Knowledge that is first given that leads to salvation.

 

Yes, this is exactly as the Gnostics taught and he has wrapped it all up with Christian terms and created nothing less than a counterfeit “Christian” religion just like that of the early Gnostics which were exposed by the early church as nothing less than Heritics.