John Calvin on the Second Commandment 3 November, 2010
Posted by Benjamin P. Glaser in Images of the Godhead, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin, Second Commandment.Tags: Images of the Godhead, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin, Second Commandment
trackback
”Seeing that this brutish stupidity has overspread the globe, men longing after visible forms of God, and so forming deities of wood and stone, silver and gold, or of any other dead and corruptible matter, we must hold it as a first principle, that as often as any form is assigned to God, his glory is corrupted by an impious lie. In the Law, accordingly, after God had claimed the glory of divinity for himself alone, when he comes to show what kind of worship he approves and rejects, he immediately adds, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or anylikeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth,” (Exod. 20:4). By these words he curbs any licentious attempt we might make to represent him by a visible shape, and briefly enumerates all the forms by which superstition had begun, even long before, to turn his truth into a lie.” –
Comments»
No comments yet — be the first.