…Reformer John Calvin, in his “Institutes of the Christian Religion,” defined faith as,
“…a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”
Calvin includes doctrine in his definition. But notice what comes first: a conviction that God loves us, a sense that God’s essential attitude towards us is one of caring and gentleness and goodness. And that conviction is not merely intellectual. It is sealed, it is stamped upon our hearts in such a way that we long for it to be true…
Image: Hochhalter, Cara B.. A Parable - The Mustard Seed, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59282 [retrieved September 26, 2025]. Original source: Cara B. Hochhalter.
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