Welcome to five minutes in church history hosted by Dr Stephen Nichols, where we take a little

break from the present to go exploring the past. Travel back in time as we look at the people,

events, and even the places that have shaped the story of Christianity.

This is our story, our family history.

Let's get started.

On this episode of five minutes in church history we are returning to one of

our favorite reformers John Calvin and we're going to be talking about Calvin on

slippery forgetfulness. Calvin was not only a brilliant theologian, he was a

brilliant writer and he has wonderful little phrases peppered throughout his

institutes of the Christian religion.

And this phrase I find to be fascinating.

He says, suppose we ponder how slippery is the fall of the human mind into forgetfulness of God.

Well, let's take Calvin up on that, if you will.

Let's suppose for a moment the pondering of how slippery our forgetfulness of God can be.

You know, it's in the opening words of Calvin's Institutes that he says this, 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 and so we have

this quest as it were, to know God and to know ourselves.

Calvin ends up asking a question, where do we begin? Do we start with God and then sort of come down to

ourselves or do we start with ourself and from there we go up and see God? And as he develops

the institutes, he sort of does both.

He looks at both God and us to understand both who God is and who we are.

One of the things that Calvin tells us about our knowledge of God is that our knowledge comes

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