God talk

    We are still on the Fallen image of God next page 148; Reformed Ethics; Herman Bavinck. I feel it is important to look at his opening statements because Bavinck is the type of theologian not to leave any stone unturned.   He says “Furthermore, Reformed theologians believed that the moral virtues of the pagans came from the general operation of the Holy Spirit and did not arise from any innate ability of the human will . That is why some preferred to use the term "virtue” for pagan morality and reserve the term "good works” for Christian morality. The former is considered under philosophical ethics, and the latter under specifically Christian ethics. These two differ in their foundations, their norms, and their goals. Human dominion over nature has been weakened and robbed of its spiritual character, but not eliminated; it has been impeded, but not destroyed. Science and scholarship hear witness to the human yearning for knowledge of earthly things.   Philoso

  Was Calvin Correct not to use Aristotle in his Institutes of the Christian Religion? We are still on the Fallen image of God and the last paragraph page 147; Reformed Ethics; Herman Bavinck   At the same time, not only do we retain natural goods like eating, drinking, sleeping, and walking; some relative moral good also remains. We agree with Augustine that there can be no virtue without righteousness and no righteousness without faith, that the virtues of the pagans are but *splendid vices.” Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge gradations in evil even when pagans seek virtue to entertain themselves, to fulfil their desires, to exalt themselves in their own eyes. Acknowledging that certain pagan philosophers (Plato) said some sensible things about God and spiritual matters, Calvin judged that this only heightened their inexcusability; because they lacked faith, they also lacked true knowledge and true virtue.   What is this talk about splendid vices? As John Calvin

  I am still in Bavinck's introduction of chapter 4 about the fallen image of God page 147.   The reason I am not leaving the introduction is because there are very deeps things that have been said.   “ What is impaired but not lost is the soul's mastery over the body, our bodies are often prisons for our souls and eventually our bodies completely fail our souls. What is lost completely is true knowledge in the mind and holiness in the will; we are spiritually dead and incapable of any spiritual good. Holy Scripture does not call the supernatural life that conforms to God "moral “but "holy," using words like” righteousness,” "sanctification,” "godliness,” and expressions like the fear of God.” The ability to do the good, the supernatural, God-pleasing, eternal-life-deserving good, is totally lost.”” (Page 147 intro on the fallen image of God)   I find the first sentence very interesting because the relationship of the soul is something that a