The doctrine of the Trinity is not a puzzle for clever minds but a boundary line that keeps the church worshiping the true God rather than a god of our own speculation. Today Calvin tightens the distinction that must be held without tearing the unity: one divine essence fully present in Father, Son, and Spirit, distinguished not by parts of deity but by personal relations that do not divide God. He then turns to the recurring threat—old heresies wearing new clothes—exposing how theories that reduce the Son and Spirit to projections, fragments, or derived divinity destroy the gospel itself, because they turn Christ into something less than Yahweh. Calvin insists that Scripture’s divine titles, divine works, and divine worship given to Christ cannot be explained away without blasphemy, and therefore the Son is not a second-class God, not a borrowed God, but the one God with the Father and the Spirit, confessed with reverence and guarded with care.

Readings: John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 13 (Sections 19–23)

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If the Son is truly divine, then the Spirit cannot be a lesser afterthought, a mere force, or an impersonal influence—and Calvin refuses to let the Bible be softened into that kind of half-truth. Today’s reading gathers Scripture’s testimony and the believer’s lived experience into a single confession: the Spirit was active before the world had form, sustains creation by divine power, grants new birth, distributes gifts with sovereign will, searches the depths of God, and is identified as God by the apostles themselves. Calvin then anchors the unity of the Triune name in baptism, insisting that the one name into which we are baptized must be the name of the one God, and therefore Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share one undivided essence. The result is reverent clarity: real distinction without division, mystery without confusion, worship without idolatry.

Readings: John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 13 (Sections 14–18)

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Unity is not a late Christian invention—it is the native air of Scripture, because the one God has always made Himself known through the one Mediator. Today Calvin presses the Old Testament appearances of “the Angel of the Lord” until the reader feels the weight of the claim: this Angel receives divine honor, bears the divine name, and is recognized as God, and therefore cannot be a created messenger. The same Word who would later take flesh was already drawing near to the faithful as Mediator, leading Israel in the wilderness, and receiving titles and works that belong to Yahweh alone. Calvin’s point is not to multiply gods, but to show that Israel’s God is the very God fully revealed in Christ, so that when the apostles confess Jesus as Lord, they are not offering a new deity, but naming the God who has been there all along.

Readings: John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 13 (Sections 10–13)

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In today’s reading from Calvin’s Institutes, we are confronted with one of the most decisive claims of historic Christianity: that the Word is eternally God, without beginning, change, or diminution. Calvin shows that denying the eternity of the Word—even while claiming to honor Christ—introduces change into God Himself and collapses the doctrine of divine immutability. Drawing from Moses, the prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the apostles, Calvin traces a single, unbroken testimony: the Son who becomes incarnate is the same Lord who spoke in creation, appeared as the Angel of the Lord, led Israel in the wilderness, and now reigns as eternal Judge. From Psalm 45 to Isaiah 9, from Jeremiah’s “The Lord Our Righteousness” to Thomas’s confession, “My Lord and my God,” Scripture does not merely suggest Christ’s divinity—it insists upon it. This reading presses us beyond vague affirmations and forces a clear conclusion: the one God of Israel has fully revealed Himself in the eternal Word, Jesus Christ.

Readings:

John Calvin

Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 1, Chapter 13, Sections 8–9

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What does it really mean to say that God is one—and yet Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? In this reading, John Calvin confronts both ancient and modern distortions of God by grounding our knowledge of Him in Scripture’s revelation of His infinite, spiritual nature and His triune being. Calvin explains why God cannot be reduced to creation, imagination, or philosophical abstraction, and why the Church was forced to speak precisely when heresy threatened the gospel. From the eternal Word active in creation to the careful use of terms like person and substance, this chapter presses us toward humility before mystery without surrendering clarity. True worship, Calvin insists, begins where God reveals Himself—and nowhere else.

Readings:

John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion Book 1, Chapter 13, Sections 1–7

Augustine The Confessions

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica

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In this reading from Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin presses a simple but unsettling claim: true knowledge of God always demands exclusive worship, and the moment that worship is shared—even subtly—true religion collapses into superstition. Calvin exposes how idolatry rarely begins with open rebellion, but with divided devotion: God is confessed as supreme while His honor is quietly redistributed to others. By tracing this pattern through Scripture and church practice, he dismantles Rome’s distinction between “service” and “worship,” showing that sacred reverence cannot be redirected without robbing God of His glory. From Paul’s rebuke of false service to Christ’s refusal of even a gesture of homage, Calvin insists that God’s name, authority, and worship belong to Him alone—and that the human heart remains dangerously inclined to give them away.

Readings:

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Book 1, Chapter 12

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Calvin closes this chapter by appealing not only to Scripture but to history itself. For the first five centuries of the Church—when doctrine was purer and faith more disciplined—Christian worship spaces were entirely without images. This was not oversight, but wisdom. Augustine warned that once images are placed before praying people, they inevitably work upon the imagination as if they were alive, drawing weak minds toward superstition. History proved him right: wherever images entered the Church, idolatry soon followed. Calvin then turns to the Second Council of Nicaea and exposes how far things had fallen by the eighth century—where Scripture was twisted, dreams were treated as revelation, incense was offered to images, and believers were commanded to rejoice in sacrificing to painted representations of Christ. The council’s reasoning was not only unbiblical but embarrassing, erasing any meaningful distinction between worshiping God and venerating images. Calvin’s conclusion is stark: Christ has already given His Church visible signs of His own choosing—Word and Sacrament—and when images are added to His worship, they do not strengthen faith; they replace it with superstition.

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Here Calvin traces idolatry to its true source: the human desire to make God tangible. Once the mind fashions a visible form of God, worship inevitably attaches itself to that form, no matter how carefully the act is explained or renamed. Calvin exposes the long-standing defense that images merely assist devotion, showing that the same arguments were used by ancient idolaters and rejected by Scripture. Whether one claims to worship God through an image or merely to honor it, the act remains the same—divine reverence is transferred to what is created. Calvin is especially sharp in dismissing the verbal distinction between “veneration” and “worship,” calling it a linguistic evasion that changes nothing in reality. He concludes by affirming that art itself is a gift of God, but God’s majesty—being invisible and infinite—must never be represented visually. What can be seen may be depicted; God, who transcends sight, must be known only as He has revealed Himself: by His Word.

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