OF THE MIND
But we are drunk with the false opinion of our own insight and are thus extremely reluctant to admit that it is utterly blind and stupid in divine matters. Hence, it will be more effective, I believe, to prove this fact by Scriptural testimonies than by reason. John very beautifully teaches it in a passage that I have previously quoted; he writes that: “Life was in God from the beginning and that life was the light of men; this light shines in the darkness, but the darkness comprehends it not” (John 1:4–5). He shows that man’s soul is so illumined by the brightness of God’s light as never to be without some slight flame or at least a spark of it; but that even with this illumination it does not comprehend God. Why is this? Because man’s keenness of mind is mere blindness as far as the knowledge of God is concerned. For when the Spirit calls men “darkness,” he at once denies them any ability of spiritual understanding. Therefore he declares that those believers who embrace Christ are “born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). This means: Flesh is not capable of such lofty wisdom as to conceive God and what is God’s, unless it be illumined by the Spirit of God. As Christ testified, the fact that Peter recognized him was a special revelation of the Father (Matt. 16:17).
Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 278.
OF THE WILL
We must now examine whether in other respects the will is so deeply vitiated and corrupted in its every part that it can beget nothing but evil; or whether it retains any portion unimpaired, from which good desires may be born.
Those who attribute to God’s first grace the fact that we effectually will, seem to imply, on the other hand, that there is a faculty in the soul voluntarily to aspire to good, but one too feeble to be able to come forth into firm intention, or to arouse effort. There is no doubt that this opinion, taken from Origen and certain other ancient writers, was commonly held by the Schoolmen: they usually consider man in “mere nature,” as they phrase it. As such, man is described in the apostle’s words: “For I do not do the good I will, but the evil I do not will is what I do. It lies in my power to will, but I find myself unable to accomplish” (Rom. 7:19, 18, cf. Vg.). But they wrongly pervert the whole argument that Paul is pursuing here. For he is discussing the Christian struggle (more brielfy touched in Galatians (ch. 5:17)), which believers constantly feel in themselves in the conflict between flesh and spirit. But the Spirit comes, not from nature, but from regeneration… He declares that it is not he who does evil, but sin dwelling in him (Rom. 7:20). What does he mean by this correction: “In me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7:18)? It is as if he were speaking in this way: “Good does not dwell in me of myself, for nothing good is to be found in my flesh.”
ibid. 278.
OF DEPRAVITY IN GENERAL
With these thunderbolts [of Rom. 3:10–18] he inveighs not against particular men but against the whole race of Adam’s children. Nor is he decrying the depraved morals of one age or another, but indicting the unvarying corruption of our nature. Now his intention in this passage is not simply to rebuke men that they may repent, but rather to teach them that they have all been overwhelmed by an unavoidable calamity from which only God’s mercy can deliver them. Because this could not be proved unless it rested upon the ruin and destruction of our nature, he put forward these testimonies which prove our nature utterly lost...
For as the body, so long as it nourishes in itself the cause and matter of disease (even though pain does not yet rage), will not be called healthy, so also will the soul not be considered healthy while it abounds with so many fevers of vice. This comparison, however, does not fit in every detail. For in the diseased body some vigor of life yet remains; although the soul, plunged into this deadly abyss, is not only burdened with vices, but is utterly devoid of all good.
ibid. 291, 292.