Socrates is famous for his dictum “Know thyself.” The pursuit of self has become all-consuming in our day. Self-awareness is now the coveted brass ring.
John Calvin (1509-1564) is hardly the first person people think of in relation to the self. People have strong opinions of Calvin. Please, don’t go there. We can take up the debate about predestination some other time and allow the alleged heretic Servetus to rest in peace. Today’s focus concerns a single insight from Calvin’s introduction to his Institutes of the Christian Religion. For the record, Calvin first published his magnum opus on theology at the tender age of twenty-seven, about the age many young men in our day emerge from their adolescent slumber. He wrote something many moderns would give hearty approval, “Without the knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God.” How curious that this Protestant Reformer, renowned for what he writes about God’s sovereignty, would begin with self-knowledge. But wait, there’s more. He goes on to write something seemingly contradictory, “Without the knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self.” Calvin asserts that knowing God and knowing self are inextricably linked. In his words, “They are connected with many ties.” We can’t know God without knowing self just as we can’t properly know self without knowing God. Bravo, Calvin! How instructive for our age that wants to separate the two.
The following prayer Calvin utilized as a “Prayer Upon Rising from Sleep.”