Book Review: Knowing Sin
Book Review: Knowing Sin Dan Crabtree It’s a horrible, necessary paradox in the Christian life: If you want to know God more, then you need to know your sin more, too. Here’s how Calvin put it at the outset of his systematic theology, The Institutes of the Christian Religion: “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves… Thus, our feeling of ignorance, vanity, want, weakness, in short, depravity and corruption, reminds us, that in the Lord, and none but He, dwell the true light of wisdom, solid virtue, exuberant goodness. We are accordingly urged by our own evil things to consider the good things of God; and, indeed, we cannot aspire to Him in earnest until we have begun to be displeased with ourselves.” Calvin, Institutes, I:1, 37-38. Calvin’s point is not that our great, immortal, all-wise God is in some way dependent on our sin to be who he is, but exactly the opposite. Because we