GroshLink

Christianity Today's Church History quote for the week caught my attention:

Wherever we find the Word of God surely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there, it is not to be doubted, is a church of God. -- John Calvin

Not bad, but ... I'd like to see the larger context for this quote.  In particular, was this a response to a question or small part of a larger section which gives reference to the Father and the Holy Spirit?  Tough to have one's numerous writings chopped up, analzyed, and stereotyped over close to 500 years!  If you're unfamiliar with Calvin and from Baptist circles, I'd encourage you to take a few minutes to read "What Baptists Can Learn From Calvin: The Genevan Reformer's words are still worth hearing today" (Timothy George). Below are two sections which I pass along for your consideration:

In their recent "battles" over the Bible, Baptists have much to learn from Calvin's engagement with Scripture. He would agree without hesitation that the Bible is totally truthful in all that it affirms, but he also recognized that this insight, as well as the Christological meaning of Scripture, was not achieved by systematic logic or empirical investigation. Inspiration and illumination are both the work of God's Spirit, the Spirit of truth who invariably draws us to Christ who is the Truth as well as the Way and the Life (John 14:6). ...

One of the greatest differences between the Baptists of the 17th century and the earlier Anabaptists during the time of Luther and Calvin was their attitude toward the world. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that while Lutherans accepted the world as a necessary evil and Anabaptists withdrew from the world as the domain of sin and corruption, Calvinists engaged the world as "the theater of God's glory," seeking to reform and transform it in keeping with the purposes and will of God. In their history, Baptists have sometimes wavered among these three models of engagement. But at their best, Baptists have been in the vanguard of those seeking religious freedom, human rights, and democratic forms of government. John Wesley once claimed that he came within "a hair's breadth of Calvinism," and nowhere was this more true than in his statement, "The world is my parish!" Baptists, too, have gone into every corner of the world proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ to persons of every race, nation, and language group. They have worked for the abolition of the slave trade, the political emancipation of women, the protection of unborn human life, prison reform, and many other movements for social justice.