I think Augustine’s well-known saying is correct: humanity’s natural gifts were corrupted by sin and humanity’s supernatural gifts were withdrawn. The supernatural gifts would have included faith and righteousness, which would have been sufficient for people to attain eternal life and happiness. When humanity rebelled against God, they were deprived of the spiritual gifts which would have given them the hope of eternal salvation. Therefore, people are now exiles from God’s kingdom. All the things necessary for a blessed with God are extinguished until they are recovered through regeneration. Among these gifts are faith, love for God, love for neighbor and the pursuit of righteousness and holiness. When all of these gifts are restored to us by Christ, they come from him, not ourselves. If the restoration of these things comes in Christ, then we can know that they were previously non-existent in us.

Besides the revocation of the supernatural gifts, we lost so-called “natural gifts” such as a sound mind and heart of integrity. Although there is still some residue of intelligence, discernment and well within us, we cannot designate a mind to be “sound,” which is both weak and immersed in darkness. If we talk about the will, well, its depravity is well known. Since the ability to reason and discern between good and evil is a natural gift, it could not be entirely destroyed. It is weakened and corrupted, however. A shapeless ruin is all that remains of it. This is why John writes, “The light shines in the darkness but the darkness could not comprehend it” (John 1:5). His words clearly express both points. Even in the perverted and degenerate nature of humans, there are still some sparks of rationality. People are different from unreasoning animals. Yet, the light of the gospel is so smothered by clouds of darkness that it cannot break through them. In a similar way, the will did not fully perish because it is inseparable of human nature. Instead, it was so enslaved by depraved lusts that it is incapable of one righteous desire.

Now that the definition is complete, I need to explain several points. Since I previously divided the soul between intellect and will, I want to know look at the power of the intellect more closely. To believe that the intellect is perpetually blind so that there is absolutely no intelligence in people is repugnant not only to the Word of god but also common experience. Most people desire to find out the truth. They would never desire to do so if some love for truth did not exist before. Again, people are not like irrational animals. They investigate and search out truth. Still, it is the true that this love of truth fails before it reaches its goal. The human mind cannot pursue the right path of investigation because of its dullness. It stumbles around looking for the truth as if it were in a dark room. Our intellect also has another terrible defect: it often fails to know the right knowledge to acquire. It often get side-tracked in superfluous and useless discussions. It will often avoid knowing what needs to be known or only cast a parting glance at them. It hardly ever studies the most important things in earnest. So many pagan writers complain about this tendency of the human mind, and yet, they do it themselves! This is why Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, criticizes all the people who think they’ve attained the highest wisdom, when, in reality, they are vain and frivolous.

“Blogging the Institutes” is my on-going attempt to paraphrase John Calvin’s work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. You can find out more about the series in the Introduction. For all the posts in this series, check out the Master List.