Next, let’s talk about the manual and liberal arts. In these areas, the full force of human intellect is displayed. Of course, not everyone is able to equally learn all of the arts. Yet most people have some capacity to display intelligent in some particular art. This capacity extended not only to learning the art but also to improvising and innovating something new.  The ability of people to learn the arts led Plato to adopt the erroneous idea that knowledge was nothing but recollection. Instead, we can understand from the ingenuity of people that the principle of intelligence is naturally implanted in the human mind. Yet while these proofs of human intellect demonstrate that reason and intelligence are universally implanted in the human mind, such facts should also lead every individual to recognize them as a special gift of God. The ability to reason should be considered a call from the Creator himself to us, especially when we consider that some people do not have this ability to reason.

So, although human intellect is natural to all people, it also ought to be regarded as a gracious gift of God’s compassion to us. However, just because some people shine forth with intellectual brilliance does not necessarily provide proof that all people share in this amazing intellect, especially regarding spiritual matters. Still, however, the gift of reason is bestowed on people indiscriminately, even upon both the good and bad, so that it should be classed as a natural ability of the human race.

“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.