Calvin: The Accommodation of Revelation and the Inner Testimony of the Spirit

Calvin begins the Institutes by saying that nearly all human knowledge consists of the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. The natural awareness of divinity only renders human beings inexcusable, and in revelation God "accommodates" himself to our limited perception, as a good orator to an audience or a mother to her child; biblical anthropomorphisms are God's "baby talk." Scripture can be called the Word of God because its content is Jesus Christ himself; it does not borrow its authority from the Church, but the Church is built on the foundation of the prophets and apostles, now found in Scripture. Rational grounds for believing Scripture are not enough to prove that it is the Word of God: that is known only by the inner testimony of the Spirit.