Bavinck kommentiert in seiner Vorlesung zum 400-jährigen Jubliläum von Calivin (1909) zum Kern der Institutio:
The certainty of which Calvin speaks in the Institutes is definitely not of a scientific or scholarly kind but of a religious-moral sort. For Calvin this faith is a matter of absolute certainty— it is sure and solid because of the Holy Spirit’s work in the human heart. Nothing in the entire world can satisfy us but the grace of God in the person of Christ who comes to us in the pages of Holy Scripture.
… The essence of the Christian faith was and remained for Calvin this simple truth: In Scripture God tells us how much he loves us. The content of special revelation is God’s mercy towards us and the assurance that this mercy effects in our hearts. Revelation and experience of salvation are intimately bound together. Objective truth and subjective assurance—unshakeable confidence about the reality of revelation and undoubting certainty about our own salvation— belong together as two halves of the same ring. Faith embraces both together in one and the same act.
Herman Bavinck, John Calvin: A Lecture on the Occasion of his 400th Birthday, trans. John Bolt
