Heart Aflame: Daily Readings from Calvin on the Psalms
Reviewed by Robert P. Mills, May 24, 1999
To the extent that Presbyterians today think of John Calvin at all, they most likely picture him an austere intellectual, a dogmatic theologian in the most unflattering sense of the term.
While his towering intellect continues to influence Reformed theology, it is equally true, if less often remarked, that Calvin was a pastor who loved both the Holy Scriptures and the flock entrusted to his care. His twin devotions are reflected in the fact that he wrote commentaries on almost every book of the Bible, of which his commentary on the Psalms is perhaps the most personal.
Heart Aflame: Daily Readings from Calvin on the Psalms divides the Psalms into 366 daily readings and offers a page of Calvin’s comments on each. The excerpts skip Calvin’s discussions of most critical and textual issues. Instead they focus on his insights into Christian faith and life.
Consider his discussion of the promise “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4):
“This does not imply that the godly immediately obtain whatever their fancy may suggest to them; nor would it be for their profit that God should grant them all their vain desires. The meaning simply is, that if we stay our minds wholly upon God, instead of allowing our imaginations like others to roam after idle and frivolous fancies, all other things will be bestowed upon us in due season.”
Of Psalm 119:11, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you,” Calvin observes:
“Among scholars, those whose knowledge is confined to books, if they have not the book always before them, readily discover their ignorance; in like manner, if we do not imbibe the doctrine of God, and are well acquainted with it, Satan will easily surprise and entangle us in his meshes. Our true safeguard, then, lies not in a slender knowledge of his law, or in a careless perusal of it, but in hiding it deeply in our hearts.”
In the preface to his 1557 commentary, Calvin said of the Psalms:
“there is no other book in which we are more perfectly taught the right manner of praising God, or in which we are more powerfully stirred up to the performance of this religious exercise. Moreover, although the Psalms are replete with all the precepts which serve to frame our life to every part of holiness, piety, and righteousness, yet they will principally teach and train us to bear the cross; and the bearing of the cross is a genuine proof our obedience, since by doing this, we renounce the guidance of our own affections, and submit ourselves entirely to God.”
Those who spend a year reading through the Psalms will find themselves being trained in prayer and praise, in carrying the cross and increasing in obedience. Those who read the Psalms with Heart Aflame as a guide will find their journeys immeasurably enhanced by the rich spiritual insights of John Calvin, a scholar who loved God with all his mind, a pastor whose heart was aflame with a passion for Christ.