Taking the Reformers for Granted

I started reading the intro. to Calvin's Institutes. It's amazing how oblivious I am to the Reformers' suffering after all the theology I've studied. I think I've focused more on what they believed than who they were as people. And I'm grateful that John Calvin took the risk and wrote his Institutes. I'm not sure if I'll get them read before I have to return the book. If not, hopefully it will make good vacation reading. But then again, hopefully I'll begin to get started. I'm still trying to look at the eyes through the world of Calvinism to see whether this is a plausible perspective. I experienced two things today that made me think of this perspective. The first was in the church service I participated in today. It was in English, which was a nice change. We sang a sang that spoke of submitting to the Lordship of Christ. This struck me as odd in a way. If God is sovereign then why are we submitting ourselves to the Lordship of Christ? Doesn't Christ already have us? But then I wondered if there could be a paradox in that and if that is part of the futility of being human, that we don't really have a right to choose. The other was in an e-mail from a student who spoke of "losing" the Holy Spirit. I began to wonder what it might be like to not be able to lose the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is a downpayment which is to serve as a guarantee of what is to come, how could we lose the Holy Spirit. I hope s/he only meant that s/he felt like s/he had lost the Holy Spirit, but I suppose both are plausible in Wesleyan or Arminian thought.