Blogging The Institutes

Calvin discusses the adequacy of the Lord's prayer as a binding rule for his people. It is a summary both of what is acceptable to God, and what, consequently, is necessary for us. To add to this, or go beyond it, is to seek to add to God's wisdom, to go beyond God's will, and to stray from God. It...

Calvin's sensitivity to the different circumstances in which people live lead him to flip-flop, or at least to be somewhat ambivalent in his attitude to the magistrate. Citing the case of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. 27), Scripture requires obedience to bad kings, and even to pray for the well being of the...

No doubt having the Anabaptists in mind, and having already defended the right to litigate, Calvin proceeds to defend the entire judicial process. He discourages using the law for the taking of revenge, but upholds the use of due process, 'through which God may work for our good'. (It is...

Calvin's Institutes opens with a strikingly important sentence--crafted first by a young man in his mid-twenties and only fine tuned between its first appearance in 1536 and its final expression a few years before his death. Wisdom--the knowledge coupled with practical understanding and piety that...

The Institutes begins with an introductory, "To the Reader" making references to the unexpected "success" of "the first edition" (1536), the "summary" nature of its contents, the publication of further editions (in Latin: 1539, 1543, 1550 and 1559; and in French: 1541 and 1560), and the hope that...

Why should you read through Calvin's Institutes with the lads here at ref21 as we blog through this work every weekday of 2009? Ten reasons: 1. Because it the most important book written in the last 500 years. 2. Because it is foundational for every Reformed systematic theology ever since. 3...

I remember where I was when I got my very first copy of Calvin's Institutes . I was crossing the Minch on the Caledonian Macbrayne ferry that takes over two and a half hours to travel between my native Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides and the mainland of Scotland. A Free Church elder who is now...

Some find it misguided to praise men. It was, after all, the Corinthian problem that they openly declared their allegiance to men: Apollos, Paul, or Peter. In doing so they caused major divisions in the Corinthian church. But we are not, I think, to conclude from this that we are never to express...