Packer on the Institutes

A helpful book to have in your library is A Theological Guide to Calvin's Institutes: Essays and Analysis, ed. David Hall and Peter Lillback.

J.I. Packer has a most helpful foreword, which is a helpful preface to reading the Institutes itself. You can read the foreword online.

Here is an excerpt:

Great theology, like the Bible in which all great theology is soaked, is essentially transhistorical and transcultural, and interprets us, joltingly sometimes, as we seek to interpret it. The 1559 Institutio is great theology, and it is uncanny how often, as we read and re-read it, we come across passages that seem to speak directly across the centuries to our own hearts and our own present-day theological debates. You never seem to get to the book's bottom; it keeps opening up as a veritable treasure trove of biblical wisdom on all the main themes of the Christian faith. Do you, I wonder, know what I am talking about? Dig into the Institutio, and you soon will.