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...

When is a "church" not a church? How do we recognize the true church of Jesus Christ? And how do we discern the false? Calvin's answer, in the Institutes 4.2.1 - 4.2.12, to what was in his day--and remains--an important question, is, essentially: the ministry of the Word and of the sacraments of...

Calvin's great concern is that Christians should "rightly use the Lord's Supper." He is, from beginning to end, a pastoral theologian (surely any other kind is guilty of a category mistake?). In seeking to serve the church he wants to be sensitive to two things: (i) the mystery of the Lord's Supper...

One of the perplexities we modern Christians encounter in admiring magisterial reformers like Calvin is the severity of their attitude to, and treatment of, Anabaptists. In Calvin's case this may seem all the more mysterious since he married the widow of a former Anabaptist! Our problem is partly--...

For some, Calvin seems to be at his most feisty when he writes on the sacraments. Against those who complain that infant baptism is a travesty of the gospel, he stoutly insists "these darts are aimed more at God than at us"! But a little reflection reveals he is also at his most thoughtful, and his...

The episcopacy that holds the church together in unity is not man's but Christ's. The unity of the church, therefore, is not a formal, historical reality made concrete in an institution (the college of bishops or the pope). Rather it is a dynamic reality, born out of living union and communion with...

The 16th century Reformers fought to win back the keys of the kingdom. Calvin held that ordinarily there is no salvation outside of the church, but he did not hold that the church itself was the repository of forgiveness. No, forgiveness comes through the preaching of the gospel and its application...

The Institutes is a great work of theology. But it is difficult to find the right adjective for the kind of theology it represents--systematic, biblical ecclesiastical, pastoral? It is certainly all of the above. Calvin engages the mind, heart, will, affections, as he writes. He does not want to...

Christians are not the only ones who have discussed the virtue of patience. But what distinguishes biblical teaching from that of the philosophers is the grand sense of purpose and design. Granted pagan philosophers at times saw that affliction tests us--but to what glorious end? By contrast the...

The Institutes almost demand multiple readings. Not only because the work is so rich in doctrinal perspective, but also because it is, in fact, full of striking "one-liners." Such surely include these words: "the chief part of self-denial ... looks to God" (III. 7.8). There is a verbal paradox here...

Ungodly people always take the higher ground when arguing with God and the lower ground when living their own lives. Is God unjust to visit iniquities on successive generations? On the contrary, Calvin argues, we are all responsible human beings and are punished for our own offences. Note how he...

There is more to obedience to God's commandments than meets the eye! Calvin's reason? The law is full of synecdoche. Synecdoche?--that un-spellable figure of speech from High School English in which the whole of something is used to refer to a part, or a part is used to designate the whole. In...

God has revealed himself above and below man, in the cosmos; he has also revealed himself in man, since he is God's image. But we might also say that God reveals himself around man in his providential governing of the universe. As God directs and superintends the flow of history two things become...

Man is God's image. The implanted knowledge of God is universal. Yes, perverted and fragmented by the fall, but still real.. It gives rise to the seed of religion, notes Calvin. An instinct to praise and worship is inbuilt in all men. Testimony to it is seen in distorted form in idolatry (whether...