Blogging The Institutes

"Catabaptists" is Calvin's term for "Anabaptists" - the sixteenth century radicals who basically wanted nothing to do with the earthly state, and did not encourage concern for the office of a magistrate or (in this case) the monarch. Calvin is keen to demonstrate to the King that Protestants,...

How is the true church to be known? Calvin's response in the preface to the Institutes is clear: it is known by "the pure preaching of God's Word and the lawful administration of the sacraments." Contrary to Roman insistence that the church is always marked by great pomp and is always visible,...

Rome's antagonism towards the Reformers, and Calvin in particular, was that what they taught was "new" and "of recent birth." To this charge Calvin responds with evident feeling: "First, by calling it "new" they do great wrong to God, whose Sacred Word does not deserve to be accused of novelty...

Although the Institutes itself grew five-fold from its first to the fifth edition, the contents of the Preface written to King Francis I remained largely the same. Precedent for publishing an introductory theological essay to the King had been set by both Guillaume Farel and Huldrych Zwingli in...

A reader asked about the different English translations of Calvin's Institutes . Any translation would probably be serviceable in understanding Calvin's main intent. We will be using the Battles/McNeill translation for blogging through the Institutes. There are four main English translators/...

That's why I am excitedly looking forward to reading through The Institutes with the Ref21 gang. Calvin was an incredibly fruitful discipler of man. By God's grace he turned out hundreds of men for the ministry, shaping them according to God's word and filling them with a majestic vision of God and...

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...

The Reformers affirmed the necessary distinction between the church visible and invisible; that is, between the one church of Christ on earth as man sees it, and the one church in heaven and earth as God sees it. The one is related to other but cannot be identified as equal. The identity between...

It is a dangerous and impious zeal that seeks to "unchurch" a brother or sister because they do not meet our standards of perfection. Discipline in the church, Calvin argues, must be done with a measure of grace and understanding; it must be on biblical grounds and not out of rigid severity. In the...

Common as it is today to cast the burden of examination prior to participation at the Lord's Supper upon the participant, Calvin saw it otherwise: knowingly and willingly to admit "an unworthy person whom he could rightfully turn away, is as guilty of sacrilege as if he had cast the Lord's body to...