Institutes of the Christian Religion [Volume 1 of 2]

by John Calvin, John Allen (Translator)

Institutes of the Christian Religion is John Calvin's seminal work of Protestant systematic theology. It is highly influential in the Western world and is still widely read by theological students today.

Genres: Theology, Christian, Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, Classics, Faith

649 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1536

About the author

French-Swiss theologian John Calvin broke with the Roman Catholic Church in 1533 and as Protestant set forth his tenets, known today, in Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536).

The religious doctrines of John Calvin emphasize the omnipotence of God, whose grace alone saves the elect.

* Jehan Cauvin
* Iohannes Calvinus (Latin)
* Jean Calvin (French)

Originally trained as a humanist lawyer around 1530, he went on to serve as a principal figure in the Reformation. He developed the system later called Calvinism.

After tensions provoked a violent uprising, Calvin fled to Basel and published the first edition of his seminal work. In that year of 1536, William Farel invited Calvin to help reform in Geneva. The city council resisted the implementation of ideas of Calvin and Farel and expelled both men. At the invitation of Martin Bucer, Calvin proceeded to Strasbourg as the minister of refugees. He continued to support the reform movement in Geneva, and people eventually invited him back to lead. Following return, he introduced new forms of government and liturgy. Following an influx of supportive refugees, new elections to the city council forced out opponents of Calvin. Calvin spent his final years, promoting the Reformation in Geneva and throughout Europe.

Calvin tirelessly wrote polemics and apologia. He also exchanged cordial and supportive letters with many reformers, including Philipp Melanchthon and Heinrich Bullinger. In addition, he wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible as well as treatises and confessional documents and regularly gave sermons throughout the week in Geneva. The Augustinian tradition influenced and led Calvin to expound the doctrine of predestination and the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation.

Calvin's writing and preaching provided the seeds for the branch of Protestantism that bears his name. His views live on chiefly in Presbyterian and Reformed denominations, which have spread throughout the world. Calvin's thought exerted considerable influence over major figures and entire movements, such as Puritanism, and some scholars argue that his ideas contributed to the rise of capitalism, individualism, and representative democracy in the west.

Reviews

[Maxwell Kendall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calvin is worth reading directly. It is a delight to see how many have built upon his shoulders in using the same expressions and emphases; including the author's of the reformed confessions, especially the Westminster Standards. Many have drank from this fountain! His theology is devotional, practical, and full of sincere reverence. I especially enjoyed Book III on "How we receive the Grace of Christ" as well as his treatments on the abiding obligations of the moral law in its third use, which made me feel like an antinomian on more than one occasion!

[J.L. Neyhart]

We read some large sections of Calvin's Institutes in my Theodicy class and I still don't care for much of Calvin.

[Alex Yauk]

Book 1 only

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

An apologetic systematic theology. The book was a fascinating look at the genesis of modern conservative systematic theology. It is truly amazing to see how little modern systematics vary from the argumentation that Calvin utilized. Although some of my arguments would vary from some of those used by Calvin, I still have come to study this work with a great sense of admiration. One of the greatest gifts that this work provides is Calvin's strong focus and use of Scripture. Moving away from the medieval scholastics like Anselm, Calvin strongly asserted the importance of sola Scriptura when constructing theology. Whether you agree with Calvin or not, at the very least, you must agree that he most certainly made a substantial contibution to the way we do theology today.

Two other points should be made. First, the work is very dated and reflects controversies of Calvin's day and often proceeds into arguments which most modern readers are unaware of. Second, as noted in the first sentence, the work is extremely apologetic in tone. Often Calvin's tone is very confrontational and aggressive. The prior consideration influences my rating of the work, whereas the second consideration is simply worthy of note for other readers.

[Nathaniel Ennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not ashamed to admit that it took me an entire year to finish this book! Not only does Calvin’s work contain rich, deep theology, but it also has real, practical, boots-on-the-ground applications for Christian living. I learned so much about the controversy of Calvin’s day, and I was also challenged on some of my Baptist presuppositions that I didn’t even know were there! My only regret was that I should have read larger chunks in one sitting rather than bits and pieces here and there. He goes through great lengths to build strong arguments, so it is best to read the arguments in their entirety if possible. Highly recommended to anyone even remotely interested in church history.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Calvin was definitely a man of his times. His description of the Christian faith is often in reaction to the faiths and excesses of his generation, often to the point of Calvin merely setting up straw men so he can knock them down. He is clearly brilliant, and yet the book is attainable. I think he cherry-picks the Scripture that best supports his theology, but I suppose we are all guilty of that. The Church owes a great deal to Calvin. It's sad it has taken me this long to read him...at least via English translators...rather than reading about him.

[Ashton Herrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book was very valuable to me, because I can see where, in modern Christianity, we have inherited a lot of beliefs and values from John Calvin. I can see in reading this that he is a sincere, truly Christian man, but I also see some faults in his theology and logic.

As another reviewer put it, he is a man of his time. He attempts to refute a lot of erroneous theological ideas that were cropping up during his time. Some of them are still relevant today and some not so much. One issue with many such arguments is he sets up strawman arguments and knocks them over and then says that he has defeated the competition. In addition, he tends to rip verses out of their literary and cultural context to support many of his ideas. Again, Calvin seems to be a truly Christian man and so I don’t think he did this intentionally, but it is definitely done by him in this book. He tends to speak very much from a western cultural perspective and tends to ignore or perhaps be in genuine ignorance about many of the eastern cultural flavorings of the Old Testament and in many cases, the New Testament. This I believe is one of the reasons that some of his theological thoughts and arguments are not quite right.

The places I believe he shines on in this book are his sections on Angels and Demons and his generally spiritual answers. He tends to ignore physical, natural world type explanations of spiritual matters and he even puts down logic, saying that God is higher than logic. I have a problem with this because God actually created the world that we live in and the world he created is orderly and wonderful and so can be studied using logic and many times, facts from the natural world.

So there are good points and bad points in Calvin’s writings. His writings are still valuable today , but should be read with caution and the facts in it should be double checked.

[Adrian Fanaca · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jean Calvin was the founder of the Calvinist religion, the harshest of the reform religions. This is a very long book that portraits how humanity in general and Christianity in particular could have been so wrong about most of the things. It is full of references to divinity, of course, however no row in this book is spent proving that there is any real verifiable proof that divinity exists. Of course, as an atheist that used to believe in God in his first ten years of life, I did not read the chapter that referred to divinity or other religious symbols. I read about man being deprived of the freedom of will, how everything proceeds from the corrupt nature of man, about moral law, how to use the present life, the promises of the law, of the Christian liberty, the state of the primitive church, the ancient form of government, the beginning and rise of the romish papacy, the power of the Church, the power of making laws, the jurisdiction of the Church, the discipline of the Church, civil government, but all were long and boring and full of the same references to divinity. We even found completely outrageous statements like "there is no justice without God", that one should not kill, however Christians have killed tens of millions of people so far, perhaps the most out of all religions, and that one should choose a society where nothing is allowed versus a society where everything is allowed, which is crazy to say and even Artificial Intelligence refutes this states and even ordinary people know this with certainty. One thing I learned from this book, that Plato was a fascist who believed that there are super people in this world who give birth to super children, which is a very nasty thing to say for such a revered philosopher like Plato.

[Harley Cottingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 for me. This book is certainly mighty and impressive, and only 1 volume in!
For Calvin’s time, having the lack of resources we now have today, it is exponential his zeal and progress in developing many foundational doctrine and fighting many fights that we no longer have to fight to the same extent. Calvin’s unapologetic stance towards the truth is serious and encouraging.
There are times that seem repetitive, but Calvin even addresses his own tendency towards repetition. Sometimes wording makes it harder to read due to a constraint in the flow of thought. Nonetheless Calvin backs up all he says with scripture and many times quotes the church fathers. Calvin addresses many issues such as predestination, regeneration, Catholicism, works and faith, the trinity, Jesus as divine, etc. Tough and long read! But good one.

[Damon Hawkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a challenging read. I assume this book was originally written in French and translated into English. The language used and the writing style made it difficult to follow and discern the points being made. I had to re-read many sections to understand the author’s argument. Much text was devoted to refuting the doctrines of contemporaries or other ancient sects or religions.

[Hany Abdelmalek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this volume is far better than the second part of the Institutes.

[Joshua Reichard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thick and intense book about Calvin's theology of the Bible. I would recommend to anyone who is looking for a book systematic theology or who wants to better understand the word of God

[Trevor Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calvin does some great expositions of why the Christian life means and is. I do wish he would limit his polemics against the Catholic Church, as the book could be much smaller.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very readable translation. Calvin is remarkable, I can hardly believe he wrote the first edition of this at age 26.

[Jill]

I was reading this with a reformed book book club. We were not reading the entire volume, I read what i was supposed to read.

[Anthony Hellerstedt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calvin assumes that infant baptism is a replacement for infant circumcision, however, I don't see any examples of that in the NT.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great.

[Norjak · Rating 2 out of 5]

1/5 DNF, agree on the main points found minor points sometimes off. Seems to take the long way around to a point.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I actually didn't finish this book. I know, bad me! I only wanted to get the feel of Calvin's writings. I think Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith is more easily understood. I liked some of Calvin's ideas, for an example his idea that Moses did not introduce a new God, but one that had been with the Isrealites for centuries; but some of them were things that I didn't agree with. It was interesting to learn a little more on the idea of the Trinity, but I was never going to finish that book...

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would urge anyone who is interested in theology to at least dip into this. Calvin is a powerful writer and surprisingly readable. Also, many of the ideas people have about Calvin seem to be from his image in the general culture, not from his writings. In "Institutes," Calvin writes with a pastoral tone, compassionate with human weakness, but stern toward hypocrisy and posers.

[Whitney Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has taken me almost a month to read, jot down notes on things I read in this book but I will say that I have learned a lot in the first volume. I will soon begin the journey of reading the second volume, I actually agree with some of the points that Calvin discusses throughout his Institutes on the Christian Religion.

[John Yelverton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not going to lie, this book was very dry reading. That being said, once you get into it, you realize that it's dry like a fine wine, and you are much richer for the experience.

[Shea Layton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank God I'm finally done. Regardless of doctrinal disagreements, Calvin's hubris makes his writings almost unbearable.

[Nehemiah]

I am not up to rating this book in a five star system.

[Gift · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got the very old edition of this book. Very deep yet thought-provoking and edifying.

[Brian Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful scholarship. Deep and enlightening. Faithful and consistent.