The Institutes Of The Christian Religion: Vol. 1 Of 3

by Walter Camp

"Institutes of the Christian Religion is John Calvin's seminal work on Protestant systematic theology that altered the course of Western history as much as any other book and that is still read by theological students today. It was published in Latin in 1536 and in his native French in 1541, with the definitive editions appearing in 1559 (Latin) and in 1560 (French)." (Quote from wikipedia.org)

Table of Contents:

Publisher's Preface; Prefaces; Introduction; The Printers To The Readers; The Original Translator's Preface; Prefatory Address To His Most Christian Majesty, The Most Mighty And Illustrious Monarch, Francis, King Of The French, His Sovereign His Sovereign; John Calvin Prays Peace And Salvation In Christ ; The Epistle To The Reader; Subject Of The Present Work; Epistle To The Reader; Method And Arrangement,or Subject Of The Whole Work; General Index Of Chapters; Of The Knowledge Of God The Creator; Argument; The Knowledge Of God And Of Ourselves Mutually Connected. —nature Of The Connection; What It Is To Know God,—tendency Of This Knowledge; The Knowledge Of God Naturally Implanted In The Human Mind; The Knowledge Of God Stifled Or Corrupted, Ignorantly Or Maliciously; The Knowledge Of God Conspicuous In The Creation, And Continual Government Of The World; The Need Of Scripture, As A Guide And Teacher, In Coming To God As A Creator; The Testimony Of The Spirit Necessary To Give Full Authority To Scripture. The Impiety Of Pretending That The Credibility Of Scripture Depends On The Judgment Of The Church; The Credibility Of Scripture Sufficiently Proved In So Far As Natural Reason Admits; All The Principles Of Piety Subverted By Fanatics, Who Substitute Revelations For Scripture; In Scripture, The True God Opposed, Exclusively, To All The Gods Of The Heathen; Impiety Of Attributing A visible Form To God.—the Setting Up Of Idols A Defection From The True God; God Distinguished From Idols, That He May Be The Exclusive Object Of Worship; The Unity Of The Divine Essence In Three Persons Taught, In Scripture, From The Foundation Of The World; In The Creation Of The World, And All Things In It, The True God Distinguished By Certain Marks From Fictitious Gods; State In Which Man Was Created. The Faculties Of The Soul—the Image Of God—free Will—original Righteousness; The World, Created By God, Still Cherished And Protected By Him. Each And All Of Its Parts Governed By His Providence; Use To Be Made Of The Doctrine Of Providence; The Instrumentality Of The Wicked Employed By God, While He Continues Free From Every Taint.14 ; Of The Knowledge Of God The Redeemer, In Christ, As First Manifested To The Fathers, Under The Law, And Thereafter To Us Under The Gospel; Argument; Through The Fall And Revolt Of Adam, The Whole Human Race Made Accursed And Degenerate. Of Original Sin; Man Now Deprived Of Freedom Of Will, And Miserably Enslaved; Every Thing Proceeding From The Corrupt Nature Of Man Damnable; How God Works In The Hearts Of Men; The Arguments Usually Alleged In Support Of Free Will Refuted; Redemption For Man Lost To Be Sought In Christ; The Law Given, Not To Retain A People For Itself, But To Keep Alive The Hope Of Salvation In Christ Until His Advent; Exposition Of The Moral Law; Christ, Though Known To The Jews Under The Law, Yet Only Manifested Under The Gospel; The Resemblance Between The Old Testament And The New ; The Difference Between The Two Testaments; Christ, To Perform The Office Of Mediator, Behoved To Become Man; Christ Clothed With The True Substance Of Human Nature; How Two Natures Constitute The Person Of The Mediator; Three Things Briefly To Be Regarded In Christ—viz. His Offices Of Prophet, King, And Priest; How Christ Performed The Office Of Redeemer In Procuring Our Salvation. The Death, Resurrection, And Ascension Of Christ; Christ Rightly And Properly Said To Have Merited Grace And Salvation For Us; Endnotes

About the Publisher:

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

559 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1536

About the author

Walter Chauncey Camp (1859 - 1925) was an American football player, coach, and sports writer known as the "Father of American Football". Among a long list of inventions, he created the sport's line of scrimmage and the system of downs.

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.