[eBook] Institutes of the Christian Religion

A colossal milestone of Christian thought—at an irresistible price!
Here in a convenient one-volume edition is John Calvin’s magnum opus. Written as an introduction to the Christian life, the Institutes remains the best articulation of Reformation principles and is a marvelous introduction to biblical Christianity. Newly retypeset for clarity, this volume translated by Henry Beveridge offers a more affordable edition of one of the last millennium’s must-have works. This book will appeal to libraries, seminarians, pastors, and laypeople.

Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin is an introduction to the Bible and a vindication of Reformation principles by one of the Reformation’s finest scholars. At the age of twenty-six, Calvin published several revisions of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, a seminal work in Christian theology that altered the course of Western history 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). The book was written as an introductory textbook on the Protestant faith for those with some learning already and covered a broad range of theological topics from the doctrines of church and sacraments to justification by faith alone. It vigorously attacked the teachings of those Calvin considered unorthodox, particularly Roman Catholicism, to which Calvin says he had been “strongly devoted” before his conversion to Protestantism. The overarching theme of the book—and Calvin’s greatest theological legacy—is the idea of God’s total sovereignty, particularly in salvation and election.

John Calvin (1509–1564), a French theologian and reformer, was persecuted as a Protestant. As a result, he traveled from place to place. In 1534 at Angouleme he began the work of systematizing Protestant thought in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, one of the most influential theological works of all time.