Introduction to the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Updated for Modern Readers

I am not a professional theologian. Not yet. Currently I am studying for my Masters in Theological Studies, but I am not a professional theologian yet. However, I am a theologian. We are all theologians.

All of us have a working theology. It begins when we are born and we experience God in the form of our parents. Did they love us? Did they care for us? Did they defend us or neglect us? Did they abandon us? In particular, these questions are answered through our relationship with our fathers. It is no accident that the Bible emphasizes primarily a male gender for God. Our first experience with God comes through our fathers. This is not always a beneficial experience.

As we grow older, we experience God in other ways. We experience the wonders of the natural world. We go to church or we do not. We learn about religion or we do not. We learn to enjoy the existence of God, to deny it, or to hate it. In every case, we form ideas about God. The ideas settle in our hearts and they shape our worldview, our behavior, and our relationships. This is our theology and this is why we are all theologians.

John Calvin was a human like any of us, but with a singular passion for Biblical truth. These kinds of passions are not haphazard but they are given to us by God. In the 16^th century, he published an enormous book and titled it, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. This book was written for men and women to possess a true theology, one not marred by the weakness of our world or the sinfulness of mankind. This book attempts to take the ideas in the Bible and place them in a logical, congruous system. It is not the Bible, but it is a wonderful work nevertheless.

The Institutes was written in French about 500 years ago, then it was translated into English by Henry Beveridge sometime later. The sentence structure is awkward, exhausting, and roundabout and much of the vocabulary is terribly out of date. Calvin’s passion is readily apparent in it, to relate Scriptural truth but also to defend it against long-forgotten naysayers. My goal in this revision is primarily to make Calvin’s meaning clear. I have made every attempt to leave his style intact, but where it conflicts with clarity, I have rewritten. I have also removed a lot of his railing against ancient falsehoods. Well, these kinds of falsehoods rarely die out completely, but I feel now that we need to focus on the truth, and not get bogged down by extraneous 500 year-old controversies that may or may not have much relevance today.

Please continue reading. This book will change your life. Read Scripture and compare what you learn here. Let it reshape your theology as you find out who God truly is and how much he has already done to show you how much he loves you.