Institutes of the Christian Religion

Summary

Institutes of the Christian Religion is John Calvin's ordered account of Christian doctrine, written to train readers in godliness and to show the King of France what his persecuted evangelical subjects actually believed. The library text opens with the Prefatory Address to Francis I, which pleads that the Reformers teach nothing new but the faith of Scripture and the early fathers, and with Calvin's Epistle to the Reader, dated Geneva, 1 August 1559, in which he says he was never satisfied until the work was set in its present order. A short summary of the plan, taken from Caspar Olevianus's epitome, explains that the four books follow the Apostles' Creed: Father, Son, Holy Spirit and Church. Book I treats God the Creator. True wisdom consists in knowing God and ourselves; a sense of deity is planted in every heart, and the created world displays God's glory, yet human minds turn that knowledge into idols. Scripture is therefore needed, and its authority is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. Calvin defends the Trinity against Michael Servetus, discusses angels and the image of God in humanity, and closes with three chapters on providence, the doctrine that God governs every event for the good of his people. Book II treats God the Redeemer. Adam's fall leaves the human will bound to sin; the moral law, expounded commandment by commandment, exposes that condition and points to Christ. The Old and New Testaments are one covenant differently administered. Christ, true God and true man, saves as Prophet, King and Priest. Book III describes how the Holy Spirit joins believers to Christ. Faith is a firm and sure knowledge of God's favour; repentance and a life of self-denial, cross-bearing and hope follow. Long chapters set out justification by faith alone, Christian liberty and prayer, with an exposition of the Lord's Prayer, before Calvin turns to election and predestination and ends with the resurrection. Book IV concerns the Church as the mother of believers, known where the Word is preached and heard and the sacraments rightly administered. Calvin sets out a ministry of pastors, teachers, elders and deacons, criticises the papacy and its claims, defends church discipline, and treats baptism, including infant baptism, and the Lord's Supper, in which Christ truly feeds believers by the Spirit. The last chapter honours civil magistrates as ministers of God while insisting that obedience to rulers must yield to obedience to God. The first edition (Basel, 1536) had six chapters; Calvin enlarged it repeatedly, translated it into French in 1541, and issued the definitive eighty-chapter Latin text at Geneva in 1559.

Plot or Argument

• Prefatory Address and Epistle to the Reader

  Calvin dedicates the work to Francis I, defending French evangelicals against charges of novelty and sedition, and in the 1559 epistle explains that he rewrote the book until its order satisfied him and that it is meant to prepare students for reading Scripture.

• Book I, chapters 1-9: Knowing God and ourselves

  The knowledge of God and of self are bound together. Every person has a sense of deity, and creation is a theatre of God's works, but sin corrupts natural knowledge; Scripture, confirmed by the inward witness of the Spirit rather than by church authority alone, is the sure guide.

• Book I, chapters 10-18: Idols, Trinity, creation and providence

  Calvin forbids images of God, defines the three Persons in one essence against Servetus, treats angels, devils and humanity's original state, and teaches that God's providence governs all events, so that believers may face danger with patience, gratitude and freedom from anxiety.

• Book II, chapters 1-5: The Fall and the bondage of the will

  Original sin corrupts the whole person; the will is not destroyed but is enslaved to sin, so that good works come from grace. Calvin cites Augustine at length and answers arguments for free will.

• Book II, chapters 6-11: Law and covenant

  The law convicts, restrains and guides believers; Calvin expounds the Ten Commandments, and argues that the Old and New Testaments share one covenant of grace, differing in clarity and administration.

• Book II, chapters 12-17: Christ the Mediator

  Christ became man to reconcile God and humanity; his two natures, his threefold office as Prophet, King and Priest, and his obedience, death, resurrection and ascension are traced through the articles of the Creed.

• Book III, chapters 1-10: Faith and the Christian life

  The Spirit unites believers to Christ. Faith is defined, repentance is distinguished from scholastic penance, indulgences and purgatory are rejected, and the famous chapters on self-denial, bearing the cross, meditating on the future life and using present goods rightly describe ordinary Christian living.

• Book III, chapters 11-20: Justification, liberty and prayer

  Justification is God's acceptance of sinners through the forgiveness of sins and the imputed righteousness of Christ, received by faith; Calvin answers Andreas Osiander and the Schoolmen, defines Christian liberty and writes a long chapter on prayer and the Lord's Prayer.

• Book III, chapters 21-25: Election and resurrection

  Calvin teaches that God has chosen some to salvation and passed by others by an eternal decree, presents the doctrine as humbling and comforting for believers, answers objections, and ends the book with the final resurrection.

• Book IV, chapters 1-13: The Church and its order

  The Church is the mother of the faithful, marked by the preached Word and the sacraments. Calvin describes the offices of the ministry, the government of the early church, his case against papal primacy and councils' claims, church discipline and excommunication, and monastic vows.

• Book IV, chapters 14-19: The sacraments

  Sacraments are signs and seals of God's promises. Calvin defends infant baptism against the Anabaptists, teaches a true spiritual feeding on Christ's body and blood in the Supper against both transubstantiation and the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity, rejects the sacrifice of the Mass, and denies sacramental status to five Roman rites.

• Book IV, chapter 20: Civil government

  Magistracy is a calling approved by God; laws, punishments, lawful war and taxes are defended, private persons owe obedience even to unjust rulers, and the closing section limits all obedience: when rulers command what God forbids, God must be obeyed rather than men.

Characters

• John Calvin, author and teacher

  Writes in the first person as a teacher of the Church, preparing students to read Scripture and answering opponents by name.

• Francis I, dedicatee

  King of France, addressed in the Prefatory Address as a ruler misinformed about his evangelical subjects.

• Augustine of Hippo, chief authority after Scripture

  Cited hundreds of times, especially on grace, the will, predestination and the sacraments.

• Michael Servetus, opponent

  Spanish physician and anti-Trinitarian writer whose teaching Calvin refutes in the chapter on the Trinity and elsewhere.

• Andreas Osiander, opponent

  Lutheran theologian whose doctrine of essential righteousness Calvin answers at length in Book III, chapter 11.

• Peter Lombard and the Schoolmen, opponents and sources

  The medieval theologians whose definitions of grace, penance and the sacraments Calvin quotes and disputes.

• The Anabaptists, opponents

  Radical reformers whose rejection of infant baptism and of Christian magistracy Calvin answers in Book IV.

Lessons

• Knowledge of God and knowledge of self belong together

  Calvin's first sentence joins two kinds of knowledge: seeing God's goodness shows us our need, and seeing our need drives us toward God. The whole first book works out this pairing, so that theology is never only about ideas but also about how a person understands himself before his Maker.

  • Why does Calvin say it is hard to decide which of the two kinds of knowledge comes first?
  • How does looking at God's perfection change the way a person judges his own goodness?
  • Can a person know himself truly without reference to God? How would Calvin answer?

• The heart makes idols

  In Book I, chapter 11, Calvin observes that soon after the Flood people were again making gods for themselves, and calls the human mind a forge of idols. For him idolatry is not only bowing to statues but any picture of God shaped by human fancy instead of God's own word.

  • What evidence from Genesis does Calvin give for his claim about the human mind?
  • What might count as an idol in Calvin's broad sense?
  • Why does Calvin think Scripture is needed to correct what nature teaches about God?

• We are not our own

  The chapters on the Christian life (Book III, chapters 6-10) are among the most read parts of the Institutes. Self-denial, patience under the cross, hope of the life to come and grateful, moderate use of earthly goods are presented as the shape of a life that belongs to God.

  • What does Calvin conclude from the claim that we belong to God rather than to ourselves?
  • How does Calvin balance contempt for the present life with gratitude for its good gifts?
  • Which of Calvin's counsels on bearing the cross seems most practical to you?

• Doctrine and comfort

  Calvin presents providence and election not as puzzles for the curious but as comfort for believers: nothing happens apart from God's fatherly care, and salvation rests on God's choice rather than on human merit. He also warns against prying beyond what Scripture says. Lutheran, Catholic and later Arminian readers disputed his account of predestination, and the debate continues among Christians today.

  • Why does Calvin warn against curiosity about God's hidden decrees?
  • How does he answer the objection that election makes people careless about holiness?
  • Why might the same doctrine comfort one reader and alarm another?

• Two kinds of government

  Calvin distinguishes the spiritual kingdom of Christ from civil government but calls both gifts of God. Magistrates deserve honour and obedience as God's ministers, yet the final section of the book sets a limit: no ruler may command what God forbids.

  • Why does Calvin call the magistrate's office a holy calling?
  • What reasons does he give for obeying even a bad ruler?
  • Where does Calvin draw the line of obedience, and what passage of Scripture does he cite?

Context

The Institutes belongs to the second generation of the Protestant Reformation. By the 1530s Luther's protest had spread to France, where evangelicals faced arrest and execution, especially after the Affair of the Placards in October 1534. Calvin, a young humanist and lawyer who had left France, wrote the first edition partly as a catechism and partly as a defence of his persecuted countrymen. Over the next quarter century Geneva became a refuge for Protestants from France, Italy, England and Scotland, and the Institutes became the textbook of the Reformed churches. The work also answered other reformers: Calvin agreed with Luther on justification by faith and the bondage of the will, but differed on the Lord's Supper, on church order and on the use of the law in the Christian life.

Composition

The first Latin edition, Christianae religionis institutio, appeared at Basel in March 1536 in six chapters, with the dedicatory letter to Francis I dated 1535. Calvin enlarged it in 1539 (Strasbourg), translated it into French in 1541, and revised it again in 1543 and 1550. The definitive Latin edition, printed at Geneva by Robert Estienne in 1559, reorganised the material into four books and eighty chapters following the Apostles' Creed; a French version followed in 1560. Thomas Norton's English translation appeared in 1561, John Allen's in 1813, and Henry Beveridge's, used here, for the Calvin Translation Society at Edinburgh in 1845. The library text, from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, gives the complete four books with the Prefatory Address, the Epistle to the Reader and the Method and Arrangement; the modern introduction, the general table of chapters, the translator's footnotes and the indexes are omitted.

Reception

The Institutes shaped the confessions and catechisms of the Reformed world, among them the French Confession (1559), the Scots Confession (1560), the Belgic Confession (1561), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) and later the Westminster Confession (1646), and it was read by Huguenots, Dutch Reformed, Scottish Presbyterians and English and American Puritans. Lutheran theologians, notably Joachim Westphal, rejected its doctrine of the Supper; Roman Catholic writers answered its account of justification, the sacraments and the papacy, and the Council of Trent defined Catholic teaching on these points; Jacobus Arminius and the Remonstrants later challenged the Reformed teaching on predestination, which the Synod of Dort (1618-19) reaffirmed. Historians and theologians continue to differ over how far later Calvinism follows Calvin himself, and the nineteenth-century Dutch statesman Abraham Kuyper presented Calvinism as a whole view of life in his Stone Lectures at Princeton (1898).

Comparisons

• calvin-selected-sermons

  The Institutes sets out Calvin's doctrine in system; the sermons on Timothy and Titus show the same teaching on election, Scripture and church order applied week by week to a Genevan congregation.

• luther-bondage-of-the-will

  Luther's 1525 reply to Erasmus anticipates Book II's case that the fallen will is enslaved to sin; Calvin cites the same Augustinian sources but sets the argument inside a larger system of covenant and providence.

• erasmus-on-free-will

  Erasmus's defence of a limited free will is the position Book II, chapters 2-5 argues against, and reading him shows the humanist case for human cooperation with grace that the Reformed position answers.

• city-of-god

  Augustine is Calvin's most cited authority; his two cities lie behind the Institutes' distinction between Christ's spiritual kingdom and civil government.

• summa-theologica

  Aquinas's Summa is the great medieval systematic theology; comparing its treatment of grace, merit and the sacraments with Calvin's shows where Catholic and Reformed doctrine part ways and where both draw on Augustine.

• the-pilgrims-progress

  Bunyan's allegory dramatises the Reformed teaching of the Institutes on conviction of sin, justification by faith, assurance and perseverance, as Christian loses his burden at the cross.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The first sentence of Book I, chapter 1, and how often later chapters return to the pairing of knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves.
• The chapter headings of Book III, chapters 6-10, which together form a short handbook on the Christian life often printed separately.
• How Calvin introduces predestination in Book III, chapter 21 with warnings against curiosity before he defines the doctrine.
• The title of Book IV, chapter 1, which calls the Church the mother of all the godly, and the two marks by which Calvin says a true church can be recognised.
• The final paragraph of the whole work, where obedience to kings meets the apostles' words in Acts 5:29.

Key terms and names

Institutes (institutio)

From the Latin for instruction or training; Calvin's title signals a handbook of Christian teaching rather than a book of rules.

Sense of deity (sensus divinitatis)

The awareness of God that Calvin says is engraved on every human heart (Book I, ch. 3), so that no one can wholly escape knowing there is a God.

Inward testimony of the Spirit

The Holy Spirit's work of persuading believers that Scripture is God's word; for Calvin this certainty rests on God's witness, not on the Church's authority or on proofs alone.

Providence

God's continuing care and government of all things, including what seems to happen by chance (Book I, chs. 16-18).

Threefold office

Christ's work as Prophet, King and Priest (Book II, ch. 15), a scheme Calvin made standard in Reformed teaching.

Justification

God's act of accepting sinners as righteous through the forgiveness of sins and the imputed righteousness of Christ, received by faith alone (Book III, ch. 11).

Election

God's free choice of those he will save, which Calvin calls part of predestination and treats in Book III, chs. 21-24.

Marks of the Church

The Word of God preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution (Book IV, ch. 1, sec. 9).

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension According to the Method and Arrangement, how do the four books of the Institutes correspond to the Apostles' Creed?
2. Comprehension In Book I, chapter 7, why does Calvin deny that the authority of Scripture depends on the judgment of the Church?
3. Comprehension How does Calvin define faith in Book III, chapter 2, and justification in Book III, chapter 11?
4. Interpretation Calvin says the human mind is a perpetual forge of idols. How does that claim prepare the way for his teaching on Scripture and on worship?
5. Interpretation Calvin presents providence and election as comforts for believers. What makes them comforting in his account, and how does he answer those who find them frightening?
6. Interpretation In the Supper, Calvin says believers truly feed on Christ but that he rather feels than understands how. How does his view differ from both the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran positions he answers?
7. Big Question Calvin ends a book addressed to a king with the claim that God must be obeyed rather than men. How should a Christian weigh honour for rulers against obedience to conscience?
8. Big Question Lutheran, Catholic and Arminian Christians have all disagreed with parts of the Institutes. Choose one disagreement and set out each side's strongest case in its own terms.

Faith Connections

• Romans 14:7-8 (Scripture)

  Paul's words that none of us lives to himself and that we are the Lord's in life and death are the text behind Calvin's chapter on self-denial and the repeated phrase that we are not our own.

• Acts 5:29 (Scripture)

  Peter's answer to the council, that we ought to obey God rather than men, is the verse Calvin sets at the end of his chapter on civil government.

• Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter and On the Predestination of the Saints (Church Fathers)

  Calvin cites Augustine more than any other writer and claims to stand with him on grace and the will; reading Augustine's anti-Pelagian treatises shows what Calvin inherited.

• Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Question 1 (Great Conversation)

  The catechism's first answer, that my only comfort in life and death is that I belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, echoes the Institutes' teaching that we are not our own but God's.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: True wisdom is the knowledge of God and of ourselves; fallen people corrupt their natural knowledge of God into idols; therefore they need Scripture, sealed by the Spirit, to know God as Creator and, in Christ, as Redeemer; the Spirit unites believers to Christ by faith, through which they are justified freely and sanctified; and God sustains this faith through the ordered ministry, sacraments and discipline of the Church, while civil government protects outward peace under God's authority.

Rhetorical device: anaphora. In Book III, ch. 7, sec. 1, Calvin repeats We are not our own three times and then We are God's three times, turning a doctrine into a rhythm the reader can carry.

Debate: Resolved: that the authority of Scripture is established by the inward testimony of the Spirit rather than by the judgment of the Church.

Memory Work

Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.

We are not our own; therefore, neither is our own reason or will to rule our acts and counsels. We are not our own; therefore, let us not make it our end to seek what may be agreeable to our carnal nature. We are not our own; therefore, as far as possible, let us forget ourselves and the things that are ours. On the other hand, we are God's; let us, therefore, live and die to him (Rom. 14:8).

Writing Prompts

Essay: Calvin claims that knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves are so connected that each leads to the other. Using Book I, chapter 1, Book II, chapter 1 and Book III, chapter 7, explain how this claim shapes his account of humility and the Christian life.

Comparison with The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio): Compare Luther's argument against Erasmus with Calvin's Book II, chapters 2-5. Where do the two reformers agree about the fallen will, and what does Calvin add or change?

Medical Lens

The Institutes is a work of theology, but a few passages bear on the history of medicine and on the care of anxious minds. In Book I, chapter 5, Calvin cites Galen's On the Usefulness of the Parts as the kind of anatomical learning that reveals the Creator's skill in the human frame, and repeats the old philosophical description of man as a microcosm; physicians, like astronomers, are said to see God's wisdom more fully than others. Book I, chapter 17 is a classic Reformed text of pastoral consolation: Calvin lists the countless dangers of ordinary life, calling the body a receptacle and nurse of a thousand diseases, and argues that trust in providence frees the believer from crushing anxiety while still requiring prudent use of means, including remedies and precautions. Book III, chapters 8-10 on bearing the cross and meditating on the future life treat illness and death as occasions for patience and hope. In Book IV, chapter 19 Calvin argues that the anointing of the sick in James 5 belonged to an apostolic gift of healing that has ceased, while holding that God still heals his people as often as there is need; this places ordinary medicine and prayer, not a sacramental rite, at the centre of care for the sick. Calvin's own long illnesses are well documented in his letters, but the Institutes does not describe them.

• Book I, ch. 5, secs. 2-3

  Medicine and astronomy as sciences that disclose God's wisdom; Galen's anatomy of the human body; man called a microcosm.

  Anatomy Dissection Ancient Medicine Physicians Doctors
• Book I, ch. 17, secs. 10-11

  The many diseases and dangers that threaten life, and providence offered as the remedy for anxious fear.

  Neurosis Anxiety Philosophy AS Therapy Death Dying
• Book I, ch. 17, sec. 4

  Providence does not excuse neglect: believers must still take precautions and use the remedies God provides.

  Philosophy AS Therapy Physicians Doctors
• Book III, chs. 8-9

  Bearing the cross and meditating on the future life as a discipline for sickness, loss and mortality.

  Death Dying Philosophy AS Therapy
• Book IV, ch. 19, secs. 18-21

  Calvin's argument that the apostolic anointing with oil and the gift of healing were temporary, set against the Roman rite of extreme unction.

  Physicians Doctors Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Calvin opens by saying that true wisdom is the knowledge of God and of ourselves. Take one chapter from Book I and one from Book III and show how each develops both halves of that sentence.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation in Strasbourg in 1540 between Calvin and a French refugee who has lost everything, in which Calvin draws on what he wrote about providence in Book I, chapter 17.

• Classroom

  Divide the class into four groups, one for each book of the 1559 Institutes, and have each group match its book to the article of the Apostles' Creed it expounds and present three chapter titles that show the link.

• Fiction

  Imagine a young Huguenot pastor carrying a copy of the 1560 French Institutes back into France. Write the scene in which he reads the dedication to Francis I aloud to a secret congregation.

Further Reading

• Institutes of the Christian Religion (Library of Christian Classics, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill), John Calvin

• Lectures on Calvinism, Abraham Kuyper

• Calvin, Bruce Gordon

• John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography, Bruce Gordon

• John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait, William J. Bouwsma

• The Unaccommodated Calvin, Richard A. Muller