Reformed Faith of John Calvin: The Institutes in Summary

As the subtitle indicates, The Reformed Faith of John Calvin is a summary (not an abridgment) in one volume of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. In a succinct, systematic way, the book sets forth the essence of the great reformer’s teachings in his Institutes on all the truths of the Christian religion.

Throughout, this sum of Calvin’s explanation and defense of the truths of the Christian faith is either expressed or supported by quotations of Calvin. The book is replete with quotations from the Institutes (in the judgment of the author, the most important and vivid statements of Calvin), so that the reader hears Calvin himself.

One who reads this book will know the Institutes and its comprehensive, powerful instruction in the Reformed faith-the faith of the sixteenth-century Reformation of the church and the faith of true churches of Christ in the twenty-first century.

The book also gives a brief explanation of certain of Calvin’s teachings, offers analysis of Calvin’s doctrine, applies the reformer’s teachings to contemporary doctrinal issues, and even, rarely, becomes so bold as to criticize Calvin’s doctrine, for instance, Calvin’s teaching that the magistrate is called to enforce the first table of the law of God.

Many seminarians, pastors, elders, and laity, perhaps even a theologian or two, although desirous of learning the content of the Institutes, are put off from reading it by the sheer size of the massive, two-volume work or are hindered by the demands of their calling. This summary will supply their want and, it is hoped, motivate them to read the Institutes itself.

472 pages.