Scott's Thoughts

Reading Calvin's Institutes

Since I’m a Calvinist, it’s only right that I should read John Calvin. I did read some Calvin in seminary, but not as much as one might think. There is a virtually unlimited amount of theological reading material that professors would like their students to read, but a very limited amount of time. So, we got portions of Calvin’s Institutes but not much else.

Like so many so many books on my shelf collecting dust, I’d often look at my two-volume set of the Institutes of the Christian Religion and think, “Someday I’m going to read those.” About a year ago, just as I was having those thoughts, a friend asked me if I’d be willing to read the Institutes with him. We’d read a small portion, and then meet once a week to discuss it. We began this discussion group and before long there were four of us meeting weekly at Panera’s to talk about our assigned reading pages. Two dropped out for different reasons, and for a while now it’s just a pair of us. We read about 25 pages a week and discuss it over coffee.

Remarkably, we’ve covered over 1100 pages in a little more than a year’s time. And it’s been a great blessing to read Calvin and think and talk over his theology. It’s quite incredible to think that a book written about 450 years ago (1559 was the final edition of the Institutes) can still speak with such authority and force today. Calvin’s writings not only reveal the man’s genius, but more importantly his profound and intimate knowledge of Scripture. As one author put it, he writes as though he is speaking from within the text itself, so familiar is he with the warp and woof of biblical revelation. If I knew Scripture a tenth as well as he did, I’d probably be ten times the preacher and pastor that I am.

One of the gifts I requested for Christmas was a large print of John Calvin to hang on my office wall. My wife told my mother about it, and she ordered it off the internet and framed it for me. Who asks for a framed picture of a 16th-century theologian with a funny-looking beard for Christmas? Although my mom thinks I’m a bit odd, it’s going to look great on the wall when I get it hung up. It’ll be a reminder that I’m just a dwarf standing on the shoulders of the giants of the faith who have gone before us.