This book, first published in 1980, was also a course that was taught at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary during the late sixties and seventies. Why mention this book today?

First, we need to be reading Calvin’s Institutes. Much of seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century theology reflects the philosophical setting of those centuries, namely, modernism and Enlightenment philosophy. Of course theology has to be done in the setting of its particular day but modernism has been replaced by postmodernism and the questions and issues are different. Calvin predated Enlightenment philosophy hence his theological statements are not framed in that format.

Second, while the Institutes are not difficult to read, this analysis is a helpful way to look at them. This book is neither a summary nor a compendium. There are several good books in those categories, but this one is unique in that it is a detailed outline of the Institutes. Battles does not intend that this book be read in place of the Institutes but that it will help people read them more effectively. He refers to this work as a synoptic view of the Institutes.

Calvin obviously thought with great precision and reason, yet he was always subservient to God’s revelation in the Scriptures and saw that revelation as the judge over reason and logic. In the following centuries, the opposite view has been far too prevalent. Of course we can read the Institutes of the Christian Religion as a systematic theology textbook but “Calvin tells us that in his Institutes he has paved a road” to the understanding of Scripture for students beginning its study. Yet he teaches that the understanding of Scripture depends upon the Holy Spirit’s illumination of the reader (Institutes 1:7). Battles also makes an extremely important observation that the readers of Calvin need to remember, “Calvin is scriptural theologian first, and a user of philosophy, logic, rhetoric—all human tools of organization—only second. Of these tools he makes good use, but never at the expense of what he deems the manifest word of Scripture, contextually perceived.”

Calvin saw the Christian life not as a “leap, after conversion, into perfection, but as a gradual often painful, growth toward the blessed consummation which can come only at death.” That is how the Institutes unfold and why they are so helpful for us today. Battles’ Analysis is not only a valuable resource for pastors and teachers but also for the general reader who would find great blessing and instruction in the Institutes. P&R did a good service to the church when they republished this volume.

- Charles Dunahoo, CEP Coordinator