John Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion”: A Biography

Princeton University Press has hit it out of the park with their Lives of Great Religious Books. While I was initially wary of the series I have come to enjoy it, as it offers a look into how these books were created and more importantly how they have been used has changed over time. In this book we get to explore John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Bruce Gordon takes us on a journey, even though it is short, from the time period of when John Calvin wrote his famous book and the world he inhabited. John Calvin was always working on the book to make it better, even after many editions the core tenets never changed. But it is the afterlife of the book – through the use of many others – that this book truly came to life. John Calvin came to be seen as one of the fathers of the Reformation and his words have been used by many political groups to further their aims; whether they truly followed Reformist thought or not. Mr. Gordon has written a book that can be enjoyed by the average reader.