Logos StaffThe life of prayer for the child of God is worked by the Holy Spirit. JohnCalvin argues that it is through Christ and his work that the believer can now enter boldly before God and pray because the veil has been torn away between sinners and God...
Kristen SchaferKarl Barth (May 10, 1886–1968) and Cornelius Van Til (May 3, 1895–1987) tend to be polarizing figures in church theology. Van Til was a firm opponent of Barth’s theology, arguing that it was fundamentally flawed and anti-biblical. Despite their...
Kent HendricksCalvin is famous for his commentaries and the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Did you know he was also a master preacher and teacher? There are two ways you can access many of Calvin’s sermons. 1. Learn French Buy a book Buy a language program...
Guest AuthorIn the prefix to the 1545 French edition of Calvin’s Institutes, Calvin seeks to explain to his readers why he wrote Institutes to begin with. While he goes into more detail, the third paragraph has some amazingly interesting nuggets of...
Despite the popular misconception, John Calvin never wrote the five points of Calvinism, also know as TULIP. These however were five points that were drawn up some time after his death in an effort to summarize the key doctrines for which Calvin and...
It seems to be the common opinion that John Calvin was neither a master of Greek or Hebrew, yet he passionately perused them and encouraged and instructed all pastors to do the like. I find encouragement in the fact that Calvin wasn’t a master...
The doctrine of adoption plays a major role in Calvin’s tracts, letters, sermons, Institutes, and most importantly, his commentaries. Timothy Trumper states on this matter, “It is increasingly apparent that the commentaries are indispensable to an...
John Calvin’s aim of the Genevan Academey is inspiring and should most certainly be applied, or should I say adopted, by more seminaries today: The creation of the Academy was perhaps Calvin’s crowning achievement. However, it needs to be...
Not only did Calvin teach and preach without any notes, he did so directly from the original language: Calvin would then read a text in Hebrew or Greek, and offer a very literal translation of it into Latin. After that, he would provide a smoother...
John Calvin’s dedication to preaching verse by verse through the Bible was impressive. He was a firm believer in preaching from the original language, in the historical-grammatical approach, with application to the hearer. What is even more...
At the young age of twenty-six, John Calvin finished the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. The results and response to the work was impressive, to say the very least. He was only in his twenty-sixth year, when he published...
It is painful to think of how many of John Calvin’s sermons were lost over the years. One wonders what troves of treasure were lost as trash: Over 2,000 of Calvin’s sermons have been preserved. Unfortunately many others have been lost. Bouwsma...
It never ceases to amaze (and humble) me when I look at how much work John Calvin did in his lifetime. Besides all his writing, travel, and other work, here is a report of his preaching efforts: During the decades of the 1540s and 1550s, Calvin was...
One of the most influential of all British Baptists wrote the following lines: The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached, is the truth that I must preach today, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I...
Baptist Roots Where did Baptists come from and, historically, what are their beliefs? The majority of historians agree that today’s Baptists were derived from three major sixteenth-century streams: Particular Baptists, General Baptists, and...
The Southern Baptist Convention—full disclosure: I am a member of an SBC church, and proudly so—has debated “Calvinism” off and on for nearly the entire span of its existence. SBC leaders sometimes rail against “Calvinism” and sometimes embrace it...
Below is the sobering account of the last hours of John Calvin’s wife, Idelette. What a mix of emotions I feel as a husband as I read of Calvin sharing the gospel with his wife one last time before she sees Jesus face to face. Idelette saw the...
It was far more common in John Calvin’s day than in our own for children to die at birth or in the early years of life. This, however, does not lessen the grief of loss. Three times in their short marriage, Calvin and Idelette experienced the pain...
Calvin’s Commentaries are a great gift to Christ’s church and laid a foundation for the dynamic theology of the reformation. They show us that Scripture truly is the living Word. For accurate, reverent, and erudite exposition, Calvin has no equal...
In reading through John Calvin’s last letter to the ministers at Geneva, I was struck by the following paragraph. I have had many infirmities which you have been obliged to bear with, and what is more, all I have done has been worth nothing...
Reading more of Calvin in His Letters I came across a fun piece where John Calvin uses a cask of wine to try and lure a friend to join him in Geneva. I couldn’t help laughing as this seems like the sort of trick I might use to get a friend to...
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. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two...
The following excerpt was taken from an 1877 issue of the The Tablet, a British Catholic weekly journal that has been published continually since 1840. This article was printed just over 300 years after Calvin’s death and shows the credit...
The other day I stumbled across a great feature of the Henry Beveridge translation of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion in my Logos library. At the end of the book, Beveridge includes One Hundred Aphorisms, containing, within...
On June 25th, 1944, The Doctor—Martyn Lloyd-Jones—gave a radio address for the BBC in Wales on the man, John Calvin. He began with the statement: “Nothing is more significant of the great change which has happened in the field of theology...
Last week, we featured the first part of an interview with John Bolt, the editor of the new translation of Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics. Dr. Bolt is Professor of Systematic Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary and has served as a pastor...
The electronic edition of Reformed Dogmatics, by Herman Bavinck is nearing completion on the Pre-Pub page, so I thought I thought I’d take this opportunity to share an email exchange I recently had with Dr. John Bolt, the editor of the new English...
I’ve been reading about baptism lately and came across this comment by John Calvin (Institutes IV, xv, 19) on the issue of mode. Whether the person baptised is to be wholly immersed, and that whether once or thrice, or whether he is only to be...
Today’s guest post is written by Louis St. Hilaire, the Catholic Product Manager at Logos Bible Software. From his evangelical youth to his leadership of the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement to his embrace of Roman Catholicism, the career and legacy...
Stephen SteeleCharles Spurgeon criticized Robert Hawker's Bible commentary for seeing Jesus in unnecessary places, such as every Psalm, a view widely held in Christian interpretation until John Calvin rooted Psalm interpretation in historical context. There's now...