An Important Chapter That Calvin Added to the Second Edition of His ‘Institutes’
A New Translation of an Influential Work
John Calvin’s concern to make the Institutes of the Christian Religion useful and practical is especially manifest in his teaching on the Christian life.1 He did not have a chapter on the Christian life in the first, short edition of the Institutes (published in 1536), but he added a concluding chapter on this topic in the second edition (published three years later in 1539). Calvin considered this material to be of such great importance that in 1550 he had it printed as a booklet on its own, both in Latin and in his native French.2
The final form of Calvin’s Institutes is comprised of eighty chapters spread across four “books.” Book 3, containing twenty-five of those chapters, expounds the manner in which Christians receive the grace of Christ, and this is where Calvin placed his material on the Christian life, now divided into five chapters (chaps. 6–10).
Chapters 6–7 discuss self-denial, and chapters 8–10 deal with bearing our cross, our view of the life to come, and the implications for our attitude toward this life. The new English translation is taken from the definitive 1559 edition of the Institutes,3 written in Latin, where Calvin added a small amount of extra material.4
On the Christian Life
John Calvin
This new translation of John Calvin’s classic work On the Christian Life helps pastors, students, scholars, and everyday Christians answer the fundamental question: What does it mean to live faithfully as a Christian?
Chapter Summaries
In the first of these five chapters (i.e., chap. 6), Calvin sets out general principles about the Christian life and the factors that should motivate us to pursue it. He aims to enable the godly to order their lives aright by setting out a universal rule to determine their duties (3.6.1). The Christian life is a journey, and we should look for daily progress, but without expecting perfection (3.6.5).
The next two chapters are based on Jesus’s statement that following him involves denying oneself and taking up one’s cross (Matt. 16:24). In chapter 7, Calvin focuses on the need for self-denial, saying no to ourselves and yes to submission to God. This is the key to progress in the Christian life, whereas “wherever self-denial does not predominate, there either the most loathsome vices predominate without shame, or virtue, if there is any appearance of it, is negated by a corrupt lust for glory” (3.7.2). Those who deny themselves resign themselves totally to God’s will and allow every part of their lives to be governed by it (3.7.10).
Calvin continues his exposition of Matthew 16:24 with chapter 8 on bearing the cross, which is an aspect of self-denial. Bearing the cross involves patiently suffering whatever tribulations God may send our way. These have many purposes: to show us our weakness, to build up our character, to test our patience, to train us in obedience, to subdue our sinful flesh, and to discipline us. Greatest of all is suffering for the sake of righteousness, such as for the gospel (3.8.7–8).
Chapter 9 is devoted to the theme of meditation on the future life. Calvin shrewdly observes that although we all know in theory that we are mortal, “we relapse into our negligent confidence in earthly immortality, oblivious not only of death but of mortality itself, as if no rumor of it had ever reached us” (3.9.2). We should be grateful for the good things of this life, but in comparison with our future life they must be “entirely despised and scorned” (3.9.4).
It is only with this attitude that we can make correct use of the present life and earthly possessions, as Calvin explains in the final chapter (chap. 10). Here he sets out a middle way between the twin errors of affluent materialism and ascetic legalism. “This is a slippery subject, and there is a tendency to slide into either extreme.” Rather than lay down rigid rules, Calvin sees in Scripture general principles for “the legitimate use of things” (3.10.1). These principles are still of great value today.5 They include a moderate use of the things of this world without enslavement to them, stewardship of all our possessions, and generosity in sharing our resources.
Calvin’s Audience and Aim
As a teenager, Calvin studied in the Collège de Montaigu in Paris, which was profoundly influenced by the late medieval Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion)—a spiritual renewal movement emphasizing conversion, practical Christian living and holiness, meditation (especially on the life and death of Jesus), and frequent communion—exemplified especially by Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ (ca. 1418–1427).6 In these chapters of Calvin’s work, we see the clear imprint of the Devotio Moderna but translated from a medieval monastic to a Protestant “secular” setting. Calvin’s target readership is not monks in a medieval monastery but Christians living in society at large. Thomas’s asceticism undergoes a radical transformation in the light of Reformation doctrine.
These chapters illustrate clearly that Calvin’s aim in all his theology was not just to inform the mind but to form the heart through the mind.
The gospel . . . is not a doctrine of the tongue but of life. It is not grasped merely by the intellect and memory like other disciplines, but it is taken in only when it possesses the entire soul and when it finds a seat and place of refuge in the most intimate affection of the heart. . . . The gospel should penetrate into the most intimate affection of the heart, take hold of the soul, and have an effect on the whole human being. (3.6.4)
Translation History
The first time this material was translated into a language other than Latin was when Pierre de la Place, as early as 1540, rendered it into French, though it was never published. In 1549, Thomas Broke translated it into English and printed it in London.7 Calvin himself published a new Latin edition of the Institutes in 1550, and Jean Crespin extracted the material on the Christian life from this edition and published it separately in Latin, along with his own prefatory letter that exhorted Christians, as spiritual soldiers, to exercise loyalty to their captain and commander in chief, Jesus Christ.8 Crespin also published a French translation of the treatise that same year and reprinted it in a smaller format in 1552.9
It was not until the nineteenth century that the treatise began to be called “the golden booklet” of the true Christian life, when a translation from German to Dutch gave it that title.10 In 1952, Henry J. Van Andel’s loose translation from Dutch to English was published by Baker Book House as Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life. Sixty-five years later, in 2017, a new translation appeared by Aaron Denlinger and Burk Parsons, A Little Book on the Christian Life, published by Ligonier Ministries.
This New Translation
On the Christian Life: A New Translation is a foretaste of the forthcoming new translation of Calvin’s Institutes, several years in the making, to be published by Crossway.11 This edition aims to serve lay readers, pastors, students, and scholars across the English-speaking world in the twenty-first century. The translation itself will be fresh, contemporary, and accurate; it will be based on the Latin text with reference in the footnotes to Calvin’s own French translation when it is significant. The edition will clearly indicate Calvin’s own citations, whether of biblical passages or other material, such as early and medieval Christian authors or Greek and Roman classical authors.
Notes:
- For two helpful recent accounts of this teaching, see Randall C. Zachman, “‘Deny Yourself and Take Up Your Cross’: John Calvin on the Christian Life,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 11, no. 4 (2009): 466–82; Scott M. Manetsch, “John Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 61, no. 2 (2018): 259–73.
- Geneva: Jean Crespin and Conrad Badius, 1550. The sections in the 1550 booklet follow those in the fourth edition of the Institutes (1550). The sections in this translation follow those in the 1559 Institutes.
- Translated from the Latin text included in OS 4:146–81.
- The chapter titles, a new section (3.7.3), and other new material.
- I have expounded five principles that Calvin set out in Tony Lane, Sin and Grace: Evangelical Soteriology in Historical Perspective (London: Apollos, 2020), 299–307.
- Calvin never actually mentions either Thomas or The Imitation of Christ. For his relation to the Devotio Moderna, see especially Lucien Joseph Richard, The Spirituality of John Calvin (Atlanta: John Knox, 1974). See also Anthony N. S. Lane, “Calvin’s Way of Doing Theology: Exploring the Institutes,” in Calvin: Theologian and Reformer, ed. Joel R. Beeke and Garry J. Williams (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 52.
- John Calvin, Of the Life or Conversation of a Christen Man: A Right Godly Treatise [. . .] (London: J. Daye and W. Seres, 1549).
- See Bibliotheca Calviniana: Les oeuvres de Jean Calvin publiées au XVIe siècle. I, Écrits théologiques, littéraires et juridiques; 1532–1554, ed. Rodolphe Peter and Jean-François Gilmont (Genève: Droz, 1991), 50/10, 354–55.
- Traicté tresexcellent de la vie chrestienne [. . .] (Geneva: Jean Crespin and Conrad Badius, 1550); Bibliotheca Calviniana, 50/18, 52/10, 1:378–79, 467–68.
- Gulden boekste over den regt [sic] christelijken wandel (Hilversum: P.M. van Cleef, 1858).
- Translated by Raymond A. Blacketer and edited by Anthony N. S. Lane. Latinist Kirk Summers, professor of classics and director of the classics program at the University of Alabama, has been an indispensable consultant and reviewer throughout this project.
This article is adapted from the introduction by Anthony N. S. Lane to On the Christian Life: A New Translation by John Calvin.
Related Articles
Like many larger-than-life figures in the history of the church, the memory of the French Reformer John Calvin has been subjected to various distortions that amount to urban legends.
Podcast: Calvinism 101 (Kevin DeYoung)
What are the five points of Calvinism really about and how can we believe them, while maintaining gracious humility towards others who don't?
How Do the Arminian and Calvinist Views of Election Differ?
We can distinguish the Arminian view of election from the Calvinist view of election by answering this question: What is the basis of God’s election?
Podcast: The Man behind Calvinism (Derek Thomas)
Derek Thomas discusses John Calvin's enduring legacy, reflecting on the importance of predestination in hius theology and describing what it would have been like to have Calvin as your pastor.
