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John Calvin's Institutes in a Year
Ever stared at John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion on your shelf and thought, “One day I’ll finally read that… but where would I even start?”This podcast is for that moment.Calvin’s Institutes in a Year is a guided, day-by-day journey through one of the most influential works in Christian theology. Together, we read through the entire Institutes over the course of a full year—one manageable section at a time—so that a book many admire from a distance finally becomes something you…
Episodes
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 18
In these closing sections, Calvin presses the doctrine of original sin to its deepest and most uncomfortable conclusion: corruption does not merely touch the…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 17
In today’s reading, Calvin presses us into a kind of self-knowledge that is painful but necessary, dismantling every form of pride so that grace alone can…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 16
Today we reach the sobering and fitting conclusion of the First Book of Calvin’s Institutes, where divine providence is defended against its most serious…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 15
Today’s reading brings us to one of the most demanding—and clarifying—chapters of Calvin’s Institutes, where the doctrine of providence is pressed to its…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 14
Life without providence is a life haunted by fear—but life under God’s providence is marked by unshakable peace. In Book 1, Chapter 17, Sections 10–14, Calvin…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 13
God’s providence does not excuse sin, erase responsibility, or render human action meaningless—it orders all things without becoming the author of evil. In…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 12
God’s providence does not cancel human responsibility—it grounds it. In the opening sections of Book 1, Chapter 17, Calvin explains that Scripture teaches…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 11
Providence does not mean blind fate or an impersonal chain of causes, and Calvin will not allow it to be reduced to either. In these closing sections of…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 10
Providence is not a passive awareness of events after the fact, nor a vague divine impulse that leaves the world to run on its own—it is God actively governing…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 9
God is not a distant Creator who wound up the world and stepped away—he is the living Governor who sustains, directs, and rules every moment of creation, so…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 8
Providence is not God watching the world from a distance—it is God holding the helm, governing every moment, every creature, and every detail down to the…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 7
In this reading, John Calvin turns from speculation to consolation, showing how the doctrine of angels is meant not to satisfy curiosity but to strengthen…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 6
How do we truly know the invisible God when nature alone leaves us prone to confusion and speculation? In this reading, Calvin explains why Scripture provides…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 5
of God? In today’s reading, Calvin carefully addresses this tension by showing how Scripture speaks of the Father and the Son according to order and role…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institues: February 4
When people try to protect monotheism by shrinking Christ, they do not save the doctrine of God—they replace it with a Trinity that collapses into fiction…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institues: February 3
The doctrine of the Trinity is not a puzzle for clever minds but a boundary line that keeps the church worshiping the true God rather than a god of our own…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 2
If the Son is truly divine, then the Spirit cannot be a lesser afterthought, a mere force, or an impersonal influence—and Calvin refuses to let the Bible be…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: February 1
Unity is not a late Christian invention—it is the native air of Scripture, because the one God has always made Himself known through the one Mediator. Today…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Instutes: January 31
In today’s reading from Calvin’s Institutes, we are confronted with one of the most decisive claims of historic Christianity: that the Word is eternally God…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 30
What does it really mean to say that God is one—and yet Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? In this reading, John Calvin confronts both ancient and modern…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 29
In this reading from Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin presses a simple but unsettling claim: true knowledge of God always demands exclusive…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Instittues: January 27
Here Calvin traces idolatry to its true source: the human desire to make God tangible. Once the mind fashions a visible form of God, worship inevitably…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institues: January 28
Calvin closes this chapter by appealing not only to Scripture but to history itself. For the first five centuries of the Church—when doctrine was purer and…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 26
In these sections, Calvin dismantles the familiar claim that images serve as “books for the unlearned,” insisting instead that Scripture calls them teachers of…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 25
Today’s reading confronts one of the Church’s most persistent temptations: the desire to make the invisible God manageable through visible forms. In Institutes…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institues: January 24
Today’s reading presses us to recognize that the God revealed in Scripture is not a different God from the one made known in creation—but the same Lord, now…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 23
Something is deeply wrong when people claim the Spirit of God while discarding the very Word the Spirit inspired. In today’s reading from John Calvin, we…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 22
Today’s reading from John Calvin confronts one of the most persistent questions in Christian theology: why should Scripture be trusted? Calvin argues that…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 21
How can Scripture be shown credible to natural reason without replacing the deeper certainty given by the Spirit? Calvin carefully answers by pointing to the…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 20
Today’s reading presses to the heart of one of Christianity’s most decisive claims: Scripture does not gain its authority from human approval, argument, or…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Insitutes: January 19
Why should Scripture be trusted as God’s Word? Calvin argues that the Bible does not receive its authority from the Church, but from God Himself, confirmed…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 18
Why isn’t creation enough to lead us to God? In this reading, Calvin argues that while the world truly displays God’s glory, human corruption turns that light…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 17
In today’s reading, Calvin delivers one of his most uncompromising critiques of false religion, arguing that any worship not grounded in God’s self-revelation…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 16
In today’s reading, Calvin argues that knowing God does not require philosophical gymnastics or abstract speculation—God’s majesty is already placed directly…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 15
In today’s reading from John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (Book 1, Chapter 5, Sections 5–8), we confront the limits of natural reason and the…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 14
Creation leaves us without excuse, but it does not leave us with clarity—and John Calvin explains why God never intended nature to stand alone as our guide. In…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 13
Today’s reading confronts us with a simple but devastating truth: the knowledge of God is not hidden, distant, or reserved for the educated—it presses in on us…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 12
Calvin presses us here with an uncomfortable truth: although God has planted a seed of religion in every human heart, almost no one allows it to grow into…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 11
True knowledge of God is never something we invent, negotiate, or outgrow—it is something we are born with and spend our lives trying, often unsuccessfully, to…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 10
To know that God exists is not the same as knowing God. In this chapter, Calvin defines the knowledge of God as recognizing Him as Creator, Sustainer, Judge…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institues: January 9
True wisdom begins where self-confidence ends. In this reading, John Calvin explains that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are inseparably…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 8
What responsibility does a king bear before God for the use of his power? In this final section of the Prefatory Address, Calvin appeals directly to King…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 7
Why did Calvin write the Institutes in the first place? In this epistle, Calvin explains that his original intention was to provide a brief and orderly…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 6
What truly marks the Church of Christ—power, visibility, and tradition, or faithfulness to the Word of God? In this section of his Prefatory Address, John…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 5
What truly marks the Church of Christ—power, visibility, and tradition, or faithfulness to the Word of God? In this section of his Prefatory Address, John…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 4
In this portion of the Prefatory Address, John Calvin challenges the misuse of the name “Church” as a shield for corruption and error. He argues that outward…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 3
Today’s reading presses the central Reformation question: by what standard is the Church judged? In this portion of the Prefatory Address, John Calvin…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 2
Calvin presses his case with clarity and courage, arguing that the Reformation is not rebellion but restoration—an urgent return to the pure worship of God…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: January 1
In this episode, we begin John Calvin’s Prefatory Address to King Francis the First, one of the most remarkable introductions in Christian theological history…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes Method and Arrangement of the Work
Before entering the main body of The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin pauses to explain how the entire work is ordered—and why that order matters…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearWho is John Calvin
Before we begin reading The Institutes of the Christian Religion, we pause to meet the man behind the work. In this episode, we trace the life of John…
John Calvin's Institutes in a YearCalvin's Institutes: Introduction
If you’ve ever looked at John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion and thought, “I know this matters—but I have no idea how to read all of it,” this…