The Institutes of Calvin-Lecture Series

Lecture Series on Calvin’s Institutes, by David Calhoun, given at Covenant Seminary ★★★
I will soon be reviewing a very lengthy lecture series by Dr. Calhoun on church history and will be giving him 5 stars for that series. Indeed, Dr. Calhoun is one of the premier church historians of the later part of the twentieth century. The church history series displays his absolute brilliance, both with his knowledge of the history of Reformed thinking, but also displayed in his several volume set on the history of Princeton Seminary. I believe Dr. Calhoun has since passed away, and in both this and the history lecture series, Dr. Calhoun speaks of suffering from cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. The series on Calvin’s Institutes followed his church history series. In the church history series, he is very lively and dynamic in his speech. In this series, it sounds like he is worn out and lifeless. When I started the series, it almost sounded like Dr. Calhoun was bored with the topic. Then, I realized that Dr. Calhoun was not his old self because of his illness. Since I hold Dr. Calhoun as one of the giants of church history, along with Dr. Schaff, I would have never given him only three stars for this series, except that the lecture series was also terribly recorded, and there were sections that I simply could not follow what Dr. Calhoun was saying. The lectures are all almost 1.5 hours long, and there are 24 of them, so it is quite lengthy to work through this series. Calhoun gives all too brief of a summary of the breadth and depth of the Institutes, essentially working from to back cover of the final version of the Institutes. For Reformed (Christian) thinkers, the Institutes are a must-read some time in one’s life. Thus, it will be the next systematic theology that I attack. At Calhoun’s recommendation, I will be reading the McNeill translation. This lecture series is a wonderful supplement to reading through the Institutes.