Calvin's Institutes

I have found Calvin's Institutes on the net. I haven't, however, had a chance to read it. I am planning to read it ASAP.

Joseph Botwinick

 

Joseph_Botwinick asked:

I am curious to know...what is the difference between Calvin's Institutes on the net and in book form? Is there really a difference? What makes book form more authoritative? Are we talking about differences in page numbers when doing footnotes? Or is there a substantive difference?

It's partly the consistency - as you point out, the same edition of a work always has the same pagination no matter where your copy is located, whereas a Web resource will be rendered differently for every user, making source-checking problematic.

Part of it is also quality. Public-domain online resources are probably derived from older translations that are not necessarily of the best quality. With the Institutes, we're fortunate that Beveridge's old translation is a good one, if archaic, but that's not necessarily always the case (Jowett's translation of Plato, common on Web sites, comes to mind as an example of the opposite). Besides, an online resource was probably scanned from a book to begin with, and possibly contains scanning and other formal errors that got past the Web author.

In part it is the traditional authority of the printed word. Literary critics also regard some editions of particular works as more authoritative than others: for example, the Arden editions of Shakespeare will carry more weight than a bargain-bin "Complete Works," and a first-edition novel more than a paperback. Sometimes it is important to know which particular edition of a work is being cited, especially if the author is known for revising. Web-based books are intended primarily for accessibility, not for scholarship. Some electronic resources are better than others, and for scholarly research, it's best to cite a particular paper edition, especially one that the audience has access to, if at all possible.

 

Ok I thought I would explain my position and get the dirrerence from the Calvinists on the Gospel preaching but I guess I need to be inline with the OP. I checked Calvin's Institutes on what I thought would explain to me Calvins position on the Gospel but no luck so far could any body tell me where to look in there for that teaching.

 

I checked Calvin's Institutes on what I thought would explain to me Calvins position on the Gospel but no luck so far could any body tell me where to look in there for that teaching.

The Institutes are a systematic theology, not an evangelistic tract. There isn't a section titled "The Gospel." It is woven throughout the entire work.

 

http://www.the-highway.com/articleJuly02.html

Dont know if this would be of help but it is on his views on the gospel and the atonement.