One of the best sources for understanding the impact of John Calvin, McGrath's work updates The History and Character of Calvinism by John T. McNeill with a fascinating biography that also explores Calvin's cultural importance.

John Calvin was one of the most important leaders of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. In this revision of his major biography, T. H. L. Parker explores Calvin's achievement against the backdrop of the turbulent times in which he lived. With clear and concise explanations of Calvin's theology, analyses of his major works, and insights into his preaching, this definitive biography brings this crucially important reformer and his world to life for readers.

An introduction to the essential life and thought of one of history's most influential theologians, who considered himself first and foremost a pilgrim and a pastor. July 10, 2009, marks the five-hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Calvin. As controversial as he was influential, his critics have named a judgmental and joyless attitude after him, while his admirers celebrate him as the principal theologian of Reformed Christianity. Yet his impact is unmistakable-a primary developer of western civilization whose life and work have deeply affected five centuries' worth of pastors, scholars, and individuals. What will surprise the readers of this book, however, is that Calvin did not live primarily to influence future generations. Rather, he considered himself first and foremost a spiritual pilgrim and a minister of the Word in the church of his day. It was from that "essential" Calvin that all his influence flowed. Here is an introduction to Calvin's life and thought and essence: a man who moved people not through the power of personality but through passion for the Word, a man who sought to serve the gospel in the most humble of roles.

An essential biography of the most important book of the Protestant Reformation John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion is a defining book of the Reformation and a pillar of Protestant theology. First published in Latin in 1536 and in Calvin's native French in 1541, the Institutes argues for the majesty of God and for justification by faith alone. The book decisively shaped Calvinism as a major religious and intellectual force in Europe and throughout the world. Here, Bruce Gordon provides an essential biography of Calvin's influential and enduring theological masterpiece, tracing the diverse ways it has been read and interpreted from Calvin's time to today. Gordon explores the origins and character of the Institutes, looking closely at its theological and historical roots, and explaining how it evolved through numerous editions to become a complete summary of Reformation doctrine. He shows how the development of the book reflected the evolving thought of Calvin, who instilled in the work a restlessness that reflected his understanding of the Christian life as a journey to God. Following Calvin's death in 1564, the Institutes continued to be reprinted, reedited, and reworked through the centuries. Gordon describes how it has been used in radically different ways, such as in South Africa, where it was invoked both to defend and attack the horror of apartheid. He examines its vexed relationship with the historical Calvin—a figure both revered and despised—and charts its robust and contentious reception history, taking readers from the Puritans and Voltaire to YouTube, the novels of Marilynne Robinson, and to China and Africa, where the Institutes continues to find new audiences today.

A leading expert on John Calvin brings together the reformer's most profound reflections on what it means to live a fully Christian life. The Christian Life includes excerpts from Calvin's impressive theological writings and illuminating sermons, as well as a selection of his stately prayers. Editor John H. Leith focuses on Calvin's spirituality, which arose out of the reformer's conviction that theology's primary importance is to encourage piety, to edify, and to transform human life and society. Calvin's writings have much to tell about the manner and style of Christian living. The writings gathered in The Christian Life draw upon Calvin's own heartfelt commitment to the ideals of life in Christ and to the responsibility to the community he served as pastor, preacher, teacher, and counselor. Here, then, is Calvin's own pattern for the conduct of the fully Christian life, which stresses that it is in Christian people living in Christian community and in society that we see most clearly the reality of faith. The Christian Life shares Calvin's thinking on such essential questions as the nature of sin; the importance of self-denial and cross-bearing to the Christian life; maintaining the proper balance between the present life and the life to come; the role of grace; the concept of Christian freedom; the place of prayer; the centrality of community; ideas of the elect and predestination; and the deepest purposes of God for his people. He relates all issues to the fundamental question of piety and how Christians can best attune themselves to God's unfolding plans in everyday life. This compact volume makes available to readers as never before some of the most accessible and rewarding writings of this foremost figure in the history of Christian thought. The selections in The Christian Life will introduce the reader to an influential form of Christian piety; but above all, they provide a clue to how Christians today may live and cope with the problems of personal and public life in a highly pluralistic and secular culture, in which the traditional guides and support for Christian living seem to have lost vitality and vigor.