Study Guide: Piety’s Wisdom: A Summary of Calvin’s Institutes with Study Questions
I think we will all profit from the stimulating study questions and excellent summary of themes and context found in Piety's Wisdom. Please pick up a copy for yourself in Kindle or Paperback format.
Note that online retailers might be restricted in their ability to process orders in a timely manner because of COVID-19 mitigation efforts. For that reason, I begrudgingly recommend the e-version even though paper is (under normal circumstances) better.
Amazon Canada - Kindle Version - $5.28
Buying a Copy of the Institutes
Recommended: 1541 Institutes of the Christian Religion, published in 2014 by Banner of Truth, is available in .mobi format (Kindle and other e-reader compatible) here: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/theology-books/institutes/ The print version is out of stock at the Banner of Truth site but there are copies still available on Amazon US and one paperback copy is available on Amazon Canada. WTS Books has it for $40. This is a newly translated edition that is more readable for lay audiences and comes from the French edition that John Calvin wrote in his native tongue for his fellow countrymen.
Institutes of the Christian Religion in Two Volumes edited by John T. McNeill and translated by Ford Lewis Battles. This is the go-to academic edition for lots of reasons and it has a few parts in it where Calvin fleshed out material that was not put in the earlier 1541 edition of the Institutes. The Kindle version is horribly overpriced at Amazon Canada and be careful about buying the paperback and hardcover version on Amazon Canada because they don't appear to include both volumes. The Kindle version at Amazon US is also pricey. Your best bet is to search on other book reseller sites if you want this 2 volume set. If you don't think you'll ever read scholarship on Calvin and want to track down references that are made to the Institutes, then you'll be fine with not owning a copy of the McNeill-Battles edition.
The Henry Beveridge translation of the Institutes is also a good edition and it has the advantage of being in public domain now (I think, don’t quote me on it) which makes it easy to find e-reader versions for cheap. For $1.41 USD you can buy a great e-reader version here: Google Books e-book. There’s an introductory essay by John Murray and some extra goodies at the end. Note that Google Books don’t easily open on Kindle devices but if you use something different for reading e-books like your browser, then you’re going to do well with this version. I actually went to seminary with the guys who created this e-book version of the Institutes and they had a clever program that allowed old texts to be converted to an accurate copy in e-book format.
Amazon Canada - I can't vouch for the quality of the e-texts on Amazon as the 'publishers' of these e-text version of public domain books commonly use text-processing tools that often mangle the readability of the writing).
The print copies are available ( $16 at Heritage Books; Amazon Canada; WTS Books) but there's a question of how long post offices will be handling mail.Tony Lane's "A Reader's Guide to Calvin's Institutes" makes a first-time read of John Calvin's Reformation classic more efficient by highlighting its most important sections. While we will use Mark Beach's summary, you might consider using Tony Lane's abridged version to split the difference between a full reading and a brief overview. (WTS Books; Heritage Books)
