BOOK REVIEW | John Calvin: For a New Reformation

By Campbell Markham

This blog post was originally published on the AP website: https://ap.org.au/2025/09/01/review-of-for-a-new-reformation/

“It’s always better to read Calvin than about Calvin.”

My old pastor said this to me very early in my training. That’s because it is much better to engage the man first-hand and unfiltered. There’s a reason Calvin is so great, still in print, and still very much in the minds of pastors and scholars everywhere: he is a not-to-be-missed genius writer.

Having said this, it never hurts to hear what other people have said about Calvin, both as a check on our own interpretation, and by way of appreciation.

I have sat in on a number of pre-concert talks given by the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra. When the conductor explains when and why the composer wrote the work, how it fitted or not with his contemporaries, how the work is structured and orchestrated, how a melody is introduced and developed, and so on, then I get far more out of the performance. The conductor’s expert hand helps me not to get lost, points me to things I would not have heard, and helps me to appreciate the work far more.

That’s the value of this book.

Its nineteen chapters are written by more-or-less well-known Reformed scholars and pastors, including Joel Beeke, Robert Godfrey, and Scott Oliphant, with an afterword by R.C. Sproul – one of his last published writings.

Part I gives six chapters to “The Life and Work of John Calvin”, tracing his career through conversion and young manhood, his labours in Geneva, and the writing and development of the Institutes over a generation. Most of this is well-known, but David Calhoun’s chapter on “Calvin the Pastor” will inspire us all to far greater circumspection, love, and thoroughness in our own churches. It includes this great quote from B.B. Warfield, who himself wrote extensively and beautifully on Calvin’s life and thought:

‘Calvin probably never did a more practical thing than expound the Scriptures day by day with the penetrating insight and the clear, searching honesty of comment in which he is unsurpassed.’

Douglas Kelly’s “Calvin and the Consistory” emphasises church discipline as pastoral care. Calvin and his elders “were determined to hold those who professed to follow Christ accountable to his word.”

Robert Godfrey’s chapter on “Calvin and Friends”, showing the sheer quantity of time that Calvin gave to letter writing, is another delightful and challenging eye-opener.

I found Part I – 182 pages – to be the most valuable part of the book.

Part II gives thirteen chapters to “The Teaching of John Calvin”, surveying his doctrines of Scripture, creation, providence, God’s law, Christology, the Holy Spirit, predestination, the Christian life, ecclesiology, and eschatology.

These are all thoughtful introductions and useful orientations to Calvin’s writings.

If you want to listen in to the conversation that some very fine pastors and thinkers are having about Calvin, then invest the necessary money and time into purchasing and reading this book. It might also serve as a reference to check or aid one’s interpretation of Calvin on certain subjects. I’m sure these chapters will be much-referenced in undergraduate theological papers.

But if someone attended a preconcert talk on Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, decided that they had heard enough, now “knew all about it”, and drove home, you would be inclined to laugh.

First, and above all, read Calvin’s Institutes, commentaries, pamphlets, and letters themselves. He is far more penetrating, engaging, interesting, and relevant than anyone who has written about him.

Then by all means sacrifice a little time for a book like John Calvin: For a New Reformation, if only to enhance your appreciation of the master’s works.