Calvin's Theology of Piety in the Institutes

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

Alister McGrath

“This book is a profound gift. Demonstrating with great care that ‘Calvin’s theology is basically practical,’ Ngien illuminates Calvin’s trinitarian dynamic of salvation. I have waited for some time for a book like this, one that unfolds the soteriological heartbeat of Calvin’s trinitarianism. Students of Calvin and Christian doctrine more broadly are once again in Ngien’s debts. With masterful understanding on display, we see the unity of doctrine and life, the former as the principle and wellspring of the latter.”

Christopher Holmes

“Calvin understood that Christian doctrine has its term in the glorification of God, and that God is truly glorified as right teaching takes hold of the whole of the Christian life, transforming minds and hearts, and bearing good fruit in turn. Ngien’s fine study of Calvin’s Institutes seizes upon this fundamental horizon of the reformer’s work, leading readers stepwise through this influential text to trace its trinitarian grammar and to discern and make manifest its practical ambition, namely, to serve the reshaping of life by the power of the gospel of God. Ngien thus invites us to contemplate the great theme of Calvin’s lifework: namely, that true doctrine ministers to true piety to the glory of the one true God.”

Philip G. Ziegler

“Calvin is all too easily misunderstood if part of his theology is analyzed in isolation from the whole, or if his doctrine is treated separately from his concern for practical piety and the life of the church. In Calvin’s Theology of Piety in the Institutes Ngien provides an effective antidote to these ills, offering a wonderfully clear account of the overall shape of Calvin’s theology in the Institutes while recognizing that for Calvin doctrine and life are one. The reformer’s deep desire for our entire existence to be transformed by Christ leaps from the page. Rarely in scholarship has the passionately devotional nature of Calvin’s theology been communicated so clearly.”

Stephen J. Chester

“Dennis Ngien provides a clear systematic exposition of the trinitarian structure of Calvin’s theology, piety, and ministry. By God’s trinitarian movement, we are taken up in the Spirit through the Son to the Father and made to be ‘not only partakers of all his benefits but also of himself.’ Ngien illuminates just how holistically this theme permeates and integrates Calvin’s thought. This is a book to enrich the mind, arouse the heart, encourage the affections, and motivate love-inspired devotion to the triune God, his mission, and his glory. A gift to the academy and the church!”

Patrick S. Franklin

“Calvin famously begins his Institutes with a discussion of the knowledge of God that we attain to in relation to knowledge of ourselves; a two-fold knowledge that dialectically unfolds in the believer’s soul. Dennis Ngien shows that, for Calvin, knowing God is therefore not merely speculative, it is also affective. True knowledge of God is loving knowledge. Given his long-standing academic interest in theology and piety, Ngien’s book is at once serious theology and deep spiritual reflection. Calvin and Ngien help readers have head and heart filled with the knowledge of God for the glory of God.”

Ian Hugh Clary

“Calvinism shaped—and still shapes—the lives of many across the world and through history. Yet Calvin’s stereotype is of a cold, logical thinker, interested in doctrinal correctness, not emotion and the practicalities of the Christian life. Dennis Ngien punctures this image with this thorough, wide-ranging and expert survey of Calvin’s teaching on piety and spirituality. Whether writing about creation, the Holy Spirit, prayer, or the church, Ngien shows how Calvin displayed a God who engages affections and warms cold hearts.”

Graham Tomlin

“In a time when spirituality is in and religion is out, this vital work calls us to ground Christian spirituality in robust Christian doctrine. Written in very accessible prose, the author explores five major spheres in Calvin’s Institutes—Epistemic foundations, Union with Christ and the Holy Spirit, Reaping fruits from the Law, Calvin’s trinitarian ground of prayer, and the Church as the ministerial vehicle of grace—and draws from a wealth of primary and secondary sources to illumine each topic. I most highly recommend it.”

Jimmy Tan