Well, we're getting a bit of a late start, but not so late that you won't be able to catch up. The reading schedule we will use will take us through only 4 or 5 pages a day, so its not an overwhelming process. If one can set aside a bit of time at the start, it should only take a few days to a week to get on track with the scheduled readings.
We should take care of some housekeeping issues right from the beginning, I suppose.
First, the text that I'll be using as we travel this road together will be the Ford Lewis Battles translation, edited by John T. McNeil. This is, by the judgment of those who know, not only the most recent, but also the best English translation of Calvin's Institutes available. Westminster John Knox Press has published a wonderful 2 volume edition of excellent quality. It's selling on Monergism.com for about $51.00 plus tax, shipping, etc. which is the best I've found. This edition will last several lifetimes. If anyone would like me to get them a copy, please let me know.
If you'd rather not shell out that kind of money, you can find the Beveridge translation at a cheaper price, or, cheaper yet, find an online version and read along that way. The Beveridge edition is from the mid-1800's, and so the language is a bit more difficult, but anyone who goes that route should not have much problem understanding the text.
We will be following a reading schedule made available by Princeton Theological Seminary, and available for download here:
http://www.ptsem.edu/news/Egreetings/test/institutes.pdf
As for this blog, my intent is to use this as a means of mutual edification and discussion of what we're reading, as we read. I won't commt to posting every day, but I'll seek to post several times a week, after which we will use the "comments" section to interact regarding whatever we're finding in the readings.
So, if you're going to read along, or just keep an eye on this blog, welcome. I trust the coming year will be both challenging and edifying.
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The first page of the introduction reminded me of this paragraph in Packer's Death of Death Intro; viz.arminian assertions lend "colour to the impression that Calvinism is a modification of Arminianism; that Arminianism has a certain primacy in order of nature, and developed Calvinism is an offshoot from it. Even when one shows this to be false as a matter of history, the suspicion remains in many minds that it is a true account of the relation of the two views themselves. For it is widely supposed that Arminianism (which, as we now see, corresponds pretty closely to the new gospel of our own day) is the result of reading the Scriptures in a "natural,unbiased, unsophisticated way", and that Calvinism is an unnatural growth, the product less of the texts themselves than of unhallowed logic working on the texts, wresting their plain sense and upsetting their balance by forcing them into a systematic framework which they do not themselves provide."
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