Chapter 8

I'm not sure who Calvin expected to read Institutes, but I hope he did not intend this to be an apologetic work. Chapter 8 was painful.

Calvin's is still focusing on special revelation, and specifically about scripture. In this chapter he offers proofs for the belief in scripture - rational explanations for why scripture is authoritative.

I never see Calvin cited for apologetic purposes. You are about to see why. My cat could punch holes in these arguments:

Scripture is authoritative because....

• The language is humble and written by non-eloquent people, but (via the holy Ghost) it is magically transformed into eloquence that exceeds anything else in the whole universe. || making an objective claim via subjective rationale - who determines 'eloquence'?
• The Bible is the oldest book in the world. || No, it is not.  
• Moses represents the oldest author in the world. || Moses didn't write the Torah. 
• The Egyptians think their books are older, but they are dumb enough to think that the world is more than 5,000 years old. So, we can't trust anything they say. || facepalm
•  There are miracles in the Bible that had eyewitness accounts. || and we only know about these eyewitness accounts because.... wait for it .... WE READ IT IN THE BOOK CALVIN IS TRYING TO PROVE IS AUTHORITATIVE
• If the recorded miracles did not actually occur, the enemies of the Israelites would have refuted them publicly. || if something didn't happen, then why would anybody refute it?
• Predictions and prophecies in the scripture came true. || I'm pretty sure you have to be drinking the kool-aid before you believe a bunch of vague predictions actually came to pass.
• Preservation! God preserved His words through thousands of years. || He also apparently preserved a lot of other people's words. (see the second bullet point above)
• God even preserved the Hebrew language (a dead language) through scripture. || There are all kinds of dead languages that we have preserved in writings. Sumerian, Egyptian, Hittite, Aramaic, etc. 
• God's 'most inveterate enemies' have been used to preserve the Word - Jews. || God's most inveterate enemies are Jews? Oh my...

This goes on and on. I have actually only listed the Old Testament 'proofs.' Now, despite these proofs being so rock solid that no one could possibly refute them (so thinks Calvin), there may be some hardened skeptics out there who are still unconvinced. NO worries. Calvin informs us that they are unconvinced because they don't have the Holy Spirit. So, there.