David,

The short answer is "yes and no." It depends on what the purpose is or whether a translation exists. The ideal way to read any text is to read it in the original language. Surely if one is going to do academic work and make definitive claims about it, one must read it in the original.

There are good English translations of many texts, but there are also poor or less than optimal translations of texts. The only way to know with certainty is to compare the translation with the original.

For less than academic purposes, yes, I read English translations.

That said, we don't require our MA (HT) students to learn Latin, though many do so anyway and increasingly they seem to want to do their research in Latin texts -- which is very encouraging. We just had a student do ground-breaking work on P. van Mastricht, mainly out of hitherto untranslated Latin texts. Another student is working on Gratian manuscipts and learning how to read MS manuscripts and doing textual criticism. That's a little more esoteric than the work most of our students are doing, however. Most of our MDiv students don't take Latin.

Of the Institutes, the modern critical edition is the Battles edn, but Muller prefers the Allen (18th c.) and there are advantages to the Beveridge. For citation purposes, however, the Battles edn is to be used.

The critical Latin edn is in vols 1-3 of the Opera selecta. This is available in most academic libraries or via ILL or via ABE et al. Scholars also cite the ediiton in the Corpus Reformatorum, esp. for the earlier editions. There is a 19th century Latin text, ed. Tholuck, which one might find used, but it's been supersceded by the Opera Selecta.

rsc

__________________
R. Scott Clark, D.Phil
Professor of Church History and Historical Theology

"For Christ, His Gospel, and His Church"
Associate Pastor
Oceanside URC
The Heidelblog