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Religion
종교 탐방
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Calvin and Calvinism
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칼빈과 칼빈주의
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John
Calvin, in French
Jean Calvin or Cauvin (1509-1564), was the leading French Protestant Reformer
and the most important figure in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation.
His interpretation of Christianity, advanced above all in his Institutio Christianae religionis (1536 but elaborated in later
editions; Institutes
of the Christian Religion), and the institutional and social
patterns he worked out for Geneva deeply influenced Protestantism
elsewhere in Europe and in North America. The Calvinist
form of Protestantism is widely thought to have had a major impact on the
formation of the modern world. |
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This
article deals with the man, his achievements, and the Calvinist tradition. For a
further treatment of Calvinism, see PROTESTANTISM
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Calvin
was born on July 10, 1509, in Noyon, in Picardy, France, the son of middle-class
parents. His father, a lay administrator in the service of the local bishop,
sent him to the University of Paris in 1523 to be educated for the priesthood
but later decided that he should be a lawyer; from 1528 to 1531, therefore,
Calvin studied in the law schools of Orléans and Bourges. He then
returned to Paris. During these years he was also exposed to Renaissance humanism,
influenced by Erasmus and Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, which
constituted the radical student movement of the time. This movement, which
antedates the Reformation, aimed to reform church and society on the model of
both classical and Christian antiquity, to be established by a return to the
Bible studied in its original languages. It left an indelible mark on Calvin.
Under its influence he studied Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin, the three
languages of ancient Christian discourse, in preparation for serious study of
the Scriptures. It also intensified his interest in the classics; his first
publication (1532) was a commentary on Seneca's essay on clemency. But the
movement, above all, emphasized salvation of individuals by grace rather than
good works and ceremonies. |
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Calvin's
Paris years came to an abrupt end late in 1533. Because the government became
less tolerant of this reform movement, Calvin, who had collaborated in the
preparation of a strong statement of theological principles for a public address
delivered by Nicolas Cop, rector of the university, found it prudent to leave
Paris. Eventually he made his way to Basel, then Protestant but tolerant of
religious variety. Up to that point, however, there is little evidence of
Calvin's conversion to Protestantism, an event difficult to date because it was
probably gradual. His beliefs before his flight to Switzerland were probably not
incompatible with Roman Catholic orthodoxy. But they underwent a change when he
began to study theology intensively in Basel. Probably in part to clarify his
own beliefs, he began to write. He began with a preface to a French translation
of the Bible by his cousin Pierre Olivétan and then undertook what became
the first edition of the Institutes, his masterwork, which, in its successive revisions,
became the single most important statement of Protestant belief. Calvin
published later editions in both Latin and French, containing elaborated and in
a few cases revised teachings and replies to his critics. The final versions
appeared in 1559 and 1560. The Institutes
also reflected the findings of Calvin's massive biblical commentaries, which,
presented extemporaneously in Latin as lectures to ministerial candidates from
many countries, make up the largest proportion of his works. In addition he
wrote many theological and polemical treatises. |
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The
1536 Institutes had given Calvin some
reputation among Protestant leaders. Therefore, on discovering that Calvin was
spending a night in Geneva
late in 1536, the Reformer and preacher Guillaume
Farel, then struggling to plant Protestantism in that town, persuaded him
to remain to help in this work. The Reformation was in trouble in Geneva, a town
of about 10,000 where Protestantism had only the shallowest of roots. Other
towns in the region, initially ruled by their prince-bishops, had successfully
won self-government much earlier, but Geneva had lagged behind in this process
largely because its prince-bishop was supported by the neighbouring duke of
Savoy. There had been iconoclastic riots in Geneva in the mid-1520s, but these
had negligible theological foundations. Protestantism had been imposed on
religiously unawakened Geneva chiefly as the price of military aid from
Protestant Bern. The limited enthusiasm of Geneva for Protestantism, reflected
by a resistance to religious and moral reform, continued almost until Calvin's
death. The resistance was all the more serious because the town council in
Geneva, as in other Protestant towns, exercised ultimate control over the church
and the ministers, all French refugees. The main issue was the right of
excommunication, which the ministers regarded as essential to their authority
but which the council refused to concede. The uncompromising attitudes of Calvin
and Farel finally resulted in their expulsion from Geneva in May 1538. |
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Calvin
found refuge for the next three years in the German Protestant city of
Strasbourg, where he was pastor of a church for French-speaking refugees and
also lectured on the Bible; there he published his commentary on the Letter of
Paul to the Romans. There too, in 1540, he married Idelette de Bure, the widow
of a man he had converted from Anabaptism. Although none of their children
survived infancy, their marital relationship proved to be extremely warm. During
his Strasbourg years Calvin also learned much about the administration of an
urban church from Martin Bucer, its chief pastor. Meanwhile Calvin's attendance
at various international religious conferences made him acquainted with other
Protestant leaders and gave him experience in debating with Roman Catholic
theologians. Henceforth he was a major figure in international Protestantism. |
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In
September 1541 Calvin was invited back to Geneva, where the Protestant
revolution, without strong leadership, had become increasingly insecure. Because
he was now in a much stronger position, the town council in November enacted his
Ecclesiastical Ordinances, which
provided for the religious education of the townspeople, especially children,
and instituted Calvin's conception of church order. It also established four
groups of church officers: pastors and teachers to preach and explain the
Scriptures, elders representing the congregation to administer the church, and
deacons to attend to its charitable responsibilities. In addition it set up a
consistory of pastors and elders to make all aspects of Genevan life conform to
God's law. It undertook a wide range of disciplinary actions covering everything
from the abolition of Roman Catholic "superstition" to the enforcement
of sexual morality, the regulation of taverns, and measures against dancing,
gambling, and swearing. These measures were resented by a significant element of
the population, and the arrival of increasing numbers of French religious
refugees in Geneva was a further cause of native discontent. These tensions, as
well as the persecution of Calvin's followers in France, help to explain the
trial and burning of Michael Servetus,
a Spanish theologian preaching and publishing unorthodox beliefs. When Servetus
unexpectedly arrived in Geneva in 1553, both sides felt the need to demonstrate
their zeal for orthodoxy. Calvin was responsible for Servetus' arrest and
conviction, though he had preferred a less brutal form of execution. |
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The
struggle over control of Geneva lasted until May 1555, when Calvin finally
prevailed and could devote himself more wholeheartedly to other matters. He had
constantly to watch the international scene and to keep his Protestant allies in
a common front. Toward this end he engaged in a massive correspondence with
political and religious leaders throughout Protestant Europe. He also continued
his commentaries on Scripture, working through the whole New Testament except
the Revelation to John and most of the Old Testament. Many of these commentaries
were promptly published, often with dedications to such European rulers as Queen
Elizabeth, though Calvin had too little time to do much of the editorial work
himself. Committees of amanuenses took down what he said, prepared a master
copy, and then presented it to Calvin for approval. During this period Calvin
also established the Genevan Academy to train students in humanist learning in
preparation for the ministry and positions of secular leadership. He also
performed a wide range of pastoral duties, preaching regularly and often, doing
numerous weddings and baptisms, and giving spiritual advice. Worn out by so many
responsibilities and suffering from a multitude of ailments, he died on May 27,
1564. |
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Unlike
Martin Luther, Calvin was a reticent man; he rarely expressed himself in the
first person singular. This reticence has contributed to his reputation as cold,
intellectual, and humanly unapproachable. His thought, from this perspective,
has been interpreted as abstract and concerned with timeless issues rather than
as the response of a sensitive human being to the needs of a particular
historical situation. Those who knew him, however, perceived him differently,
remarking on his talent for friendship but also on his hot temper. Moreover, the
intensity of his grief on the death of his wife, as well as his empathic reading
of many passages in Scripture, revealed a large capacity for feeling. |
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Calvin's
facade of impersonality can now be understood as concealing an unusually high
level of anxiety about the world around him, about the adequacy of his own
efforts to deal with its needs, and about human salvation, notably including his
own. He believed that every Christian--and he certainly included
himself--suffers from terrible bouts of doubt. From this perspective the need
for control both of oneself and the environment, often discerned in Calvinists,
can be understood as a function of Calvin's own anxiety. |
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Calvin's
anxiety found expression in two metaphors for the human condition that appear
again and again in his writings: as an abyss in which human beings have lost
their way and as a labyrinth from which they cannot escape. Calvinism as a body
of thought must be understood as the product of Calvin's effort to escape from
the terrors conveyed by these metaphors. |
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Historians
are generally agreed that Calvin is to be understood primarily as a Renaissance
humanist who aimed to apply the novelties of humanism to recover a biblical
understanding of Christianity. Thus he sought to appeal rhetorically to the
human heart rather than to compel agreement, in the traditional manner of
systematic theologians, by demonstrating dogmatic truths. His chief enemies,
indeed, were the systematic theologians of his own time, the Scholastics, both
because they relied too much on human reason rather than the Bible and because
their teachings were lifeless and irrelevant to a world in desperate need.
Calvin's humanism meant first that he thought of himself as a biblical
theologian in accordance with the Reformation slogan scriptura
sola. He was prepared to follow Scripture even when it surpassed the limits
of human understanding, trusting to the Holy Spirit to inspire faith in its
promises. Like other humanists, he was also deeply concerned to remedy the evils
of his own time; and here too he found guidance in Scripture. Its teachings
could not be presented as a set of timeless abstractions but had to be brought
to life by adapting them to the understanding of contemporaries according to the
rhetorical principle of decorum--i.e.,
suitability to time, place, and audience. |
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Calvin's
humanism influenced his thought in two other basic ways. For one, he shared with
earlier Renaissance humanists an essentially biblical conception of the human
personality, comprehending it not as a hierarchy of faculties ruled by reason
but as a mysterious unity in which what is primary is not what is highest but
what is central: the heart. This conception assigned more importance to will and
feelings than to the intellect, and it also gave new dignity to the body. For
this reason Calvin rejected the ascetic disregard of the body's needs that was
often prominent in medieval spirituality. Implicit in this particular rejection
of the traditional hierarchy of faculties in the personality, however, was a
radical rejection of the traditional belief that hierarchy was the basis of all
order. For Calvin, instead, the only foundation for order in human affairs was
utility. Among its other consequences this position undermined the traditional
one subordinating women to men. Calvin believed that, for practical reasons, it
may be necessary for some to command and others to obey, but it could no longer
be argued that women must naturally be subordinated to men. This helps to
explain the rejection in Geneva of the double standard in sexual morality. |
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Second,
Calvin's utilitarianism, as well as his understanding of the human personality
as both less and more than intellectual, was also reflected in deep reservations
about the capacity of human beings for anything but practical knowledge. The
notion that they can know anything absolutely, as God knows, so to speak, seemed
to him highly presumptuous. This conviction helps to explain his reliance on the
Bible. Calvin believed that human beings have access to the saving truths of
religion only insofar as God has revealed them in Scripture. But revealed truths
were not given to satisfy human curiosity but were limited to meeting the most
urgent and practical needs of human existence, above all for salvation. This
emphasis on practicality reflects a basic conviction of Renaissance humanism:
the superiority of an active earthly life devoted to meeting practical needs to
a life of contemplation. Calvin's conviction that every occupation in society is
a "calling" on the part of God himself sanctified this conception.
Calvin thus spelled out the theological implications of Renaissance humanism in
various ways. |
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But
Calvin was not purely a Renaissance humanist. The culture of the 16th century
was peculiarly eclectic, and, like other thinkers of his time, Calvin had
inherited a set of contrary tendencies, which he uneasily combined with his humanism.
He was an unsystematic thinker not only because he was a humanist but also
because 16th-century thinkers lacked the historical perspective that would have
enabled them to sort out the diverse materials in their culture. Thus, even as
he emphasized the heart, Calvin continued also to think of the human personality
in traditional terms as a hierarchy of faculties ruled by reason. He sometimes
attributed a large place to reason even in religion and emphasized the
importance of rational control over the passions and the body. The persistence
of these traditional attitudes in Calvin's thought, however, helps to explain
its broad appeal; they were reassuring to conservatives. |
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Calvin
has often been seen as little more than a systematizer of the more creative
insights of Luther. He
followed Luther on many points: on original sin, Scripture, the absolute
dependence of human beings on divine grace, and justification by faith alone.
But Calvin's differences with Luther are of major significance, even though some
were largely matters of emphasis. Calvin was thus perhaps more impressed than
Luther by God's transcendence and by his control over the world; Calvin
emphasized God's power and glory, whereas Luther often thought of God as the
babe in the manger, here among human beings. Contrary to a general impression,
Calvin's understanding of predestination was also virtually identical with
Luther's (and indeed is close to that of Thomas Aquinas); and, although Calvin
may have stated it more emphatically, the issue itself is not of central
importance to his theology. He considered it a great mystery, to be approached
with fear and trembling and only in the context of faith. Seen in this way,
predestination seemed to him a comforting doctrine; it meant that salvation
would be taken care of by a loving and utterly reliable God. |
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But
in major respects Calvin departed from Luther. In some ways Calvin was more
radical. Though he agreed with Luther on the real presence of Christ in the
Eucharist, he understood this in a completely spiritual sense. But most of his
differences suggest that he was closer to the old church than was Luther, as in
his ecclesiology, which recognized the institutional church in this world, as
Luther did not, as the true church. He was also more traditional in his
clericalism; his belief in the authority of clergy over laity was hardly
consistent with Luther's stress on the priesthood of all believers. He insisted,
too, on the necessity of a holy life, at least as a sign of genuine election.
Even more significant, especially for Calvinism as a historical force, was
Calvin's attitude toward the world. Luther had regarded this world and its
institutions as incorrigible and was prepared to leave them to the Devil, a far
more important figure in his spiritual universe than in Calvin's. But for Calvin
this world was created by God and still belonged to him. It was still
potentially Christ's kingdom, and every Christian was obligated to struggle to
make it so in reality by bringing it under God's law. |
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Calvin's
reservations about the capacities of the human mind and his insistence that
Christians exert themselves to bring the world under the rule of Christ suggest
that it is less instructive to approach his thought as a theology to be
comprehended by the mind than as a set of principles for the Christian life--in
short, as spirituality. His spirituality begins with the conviction that human
beings do not so much "know" God as "experience" him
indirectly, through his mighty acts and works in the world, as they experience
but can hardly be said to know thunder, one of Calvin's favourite metaphors for
religious experience. Such experience of God gives them confidence in his power
and stimulates them to praise and worship him. |
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At
the same time that Calvin stressed God's power, he also depicted God as a loving
father. Indeed, although Calvinism is often considered one of the most
patriarchal forms of Christianity, Calvin recognized that God is commonly
experienced as a mother. He denounced those who represent God as dreadful; God
for him is "mild, kind, gentle, and compassionate." Human beings can
never praise him properly, Calvin declared, "until he wins us by the
sweetness of his goodness." That God loves and cares for his human
creatures was, for Calvin, what distinguished his doctrine of providence from
that of the Stoics. |
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Calvin's
understanding of Christianity is thus in many ways gentler than has been
commonly supposed. This is also shown in his understanding of original sin.
Although he insisted on the "total depravity" of human nature after
the Fall, he did not mean by this that there is nothing good left in human
beings but rather that there is no agency within the personality left untouched
by the Fall on which to depend for salvation. The intention of the doctrine is
practical: to reinforce dependence on Christ and the free grace of God. In fact,
unlike some of his followers, Calvin believed in the survival after the Fall,
however weak, of the original marks of God's image, in which human beings were
created. "It is always necessary to come back to this," he declared,
"that God never created a man on whom he did not imprint his image."
At times, to be sure, Calvin's denunciations of sin give a very different
impression. But it should be kept in mind that as a humanist and a rhetorician
Calvin was less concerned to be theologically precise than to impress his
audience with the need to repent of its sins. |
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The
problem posed by sin was, for Calvin, not that it had destroyed the spiritual
potentialities of human beings but rather that human beings had lost their
ability to use their potentialities. Through the Fall they had been alienated
from God, who is the source of all power, energy, warmth, and vitality. Sin, on
the contrary, had exposed the human race to death, the negation of God's
life-giving powers. Human beings thus experience the effects of sin as
drowsiness when they should be alert, as apathy when they should feel concern,
as sloth when they should be diligent, as coldness when they should be warm, as
weakness when they need strength. Thus also, since the Devil, who seeks to drain
human beings of their God-given spirituality, tries to lull them to sleep, God
must employ various stratagems to awaken them. This helps to explain the
troubles that afflict the elect: God threatens, chastises, and compels them to
remember him by making their lives go badly. |
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The
effect of sin also prevents human beings from reacting with appropriate wonder
to the marvels of the world. The failure of spirituality is the primary obstacle
to an affective knowledge that, unlike mere intellectual apprehension, can move
the whole personality. Calvin attached particular importance to the way in which
sin deadens the feelings, but spiritual knowledge renews the connection, broken
by sin, between knowledge, feeling, and action. Thus God's spirit, in all its
manifestations, is the power of life. Calvin's understanding of sin is closely
related to his humanistic emphasis on activity. |
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As
his emphasis on sanctification for the individual believer and on reconquering
the world for Christ implies, Calvin's spirituality also included a strong sense
of history, which he perceived as a process in which God's purposes are
progressively realized. Therefore, the central elements of the Gospel--the
Incarnation and Atonement, the grace available through them, the gift of faith
by which human beings are enabled to accept this grace for themselves, and the
sanctification that results--together describe objectively how human beings are
enabled, step by step, to recover their original relationship with God and
regain the energy coming from it. Calvin described this as a
"quickening" that, in effect, brings the believer back from death to
life and makes possible the most strenuous exertion in God's service. |
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Calvin
exploited two traditional metaphors for the life of a Christian. Living in an
unusually militant age, he drew on the familiar idea of the believer's life as a
ceaseless, quasi-military struggle against the powers of evil both within the
self and in the world. The Christian, in this conception, must struggle against
his own wicked impulses, against the majority of the human race on behalf of the
Gospel, and ultimately against the Devil. Paradoxically, however, Christian
warfare consists less in inflicting wounds on others than in suffering the
effects of sin patiently, that is, by bearing the cross. In Calvin's thought the
metaphor for the Christian life as conflict thus takes on the added meaning of
acquiescence in suffering. The disasters that afflict human existence, though
punishments for the wicked, are an education for the believer; they strengthen
faith, develop humility, purge wickedness, and compel him to keep alert and look
to God for help. |
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The
second traditional metaphor for the Christian life employed by Calvin, that of a
journey or pilgrimage--i.e., of a
movement toward a goal--equally implied activity. "Our life is like a
journey," Calvin asserted; yet "it is not God's will that we should
march along casually as we please, but he sets the goal before us, and also
directs us on the right way to it." This way is also a struggle because no
one moves easily forward and most are so weak that, "wavering and limping
and even creeping along the ground, they move at a feeble pace." Yet with
God's help everyone can daily make some advance, however slight. Notable in this
conception is a single-mindedness often associated with Calvinism: Christians
must look straight ahead to the goal and be distracted by nothing, looking
neither to the right nor left. Calvin allows them to love the good things in
this life, but only within limits. |
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Thus
the Christian life is a strenuous progress in holiness, which, through the
constant effort of the individual to make the whole world obedient to God, will
also be reflected in the progressive sanctification of the world. These
processes, however, will never be completed in this life. For Calvin even the
most developed Christian in this world is like an adolescent, yearning to grow
into, though still far from, the full stature of Christ. But, Calvin assured his
followers, "each day in some degree our purity will increase and our
corruption be cleansed as long as we live in the world," and "the more
we increase in knowledge, the more should we increase in love." Meanwhile
the faithful experience a vision, always more clear, of "God's face,
peaceful and calm and gracious toward us." So the spiritual life, for
Calvin as for many before him, culminates in the vision of God. |
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While
Lutheranism was largely confined to parts of Germany and to Scandinavia,
Calvinism spread into England, Scotland, the English-speaking colonies in North
America, France, the Netherlands, much of Germany, and parts of central Europe.
This expansion began during Calvin's lifetime and was encouraged by him.
Religious refugees had poured into Geneva, especially from France during the
1550s as the French government became increasingly intolerant but also from
England, Scotland, Italy, and other parts of Europe into which Calvinism had
spread. Calvin welcomed them, trained many of them as ministers, sent them back
to their countries of origin to spread the Gospel, and then supported them with
letters of encouragement and advice. Geneva thus became the centre of an
international movement and a model for churches elsewhere. John Knox, the
Calvinist leader of Scotland, described Geneva as "the most perfect school
of Christ that ever was on the earth since the days of the Apostles." |
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Efforts
to explain the appeal of Calvinism in social terms have had only limited
success. In France it may have been primarily attractive to the nobility and the
urban upper classes, in Germany it found adherents among both townsmen and
princes, but in England and the Netherlands it made converts in every social
group. It seems likely, therefore, that its appeal was based on its ability to
explain disorders of the age afflicting all classes as well as on the remedies
and comfort provided both by its activism and by its doctrine. |
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Having
said this much, however, it is important to observe that the later history of
Calvinism has often been obscured by a failure to distinguish between (1)
Calvinism as the beliefs of Calvin himself, as discussed above, (2) the beliefs
of his followers, who, though striving to be faithful to Calvin, modified his
teachings to meet their own needs, and (3) more loosely, the beliefs of the
Reformed tradition of Protestant Christianity, in which Calvinism proper was
only one, if historically the most prominent, strand. The Reformed churches--in
the 16th century referred to in the plural to indicate, along with what they had
in common, their individual autonomy and variety--consisted originally of a
group of non-Lutheran Protestant churches based in towns in Switzerland and
southern Germany. These churches have always been jealous of their autonomy, and
Geneva was not alone among them in having distinguished theological leadership.
Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger in Zürich and Martin Bucer in
Strasbourg also had a European influence, which combined with that of Calvin,
especially in England, to shape what came to be called Calvinism. |
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The
church in Geneva continued to venerate Calvin and aimed to be faithful to his
teaching under his successors, first among them Theodore
Beza, Calvin's chief lieutenant during the latter part of his life. But
in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, in the atmosphere of what can be
appropriately described as a Protestant "Counter-Reformation,"
Calvinism in Geneva underwent a change. Abandoning Calvin's more humanistic
tendencies and drawing more on other aspects of his thought, Calvinism was
increasingly intellectualized and came more and more to resemble the
Scholasticism that Calvin had abhorred. |
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Under
the influence of Aristotle the theology of Geneva became increasingly
systematic. Faith, in this new atmosphere, was less a lively trust in God's
promises than assent to a body of theological propositions. Especially the
doctrine of predestination
began to assume an importance such as had not been attributed to it before.
Whereas Calvin had been led by personal faith to an awed belief in
predestination, predestination, considered an "eternal decree" of God
and a metaphysical necessity, now became the basis of faith. |
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Developments
in Geneva illustrate what happened to Calvinism elsewhere. In 1619 they reached
a climax at the Synod of Dort
in the Netherlands, which spelled out various corollaries of predestination, as
Calvin had never done, and made the doctrine central to Calvinism. Although the
controversy that provoked this formulation was local, the synod was attended by
representatives of Reformed churches elsewhere and assumed somewhat the same
importance for them as the Council of Trent did for Roman Catholics. |
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In
keeping with these developments Calvinist theologians, apparently finding
Calvin's loose rhetorical style of expression unsatisfactory, began deliberately
to write like Scholastic theologians, in Latin, and even appealed to medieval
Scholastic authorities. The major Calvinist theological statement of the 17th
century was the Institutio Theologiae
Elencticae (1688) of François Turretin, chief pastor of Geneva.
Although the title of his work recalled Calvin's masterpiece, the work itself
bore little resemblance to the Institutes;
it was not published in the vernacular, its dialectical structure followed the
model of the great Summae of Thomas
Aquinas, and it suggested Thomas' confidence in the value of human reason. The
lasting significance of this shift is suggested by the fact that Turretin, in
Latin, was the basic textbook in theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary
in New Jersey, the most distinguished intellectual centre of American Calvinism,
until the middle of the 19th century. |
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Historians
of Calvinism have continued to debate whether these developments were
essentially faithful to the beliefs of Calvin or deviations from them. In some
sense they were both. Later Calvinism, though abandoning Calvin's more
humanistic tendencies, found precedents for these changes in the contrary
aspects of his thought. They were untrue to Calvin, however, in rejecting his
typically Renaissance concern to balance contrary impulses. These changes,
moreover, suggest the stage in the development of a movement that Max Weber
called "routinization." It is the stage that comes after a movement's
creative beginnings and, as a kind of reaction against the disorderly freedom of
individual creativity, represents the quite different values of order and
regularity. It is also relevant to explaining these changes in Calvinism that
they occurred during a period of singular disorder, caused among other things by
a century of religious warfare, which generally produced a longing for
certainty, security, and peace. |
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Calvin's
influence has persisted not only in the Reformed churches of France, Germany,
Scotland, the Netherlands, and Hungary but also in the Church of England, where
Calvin was long at least as highly regarded as among those Puritans who
separated from the Anglican establishment. The latter organized their own churches,
Presbyterian or Congregational,
which brought Calvinism to North America. Even today these churches, along with
the originally German Evangelical and Reformed Church, recall Calvin as their
founding father. Eventually Calvinist theology was also widely accepted by major
groups of Baptists; and even Unitarianism, which broke away from the Calvinist
churches of New England in the 18th century, reflected the more rational
impulses in Calvin's theology. More recently Protestant interest in the social
implications of the Gospel and Protestant neo-orthodoxy, as represented by Karl
Barth, Emil Brunner, and Reinhold Niebuhr, reflects the continuing influence of
John Calvin. |
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Calvin's
larger influence over the development of modern Western civilization has been
variously assessed. The controversial "Weber thesis" attributed the
rise of modern capitalism largely to Puritanism, but neither Max
Weber, in his famous essay of 1904, "Die protestantische Ethik und
der Geist des Kapitalismus" (The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism), nor the great economic
historian Richard Henry Tawney, in Religion
and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), implicated Calvin himself in this
development. Much the same thing can be said about efforts to link Calvinism to
the rise of modern science; although Puritans were prominent in the scientific
movement of 17th-century England, Calvin himself was indifferent to the science
of his own day. A somewhat better case can be made for Calvin's influence on
political theory. His own political instincts were highly conservative, and he
preached the submission of private persons to all legitimate authority. But,
like Italian humanists, he personally preferred a republic to a monarchy. In
confronting the problem posed by rulers who actively opposed the spread of the
Gospel, he advanced a theory of resistance, kept alive by his followers,
according to which lesser magistrates might legitimately rebel against kings.
Unlike most of his contemporaries, furthermore, Calvin included among the proper
responsibilities of states not only the maintenance of public order but also a
positive concern for the general welfare of society. |
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Calvinism
has a place, therefore, in the development of liberal political thought.
Calvin's major and most durable influence, nevertheless, has been religious.
From his time to the present Calvinism has meant a peculiar seriousness about
Christianity and its ethical implications. |
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BIBLIOGRAPHY.
The most complete edition of Calvin's works is Ioannis
Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, 59 vol. in 26, ed. by GUILIELMUS (JOHANN
WILHELM) BAUM, EDUARDUS (EDUARD) CUNITZ, and EDUARDUS (EDUARD) REUSS (1863-1900;
reprinted 59 vol. in 58, 1964). Supplementary material may be found in the
series "Supplementa Calviniana: Sermons inédits" (1961- ),
which collects hitherto unpublished sermons, with 5 vol. published by 1988; and
the Registres de la Compagnie des Pasteurs
de Genève au temps de Calvin, ed. by ROBERT M. KINGDON and JEAN-FRANÇOIS
BERGIER, 2 vol. (1962-64), a partial record of the deliberations of the Geneva
Company of Pastors from 1546 to 1564, the first 2 vol. of a larger set, Registres
de la Compagnie des Pasteurs de Genève, ed. by OLIVIER FATIO et al. The best English translation of Institutio Christianae religionis is Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. by FORD LEWIS BATTLES,
2 vol. (1960). For selected other works of Calvin in English, see DAVID W.
TORRANCE and THOMAS F. TORRANCE (eds.), Commentaries,
12 vol. (1959-72, reprinted 1976-88), on the New Testament; and DONALD K. McKIM
(ed.), Readings in Calvin's Theology
(1984). |
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Studies
of Calvin are numerous. For guidance to older works, see ALFREDUS (ALFRED)
ERICHSON, Bibliographia Calviniana (1900,
reprinted 1979); and WILHELM NIESEL, Calvin-Bibliographie, 1901-1959 (1961). For literature since 1960,
see the bibliographies ed. by PETER DE KLERK and published annually in issue no.
2 of Calvin Theological Journal. A
recent scholarly biography of Calvin is T.H.L. PARKER, John Calvin (1975, reissued 1987). For a fuller account of his
thought, see FRANÇOIS WENDEL, Calvin:
Origins and Development of His Religious Thought (1963, reprinted 1987;
originally published in French, 1950); and for Calvin in historical context, see
WILLIAM J. BOUWSMA, John Calvin: A
Sixteenth-Century Portrait (1988). ROBERT M. KINGDON, Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France, 1555-1563
(1956), deals with Calvin's interest in France. For later Calvinism, see ROBERT
V. SCHNUCKER (ed.), Calviniana: Ideas and
Influence of Jean Calvin (1988); and MENNA PRESTWICH (ed.), International
Calvinism, 1541-1715 (1985). For Calvinist political thought, see QUENTIN
SKINNER, "Calvinism and the Theory of Revolution," in The
Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2, The Age of Reformation (1978), pp. 189-358. |
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