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John Calvin (Middle French: Jean Cauvin; 10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where in 1536 he published the first edition of his seminal work Institutes of the Christian Religion.
In that year, Calvin was invited by William Farel to help reform the church in Geneva. The city council resisted the implementation of Calvin and Farel's ideas, and both men were expelled. At the invitation of Martin Bucer, Calvin proceeded to Strasbourg, where he became the minister of a church of French refugees. He continued to support the reform movement in Geneva, and was eventually invited back to lead its church. Following his return, he introduced new forms of church government and liturgy, despite the opposition of several powerful families in the city who tried to curb his authority. During this period, Michael Servetus, a Spaniard known for his heretical views, arrived in Geneva. He was denounced by Calvin and executed by the city council. Following an influx of supportive refugees and new elections to the city council, Calvin's opponents were forced out. Calvin spent his final years promoting the Reformation both in Geneva and throughout Europe.
Calvin was a tireless polemic and apologetic writer who generated much controversy. He also exchanged cordial and supportive letters with many reformers including Philipp Melanchthon and Heinrich Bullinger. In addition to the Institutes, he wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible as well as theological treatises and confessional documents, and he regularly gave sermons throughout the week in Geneva. Calvin was influenced by the Augustinian tradition, which led him to expound the doctrine of predestination and the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation.
Calvin's writing and preachings provided the seeds for the branch of theology that bears his name. The Presbyterian and other Reformed churches, which look to Calvin as a chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world. Calvin's thought exerted considerable influence over major religious figures and entire religious movements, such as Puritanism, and some political historians have argued that his ideas have contributed to the rise of capitalism and representative democracy in the West.
Calvin was born Jean Cauvin on 10 July 1509 in the town of Noyon in the Picardy region of France. He was the second of three sons who survived infancy. His father, Gérard Cauvin, had a prosperous career as the cathedral notary and registrar to the ecclesiastical court. His mother, Jeanne le Franc, was the daughter of an innkeeper from Cambrai. She died a few years after Calvin's birth. Gérard intended his three sons—Charles, Jean, and Antoine—for the priesthood. Jean was particularly precocious; by the age of twelve, he was employed by the bishop as a clerk and received the tonsure, cutting his hair to symbolise his dedication to the Church. He also won the patronage of an influential family, the Montmors.[1] Through their assistance, Calvin was able to attend the Collège de la Marche in Paris, where he learned Latin from one of its greatest teachers, Mathurin Cordier.[2] Once he completed the course, he entered the Collège de Montaigu as a philosophy student.[3]
In 1525 or 1526, Gérard withdrew his son from Montaigu and enrolled him in the University of Orléans to study law. According to contemporary biographers Theodore Beza and Nicolas Colladon, Gérard believed his son would earn more money as a lawyer than as a priest.[4] After a few years of quiet study, Calvin entered the University of Bourges in 1529. He was intrigued by the presence of Andreas Alciati, a humanist lawyer. Humanism was a European intellectual movement which stressed classical studies. During his eighteen-month stay in Bourges Calvin learned Greek, a necessity for studying the New Testament.[5]
Sometime during this period Calvin experienced a sudden religious conversion. Not much is known of the surrounding circumstances, but he made one reference to it in the preface to his Commentary on the Book of Psalms: "God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame, which was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected from one at my early period of life. Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness, I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress therein, that although I did not altogether leave off other studies, yet I pursued them with less ardour."[6] Scholars have argued about the precise interpretation of this statement, but it is agreed that his conversion corresponded with his break from the Roman Catholic Church.[7][8]
By 1532, he received his licentiate in law and published his first book, a commentary on Seneca's De Clementia. After uneventful trips to Orléans and his hometown of Noyon, Calvin returned to Paris in October 1533. During this time, tensions rose at the Collège Royal (later to become the Collège de France) between the humanists/reformers and the conservative senior faculty members. One of the reformers, Nicolas Cop, was rector of the university. On 1 November 1533 he devoted his inaugural address to the need for reform and renewal in the Catholic Church. The address provoked a strong reaction from the faculty, who denounced it as heretical, forcing Cop to flee to Basel. Calvin, a close friend of Cop, was implicated in the offense, and for the next year he was forced into hiding. He remained on the move, sheltering with his friend Louis du Tillet in Angoulême and taking refuge in Noyon and Orléans. He was finally forced to flee France during the Affair of the Placards in mid-October 1534. In that incident, unknown reformers had posted placards in various cities attacking the Catholic mass, which provoked a violent backlash against Protestants. In January 1535, Calvin joined Cop in Basel, a city under the influence of the reformer Johannes Oecolampadius.[9]
In March 1536, Calvin published the first edition of his Institutio Christianae Religionis or Institutes of the Christian Religion. The work was an apologia or defense of his faith and a statement of the doctrinal position of the reformers. He also intended it to serve as an elementary instruction book for anyone interested in the Christian religion. The book was the first expression of his theology. Calvin updated the work and published new editions throughout his life.[10] Shortly after its publication, he left Basel for Ferrara, Italy, where he briefly served as secretary to Princess Renée of France. By June he was back in Paris with his brother Antoine, who was resolving their father's affairs. Following the Edict of Coucy, which gave a limited six-month period for heretics to reconcile with the Catholic faith, Calvin decided that there was no future for him in France. In August he set off for Strasbourg, a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire and a refuge for reformers. Due to military manoeuvres of imperial and French forces, he was forced to make a detour to the south, bringing him to Geneva. Calvin had only intended to stay a single night, but William Farel, a fellow French reformer residing in the city, implored Calvin to stay and assist him in reforming the church there. Calvin quietly accepted without any preconditions on his tasks or duties.[11] The office to which he was initially assigned is unknown. He was eventually given the title of "reader", which most likely meant that he could give expository lectures on the Bible. Sometime in 1537 he was selected to be a "pastor", although he never received any pastoral consecration.[12] For the first time, the lawyer-theologian took up pastoral duties such as baptisms, weddings, and church services.[13]
Throughout the fall of 1536, Farel drafted a confession of faith while Calvin wrote separate articles on reorganising the church in Geneva. On 16 January 1537, Farel and Calvin presented their Articles concernant l'organisation de l'église et du culte à Genève (Articles on the Organisation of the Church and its Worship at Geneva) to the city council.[14] The document described the manner and frequency of their celebrations of the eucharist, the reason for and the method of excommunication, the requirement to subscribe to the confession of faith, the use of congregational singing in the liturgy, and the revision of marriage laws. The council accepted the document on the same day.[15]
Throughout the year, however, Calvin and Farel's reputation with the council began to suffer. The council was reluctant to enforce the subscription requirement as only a few citizens had subscribed to their confession of faith. On 26 November, the two ministers heatedly debated the council over the issue. Furthermore, France was taking an interest in forming an alliance with Geneva and as the two ministers were Frenchmen, councillors began to question their loyalty. Finally, a major ecclesiastical-political quarrel developed when Bern, Geneva’s ally in the reformation of the Swiss churches, proposed to introduce uniformity in the church ceremonies. One proposal required the use of unleavened bread for the eucharist. The two ministers were unwilling to follow Bern's lead and delayed the use of such bread until a synod in Zürich could be convened to make the final decision. The council ordered Calvin and Farel to use unleavened bread for the Easter eucharist; in protest, the ministers did not administer communion during the Easter service. This caused a riot during the service and the next day, the council told the ministers to leave Geneva.[16]
Farel and Calvin went to Bern and Zürich to plead their case. The synod in Zürich placed most of the blame on Calvin for not being sympathetic enough toward the people of Geneva. However, it asked Bern to mediate with the aim of restoring the ministers. The Geneva council refused to readmit the two men, who took refuge in Basel. Subsequently Farel received an invitation to lead the church in Neuchâtel. Calvin was invited to lead a church of French refugees in Strasbourg by that city's leading reformers, Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito. Initially Calvin refused because Farel was not included in the invitation, but when Bucer appealed to him Calvin relented. By September, Calvin had taken up his new position in Strasbourg, fully expecting that this time it would be permanent; a few months later, he applied for and was granted citizenship of the city.[17]
During his time in Strasbourg, Calvin was not affected to one particular church, but held his office successively in the Saint-Nicolas Church, the Sainte-Madeleine Church and the former Dominican Church, renamed the Temple Neuf.[18] (All of these churches still exist today, but none of them in the architectural state of Calvin's days.) Calvin ministered to four or five hundred members in his church. He preached or lectured every day with two sermons on Sunday. Communion was celebrated monthly and congregational psalms singing was encouraged.[19] He also worked on the second edition of the Institutes. Although the first edition sold out within a year, Calvin was dissatisfied with its structure as a catechism, a primer for young Christians. For the second edition, published in 1539, Calvin dropped this format in favour of systematically presenting the main doctrines from scripture. In the process, the book was enlarged from six chapters to seventeen.[20] He concurrently worked on another book, the Commentary on Romans, which was published in March 1540. The book was a model for his later commentaries: it included his own Latin translation from the Greek rather than the Latin Vulgate, an exegesis, and an exposition.[21] In the dedicatory letter, Calvin praised the work of his predecessors Philipp Melanchthon, Heinrich Bullinger, and Martin Bucer, but he also took care to state that his own work was distinct and courteously criticised some of the shortcomings of these three major reformers.[22]
Calvin's friends soon began to urge him to marry. Calvin took a prosaic view on the issue of his own marriage, writing to one correspondent, "I, who have the air of being so hostile to celibacy, I am still not married and do not know whether I will ever be. If I take a wife it will be because, being better freed from numerous worries, I can devote myself to the Lord."[23] Several candidates were presented to him including one young woman from a noble family. Reluctantly, Calvin agreed to the marriage, on the condition that she would learn French. Although a wedding date was planned for sometime in March 1540, he remained reluctant and the wedding never took place. He later wrote that he would never think of marrying her, "unless the Lord had entirely bereft me of my wits".[24] Instead, in August of that year, he married Idelette de Bure, a widow who had two children from her first marriage.[25]
Meanwhile Geneva had begun to reconsider its expulsion of Calvin. Church attendance had dwindled and the political climate had changed; as Bern and Geneva quarreled over land, their alliance frayed. When Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto wrote a letter to the city council inviting Geneva to return to the Catholic faith, the council searched for an ecclesiastical authority to respond to him. At first Pierre Viret was consulted, but when he refused, the council asked Calvin. He agreed and his Responsio ad Sadoletum (Letter to Sadoleto), while courteous, strongly defended Geneva's position concerning reforms in the church.[26] On 21 September 1540 the council commissioned one of its members, Ami Perrin, to find a way to recall Calvin. An embassy reached Calvin while he was at a colloquy, a conference to settle religious disputes, in Worms. His reaction to the suggestion of returning to Geneva was one of horror in which he wrote, "Rather would I submit to death a hundred times than to that cross on which I had to perish daily a thousand times over."[27]
Despite his hesitation, he also wrote that he was prepared to follow the Lord's calling. A plan was drawn up in which Viret would be appointed to take temporary charge in Geneva for six months while Bucer and Calvin would visit the city to determine the next steps. However, the city council pressed for the immediate appointment of Calvin in Geneva. By summer 1541, it was finally decided that Strasbourg would lend Calvin to Geneva for six months. Calvin returned on 13 September 1541 and quite unlike his first entry into Geneva as a refugee, he arrived with an official escort and a wagon for his family.[28]
In supporting Calvin's proposals for reforms, the council of Geneva passed the Ordonnances ecclésiastiques (Ecclesiastical Ordinances) on 20 November 1541. The ordinances defined four orders of ministerial function: pastors to preach and to administer the sacraments; doctors to instruct believers in the faith; elders to provide discipline; and deacons to care for the poor and needy.[29] They also called for the creation of the Consistoire (Consistory), an ecclesiastical court composed of the lay elders and the ministers. The city government retained the power to summon persons before the court and the Consistory could judge only ecclesiastical matters having no civil jurisdiction. Originally, the court had the power to mete out sentences, with excommunication as its most severe penalty. However, the government contested this power and on 19 March 1543 the council decided that all sentencing would be carried out by the government.[30]
In 1542, Calvin adapted a service book used in Strasbourg, publishing La Forme des Prières et Chants Ecclésiastiques (The Form of Prayers and Church Hymns). Calvin recognised the power of music and he intended that it be used to support scripture readings. The original Strasbourg psalter contained twelve psalms by Clément Marot and Calvin added several more hymns of his own composition in the Geneva version. At the end of 1542, Marot became a refugee in Geneva and contributed nineteen more psalms. Louis Bourgeois, also a refugee, lived and taught music in Geneva for sixteen years and Calvin took the opportunity to add his hymns, the most famous being the Old Hundredth.[31]
In the same year of 1542, Calvin published Catéchisme de l'Eglise de Genève (Catechism of the Church of Geneva), which was inspired by Bucer's Kurze Schrifftliche Erklärung of 1534. Calvin had written an earlier catechism during his first stay in Geneva which was largely based on Martin Luther's Large Catechism. The first version was arranged pedagogically, describing Law, Faith, and Prayer. The 1542 version was rearranged for theological reasons, covering Faith first, then Law and Prayer.[32]
During his ministry in Geneva, Calvin preached over two thousand sermons. Initially he preached twice on Sunday and three times during the week. This proved to be too heavy a burden and late in 1542 the council allowed him to preach only once on Sunday. However, in October 1549, he was again required to preach twice on Sundays and, in addition, every weekday of alternate weeks. His sermons lasted more than an hour and he did not use notes. An occasional secretary tried to record his sermons, but very little of his preaching was preserved before 1549. In that year, professional scribe Denis Raguenier, who had learned or developed a system of shorthand, was assigned to record all of Calvin's sermons. An analysis of his sermons by T. H. L. Parker suggests that Calvin was a consistent preacher and his style changed very little over the years.[33][34]
Very little is known about Calvin's personal life in Geneva. His house and furniture were owned by the council. The house was big enough to accommodate his family as well as Antoine's family and some servants. On 28 July 1542, Idelette gave birth to a son, Jacques, but he was born prematurely and survived only briefly. Idelette fell ill in 1545 and died on 29 March 1549. Calvin never married again. He expressed his sorrow in a letter to Viret:
I have been bereaved of the best friend of my life, of one who, if it has been so ordained, would willingly have shared not only my poverty but also my death. During her life she was the faithful helper of my ministry. From her I never experienced the slightest hindrance.[35]
Throughout the rest of his life in Geneva, he maintained several friendships from his early years including Montmor, Cordier, Cop, Farel, Melanchthon, and Bullinger.[36]
Calvin encountered bitter opposition to his work in Geneva. Around 1546, the uncoordinated forces coalesced into an identifiable group whom he referred to as the libertines. According to Calvin, these were people who felt that after being liberated through grace, they were exempted from both ecclesiastical and civil law. The group consisted of wealthy, politically powerful, and interrelated families of Geneva.[37] At the end of January 1546, Pierre Ameaux, a maker of playing cards who had already been in trouble with the Consistory, attacked Calvin by calling him a "Picard", an epithet denoting anti-French sentiment, and accused him of false doctrine. Ameaux was punished by the council and forced to make expiation by parading through the city and begging God for forgiveness.[38] A few months later Ami Perrin, the man who had brought Calvin to Geneva, moved into open opposition. Perrin had married Françoise Favre, daughter of François Favre, a well-established Genevan merchant. Both Perrin's wife and father-in-law had previous quarrels with the Consistory. The court noted that many of Geneva's notables, including Perrin, had breached a law against dancing. Initially, Perrin ignored the court when he was summoned, but after receiving a letter from Calvin, he acquiesced and appeared quietly before the Consistory.[39]
By 1547, opposition to Calvin and other French refugee ministers had grown to constitute the majority of the syndics, the civil magistrates of Geneva. On 27 June an unsigned threatening letter in Genevan dialect was found at the pulpit of St. Pierre Cathedral where Calvin preached. Suspecting a plot against both the church and the state, the council appointed a commission to investigate. Jacques Gruet, a Genevan member of Favre's group, was arrested and incriminating evidence was found when his house was searched. Under torture, he confessed to several crimes including writing the letter left in the pulpit which threatened God and his ambassadors and endeavouring to subvert church order. The civil court condemned him to death and with Calvin's consent, he was beheaded on 26 July.[40]
The libertines continued their opposition, taking opportunities to stir up discontent, to insult the ministers, and to defy the authority of the Consistory. The council straddled both sides of the conflict, alternately admonishing and upholding Calvin. When Perrin was elected first syndic in February 1552, Calvin's authority appeared to be at its lowest point. After some losses before the council, Calvin believed he was defeated; on 24 July 1553 he asked the council to allow him to resign. Although the libertines controlled the council, his request was refused. The opposition realised that they could curb Calvin's authority, but they did not have enough power to banish him.[41]
The turning point in Calvin's fortunes occurred when Michael Servetus, a fugitive from ecclesiastical authorities, appeared in Geneva on 13 August 1553. Servetus was a Spaniard who boldly criticised Christian dogma. In particular, he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. In July 1530 he disputed with Johannes Oecolampadius in Basel and was eventually expelled. He went to Strasbourg where he published a pamphlet against the Trinity. Bucer publicly refuted it and asked Servetus to leave. After returning to Basel, Servetus published Dialogorum de Trinitate libri duo (Two Books of Dialogues on the Trinity) which caused a sensation among Reformers and Catholics alike. The Inquisition in Spain ordered his arrest.[42]
Calvin and Servetus were first brought into contact in 1546 through a common acquaintance, Jean Frellon of Lyon. They exchanged letters debating doctrine until Calvin lost patience and refused to respond; by this time Servetus had written around thirty letters to Calvin. Calvin was particularly outraged when Servetus sent him a copy of the Institutes of the Christian Religion heavily annotated with arguments pointing to errors in the book. When Servetus mentioned that he would come to Geneva if Calvin agreed, Calvin wrote a letter to Farel on 13 February 1547 noting that if Servetus were to come, he would not assure him safe conduct: "for if he came, as far as my authority goes, I would not let him leave alive."[43]
In 1553 when the inquisitor-general of France learned that Servetus was hiding in Vienne under an assumed name, he contacted Cardinal François de Tournon, the secretary of the archbishop of Lyon, to take up the matter. Servetus was arrested and taken in for questioning. His letters to Calvin were presented as evidence of heresy, but he denied having written them. He managed to escape from prison, and the Catholic authorities sentenced him in absentia to death by slow burning.[44]
On his way to Italy, Servetus stopped in Geneva for unknown reasons and attended one of Calvin's sermons in St Pierre. Calvin had him arrested, and Calvin's secretary Nicholas de la Fontaine composed a list of accusations that was submitted before the court. The prosecutor was Philibert Berthelier, a member of a libertine family and son of a famous Geneva patriot, and the sessions were led by Pierre Tissot, Perrin's brother-in-law. The libertines allowed the trial to drag on in an attempt to harass Calvin. The difficulty in using Servetus as a weapon against Calvin was that the heretical reputation of Servetus was widespread and most of the cities in Europe were observing and awaiting the outcome of the trial. This posed a dilemma for the libertines, so on 21 August the council decided to write to other Swiss churches for their opinions, thus mitigating their own responsibility for the final decision. While waiting for the responses, the council also asked Servetus if he preferred to be judged in Vienne or in Geneva. He begged to stay in Geneva. On 20 October the replies from Zürich, Basel, Bern, and Schaffhausen were read and the council condemned Servetus as a heretic. The following day he was sentenced to burning at the stake, the same sentence as in Vienne. Calvin and other ministers asked that he be beheaded instead of burnt. This plea was refused and on 27 October, Servetus was burnt alive—atop a pyre of his own books—at the Plateau of Champel at the edge of Geneva.[45]
After the death of Servetus, Calvin was acclaimed a defender of Christianity, but his ultimate triumph over the libertines was still two years away. He had always insisted that the Consistory retain the power of excommunication, despite the council's past decision to take it away. During Servetus's trial, Philibert Berthelier asked the council for permission to take communion, as he had been excommunicated the previous year for insulting a minister. Calvin protested that the council did not have the legal authority to overturn Berthelier's excommunication. Unsure of how the council would rule, he hinted in a sermon on 3 September 1553 that he might be dismissed by the authorities. The council decided to re-examine the Ordonnances and on 18 September it voted in support of Calvin—excommunication was within the jurisdiction of the Consistory. Berthelier applied for reinstatement to another Genevan administrative assembly, the Deux Cents (Two Hundred), in November. This body reversed the council's decision and stated that the final arbiter concerning excommunication should be the council. However, the ministers continued to protest and as in the case of Servetus, the opinions of the Swiss churches were sought. The affair dragged on through 1554. Finally, on 22 January 1555, the council announced the decision of the Swiss churches: the original Ordonnances were to be kept and the Consistory was to regain its official powers.[46]
The libertines' downfall began with the February 1555 elections. By then, many of the French refugees had been granted citizenship and with their support, Calvin's partisans elected the majority of the syndics and the councillors. The libertines plotted to make trouble and on 16 May they set off to burn down a house that was supposedly full of Frenchmen. The syndic Henri Aulbert tried to intervene, carrying with him the baton of office that symbolised his power. Perrin made the mistake of seizing the baton, thereby signifying that he was taking power, a virtual coup d'état. The insurrection was over as soon as it started when another syndic appeared and ordered Perrin to go with him to the town hall. Perrin and other leaders were forced to flee the city. With the approval of Calvin, the other plotters who remained in the city were found and executed. The opposition to Calvin's church polity came to an end.[47]
Calvin's authority was practically uncontested during his final years, and he enjoyed an international reputation as a reformer distinct from Martin Luther.[48] Initially, Luther and Calvin had mutual respect for each other. However, a doctrinal conflict had developed between Luther and Zürich reformer Huldrych Zwingli on the interpretation of the eucharist. Calvin's opinion on the issue forced Luther to place him in Zwingli's camp. Calvin actively participated in the polemics that were exchanged between the Lutheran and Reformed branches of the Reformation movement.[49] At the same time, Calvin was dismayed by the lack of unity among the reformers. He took steps toward rapprochement with Bullinger by signing the Consensus Tigurinus, a concordat between the Zürich and Geneva churches. He reached out to England when Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer called for an ecumenical synod of all the evangelical churches. Calvin praised the idea, but ultimately Cranmer was unable to bring it to fruition.[50]
Calvin's greatest contribution toward the English-speaking community was through his sheltering of Marian exiles in Geneva starting in 1555. Under the city's protection, they were able to form their own reformed church under John Knox and William Whittingham and eventually carried Calvin's ideas on doctrine and polity back to England and Scotland.[51] However, Calvin was most interested in reforming his homeland, France. He supported the building of churches by distributing literature and providing ministers. Between 1555 and 1562, over one hundred ministers were sent to France. These efforts were funded entirely by the church in Geneva, as the city council had refused to become involved in missionary activities at the time. Henry II severely persecuted Protestants under the Edict of Chateaubriand and when the French authorities complained about the missionary activities, Geneva was able to disclaim responsibility.[52]
Within Geneva, Calvin's main concern was the creation of a collège, an institute for the education of children. A site for the school was selected on 25 March 1558 and it opened the following year on 5 June 1559. Although the school was a single institution, it was divided into two parts: a grammar school called the collège or schola privata and an advanced school called the académie or schola publica. Calvin tried to recruit two professors for the institute, Mathurin Cordier, his old friend and Latin scholar who was now based in Lausanne, and Emmanuel Tremellius, the Regius professor of Hebrew in Cambridge. Neither were available, but he succeeded in obtaining Theodore Beza as rector. Within five years there were 1,200 students in the grammar school and 300 in the advanced school. The collège eventually became the Collège Calvin, one of the college preparatory schools of Geneva, while the académie became the University of Geneva.[53]
In autumn 1558, Calvin became ill with a fever. Since he was afraid that he might die before completing the final revision of the Institutes, he forced himself to work. The final edition was greatly expanded to the extent that Calvin referred to it as a new work. The expansion from twenty-one chapters of the previous edition to eighty was due to the extended treatment of existing material rather than the addition of new topics.[54] Shortly after he recovered, he strained his voice while preaching, which brought on a violent fit of coughing. He burst a blood-vessel in his lungs, and his health steadily declined. He preached his final sermon in St. Pierre on 6 February 1564. On 25 April, he made his will, in which he left small sums to his family and to the collège. A few days later, the ministers of the church came to visit him, and he bid his final farewell, which was recorded in Discours d'adieu aux ministres. He recounted his life in Geneva, sometimes recalling bitterly some of the hardships he had suffered. Calvin died on 27 May 1564 aged 54. At first his body was laid in state, but since so many people came to see it, the reformers were afraid that they would be accused of fostering a new saint's cult. On the following day, he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Cimetière de Plainpalais.[55] While the exact location of the grave is unknown, a stone was added in the 19th century to mark a grave traditionally thought to be Calvin's.[56]
Calvin develops his theology in his biblical commentaries as well as his sermons and treatises, but the most concise expression of his views is found in his magnum opus, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. He intended that the book be used as a summary of his views on Christian theology and that it be read in conjunction with his commentaries.[57] The various editions of that work span nearly his entire career as a reformer, and the successive revisions of the book show that his theology changed very little from his youth to his death.[58] The first edition from 1536 consisted of only six chapters. The second edition, published in 1539, was three times as long because he added chapters on subjects that appear in Melanchthon's Loci Communes. In 1543, he again added new material and expanded a chapter on the Apostles' Creed. The final edition of the Institutes appeared in 1559. By then, the work consisted of four books of eighty chapters, and each book was named after statements from the creed: Book 1 on God the Creator, Book 2 on the Redeemer in Christ, Book 3 on receiving the Grace of Christ through the Holy Spirit, and Book 4 on the Society of Christ or the Church.[59]
The first statement in the Institutes acknowledges its central theme. It states that the sum of human wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.[60] Calvin argues that the knowledge of God is not inherent in humanity nor can it be discovered by observing this world. The only way to obtain it is to study scripture. Calvin writes, "For anyone to arrive at God the Creator he needs Scripture as his Guide and Teacher."[61] He does not try to prove the authority of scripture but rather describes it as autopiston or self-authenticating. He defends the trinitarian view of God and, in a strong polemical stand against the Catholic Church, argues that images of God lead to idolatry.[62] At the end of the first book, he offers his views on providence, writing, "By his Power God cherishes and guards the World which he made and by his Providence rules its individual Parts."[63] Humans are unable to fully comprehend why God performs any particular action, but whatever good or evil people may practise, their efforts always result in the execution of God's will and judgments.[64]
The second book includes several essays on the original sin and the fall of man, which directly refer to Augustine, who developed these doctrines. He often cited the Church Fathers in order to defend the reformed cause against the charge that the reformers were creating new theology.[65] In Calvin's view, sin began with the fall of Adam and propagated to all of humanity. The domination of sin is complete to the point that people are driven to evil.[66] Thus fallen humanity is in need of the redemption that can be found in Christ. But before Calvin expounded on this doctrine, he described the special situation of the Jews who lived during the time of the Old Testament. God made a covenant with Abraham and the substance of the promise was the coming of Christ. Hence, the old covenant was not in opposition to Christ, but was rather a continuation of God's promise. Calvin then describes the New Covenant using the passage from the Apostles' Creed that describes Christ's suffering under Pontius Pilate and his return to judge the living and the dead. For Calvin, the whole course of Christ's obedience to the Father removed the discord between humanity and God.[67]
In the third book, Calvin describes how the spiritual union of Christ and humanity is achieved. He first defines faith as the firm and certain knowledge of God in Christ. The immediate effects of faith are repentance and the remission of sin. This is followed by spiritual regeneration, which returns the believer to the state of holiness before Adam's transgression. However, complete perfection is unattainable in this life, and the believer should expect a continual struggle against sin.[68] Several chapters are then devoted to the subject of justification by faith alone. He defined justification as "the acceptance by which God regards us as righteous whom he has received into grace."[69] In this definition, it is clear that it is God who initiates and carries through the action and that people play no role; God is completely sovereign in salvation.[70] Near the end of the book, Calvin describes and defends the doctrine of predestination, a doctrine advanced by Augustine in opposition to the teachings of Pelagius. Fellow theologians who followed the Augustinian tradition on this point included Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther. The principle, in Calvin's words, is that "God adopts some to the hope of life and adjudges others to eternal death."[71]
The final book describes what he considers to be the true Church and its ministry, authority, and sacraments. He denied the papal claim to primacy and the accusation that the reformers were schismatic. For Calvin, the Church was defined as the body of believers who placed Christ at its head. By definition, there was only one "catholic" or "universal" Church. Hence, he argued that the reformers, "had to leave them in order that we might come to Christ."[72] The ministers of the Church are described from a passage from Ephesians, and they consisted of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and doctors. Calvin regarded the first three offices as temporary, limited in their existence to the time of the New Testament. The latter two offices were established in the church in Geneva. Although Calvin respected the work of the ecumenical councils, he considered them to be subject to God's Word, the teaching of scripture. He also believed that the civil and church authorities were separate and should not interfere with each other.[73]
Calvin defined a sacrament as an earthly sign associated with a promise from God. He accepted only two sacraments as valid under the new covenant: baptism and the Lord's Supper (in opposition to the Catholic acceptance of seven sacraments). He completely rejected the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and the treatment of the Supper as a sacrifice. He also could not accept the Lutheran doctrine of sacramental union in which Christ was "in, with and under" the elements. His own view was close to Zwingli's symbolic view, but it was not identical. Rather than holding a purely symbolic view, Calvin noted that with the participation of the Holy Spirit, faith was nourished and strengthened by the sacrament. In his words, the eucharistic rite was "a secret too sublime for my mind to understand or words to express. I experience it rather than understand it."[74]
Calvin's theology was not without controversy. Pierre Caroli, a Protestant minister in Lausanne accused Calvin as well as Viret and Farel of Arianism in 1536. Calvin was forced to defend his beliefs on the Trinity in Confessio de Trinitate propter calumnias P. Caroli.[75] In 1551 Jérôme-Hermès Bolsec, a physician in Geneva, attacked Calvin’s doctrine of predestination and accused him of making God the author of sin. Bolsec was banished from the city, and after Calvin’s death, he wrote a biography which severely maligned Calvin’s character.[76] In the following year, Joachim Westphal, a Gnesio-Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, condemned Calvin and Zwingli as heretics in denying the eucharistic doctrine of the union of Christ's body with the elements. Calvin's Defensio sanae et orthodoxae doctrinae de sacramentis (A Defence of the Sober and Orthodox Doctrine of the Sacrament) was his response in 1555.[77] Following the execution of Servetus, a close associate of Calvin, Sebastian Castellio broke with him on the issue of the maltreatment of heretics. In Castellio's Treatise on Heretics (1554), he argued for a focus on Christ's moral teachings in place of the vanity of theology,[78] and he afterward developed a theory of tolerance based on biblical principles.[79]
Scholars have debated over Calvin's view of the Jews and Judaism. Some have argued that Calvin was the least anti-semitic among all the major reformers of his time especially in comparison to Martin Luther. Others have pointed out that Calvin was firmly within the anti-semitic camp.[80] Scholars agree, however, that it is important to distinguish between Calvin's views toward the biblical Jews and his attitude toward contemporary Jews. In his theology, Calvin demonstrates unusual tolerance as he does not differentiate between God's covenant with the Jews and the New Covenant. He states, "all the children of the promise, reborn of God, who have obeyed the commands by faith working through love, have belonged to the New Covenant since the world began."[81] Hence, he broke from the medieval tradition of using exegetical studies of the Old Testament for the purpose of anti-semitic attacks. On the other hand, most of Calvin's statements on contemporary Jewry were highly polemical, using the negative stereotypes typical of the sixteenth-century. In one example, he states, "I have had much conversation with many Jews: I have never seen either a drop of piety or a grain of truth or ingenuousness—nay, I have never found common sense in any Jew."[82] In this respect, Calvin differed little from other Protestant and Catholic clerics of his day.[83]
Calvin's first published work was a commentary of Seneca the Younger's De Clementia. Published at his own expense in 1532, it showed that he was a humanist in the tradition of Erasmus with a thorough understanding of classical scholarship.[84] His first theological work, the Psychopannychia, attempted to refute the doctrine of soul sleep as promulgated by the Anabaptists. Calvin probably wrote it during the period following Cop's speech, but it was not published until 1542 in Strasbourg.[85]
Calvin produced commentaries on most of the books of the Bible. His first commentary on Romans was published in 1540, and he planned to write commentaries on the entire New Testament. Six years passed before he wrote his second, a commentary on I Corinthians, but after that he devoted more attention to reaching his goal. Within four years he had published commentaries on all the Pauline epistles, and he also revised the commentary on Romans. He then turned his attention to the general epistles, dedicating them to Edward VI of England. By 1555 he had completed his work on the New Testament, finishing with the Acts and the Gospels (he omitted only the brief second and third Epistles of John and the Book of Revelation). For the Old Testament, he wrote commentaries on Isaiah, the books of the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and Joshua. The material for the commentaries often originated from lectures to students and ministers that he reworked for publication. However, from 1557 onwards, he could not find the time to continue this method, and he gave permission for his lectures to be published from stenographers' notes. These Praelectiones covered the minor prophets, Daniel, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and part of Ezekiel.[86]
Calvin also wrote many letters and treatises. Following the Responsio ad Sadoletum, Calvin wrote an open letter at the request of Bucer to Charles V in 1543, Supplex exhortatio ad Caesarem, defending the reformed faith. This was followed by an open letter to the pope (Admonitio paterna Pauli III) in 1544, in which Calvin admonished Paul III for depriving the reformers of any prospect of rapprochement. The pope proceeded to open the Council of Trent, which resulted in decrees against the reformers. Calvin refuted the decrees by producing the Acta synodi Tridentinae cum Antidoto in 1547. When Charles tried to find a compromise solution with the Augsburg Interim, Bucer and Bullinger urged Calvin to respond. He wrote the treatise, Vera christiannae pacificationis et Ecclesiae reformandae ratio in 1549, in which he described the doctrines that should be upheld, including justification by faith.[87]
Calvin provided many of the foundational documents for reformed churches, including documents on the catechism, the liturgy, and church governance. He also produced several confessions of faith in order to unite the churches. In 1559, he drafted the French confession of faith, the Gallic Confession, and the synod in Paris accepted it with few changes. The Belgic Confession of 1561, a Dutch confession of faith, was partly based on the Gallic Confession.[88]
After the deaths of Calvin and his successor, Beza, the Geneva city council gradually gained control over areas of life that were previously in the ecclesiastical domain. Increasing secularisation was accompanied by the decline of the church. Even the Geneva académie was eclipsed by universities in Leiden and Heidelberg, which became the new strongholds of Calvin's ideas, first identified as "Calvinism" by Joachim Westphal in 1552. By 1585, Geneva, once the wellspring of the reform movement, had become merely its symbol.[89] However, Calvin had always warned against describing him as an "idol" and Geneva as a new "Jerusalem". He encouraged people to adapt to the environments in which they found themselves. Even during his polemical exchange with Westphal, he advised a group of French-speaking refugees, who had settled in Wesel, Germany, to integrate with the local Lutheran churches. Despite his differences with the Lutherans, he did not deny that they were members of the true Church. Calvin’s recognition of the need to adapt to local conditions became an important characteristic of the reformation movement as it spread across Europe.[90]
Due to Calvin's missionary work in France, his programme of reform eventually reached the French-speaking provinces of the Netherlands. Calvinism was adopted in the Palatinate under Frederick III, which led to the formulation of the Heidelberg Catechism in 1563. This and the Belgic Confession were adopted as confessional standards in the first synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1571. Leading divines, either Calvinist or those sympathetic to Calvinism, settled in England (Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr, and Jan Laski) and Scotland (John Knox). During the English Civil War, the Calvinistic Puritans produced the Westminster Confession, which became the confessional standard for Presbyterians in the English-speaking world. Having established itself in Europe, the movement continued to spread to other parts of the world including North America, South Africa, and Korea.[91] Calvin did not live to see the foundation of his work grow into an international movement; but his death allowed his ideas to break out of their city of origin, to succeed far beyond their borders, and to establish their own distinct character.[92]
Calvin's legacy in modern times has produced a variety of opinions. Certainly the execution of Servetus has left a negative view of Calvin. Voltaire mentions the event in his Poème sur la loi naturelle (Poem on Natural Law, 1756) and Dialogues chrétiens (Christian Dialogues, 1760). For Voltaire, Calvin’s philosophy had not produced any improvement over the intolerance presented in previous revealed religions.[93] Calvin is discussed in Max Weber’s classic work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in which he argues that Calvin's teachings provided ideological impetus for the development of capitalism.[94] John Stuart Mill saw Calvin's belief in the value of restraining one's self-will as damaging to the development of the individual, though.[95] Some political historians, such as George Bancroft, have recognised his contributions to the development of representative democracy in general and the American system of government in particular.[96]
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John Calvin (1509-07-10 – 1564-05-27) was a major French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation; he is renowned for his teaching and infamous for his role in the execution of Michael Servetus.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564), Swiss divine and reformer, was born at Noyon, in Picardy, on the 10th of July 1509. His father, Gerard Cauvin or Calvin,' was a notary-apostolic and procuratorfiscal for the lordship of Noyon, besides holding certain ecclesiastical offices in connexion with that diocese. The name of his mother was Jeanne le Franc; she was the daughter of an innkeeper at Cambrai, who afterwards came to reside at Noyon. Gerard Cauvin was esteemed as a man of considerable sagacity and prudence, and his wife was a godly and attractive lady. She bore him five sons, of whom John was the second. By a second wife there were two daughters.
Of Calvin's early years only a few notices remain. His father
destined him from the first for an ecclesiastical career, and paid
for his education in the household of the noble family of Hangest
de Montmor. In May 1521 he was appointed to a chaplaincy attached
to the altar of La Gesine in the
cathedral of Noyon, and
received the tonsure. The
actual duties of the office were in such cases carried out by
ordained and older men for a fraction of the stipend. The plague having visited Noyon, the young Hangests
were sent to Paris in August
'523, and Calvin accompanied them, being enabled to do so by the
income received from his benefice.
He lived with his uncle and attended as an out-student the College
de la Marche, at that time
under the regency of Mathurin Cordier, a man of character, learning and
repute as a teacher, who in later days followed his pupil to Switzerland, taught at
Neuchatel, and died in
Geneva in 1564. In dedicating
to him his Commentary on the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, as "eximiae
pietatis et doctrinae viro," he declares that so had he been aided
by his instruction that whatever subsequent progress he had made he
only regarded as received from him, and "this," he adds, "I wish to
testify to posterity that if any utility accrue to any from my
writings they may acknowledge it as having in part flowed from
thee." From the College de la Marche he removed to the College de
Montaigu, 2 where the atmosphere was more ecclesiastical and where
he had for instructor a Spaniard who is described as a man of
learning and to whom Calvin was indebted for some sound training in dialectics and the scholastic
philosophy.
He speedily outstripped all his competitors in grammatical studies,
and by his skill and acumen as a student of philosophy, and in the
college disputations gave fruitful promise of that consummate
excellence as a reasoner in the department of speculative truth
which he afterwards displayed. Among his friends were the Hangests
(especially Claude), Nicolas and Michel Cop, sons of the king's
Swiss physician, and his own kinsman Pierre Robert, better known as Olivetan. Such
friendships testify both to the worth and the attractiveness of his
character, and contradict the old legend that he was an unsociable
misanthrope. Pleased with his success, the canons at Noyon gave him
the curacy of St Martin de
Marteville in September 1527. After holding this preferment for
nearly two years, he exchanged it in July 1529 for the cure of Pont L'Eveque, a village 1 The family
name of Calvin seems to have been written indifferently Cauvin,
Chauve, Chauvin, Calvus, Calvinus.
In the contemporary notices of Gerard and his family, in the
capitular registers of the cathedral at Noyon, the name is always
spelt Cauuin. The anagram of
Calvin is Alcuin, and this in
its Latinized form Alcuinus appears in two editions of his
Institutio as that of the author (Audin, Vie de
Calvin, i. 520). The syndics of Geneva address him in a letter
written in 1540, and still preserved, as "Docteur Caulvin." In his
letters written in French he usually signs himself "Jean Calvin."
He affected the title of "Maitre," for what reason is not
known.
Pierre de Montaigu refounded this institution in 1388. Erasmus and Ignatius Loyola also studied here.
near to Noyon, and the place to which his father originally belonged. He appears to have been not a little elated by his early promotion, and although not ordained, he preached several sermons to the people. But though the career of ecclesiastical preferment was thus early opened to him, Calvin was destined not to become a priest. A change came over the mind both of his father and himself respecting his future career. Gerard Cauvin began to suspect that he had not chosen the most lucrative profession for his son, and that the law offered to a youth of his talents and industry a more promising sphere. 3
He was also now out of favour with the cathedral chapter at Noyon.
It is said also that John himself, on the advice of his relative,
Pierre Robert Olivetan, the first translator of the Bible into French, had begun to
study the Scriptures and to dissent from the Roman worship. At any
rate he readily complied with his father's suggestion, and removed
from Paris to Orleans (March
1528) in order to study law under Pierre Taisan de 1'Etoile, the
most distinguished jurisconsult of his day.
The university atmosphere here was less ascetic than at Paris, but
Calvin's ardour knew no slackening, and such was his progress in
legal knowledge that he was frequently called upon to lecture, in
the absence of one or other of the regular staff. Other studies,
however, besides those of law occupied him while in this city, and
moved by the humanistic spirit of the age he eagerly developed his
classical knowledge. "By protracted vigils," says Beza, "he secured
indeed a solid erudition and an excellent memory; but it is
probable he at the same time sowed the seeds of that disease
(dyspepsia) which occasioned him various illnesses in after life,
and at last brought upon him premature death." 4 His friends here
were Melchior Wolmar, a German schoolmaster and a man of exemplary
scholarship and character, Francois Daniel, Francois de Connam
and Nicolas Duchemin; to these his earliest letters were
written.
From Orleans Calvin went to Bourges in the autumn of 1529 to continue his studies under the brilliant Italian, Andrea Alciati (1492-1550), whom Francis I. had invited into France and settled as a professor of law in that university. His friend Daniel went with him, and Wolmar followed a year later. By Wolmar Calvin was taught Greek, and introduced to the study of the New Testament in the original, a service which he gratefully acknowledges in one of his printed works.' The conversation of Wolmar may also have been of use to him in his consideration of the doctrines of the Reformation, which were now beginning to be widely diffused through France.
Twelve years had elapsed since Luther had published his theses
against indulgences - twelve years of intense excitement and
anxious discussion, not in Germany only, but in almost all the adjacent
countries. France there had not been as yet any overt revolt
against the Church of Rome, but
multitudes were in sympathy with any attempt to improve the church
by education, by purer morals, by better preaching and by a return to the primitive
and uncorrupted faith.
Though we cannot with Beza regard Calvin at this time as a centre
of Protestant
activity, he may well have preached at Lignieres as a reformatory
Catholic of the school of
Erasmus. Calvin's own record of his "conversion" is so scanty and
devoid of chronological data that it is extremely difficult to
trace his religious development with any certainty. But it seems
probable that at least up to 1532 he was far more concerned about
classical scholarship than about religion.
His residence at Bourges was cut short by the death of his father
in May 1531. Immediately after this event he went to Paris, where
the "new learning" was now at length ousting the medieval scholasticism from
the university. He lodged in the College Fortet, reading Greek with Pierre Danes and beginning
Hebrew with Francois Vatable. It was at this time (April 1532) that
Calvin issued his first publication, a commentary in Latin on Seneca's tract De
Clementia. This book he published at his own cost, and
dedicated to Claude Hangest, abbot of St Eloi, a member of the de Montmor family, with whom
Calvin had been Calv. Praef. ad Comment. in Psalmos. 4 Jo.
Calvini Vita, sub init. 5 Epist. Ded., Comment in Ep. H. ad
Corinthios praefix. brought up.
It was formerly thought that Calvin published this work with a view
to influence the king to put a stop to the attacks on the
Protestants, but there is nothing in the treatise itself or in the
commentary to favour this opinion.
Soon after the publication of his first book Calvin returned to Orleans, where he stayed for a year, perhaps again reading law, and still undecided as to his life's work. He visited Noyon in August 1533, and by October of the same year was settled again in Paris. Here and now his destiny became certain. The conservative theology was becoming discredited, and humanists like Jacques Lefevre of Staples (Faber Stapulensis) and Gerard Roussel were favoured by the court under the influence of Margaret of Angouleme, queen of Navarre and sister of Francis I. Calvin's old friend, Nicolas Cop, had just been elected rector of the university and had to deliver an oration according to custom in the church of the Mathurins, on the feast of All Saints.
The oration (certainly influenced but hardly composed by Calvin)
was in effect a defence of the reformed opinions, especially of the
doctrine of justification by faith alone. It is to
the period between April 1532 and November 1533, and in particular
to the time of his second sojourn at Orleans, that we may most
fittingly assign the great change in Calvin which he describes
(Praef. ad Psalmos; opera xxxi. 2 1-24) as his "sudden conversion"
and attributes to direct divine agency. It must have been at least
after his Commentary on Seneca's De Clementia that his heart was "so subdued and reduced
to docility that in comparison with his zeal for true piety he
regarded all other studies with indifference, though not entirely
forsaking them.
Though himself a beginner, many flocked to him to learn the pure
doctrine, and he began to seek some hiding-place and means of
withdrawal from people." This indeed was forced upon him, for Cop's
address was more than the conservative party could bear, and Cop, being summoned to
appear before the parlement of Paris, found it necessary, as he
failed to secure the support either of the king, or of the
university, to make his escape to Basel. An attempt was at the same time made to
seize Calvin, but, being forewarned of the design by his friends,
he also made his escape. His room in the College Fortet, however,
was searched, and his books and papers seized, to the imminent
peril of some of his friends, whose letters were found in his
repositories.
He went to Noyon, but, proceedings against him being dropped, soon
returned to Paris. But desiring both security and solitude for study he left the
city again about New Year of 1534 and became the guest of Louis du
Tillet, a canon of the
cathedral, at Angouleme, where at the request of his host he
prepared some short discourses, which were circulated in the
surrounding parishes, and read in public to the people. Here, too
in du Tillet's splendid library, he began the studies which
resulted in his great work, the Institutes, and paid a
visit to Nerac, where the venerable Lefevre, whose
revised translation of the Bible into French was published about
this time, was spending his last years under the kindly care of
Margaret of Navarre.
Calvin was now nearly twenty-five years of age, and in the ordinary
way would have been ordained to the priesthood. Up till this time
his work for the evangelical cause was not so much that of the
public preacher or reformer as that of the retiring but influential
scholar and adviser. Now, however, he had to decide whether, like
Roussel and other of his friends, he should strive to combine the
new doctrines with a position in the old church, or whether he
should definitely break away from Rome. His mind was made up, and
on the 4th of May he resigned his chaplaincy at Noyon and his
rectorship at Pont l'Eveque.
Towards the end of the same month he was arrested and suffered two
short terms of imprisonment, the charges against him being not
strong enough to be pressed. He seems to have gone next to to
Paris, staying perhaps with Etienne de la Forge, a Protestant
merchant who suffered for his faith in February 1 53 5. To this
time belongs the story of the proposed meeting between Calvin and
the Spanish reformer Servetus. Calvin's movements
at this time are difficult to trace, but he visited both Orleans
and Poitiers, and each
visit marked a stage in his development.
The Anabaptists of
Germany had spread into France, and were disseminating many wild
and fanatical opinions among those who had seceded from the Church
of Rome. Among other notions which they had imbibed was that of a
sleep of the soul after death.
To Calvin this notion appeared so pernicious that he composed a
treatise in refutation of it, under the title of
Psychopannychia. The preface to this treatise is dated
Orleans 1 534, but it was not printed till 1542.
In it he chiefly dwells upon the evidence from Scripture in favour
of the belief that the soul retains its intelligent consciousness
after its separation from the body - passing by questions of
philosophical speculation, as tending on such a subject
only to minister to an idle curiosity. At Poitiers Calvin gathered
round him a company of cultured and gentle men whom in private
intercourse he influenced considerably. Here too in a grotto near
the town he for the first time celebrated the communion in the Evangelical Church of
France, using a piece of the rock as a table.
The year 1534 was thus decisive for Calvin. From this time forward his influence became supreme, and all who had accepted the reformed doctrines in France turned to him for counsel and instruction, attracted not only by his power as a teacher, but still more, perhaps because they saw in him so full a development of the Christian life according to the evangelical model. Renan, no prejudiced judge, pronounces him "the most Christian man of his time," and attributes to this his success as a reformer. Certain it is that already he had become conspicuous as a prophet of the new religion; his life was in danger, and he was obliged to seek safety in flight.
In company with his friend Louis du Tillet, whom he had again gone
to Angouleme to visit, he set out for Basel. On their way they were
robbed by one of their servants, and it was only by borrowing ten
crowns from their other servant that they were enabled to
get to Strassburg, and
thence to Basel. Here Calvin was welcomed by the band of scholars
and theologians who had conspired to make that city the Athens of Switzerland, and
especially by Oswald Myconius, the chief pastor,
Pierre Viret and Heinrich Bullinger. Under the
aupices and guidance of Sebastian Minster, Calvin now gave himself to the study
of Hebrew.
Francis I., desirous to continue the suppression of the Protestants
but anxious, because of his strife with Charles V., not to break with the Protestant
princes of Germany, instructed his ambassador to assure these
princes that it was only against Anabaptists, and other parties who
called in question all civil magistracy, that his severities were
exercised. Calvin, indignant at the calumny which was thus cast
upon the reformed party in France, hastily prepared for the press
his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which he
published "first that I might vindicate from unjust affront my
brethren whose death was precious in the sight of the Lord, and, next,
that some sorrow and anxiety should move foreign peoples, since the
same sufferings threatened many."
The work was dedicated to the king, and Calvin says he wrote it in
Latin that it might find access to the learned in all lands.' Soon
after it appeared he set about translating it into French, as he
himself attests in a letter dated October 1536. This sets at rest a
question, at one time much agitated, whether the book appeared
first in French or in Latin. The earliest French edition known is
that of 1540, and this was after the work had been much enlarged,
and several Latin editions had appeared. In its first form the work
consisted of only six chapters, and was intended merely as a brief
manual of Christian doctrine. The chapters follow a traditional
scheme of religious teaching: (1) The Law, (as in the Ten Words),
(2) Faith (as in the Apostles' Creed) (3) Prayer, (4) the Sacraments; to these were added
(5) False Sacraments, (6) Christian liberty, ecclesiastical power
and civil administration.
The closing chapters of the work are more polemical than the
earlier ones. His indebtedness to Luther is of course great, but
his spiritual kinship with Martin Bucer of 1 This edition forms a small 8vo of 514
pages, and 6 pages of index. It appeared at Basel from the press of
Thomas Platter and Balthasar Lasius in March 1536, and was
published by Johann Oporin. The dedicatory preface is dated 23rd
August 1535. It is a masterpiece of apologetic literature. See W.
Walker, John Calvin, 132 f., and for an outline of the
contents of the treatise, ib. 137-149. Strassburg is even
more marked. Something also he owed to Scotus and other medieval
schoolmen. The book appeared anonymously, the author having, as he
himself says, nothing in view beyond furnishing a statement of the
faith of the persecuted Protestants, whom he saw cruelly cut to
pieces by impious and perfidious court parasites.'
In this work, though produced when the author was only twenty-six
years of age, we find a complete outline of the Calvinist
theological system. In none of the later editions, nor in any of
his later works do we find reason to believe that he ever changed
his views on any essential point from what they were at the period
of its first publication. Such an instance of maturity of mind and
of opinion at so early an age would be remarkable under any
circumstances; but in Calvin's case it is rendered peculiarly so by
the shortness of the time which had elapsed since he gave himself
to theological studies. It may be doubted also if the history of
literature presents us with another instance of a book written at
so early an age, which has exercised such a prodigious influence
upon the opinions and practices both of contemporaries and of
posterity.
After a short visit (April 1536) to the court of Renee, duchess of Ferrara (cousin to Margaret of Navarre), which
at that time afforded an asylum to several learned and pious fugitives
from persecution, Calvin returned through Basel to France to
arrange his affairs before finally taking farewell of his native
country. His intention was to settle at Strassburg or Basel, and to devote
himself to study. But being unable, in consequence of the war
between Francis I. and Charles V., to reach Strassburg by the
ordinary route, he with his younger brother Antoine and his
half-sister Marie journeyed to Lyons and so to Geneva, making for Basel. In
Geneva his progress was arrested, and his resolution to pursue the quiet path of
studious research was dispelled by what he calls the "formidable
obtestation" of Guillaume Fare1.2
After many struggles and no small suffering, this energetic spirit
had succeeded in planting the evangelical standard at Geneva; and
anxious to secure the aid of such a man as Calvin, he entreated him
on his arrival to relinquish his design of going farther, and to
devote himself to the work in that city. Calvin at first declined,
alleging as an excuse his need of securing more time for personal
improvement, but ultimately, believing that he was divinely called
to this task and that "God had stretched forth His hand upon me
from on high to arrest me," he
consented to remain at Geneva. He hurried to Basel, transacted some
business, and returned to Geneva in August 1536. He at once began
to expound the epistles of St Paul
in the church of St Pierre, and after about a year was also elected
preacher by the magistrates with the consent of the people, an
office which he would not accept until it had been repeatedly
pressed upon him. His services seem to have been rendered for some
time gratuitously, for in February 1537 there is an entry in the
city registers to the effect that six crowns had been voted to him,
"since he has as yet hardly received anything."
Calvin was in his twenty-eighth year when he was thus constrained
to settle at Geneva; and in this city the rest of his life, with
the exception of a brief interval, was spent. The post to which he
was thus called was not an easy one. Though the people of Geneva
had cast off the obedience of Rome, it was largely a political
revolt against the duke of Savoy, and they were still (says Beza)
"but very imperfectly enlightened in divine knowledge; they had as
yet hardly emerged from the filth of the papacy." 3 This laid them open to the incursions
of those fanatical teachers, whom the excitement attendant upon the
Reformation had called forth, and who hung mischievously upon the
rear of the reforming body.
To obviate the evils thence resulting, Calvin, in union with Farel,
drew up a condensed statement of Christian doctrine consisting of
twenty-one articles. This the citizens were summoned, in parties of
ten each, to profess and swear to as the confession of their faith - a process which,
though not in accordance with modern notions of the best way of
establishing men in the faith, was gone through, Calvin tells us,
"with much satisfaction." As the people took this
oath ' Praef. ad Psalmos. Ibid. Beza, Vit. Calv. an.
1536. in the capacity of citizens, we may see here
the basis laid for that theocratic system which subsequently became
peculiarly characteristic of the Genevan polity.
Deeply convinced of the importance of education for the young,
Calvin and his coadjutors were solicitous to establish schools
throughout the city, and to enforce on parents the sending of their
children to them; and as he had no faith in education apart from
religious training, he drew up a catechism of Christian doctrine which the
children had to learn whilst they were receiving secular
instruction. Of the troubles which arose from fanatical teachers,
the chief proceeded from the efforts of the Anabaptists; a public
disputation was held on the 26th and 17th of March 1537, and so
excited the populace that the Council of Two Hundred stopped it,
declared the Anabaptists vanquished and drove them from the
city.
About the same time also, the peace of Calvin and his friends was
much disturbed and their work interrupted by Pierre Caroli, another
native of northern France, who, though a man of loose principle and
belief, had been appointed chief pastor at Lausanne and was discrediting the good work
done by Pierre Viret in that city. Calvin went to Viret's aid and
brought Caroli before the commissioners of Bern on a charge of advocating prayers
for the dead as a means of their earlier resurrection. Caroli
brought a counter-charge
against the Geneva divines of Sabellianism and Arianism, because
they would not enforce the Athanasian creed, and had not used the
words "Trinity" and "Person" in the confession they had drawn up.
It was a struggle between the thoroughgoing humanistic reformer who
drew his creed solely from the "word of God" and the merely
semi-Protestant reformer who looked on the old creed as a priceless
heritage.
In a synod held at Bern the
matter was fully discussed, when a verdict was given in favour of the Geneva
divines, and Caroli deposed from his office and banished. He
returned to France, rejoined the Roman communion and spent the rest
of his life in passing to and from the old faith and the new. Thus
ended an affair which seems to have occasioned Calvin much more
uneasiness than the character of his assailant, and the manifest falsehood of the
charge brought against him, would seem to justify. Two brief
anti-Romanist tracts, one entitled De fugiendis impiorum
sacris, the other De sacerdotio papali abjiciendo,
were also published early in this year.
Hardly was the affair of Caroli settled, when new and severer
trials came upon the Genevan Reformers. The austere simplicity of
the ritual which Farel had
introduced, and to which Calvin had conformed; the strictness with
which the ministers sought to enforce not only the laws of
morality, but certain sumptuary regulations respecting the dress and mode of living of the
citizens; and their determination in spiritual matters and
ecclesiastical ceremonies not to submit to the least dictation from
the civil power, led to violent dissensions. Amidst much party
strife Calvin perhaps showed more youthful impetuosity than
experienced skill.
He and his colleagues refused to administer the sacrament in the Bernese
form, i.e. with unleavened bread, and on Easter Sunday, 1538, declined to do so at all
because of the popular tumult. For this they were banished from the
city. They went first to Bern, and soon after to Zurich, where a synod of the Swiss pastors had
been convened. Before this assembly they pleaded their cause, and
stated what were the points on which they were prepared to insist
as needful for the proper discipline of the church. They declared
that they would yield in the matter of ceremonies so far as to
employ unleavened bread in the eucharist, to use fonts in baptism, and to allow festival days, provided
the people might pursue their ordinary avocations after public
service.
These Calvin regarded as matters of indifference, provided the
magistrates did not make them of importance, by seeking to enforce
them; and he was the more willing to concede them, because he hoped
thereby to meet the wishes of the Bernese brethren whose ritual was
less simple than that established by Farel at Geneva. But he and
his colleagues insisted, on the other hand, that for the proper
maintenance of discipline, there should be a division of parishes -
that excommunications should be permitted, and should be under the
power of elders chosen by the council, in v. 3 a
conjunction with the clergy - that order should be observed in the
admission of preachers - and that only the clergy should officiate
in ordination by the laying on of hands.
It was proposed also, as conducive to the welfare of the church,
that the sacrament of the Lord's Supper should be administered more
frequently, at least once every month, and that congregational
singing of psalms should be practised in the churches. On these
terms the synod interceded with the Genevese to restore their
pastors; but through the opposition of some of the Bernese
(especially Peter Kuntz, the
pastor of that city) this was frustrated, and a second edict of banishment was the only
response.
Calvin and Farel betook themselves, under these circumstances, to Basel, where they soon after separated, Farel to go to Neuchatel and Calvin to Strassburg. At the latter place Calvin resided till the autumn of 1541, occupying himself partly in literary exertions, partly as a preacher and especially an organizer in the French church, and partly as a lecturer on theology. These years were not the least valuable in his experience. In 1539 he attended Charles V.'s conference on Christian reunion at Frankfort as the companion of Bucer, and in the following year he appeared at Hagenau and Worms, as the delegate from the city of Strassburg.
He was present also at the diet at Regensburg, where he deepened his
acquaintance with Melanchthon, and formed with him a friendship
which lasted through life. He also did something to relieve the
persecuted Protestants of France. It is to this period of his life
that we owe a revised and enlarged form of his Institutes,
his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, and
his Tract on the Lord's Supper. Notwithstanding his
manifold engagements, he found time to attend to the tenderer
affections; for it was during his residence at Strassburg that he
married, in August 1540, Idelette de Bure, the widow of one Jean
Stordeur of Liege, whom he had
converted from Anabaptism.
In her Calvin found, to use his own words, "the excellent companion
of his life," a "precious help" to him amid his manifold labours
and frequent infirmities. She died in 1 549, to the great grief of
her husband, who never ceased to mourn her loss. Their only child
Jacques, born on the 28th of July 1542, lived only a few days.
During Calvin's absence disorder and irreligion had prevailed in Geneva. An attempt was made by Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto (1477-1547), bishop of Carpentras, to take advantage of this so as to restore the papal supremacy in that district; but this design Calvin, at the request of the Bernese authorities, who had been consulted by those of Geneva, completely frustrated, by writing such a reply to the letter which the bishop had addressed to the Genevese, as constrained him to desist from all further efforts. The letter had more than a local or temporary reference. It was a popular yet thoroughgoing defence of the whole Protestant position, perhaps the best apologia for the Reformation that was ever written.
He seems also to have kept up his connexion with Geneva by
addressing letters of counsel and comfort to the faithful there who
continued to regard him with affection. It was whilst he was still at
Strassburg that there appeared at Geneva a translation of the Bible
into French, bearing Calvin's name, but in reality only revised and
corrected by him from the version of Olivetan. Meanwhile the way
was opening for his return. Those who had driven him from the city
gradually lost power and office. Farel worked unceasingly for his
recall. After much hesitation, for Strassburg had strong claims, he
yielded and returned to Geneva, where he was received with the
utmost enthusiasm (September 13, 1541.
He entered upon his work with a firm determination to carry out
those reforms which he had originally purposed, and to set up in
all its integrity that form of church polity which he had carefully
matured during his residence at Strassburg. He now became the sole
directive spirit in the church at Geneva. Farel was retained by the
Neuchatelois, and Viret, soon after Calvin's return, removed to
Lausanne. His duties were thus rendered exceedingly onerous, and
his labour became excessive. Besides preaching every day in each
alternate week, he taught theology three days in the week, attended
weekly meetings of his consistory, read the Scriptures once a week
in the congregation, carried on an extensive
correspondence on a multiplicity of subjects, prepared commentaries
on the books of Scripture, and was engaged repeatedly in
controversy with the opponents of his opinions.
"I have not time," he writes to a friend, "to look out of my house
at the blessed sun, and if things continue thus I shall forget what
sort of appearance it has. When I have settled my usual business, I
have so many letters to write, so many questions to answer, that
many a night is spent without any offering of sleep being brought
to nature." It is only necessary here to sketch the leading events
of Calvin's life after his return to Geneva. He recodified the
Genevan laws and constitution, and was the leading spirit in the
negotiations with Bern that issued in the treaty of February 1
544
Of the controversies in which he embarked, one of the most
important was that in which he defended his doctrine concerning predestination
and election. His first antagonist on this head was Albert Pighius, a Romanist, who,
resuming the controversy between Erasmus and Luther on the freedom
of the will, violently attacked Calvin for the views he had
expressed on that subject. Calvin replied to him in a work
published in 1543, in which he defends his own opinions at length,
both by general reasonings and by an appeal to both Scripture and
the Fathers, especially Augustine. So potent were his reasonings that
Pighius, though owing nothing to the gentleness or courtesy of Calvin, was led
to embrace his views.
A still more vexatious and protracted controversy on the same
subject arose in 1551. Jerome Hermes Bolsec, a Carmelite friar, having renounced Romanism, had fled from
France to Veigy, a village near Geneva, where he practised as a
physician. Being a zealous opponent of predestinarian views, he
expressed his criticisms of Calvin's teaching on the subject in one
of the public conferences held each Friday. Calvin replied with
much vehemence, and brought the matter before the civil
authorities. The council were at a loss which course to take; not
that they doubted which of the disputants was right, for they all
held by the views of Calvin, but they were unable to determine to
what extent and in which way Bolsec should be punished for his heresy.
The question was submitted to the churches at Basel, Bern, Zurich
and Neuchatel, but they also, to Calvin's disappointment, were
divided in their judgment, some counselling severity, others gentle
measures. In the end Bolsec was banished from Geneva; he ultimately
rejoined the Roman communion and in 1577 avenged himself by a
particularly slanderous biography of Calvin. Another painful
controversy was that with Sebastien Castellio (1515-1563), a
teacher in the Genevan school and a scholar of real
distinction.
He wished to enter the preaching ministry but was excluded by
Calvin's influence because he had criticized the inspiration of the
Song of Solomon and the
Genevan interpretation of the clause "he descended into hell." The bitterness thus aroused
developed into life-long enmity. During all this time also the less
strict party in the city and in the council did not cease to harry
the reformer.
But the most memorable of all the controversies in which Calvin was engaged was that into which he was brought in 1553 with [[Michael Servetus]]. After many wanderings, and after having been condemned to death for heresy at Vienne, whence he was fortunate enough to make his escape, Servetus arrived in August 1553 at Geneva on his way to Naples. He was recognized in church and soon after, at Calvin's instigation, arrested. The charge of blasphemy was founded on certain statements in a book published by him in 1553, entitled Christianismi Restitutio, in which he animadverted on the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, and advanced sentiments strongly savouring of Pantheism.
The story of his trial is told elsewhere (see art.
[[Servetus]]), but it must be noted here that the
struggle was something more than a doctrinal one. The cause of
Servetus was taken up by Calvin's Genevan foes headed by Philibert
Berthelier, and became a test of the relative strength of the rival
forces and of the permanence of Calvin's control. That Calvin was
actuated by personal spite and animosity against Servetus himself
may be open to discussion; we have his own express declaration
that, after Servetus was convicted, he used no urgency that he
should be put to death, and at their last interview he told
Servetus that he never had avenged private injuries, and assured
him that if he would repent it would not be his fault if all the pious did not give him their
hands.'
There is the fact also that Calvin used his endeavour to have the
sentence which had been pronounced against
Servetus mitigated, death by burning being
regarded by him as an "atrocity," for which he sought to substitute
death by the sword. 2 It can be
justly charged against Calvin in this matter that he took the
initiative in bringing on the trial of Servetus, that as his
accuser he prosecuted the suit against him with undue severity, and
that he approved the sentence which condemned Servetus to
death.
When, however, it is remembered that the unanimous decision of the
Swiss churches and of the Swiss state governments was that Servetus
deserved to die; that the general voice of Christendom was in
favour of this; that even such a man as Melanchthon affirmed the
justice of the sentence; 3 that an eminent English divine of the
next age should declare the process against him "just and honourable," 4 and that
only a few voices here and there were at the time raised against
it, many will be ready to accept the judgment of Coleridge, that
the death of Servetus was not "Calvin's guilt especially, but the common opprobrium of
all European Christendom." 5
Calvin was also involved in a protracted and somewhat vexing
dispute with the Lutherans respecting the Lord's Supper, which
ended in the separation of the evangelical party into the two great
sections of Lutherans and Reformed, - the former holding that in
the eucharist the body and blood of Christ are objectively and consubstaritially
present, and so are actually partaken of by the communicants, and
the latter that there is only a virtual presence of the body and
blood of Christ, and consequently only a spiritual participation
thereof through faith. In addition to these controversies on points
of faith, he was for many years greatly disquieted, and sometimes
even endangered, by the opposition offered by the libertine party
in Geneva to the ecclesiastical discipline which he had established
there.
His system of church polity was essentially theocratic; it assumed
that every member of the state was also under the discipline of the
church; and he asserted that the right of exercising this
discipline was vested exclusively in the consistory or body of
preachers and elders. His attempts to carry out these views brought
him into collision both with the authorities and with the populace,
- the latter being not unnaturally restive under the restraints
imposed upon their liberty by the vigorous system of church
discipline, and the former being inclined to retain in their own
hands a portion of that power in things spiritual which Calvin was
bent on placing exclusively in the hands of the church rulers. His
dauntless courage, his perseverance, and his earnestness at length
prevailed, and he had the satisfaction, before he died, of seeing
his favourite system of church polity firmly established, not only
at Geneva, but in other parts of Switzerland, and of knowing that
it had been adopted substantially by the Reformers in France and Scotland.
The men whom he trained at Geneva carried his principles into
almost every country in Europe, and in varying degree these principles
did much for the cause of civil liberty. 6 Nor was it only in
religious matters that Calvin busied himself; nothing was
indifferent to him that concerned the welfare and good order of the
state or the advantage of its citizens. His work embraced
everything; he was consulted on every affair, great and small, that
came before the council, - on questions of law, police, economy, trade, and manufactures, no
less than on questions of doctrine and church polity. To him the
city owed her trade in cloths and velvets, from which so much
wealth accrued to her 1 Fidelis Expositio Errorum Serveti, sub
init. Calvini, Opp. t. ix.
2 Calvin to Farel, 10th Aug. 1553.
3 Tuo judicio prorsus assentior. Affirmo etiam vestros magistratus juste fecisse quod hominem blasphemum, re ordine judicata, interfecerunt. - Melanchthon to Calvin, 14th Oct. 1554.
4 Field On the Church, bk. iii. c. 27, vol. i. p. 288 (ed. Cambridge, 1847).
Notes on English Divines, vol. i. p. 49. See also Table Talk, vol. ii. p. 282 (ed. 1835) 6 W. Walker, John Calvin, pp. 403-8.
citizens; sanitary regulations were introduced by him which made Geneva the admiration of all visitors; and in him she reverences the founder of her university. This institution was in a sense Calvin's crowning work. It added religious education to the evangelical preaching and the thorough discipline already established, and so completed the reformer's ideal of a Christian commonwealth.
Amidst these multitudinous cares and occupations, Calvin found time to write a number of works besides those provoked by the various controversies in which he was engaged. The most numerous of these were of an exegetical character. Including discourses taken down from his lips by faithful auditors, we have from him expository comments or homilies on nearly all the books of Scripture, written partly in Latin and partly in French. Though naturally knowing nothing of the modern idea of a progressive revelation, his judiciousness, penetration, and tact in eliciting his author's meaning, his precision, condensation, and concinnity as an expositor, the accuracy of his learning, the closeness of his reasoning, and the elegance of his style, all unite to confer a high value on his exegetical works. The series began with Romans in 1540 and ended with Joshua in 1564. In 15581 559 also, though in very ill health, he finally perfected the Institutes.
The incessant and exhausting labours to which Calvin gave himself could not but tell on his fragile constitution. Amid many sufferings, however, and frequent attacks of sickness, he manfully pursued his course; nor was it till his frail body, torn by many and painful diseases - fever, asthma, stone, and gout, the fruits for the most part of his sedentary habits and unceasing activity - had, as it were, fallen to pieces around him, that his indomitable spirit relinquished the conflict. In the early part of the year 1564 his sufferings became so severe that it was manifest his earthly career was rapidly drawing to a close. On the 6th of February of that year he preached his last sermon, having with great difficulty found breath enough to carry him through it.
He was several times after this carried to church, but never again
was able to take any part in the service. With his usual
disinterestedness he refused to receive his stipend, now that he
was no longer able to discharge the duties of his office. In the
midst of his sufferings, however, his zeal and energy kept him in
continual occupation; when expostulated with for such unseasonable
toil, he replied, "Would you that the Lord should find me idle when
He comes ?" After he had retired from public labours he
lingered for some months, enduring the severest agony without a
murmur, and cheerfully attending to all the duties of a private
kind which his diseases left him strength to discharge. On the 25th
of April he made his will, on the 27th he received the Little
Council, and on the 28th the Genevan ministers, in his sick-room;
on the 2nd of May he wrote his last letter - to his old comrade
Farel, who hastened from Neuchatel to see him once again.
He spent much time in prayer and died quietly, in the arms of his
faithful friend Theodore Beza, on the evening of the 2
7th of May, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. The next day he was
buried without pomp "in the common cemetery called Plain-palais" in a spot not
now to be identified.
Calvin was of middle stature; his complexion was somewhat pallid and dark; his eyes, to the latest clear and lustrous, bespoke the acumen of his genius. He was sparing in his food and simple in his dress; he took but little sleep, and was capable of extraordinary efforts of intellectual toil. He had a most retentive memory and a very keen power of observation. He spoke without rhetoric, simply, directly, but with great weight. He had many acquaintances but few close friends. His private character was in harmony with his public reputation and position. If somewhat severe and irritable, he was at the same time scrupulously just, truthful, and steadfast; he never deserted a friend or took an unfair advantage of an antagonist; and on befitting occasions he could be cheerful and even facetious among his intimates. "God gave him," said the Little Council after his death, "a character of great majesty."
"I have been a witness of
him for sixteen years," says Beza, "and I think I am fully entitled
to say that in this man there was exhibited to all an example of
the life and death of the Christian, such as it will not be easy to
depreciate, such as it will be difficult to emulate." Though Calvin
built his theology on the foundations laid by earlier reformers,
and especially by Luther and Bucer, his peculiar gifts of learning,
of logic and of style made him
pre-eminently the theologian of the new religion. The following may
be regarded as his characteristic tenets, though not all are
peculiar to him.
The dominant thought is the infinite and transcendent sovereignty of God, to know whom is the supreme end of human endeavour. God is made known to man especially by the Scriptures, whose writers were "sure and authentic amanuenses of the Holy Spirit." To the Spirit speaking therein the Spirit-illumined soul of man makes response. While God is the source of all good, man as a sinner is guilty and corrupt. The first man was made in the image and likeness of God, which not only implies man's superiority to all other creatures, but indicates his original purity, integrity and sanctity.
From this state Adam fell, and in
his fall involved the whole human race descended from him. Hence
depravity and corruption, diffused through all parts of the soul,
attach to all men, and this first makes them obnoxious to the anger of God, and then comes
forth in works which the Scripture calls works of the flesh (Gal.
v. 19). Thus all are held vitiated and perverted in all
parts of their nature, and on account of such corruption deservedly
condemned before God, by whom nothing is accepted save
righteousness innocence, and purity. Nor is that a being bound
foranother's offence; for when it is said that we through Adam's sin have become obnoxious to the divine
judgment, is is not to be taken as if we, being ourselves innocent
and blameless, bear the fault of his offence, but that, we having
been brought under a curse through his transgression, he is said to
have bound us.
From him, however, not only has punishment overtaken us, but a
pestilence instilled from him resides in us, to which punishment is
justly due. Thus even infants, whilst they bring their own
condemnation with them from their mother's womb, are bound not by
another's but by their own fault. For though they have not yet
brought forth the fruits of their iniquity, they have the seed shut up in them; nay, their whole nature is a sort of seed of sin,
therefore it cannot but be hateful and abominable to God
(Instil. bk. ii. ch. i. sect. 8).
To redeem man from this state of guilt, and to recover him from corruption, the Son of God became incarnate, assuming man's nature into union with His own, so that in Him were two natures in one person. Thus incarnate He took on Him the offices of prophet, priest and king, and by His humiliation, obedience and suffering unto death, followed by His resurrection and ascension to heaven, He has perfected His work and fulfilled all that was required in a redeemer of men, so that it is truly affirmed that He has merited for man the grace of salvation (bk. ii. ch. 13-17). But until a man is in some way really united to Christ so as to partake of Him, the benefits of Christ's work cannot be attained by him. Now it is by the secret and special operation of the Holy Spirit that men are united to Christ and made members of His body.
Through faith, which is a firm and certain cognition of the divine benevolence towards us
founded on the truth of the gracious promise in Christ, men are by
the operation of the Spirit united to Christ and are made partakers
of His death and resurrection, so that the old man is crucified
with Him and they are raised to a new life, a life of righteousness
and holiness. Thus joined to Christ the believer has life in Him
and knows that he is saved, having the witness of the Spirit that
he is a child of God, and having the promises, the certitude of
which the Spirit had before impressed on the mind, sealed by the
same Spirit on the heart (bk. iii. ch. 33-36). From faith proceeds
repentance, which is the turning of our life to God, proceeding
from a sincere and earnest
fear of God, and consisting in the mortification of the flesh and the old
man within us and a vivification of the Spirit.
Through faith also the believer receives justification, his sins
are forgiven, he is accepted of God, and is held by Him as
righteous, the righteousness of Christ being imputed to him, and
faith being the instrument by which the man lays hold on Christ, so
that with His righteousness the man appears in God's sight as
righteous. This imputed righteousness, however, is not disjoined
from real personal righteousness, for regeneration and
sanctification come to the believer from Christ no less than
justification; the two blessings are not to be confounded, but
neither are they to be disjoined. The assurance which the believer
has of salvation he receives from the operation and witness of the
Holy Spirit; but this again rests on the divine choice of the man
to salvation; and this falls back on God's eternal sovereign
purpose, whereby He has predestined some to eternal life while the
rest of mankind are predestined to condemnation and eternal
death.
Those whom God has chosen to life He effectually calls to
salvation, and they are kept by Him in progressive faith and
holiness unto the end (bk. iii. passim). The external
means or aids by which God unites
men into the fellowship of Christ, and sustains and advances those
who believe, are the church and its ordinances, especially the
sacraments. The church universal is the multitude gathered from
diverse nations, which though divided by distance of time and
place, agree in one common faith, and it is bound by the tie of the
same religion; and wherever the word of God is sincerely preached,
and the sacraments are duly administered, according to Christ's
institute, there beyond doubt is a church of the living God (bk.
iv. ch. I, sect. 7-10.
The permanent officers in the church are pastors and teachers, to
the former of whom it belongs to preside over the discipline of the
church, to administer the sacraments, and to admonish and exhort
the members; while the latter occupy themselves with the exposition
of Scripture, so that pure and wholesome doctrine may be retained.
With them are to be joined for the government of the church certain
pious, grave and holy men as a senate in each church; and to others, as
deacons, is to be entrusted the care of the poor. The election of
the officers in a church is to be with the people, and those duly
chosen and called are to be ordained by the laying on of the hands
of the pastors (ch. 3, sect. 4-16).
The sacraments are two - Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Baptism is
the sign of initiation
whereby men are admitted into the society of the church and, being
grafted into Christ, are reckoned among the sons of God; it serves
both for the confirmation of faith and as a confession
before men. The Lord's Supper is a spiritual feast where Christ
attests that He is the life-giving bread, by which our souls are
fed unto true and blessed immortality. That sacred communication of
His flesh and blood whereby Christ transfuses into us His life,
even as if it penetrated into our bones and marrow, He in the
Supper attests and seals; and
that not by a vain or empty sign set before us, but there He puts
forth the efficacy of His Spirit whereby He fulfils what He
promises.
In the mystery of the Supper
Christ is truly exhibited to us by the symbols of bread and wine; and so His body and blood, in
which He fulfilled all obedience for the obtaining of righteousness
for us, are presented. There is no such presence of Christ in the
Supper as that He is affixed to the bread or included in it or in
any way circumscribed; but whatever can express the true and
substantial communication of the body and blood of the Lord, which
is exhibited to believers under the said symbols of the Supper, is
to be received, and that not as perceived by the imagination only
or mental intelligence, but as enjoyed for the aliment of the eternal life (bk. iv. ch. 15,
17).
The course of time has substantially modified many of these positions. Even the churches which trace their descent from Calvin's work and faith no longer hold in their entirety his views on the magistrate as the preserver of church purity, the utter depravity of human nature, the non-human character of the Bible, the dealing of God with man. But his system had an immense value in the history of Christian thought. It appealed to and evoked a high order of intelligence, and its insistence on personal individual salvation has borne worthy fruit. So also its insistence on the chief end of man "to know and do the will of God" made for the strenuous morality that helped to build up the modern world. Its effects are most clearly seen in Scotland, in Puritan England and in the New England states, but its influence was and is felt among peoples that have little desire or claim to be called Calvinist.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. - The standard edition of Calvin's works is that undertaken by the Strassburg scholars, J. W. Baum, E. Cunitz, E. Reuss, P. Lobstein, A. Erichson (59 vols., 1863-1900). The last of these contains an elaborate bibliography which was also published separately at Berlin in 1900. The bulk of the writings was published in English by the Calvin Translation Society (48 vols., Edinburgh, 1843-1855); the Institutes have often been translated. The early lives by Beza and Collodon are given in the collected editions. Among modern biographies are those by P. Henry, Das Leben J. Calvins (3 vols., Hamburg, 1835-1844; Eng. trans. by H. Stebbing, London and New York, 1849); V. Audin, Histoire de la vie, des ouvrages, et des doctrines de Calvin (2 vols., Paris, 1841; Eng. trans. by J. McGill, London, 1843 and 1850) unfairly antagonistic; T. H. Dyer, Life of John Calvin (London, 1850); E. Stahelin, Joh. Calvin, Leben and aus g ewahlte Schriften (2 vols., Elberfeld, 1863); F. W Kampschulte, Joh. Calvin, seine Kirche and sein Staat in Genf (2 vols., 1869, 1899, unfinished); Abel Lefranc, La Jeunesse de Calvin (Paris, 1888); E. Choisy, La Theocratie a Geneve au temps de Calvin (Geneva, 1897); E. Doumergue, Jean Calvin; les hommes et les choses de son temps (5 vols., 1899-1908). See also A. M. Fairbairn, "Calvin and the Reformed Church" in the Cambridge Modern History, vol. ii. (1904) P. Schaff's, History of the Christian Church, vol. vii. (1892), and R. Stahelin's article in Hauck-Herzog's Realencyk. fiir Prot. Theologie and Kirche. Each of these contains a useful bibliography, as also does the excellent life by Professor Williston Walker, John Calvin, the Organizer of Reformed Protestantism, " Heroes of the Reformation" series (1906). See also C. S. Horne in Mansfield Coll. Essays (1909). (W. L. A.; A. J. G.)
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<< Calvi |
Categories: C-CAL | Biography | Theologians | Reformation
| John Calvin | |
|---|---|
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File:John Calvin - best Engraving from the original oil painting in the University Library of Geneva | |
| Born |
July 10, 1509 Noyon, Picardy, France |
| Died |
May 27, 1564 (aged 54) Geneva, Switzerland |
| Religion | Reformed Protestant |
| Spouse | Idelette de Bure |
| Parents | Gérard Cauvin and Jeanne Lefranc |
Jean Cauvin, also Jean Calvin (John Calvin in English) (July 10, 1509 – May 27, 1564), was a French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation and was a central developer of the system of Christian theology called Calvinism or Reformed theology. In Geneva, he rejected Papal authority, established a new scheme of civic and ecclesiastical governance. He is famous for his teachings and writings and infamous for his role in the execution of Michael Servetus.
Calvin was born with the name Jean Chauvin (or Cauvin, in Latin Calvinus) in Noyon, Picardie, France, to Gérard Cauvin and Jeanne Lefranc. In 1523, Calvin's father, an lawyer, sent his fourteen-year-old son to the University of Paris to study humanities and law. By 1532, he had attained a Doctor of Law degree at Orléans. In 1536, he settled in Geneva, Switzerland. After being expelled from the city, he served as a pastor in Strasbourg from 1538 until 1541, before returning to Geneva, where he lived until his death in 1564.
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Calvin was trained to be a lawyer. He studied under some of the best legal minds of the Renaissance in France. Part of that training involved the newer humanistic methods of exegesis, which dealt with a text directly via historical and grammatical analysis, as opposed to indirectly via layers of commentators. His legal and exegetical training was important for Calvin because, once convinced of the evangelical faith, he applied these exegetical methods to the Scripture. He self-consciously molded his thinking along biblical lines, and he labored to preach and teach what he believed the Bible taught.
While Reformers such as Jan Hus and Martin Luther may be seen as somewhat original thinkers that began a movement, Calvin was a great logician and systematizer of that movement, but not an innovator in doctrine. Calvin was very familiar with the writings of the early Church Fathers and the great Medieval schoolmen, and he was also in debt to earlier Reformers. Calvin did not reject the Scholastics of the Middle Ages outright but rather made use of them and reformed their thoughts in accordance with his understanding of the Bible.
Calvin is often associated with the doctrines of predestination and election, but he differed very little with the other magisterial Reformers regarding these difficult doctrines.
Calvin's power was very great in his last years. He was known all around the world as a reformer different from Martin Luther.[1] Mainly, Luther and Calvin respected each other. However, Luther and a Zürich reformer Huldrych Zwingli thought differently about the eucharist. Calvin's thoughts about it made Luther believe that Calvin agreed with Zwingli. At the same time, Calvin was sad that the reformers were not all together. He tried to join them together by signing the Consensus Tigurinus. This was an agreement between the Zürich and Geneva churches.
Calvin's greatest help to the English-speaking people was by giving Marian exiles in Geneva protection. He did this starting in 1555. With the city's protection, they could make their own reformed church under John Knox and William Whittingham. They later carried many of Calvin's ideas back to England and Scotland.[2] However, Calvin was most interested in trying to change his homeland, France. He helped the building of churches by giving out literature and offering ministers. Between 1555 and 1562, over one hundred ministers were sent to France.
is now a college preparatory school for the Swiss Maturité.]]
Inside Geneva, Calvin's mainly wanted to make a collège. He wanted a place to educate children. A place to build the school was picked on 25 March 1558. It was opened the next year on 5 June 1559. Even though the school was one, it was divided into two parts. One part was a grammar school. The grammar school was called the collège or schola privata. The other part was an advanced school called the académie or schola publica. In five years there were 1,200 students in the grammar school and 300 in the advanced school. The collège later became the Collège Calvin, one of the college preparatory schools of Geneva. The académie became the University of Geneva.[3]
In autumn 1558, Calvin became ill with a fever. He was afraid he might die before finishing his last revision of the Institutes. Because of this, he forced himself to work. The last edition became much longer, so Calvin called it a new work. It was 21 chapters in the edition before the last one. However, in the last one, it was 80. This was because of more detail in the material that was already there: more subjects were not really added. [4] Soon after he became better, he strained his voice while preaching. This made him cough violently. He burst a blood-vessel in his lungs. His health became much worse after this. He preached his last sermon in St. Pierre on 6 February 1564. On 25 April, he made his will. In his will, he left a little money to his family and to the collège. A few days later, the ministers of the church came to visit him. He said his last goodbye. This goodbye is recorded in Discours d'adieu aux ministres. He remembered his life in Geneva. Calvin died on 27 May 1564. He was 54. On the next day, he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Cimetière de Plainpalais.[5] People are not sure where the grave is exactly. However, a stone was added in the 19th century to mark a grave traditionally thought to be Calvin's.[6]
   | Other writings of Calvin - Biography of John Calvin | Christian Classics Ethereal Library |
| | Calvin's ''Institutes of the Christian Religion'' - Book Information | Christian Classics Ethereal Library |
| | Calvin's letter to the Protector Somerset, October 22, 1548 - Calvin to Somerset |
| | An Account of the Life of John Calvin - FOX's Book of Martyrs |
| | 20:27 - BibleGateway.com - Passage Lookup: Lev 20:27; |
| | 22:18 - BibleGateway.com - Passage Lookup: Ex 22:18; |
| | PROTESTANT REFORMED THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL - Protestant Reformed Theological Journal: Nov. 2000 |
| | St Peter's Cathedral in Geneva - Paroisse de Saint-Pierre |
| | The Right to Heresy: Castellio against Calvin - Table of Contents: THE RIGHT TO HERESY or How JOHN CALVIN Killed A Conscience |
| | "A Burning Issue of Belief." - A burning issue of belief books - SIS |
| | Commenting on Exodus 22:18 - Harmony of the Law - Volume 2 | Christian Classics Ethereal Library |
 | "John Calvin" - John Calvin | Christian History |
| | Letters of John Calvin - Internet Archive Search: john calvin |
| | "John Calvin: The Man and His Preaching" - The Divine Majesty of the Word :: Desiring God Christian Resource Library |
| | Bibliography of writings about Calvin - Calvin College - Meeter Center |
| | John Calvin - CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: John Calvin |
| | John Calvin - John Calvin [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] |
| | Calvin and Servetus - Banner of Truth Trust General Articles |
| | Schaff, ''HCC'' - History of the Christian Church, Volume VIII: Modern Christianity. The Swiss Reformation. |
| | Bonnet, Jules,(1820-1892) - New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. II: Basilica - Chambers | Christian Classics Ethereal Library |
| | Schaff, ''HCC'' - Harmony of the Law - Volume 2 |
| | section 137 - History of the Christian Church, Volume VIII: Modern Christianity. The Swiss Reformation. | Christian Classics Ethereal Library |
| | Christian Classics Ethereal Library - Welcome to the Christian Classics Ethereal Library! | Christian Classics Ethereal Library |
| | What Calvinism is Not - The FIDE-O Blog: What Calvinism is Not |
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