John
Calvin
French theologian
French Jean Calvin, or Cauvin
born July 10, 1509, Noyon, Picardy, France
died May 27, 1564, Geneva, Switz.
Main
theologian and ecclesiastical statesman. He was the leading
French Protestant Reformer and the most important figure in the
second generation of the Protestant Reformation. His
interpretation of Christianity, advanced above all in his
Institutio Christianae religionis (1536 but elaborated in later
editions; Institutes of the Christian Religion), and the
institutional and social patterns he worked out for Geneva
deeply influenced Protestantism elsewhere in Europe and in North
America. The Calvinist form of Protestantism is widely thought
to have had a major impact on the formation of the modern world.
This article deals with the man and his achievements. For a
further treatment of Calvinism, see Calvinism and Protestantism.
Life and works
Calvin was of middle-class parents. His father, a lay
administrator in the service of the local bishop, sent him to
the University of Paris in 1523 to be educated for the
priesthood but later decided that he should be a lawyer; from
1528 to 1531, therefore, Calvin studied in the law schools of
Orléans and Bourges. He then returned to Paris. During these
years he was also exposed to Renaissance humanism, influenced by
Erasmus and Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, which constituted the
radical student movement of the time. This movement, which
antedates the Reformation, aimed to reform church and society on
the model of both classical and Christian antiquity, to be
established by a return to the Bible studied in its original
languages. It left an indelible mark on Calvin. Under its
influence he studied Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin, the
three languages of ancient Christian discourse, in preparation
for serious study of the Scriptures. It also intensified his
interest in the classics; his first publication (1532) was a
commentary on Seneca’s essay on clemency. But the movement,
above all, emphasized salvation of individuals by grace rather
than good works and ceremonies.
Calvin’s Paris years came to an abrupt end late in 1533. Because
the government became less tolerant of this reform movement,
Calvin, who had collaborated in the preparation of a strong
statement of theological principles for a public address
delivered by Nicolas Cop, rector of the university, found it
prudent to leave Paris. Eventually he made his way to Basel,
then Protestant but tolerant of religious variety. Up to that
point, however, there is little evidence of Calvin’s conversion
to Protestantism, an event difficult to date because it was
probably gradual. His beliefs before his flight to Switzerland
were probably not incompatible with Roman Catholic orthodoxy.
But they underwent a change when he began to study theology
intensively in Basel. Probably in part to clarify his own
beliefs, he began to write. He began with a preface to a French
translation of the Bible by his cousin Pierre Olivétan and then
undertook what became the first edition of the Institutes, his
masterwork, which, in its successive revisions, became the
single most important statement of Protestant belief. Calvin
published later editions in both Latin and French, containing
elaborated and in a few cases revised teachings and replies to
his critics. The final versions appeared in 1559 and 1560. The
Institutes also reflected the findings of Calvin’s massive
biblical commentaries, which, presented extemporaneously in
Latin as lectures to ministerial candidates from many countries,
make up the largest proportion of his works. In addition he
wrote many theological and polemical treatises.
The 1536 Institutes had given Calvin some reputation among
Protestant leaders. Therefore, on discovering that Calvin was
spending a night in Geneva late in 1536, the Reformer and
preacher Guillaume Farel, then struggling to plant Protestantism
in that town, persuaded him to remain to help in this work. The
Reformation was in trouble in Geneva, a town of about 10,000
where Protestantism had only the shallowest of roots. Other
towns in the region, initially ruled by their prince-bishops,
had successfully won self-government much earlier, but Geneva
had lagged behind in this process largely because its
prince-bishop was supported by the neighbouring duke of Savoy.
There had been iconoclastic riots in Geneva in the mid-1520s,
but these had negligible theological foundations. Protestantism
had been imposed on religiously unawakened Geneva chiefly as the
price of military aid from Protestant Bern. The limited
enthusiasm of Geneva for Protestantism, reflected by a
resistance to religious and moral reform, continued almost until
Calvin’s death. The resistance was all the more serious because
the town council in Geneva, as in other Protestant towns,
exercised ultimate control over the church and the ministers,
all French refugees. The main issue was the right of
excommunication, which the ministers regarded as essential to
their authority but which the council refused to concede. The
uncompromising attitudes of Calvin and Farel finally resulted in
their expulsion from Geneva in May 1538.
Calvin found refuge for the next three years in the German
Protestant city of Strasbourg, where he was pastor of a church
for French-speaking refugees and also lectured on the Bible;
there he published his commentary on the Letter of Paul to the
Romans. There too, in 1540, he married Idelette de Bure, the
widow of a man he had converted from Anabaptism. Although none
of their children survived infancy, their marital relationship
proved to be extremely warm. During his Strasbourg years Calvin
also learned much about the administration of an urban church
from Martin Bucer, its chief pastor. Meanwhile Calvin’s
attendance at various international religious conferences made
him acquainted with other Protestant leaders and gave him
experience in debating with Roman Catholic theologians.
Henceforth he was a major figure in international Protestantism.
In September 1541 Calvin was invited back to Geneva, where the
Protestant revolution, without strong leadership, had become
increasingly insecure. Because he was now in a much stronger
position, the town council in November enacted his
Ecclesiastical Ordinances, which provided for the religious
education of the townspeople, especially children, and
instituted Calvin’s conception of church order. It also
established four groups of church officers: pastors and teachers
to preach and explain the Scriptures, elders representing the
congregation to administer the church, and deacons to attend to
its charitable responsibilities. In addition it set up a
consistory of pastors and elders to make all aspects of Genevan
life conform to God’s law. It undertook a wide range of
disciplinary actions covering everything from the abolition of
Roman Catholic “superstition” to the enforcement of sexual
morality, the regulation of taverns, and measures against
dancing, gambling, and swearing. These measures were resented by
a significant element of the population, and the arrival of
increasing numbers of French religious refugees in Geneva was a
further cause of native discontent. These tensions, as well as
the persecution of Calvin’s followers in France, help to explain
the trial and burning of Michael Servetus, a Spanish theologian
preaching and publishing unorthodox beliefs. When Servetus
unexpectedly arrived in Geneva in 1553, both sides felt the need
to demonstrate their zeal for orthodoxy. Calvin was responsible
for Servetus’ arrest and conviction, though he had preferred a
less brutal form of execution.
The struggle over control of Geneva lasted until May 1555, when
Calvin finally prevailed and could devote himself more
wholeheartedly to other matters. He had constantly to watch the
international scene and to keep his Protestant allies in a
common front. Toward this end he engaged in a massive
correspondence with political and religious leaders throughout
Protestant Europe. He also continued his commentaries on
Scripture, working through the whole New Testament except the
Revelation to John and most of the Old Testament. Many of these
commentaries were promptly published, often with dedications to
such European rulers as Queen Elizabeth, though Calvin had too
little time to do much of the editorial work himself. Committees
of amanuenses took down what he said, prepared a master copy,
and then presented it to Calvin for approval. During this period
Calvin also established the Genevan Academy to train students in
humanist learning in preparation for the ministry and positions
of secular leadership. He also performed a wide range of
pastoral duties, preaching regularly and often, doing numerous
weddings and baptisms, and giving spiritual advice. Worn out by
so many responsibilities and suffering from a multitude of
ailments, he died in 1564.
Personality
Unlike Martin Luther, Calvin was a reticent man; he rarely
expressed himself in the first person singular. This reticence
has contributed to his reputation as cold, intellectual, and
humanly unapproachable. His thought, from this perspective, has
been interpreted as abstract and concerned with timeless issues
rather than as the response of a sensitive human being to the
needs of a particular historical situation. Those who knew him,
however, perceived him differently, remarking on his talent for
friendship but also on his hot temper. Moreover, the intensity
of his grief on the death of his wife, as well as his empathic
reading of many passages in Scripture, revealed a large capacity
for feeling.
Calvin’s facade of impersonality can now be understood as
concealing an unusually high level of anxiety about the world
around him, about the adequacy of his own efforts to deal with
its needs, and about human salvation, notably including his own.
He believed that every Christian—and he certainly included
himself—suffers from terrible bouts of doubt. From this
perspective the need for control both of oneself and the
environment, often discerned in Calvinists, can be understood as
a function of Calvin’s own anxiety.
Calvin’s anxiety found expression in two metaphors for the human
condition that appear again and again in his writings: as an
abyss in which human beings have lost their way and as a
labyrinth from which they cannot escape. Calvinism as a body of
thought must be understood as the product of Calvin’s effort to
escape from the terrors conveyed by these metaphors.
Intellectual formation
Historians are generally agreed that Calvin is to be
understood primarily as a Renaissance humanist who aimed to
apply the novelties of humanism to recover a biblical
understanding of Christianity. Thus he sought to appeal
rhetorically to the human heart rather than to compel agreement,
in the traditional manner of systematic theologians, by
demonstrating dogmatic truths. His chief enemies, indeed, were
the systematic theologians of his own time, the Scholastics,
both because they relied too much on human reason rather than
the Bible and because their teachings were lifeless and
irrelevant to a world in desperate need. Calvin’s humanism meant
first that he thought of himself as a biblical theologian in
accordance with the Reformation slogan scriptura sola. He was
prepared to follow Scripture even when it surpassed the limits
of human understanding, trusting to the Holy Spirit to inspire
faith in its promises. Like other humanists, he was also deeply
concerned to remedy the evils of his own time; and here too he
found guidance in Scripture. Its teachings could not be
presented as a set of timeless abstractions but had to be
brought to life by adapting them to the understanding of
contemporaries according to the rhetorical principle of
decorum—i.e., suitability to time, place, and audience.
Calvin’s humanism influenced his thought in two other basic
ways. For one, he shared with earlier Renaissance humanists an
essentially biblical conception of the human personality,
comprehending it not as a hierarchy of faculties ruled by reason
but as a mysterious unity in which what is primary is not what
is highest but what is central: the heart. This conception
assigned more importance to will and feelings than to the
intellect, and it also gave new dignity to the body. For this
reason Calvin rejected the ascetic disregard of the body’s needs
that was often prominent in medieval spirituality. Implicit in
this particular rejection of the traditional hierarchy of
faculties in the personality, however, was a radical rejection
of the traditional belief that hierarchy was the basis of all
order. For Calvin, instead, the only foundation for order in
human affairs was utility. Among its other consequences this
position undermined the traditional one subordinating women to
men. Calvin believed that, for practical reasons, it may be
necessary for some to command and others to obey, but it could
no longer be argued that women must naturally be subordinated to
men. This helps to explain the rejection in Geneva of the double
standard in sexual morality.
Second, Calvin’s utilitarianism, as well as his understanding of
the human personality as both less and more than intellectual,
was also reflected in deep reservations about the capacity of
human beings for anything but practical knowledge. The notion
that they can know anything absolutely, as God knows, so to
speak, seemed to him highly presumptuous. This conviction helps
to explain his reliance on the Bible. Calvin believed that human
beings have access to the saving truths of religion only insofar
as God has revealed them in Scripture. But revealed truths were
not given to satisfy human curiosity but were limited to meeting
the most urgent and practical needs of human existence, above
all for salvation. This emphasis on practicality reflects a
basic conviction of Renaissance humanism: the superiority of an
active earthly life devoted to meeting practical needs to a life
of contemplation. Calvin’s conviction that every occupation in
society is a “calling” on the part of God himself sanctified
this conception. Calvin thus spelled out the theological
implications of Renaissance humanism in various ways.
But Calvin was not purely a Renaissance humanist. The culture of
the 16th century was peculiarly eclectic, and, like other
thinkers of his time, Calvin had inherited a set of contrary
tendencies, which he uneasily combined with his humanism. He was
an unsystematic thinker not only because he was a humanist but
also because 16th-century thinkers lacked the historical
perspective that would have enabled them to sort out the diverse
materials in their culture. Thus, even as he emphasized the
heart, Calvin continued also to think of the human personality
in traditional terms as a hierarchy of faculties ruled by
reason. He sometimes attributed a large place to reason even in
religion and emphasized the importance of rational control over
the passions and the body. The persistence of these traditional
attitudes in Calvin’s thought, however, helps to explain its
broad appeal; they were reassuring to conservatives.
Theology
Calvin has often been seen as little more than a
systematizer of the more creative insights of Luther. He
followed Luther on many points: on original sin, Scripture, the
absolute dependence of human beings on divine grace, and
justification by faith alone. But Calvin’s differences with
Luther are of major significance, even though some were largely
matters of emphasis. Calvin was thus perhaps more impressed than
Luther by God’s transcendence and by his control over the world;
Calvin emphasized God’s power and glory, whereas Luther often
thought of God as the babe in the manger, here among human
beings. Contrary to a general impression, Calvin’s understanding
of predestination was also virtually identical with Luther’s
(and indeed is close to that of Thomas Aquinas); and, although
Calvin may have stated it more emphatically, the issue itself is
not of central importance to his theology. He considered it a
great mystery, to be approached with fear and trembling and only
in the context of faith. Seen in this way, predestination seemed
to him a comforting doctrine; it meant that salvation would be
taken care of by a loving and utterly reliable God.
But in major respects Calvin departed from Luther. In some ways
Calvin was more radical. Though he agreed with Luther on the
real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, he understood this in
a completely spiritual sense. But most of his differences
suggest that he was closer to the old church than was Luther, as
in his ecclesiology, which recognized the institutional church
in this world, as Luther did not, as the true church. He was
also more traditional in his clericalism; his belief in the
authority of clergy over laity was hardly consistent with
Luther’s stress on the priesthood of all believers. He insisted,
too, on the necessity of a holy life, at least as a sign of
genuine election. Even more significant, especially for
Calvinism as a historical force, was Calvin’s attitude toward
the world. Luther had regarded this world and its institutions
as incorrigible and was prepared to leave them to the Devil, a
far more important figure in his spiritual universe than in
Calvin’s. But for Calvin this world was created by God and still
belonged to him. It was still potentially Christ’s kingdom, and
every Christian was obligated to struggle to make it so in
reality by bringing it under God’s law.
Spirituality
Calvin’s reservations about the capacities of the human mind
and his insistence that Christians exert themselves to bring the
world under the rule of Christ suggest that it is less
instructive to approach his thought as a theology to be
comprehended by the mind than as a set of principles for the
Christian life—in short, as spirituality. His spirituality
begins with the conviction that human beings do not so much
“know” God as “experience” him indirectly, through his mighty
acts and works in the world, as they experience but can hardly
be said to know thunder, one of Calvin’s favourite metaphors for
religious experience. Such experience of God gives them
confidence in his power and stimulates them to praise and
worship him.
At the same time that Calvin stressed God’s power, he also
depicted God as a loving father. Indeed, although Calvinism is
often considered one of the most patriarchal forms of
Christianity, Calvin recognized that God is commonly experienced
as a mother. He denounced those who represent God as dreadful;
God for him is “mild, kind, gentle, and compassionate.” Human
beings can never praise him properly, Calvin declared, “until he
wins us by the sweetness of his goodness.” That God loves and
cares for his human creatures was, for Calvin, what
distinguished his doctrine of providence from that of the
Stoics.
Calvin’s understanding of Christianity is thus in many ways
gentler than has been commonly supposed. This is also shown in
his understanding of original sin. Although he insisted on the
“total depravity” of human nature after the Fall, he did not
mean by this that there is nothing good left in human beings but
rather that there is no agency within the personality left
untouched by the Fall on which to depend for salvation. The
intention of the doctrine is practical: to reinforce dependence
on Christ and the free grace of God. In fact, unlike some of his
followers, Calvin believed in the survival after the Fall,
however weak, of the original marks of God’s image, in which
human beings were created. “It is always necessary to come back
to this,” he declared, “that God never created a man on whom he
did not imprint his image.” At times, to be sure, Calvin’s
denunciations of sin give a very different impression. But it
should be kept in mind that as a humanist and a rhetorician
Calvin was less concerned to be theologically precise than to
impress his audience with the need to repent of its sins.
The problem posed by sin was, for Calvin, not that it had
destroyed the spiritual potentialities of human beings but
rather that human beings had lost their ability to use their
potentialities. Through the Fall they had been alienated from
God, who is the source of all power, energy, warmth, and
vitality. Sin, on the contrary, had exposed the human race to
death, the negation of God’s life-giving powers. Human beings
thus experience the effects of sin as drowsiness when they
should be alert, as apathy when they should feel concern, as
sloth when they should be diligent, as coldness when they should
be warm, as weakness when they need strength. Thus also, since
the Devil, who seeks to drain human beings of their God-given
spirituality, tries to lull them to sleep, God must employ
various stratagems to awaken them. This helps to explain the
troubles that afflict the elect: God threatens, chastises, and
compels them to remember him by making their lives go badly.
The effect of sin also prevents human beings from reacting with
appropriate wonder to the marvels of the world. The failure of
spirituality is the primary obstacle to an affective knowledge
that, unlike mere intellectual apprehension, can move the whole
personality. Calvin attached particular importance to the way in
which sin deadens the feelings, but spiritual knowledge renews
the connection, broken by sin, between knowledge, feeling, and
action. Thus God’s spirit, in all its manifestations, is the
power of life. Calvin’s understanding of sin is closely related
to his humanistic emphasis on activity.
As his emphasis on sanctification for the individual believer
and on reconquering the world for Christ implies, Calvin’s
spirituality also included a strong sense of history, which he
perceived as a process in which God’s purposes are progressively
realized. Therefore, the central elements of the Gospel—the
Incarnation and Atonement, the grace available through them, the
gift of faith by which human beings are enabled to accept this
grace for themselves, and the sanctification that
results—together describe objectively how human beings are
enabled, step by step, to recover their original relationship
with God and regain the energy coming from it. Calvin described
this as a “quickening” that, in effect, brings the believer back
from death to life and makes possible the most strenuous
exertion in God’s service.
Calvin exploited two traditional metaphors for the life of a
Christian. Living in an unusually militant age, he drew on the
familiar idea of the believer’s life as a ceaseless,
quasi-military struggle against the powers of evil both within
the self and in the world. The Christian, in this conception,
must struggle against his own wicked impulses, against the
majority of the human race on behalf of the Gospel, and
ultimately against the Devil. Paradoxically, however, Christian
warfare consists less in inflicting wounds on others than in
suffering the effects of sin patiently, that is, by bearing the
cross. In Calvin’s thought the metaphor for the Christian life
as conflict thus takes on the added meaning of acquiescence in
suffering. The disasters that afflict human existence, though
punishments for the wicked, are an education for the believer;
they strengthen faith, develop humility, purge wickedness, and
compel him to keep alert and look to God for help.
The second traditional metaphor for the Christian life employed
by Calvin, that of a journey or pilgrimage—i.e., of a movement
toward a goal—equally implied activity. “Our life is like a
journey,” Calvin asserted; yet “it is not God’s will that we
should march along casually as we please, but he sets the goal
before us, and also directs us on the right way to it.” This way
is also a struggle because no one moves easily forward and most
are so weak that, “wavering and limping and even creeping along
the ground, they move at a feeble pace.” Yet with God’s help
everyone can daily make some advance, however slight. Notable in
this conception is a single-mindedness often associated with
Calvinism: Christians must look straight ahead to the goal and
be distracted by nothing, looking neither to the right nor left.
Calvin allows them to love the good things in this life, but
only within limits.
Thus the Christian life is a strenuous progress in holiness,
which, through the constant effort of the individual to make the
whole world obedient to God, will also be reflected in the
progressive sanctification of the world. These processes,
however, will never be completed in this life. For Calvin even
the most developed Christian in this world is like an
adolescent, yearning to grow into, though still far from, the
full stature of Christ. But, Calvin assured his followers, “each
day in some degree our purity will increase and our corruption
be cleansed as long as we live in the world,” and “the more we
increase in knowledge, the more should we increase in love.”
Meanwhile the faithful experience a vision, always more clear,
of “God’s face, peaceful and calm and gracious toward us.” So
the spiritual life, for Calvin as for many before him,
culminates in the vision of God.
Assessment
Calvin’s influence has persisted not only in the Reformed
churches of France, Germany, Scotland, the Netherlands, and
Hungary but also in the Church of England, where Calvin was long
at least as highly regarded as among those Puritans who
separated from the Anglican establishment. The latter organized
their own churches, Presbyterian or Congregational, which
brought Calvinism to North America. Even today these churches,
along with the originally German Evangelical and Reformed
Church, recall Calvin as their founding father. Eventually
Calvinist theology was also widely accepted by major groups of
Baptists; and even Unitarianism, which broke away from the
Calvinist churches of New England in the 18th century, reflected
the more rational impulses in Calvin’s theology. More recently
Protestant interest in the social implications of the Gospel and
Protestant neo-orthodoxy, as represented by Karl Barth, Emil
Brunner, and Reinhold Niebuhr, reflects the continuing influence
of John Calvin.
Calvin’s larger influence over the development of modern Western
civilization has been variously assessed. The controversial
“Weber thesis” attributed the rise of modern capitalism largely
to Puritanism, but neither Max Weber, in his famous essay of
1904, “Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus”
(The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism), nor the
great economic historian Richard Henry Tawney, in Religion and
the Rise of Capitalism (1926), implicated Calvin himself in this
development. Much the same thing can be said about efforts to
link Calvinism to the rise of modern science; although Puritans
were prominent in the scientific movement of 17th-century
England, Calvin himself was indifferent to the science of his
own day. A somewhat better case can be made for Calvin’s
influence on political theory. His own political instincts were
highly conservative, and he preached the submission of private
persons to all legitimate authority. But, like Italian
humanists, he personally preferred a republic to a monarchy. In
confronting the problem posed by rulers who actively opposed the
spread of the Gospel, he advanced a theory of resistance, kept
alive by his followers, according to which lesser magistrates
might legitimately rebel against kings. Unlike most of his
contemporaries, furthermore, Calvin included among the proper
responsibilities of states not only the maintenance of public
order but also a positive concern for the general welfare of
society.
Calvinism has a place, therefore, in the development of liberal
political thought. Calvin’s major and most durable influence,
nevertheless, has been religious. From his time to the present
Calvinism has meant a peculiar seriousness about Christianity
and its ethical implications.
William J. Bouwsma
