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John Calvin (July
10, 1509 –
May 27,
1564) was an
important French
Christian
theologian during the
Protestant Reformation and is the namesake of the system of
Christian theology called
Calvinism.
He was born Jean Chauvin (or Cauvin) in
Noyon,
Picardie,
France, to
Gérard Cauvin and
Jeanne Lefranc.
French was his mother tongue; Calvin derives from the
Latin version of
his name, Calvinus.
Martin Luther posted his
95 Theses
in 1517, when
Calvin was 8 years old.
In 1523,
Calvin's father, an attorney, sent 14-year-old hi mum John to the
University of Paris to study humanities and law. By
1532, he was a
Doctor of Law at
Orléans. His first published work was an ion of the
Roman
philosopher
Seneca's De Clementia, accompanied by a thorough commentary.
In 1536, he
settled in Geneva,
halted in the path of an intended journey to
Basel, by the
personal persuasion of the reformer
William Farel. He pastored in Strasbourg from 1538 until 1541, before
returning to Geneva. He would live there until his death in
1564.
John Calvin sought marriage to affirm his approval of marriage over
clerical celibacy. He asked friends to help him find a woman who was
"modest, obliging, not haughty, not extravagant, patient, and solicitous for my
health ." In 1539,
he married
Idelette de Bure, a widow of a converted
Anabaptist
in
Strasbourg. Idelette had a son and daughter from the previous marriage. Only
the daughter moved with her to Geneva. In
1542, the Calvins
had a son who died after only two weeks.
Idelette Calvin died in
1549. Calvin wrote
that she was a helper in ministry, never stood in his way, never troubled him
about her children, and had a greatness of spirit.
Calvin's health began to fail when he suffered
migraines,
lung hemorrhages,
gout and
kidney stones. At times, he was carried to the pulpit. According to his
successor,
Theodore Beza, Calvin took but one meal a day for a decade, but at the
advice of his
physician, he ate an
egg and
drank a glass of wine
at noon. His recreation consisted mainly of a walk after meals. Towards the end
Calvin said to those friends who were worried about his daily regimen of work,
"What! Would you have the Lord find me idle when He comes?"[1]
John Calvin died in Geneva on
May 27, 1564.
He was buried in the
Cimetière des Rois under a
tombstone marked simply with the initials "J.C.", partially honoring his
request that he be buried in an unknown place, without witnesses or ceremony.
Calvin's thought
Calvin was a prominent advocate of the
five solas
of the Reformation, which teach
that the Bible
alone (not the church leadership) is the final authority for matters of faith
and morals and that salvation is attained purely through grace without any
contribution from the
good works of the person in question. He is also widely known for his
teaching on
predestination, which is often labeled as a form of a
determinism though Calvin and his followers reject the accuracy of this
characterization and argue for personal responsibility.
Calvin and power
Some allege that Calvin was not above using the Consistory to further his own
political aims and maintain his absolute control over civil and religious life
in Geneva, and, it is argued, he responded harshly to any challenge to his
actions. Calvin was reluctant to ordain Genevans, preferring to choose pastors
from the stream of French immigrants pouring into the city for the express
purpose of supporting Calvin's program of reform. When Pierre Ameaux complained
about this practice, some contend that Calvin took it as an attack on his
absolute authority as the authority, and he persuaded the city council to
require Ameaux to walk through the town dressed in a hair shirt and begging for
mercy in the public squares.[citation needed]
Jacques Gruet sided with some of the old Genevan families, who resented the
power and methods of the Consistory. He was implicated in an incident in which
someone had placed a placard in one of the city's churches, reading:
- Gross hypocrite, thou and thy companions will gain little by your pains.
If you do not save yourselves by flight, nobody shall prevent your overthrow,
and you will curse the hour when you left your monkery. Warning has been
already given that the devil and his renegade priests were come hither to ruin
every thing. But after people have suffered long they avenge themselves. Take
care that you are not served like Mons. Verle of Fribourg [who was killed in a
fight with the Protestants, while endeavoring to save himself by flight]. We
will not have so many masters. Mark well what I say.
Gruet's views on religion were well known in Geneva, and he wrote verses
about Calvin and the French immigrants that were "more malignant that poetic".
As Gruet had been heard threatening Calvin a few days earlier, he was arrested
in connection with the anonymous placard and was tortured "after the inhuman
fashion of that age". He confessed to the placard and to writing various other
heretical documents that were found in his house, and he was beheaded.[2]
Calvin's acceptance of
torture in
particular is reprehensible to modern sensibilities, but in this view, he was in
accord with the prevailing attitude of that age. Few persons of any position or
religious denomination were critical of the practice, though there certainly
were exceptions such as
Anton Praetorius.
Calvin and Servetus
In 1553, the
Spanish scholar
Michael Servetus, who is viewed by many
Unitarians
as a founding figure, was sentenced to death on the stake for the heresy of
Antitrinitarianism with Calvin's approval (and that of other Reformers,
including
Bullinger,
Farel,
Beza,
Peter Martyr, and even "the mild and gentle"
Melancthon[3]),
although he counselled the magistrate without success to mitigate the legal
penalty by substituting the sword for the fire. Ironically, Servetus had arrived
in Geneva while fleeing from a similar fate at the hands of the French
Inquisition.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, without attempting to exonerate opinion of Calvin
and the others in his time, said of the execution, "[I]f ever a poor fanatic
thrust himself into the fire, it was Michael Servetus. He was a rabid
enthusiast, and did everything he could in the way of insult and ribaldry to
provoke the feeling of the Christian church."[4]
Calvin always maintained that the execution was just, as did Servetus
himself,[5]
who proclaimed his defiance of the authorities even up to the moment of his
death at the stake.[6]
Some have argued that Servetus' trial and execution were a form of personal
revenge for his having snubbed Calvin in a debate years earlier while both men
were students at the University of Paris (Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone, Out
of the Flames, Broadway, 2002).
Writings by Calvin
Calvin published several revisions of his
Institutes of the Christian Religion — a seminal work in Christian
theology that is still read today — in Latin in
1536 (at the age of
26) and then in his native French in
1541, with the
definitive ions appearing in
1559 and
1560, respectively.
He also produced many volumes of commentary on most of the books of the
Bible. For the
Old
Testament (referring to the Protestant
organization of books), he published commentaries for all books except the
histories after
Joshua (though he did publish his sermons on
First Samuel) and the Wisdom literature other than the
Book of Psalms. For the
New
Testament, he omitted only the brief
2nd and
3rd Epistles of
John and the
Book of Revelation. (Some have suggested that Calvin questioned the
canonicity of the Book of Revelation, but his citation of it as
authoritative in his other writings casts doubt on that theory.) These
commentaries, too, have proved to be of lasting value to students of the Bible,
and they are still in print after over 400 years.
In the eighth volume of
Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church, the historian quotes
Dutch theologian
Jacobus Arminius (after whom the anti-Calvinistic movement
Arminianism was named) with regard to the value of Calvin's writings:
- Next to the study of the Scriptures which I earnestly inculcate, I exhort
my pupils to peruse Calvin’s Commentaries, which I extol in loftier terms than
Helmich himself (a Dutch divine, 1551–1608); for I affirm that he excels
beyond comparison in the interpretation of Scripture, and that his
commentaries ought to be more highly valued than all that is handed down to us
by the library of the
fathers; so that I acknowledge him to have possessed above most others, or
rather above all other men, what may be called an eminent spirit of
prophecy.
His Institutes ought to be studied after the
(Heidelberg) Catechism, as containing a fuller explanation, but with
discrimination, like the writings of all men.
Although much of Calvin's practice was in Geneva, his publications spread his
ideas of a correctly reformed church to many parts of
Europe and from
there to the rest of the world.
Reformed Geneva
John Calvin had been exiled from Geneva because he and his followers, namely
William Farel and
Antoine Froment, were accused of wanting to create a "new papacy." Thus, he
went to Strasbourg during the time of the
Ottoman
wars and passed through the
Cantons of Switzerland. While in Geneva, William Farel asked Calvin to help
him with the cause of the Church. Calvin wrote of Farel's request, "I felt as if
God from heaven had laid his mighty hand upon me to stop me in my course."
Together with Farel, Calvin attempted to institute a number of changes to the
city's governance and religious life. They drew up a catechism and a confession
of faith, which they insisted all citizens must affirm. The city council refused
to adopt Calvin and Farel's creed, and in January 1538 denied them the power to
excommunicate, a power they saw as critical to their work. The pair
responded with a blanket denial of the
Lord's Supper to all Genevans at
Easter
services. For this the city council expelled them from the city. Farel travelled
to Neuchâtel, Calvin to Strasbourg.
For three years Calvin served as a lecturer and pastor to a church of French
Huguenots
in Strasbourg. It was during his exile that Calvin married Idelette de Bure. He
also came under the influence of
Martin
Bucer, who advocated a system of political and ecclesiastical structure
along New Testament lines. He continued to follow developments in Geneva, and
when
Jacopo Sadoleto, a Catholic cardinal, penned an open letter to the city
council inviting Geneva to return to the mother church, Calvin's response on
behalf of embattled Genevan Protestants helped him to regain the respect he had
lost. A number of Calvin's supporters having won election to the Geneva city
council, he was invited back to the city in 1540, and after negotiating
concessions such as the formation of the Consistory, he returned in 1541.
Upon his return, armed with the authority to craft the institutional form of
the church, Calvin began his program of reform. He established four categories
of offices, with distinct hierarchy:
- Doctors held an office of theological scholarship and teaching for
the edification of the people and the training of other ministers.
- Pastors were to preach, to administer the sacraments, and to
exercise pastoral discipline, teaching and admonishing the people.
- Deacons oversaw institutional charity, including hospitals and
anti-poverty programs.
- Elders were 12 laymen whose task was to serve as a kind of moral
police force, mostly issuing warnings, but referring offenders to the
Consistory when necessary.
Critics often look to the Consistory as the emblem of Calvin's
theocratic
rule. The Consistory was an ecclesiastical court consisting of the elders and
pastors, charged with maintaining strict order in the church caste and among its
members. Offenses ranged from propounding false doctrine to moral infractions,
such as wild dancing and bawdy singing. Typical punishments were being required
to attend public sermons, catechism classes, floggings or torture. Protestants
in the 16th century were often subjected to the Catholic charge that they were
innovators in doctrine, and that such innovation did lead inevitably to moral
decay and, ultimately, the dissolution of society itself. Calvin claimed his
wish was to establish the moral legitimacy of the church reformed according to
his program, but also to promote the health and well-being of individuals,
families, and communities. Recently discovered documentation of Consistory
proceedings shows at least some concern for domestic life, and women in
particular. For the first time men's infidelity was punished as harshly as that
of women, and the Consistory showed absolutely no tolerance for spousal abuse.
The Consistory helped to transform Geneva into the city described by Scottish
reformer John
Knox as "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on the earth since
the days of the Apostles." In
1559 Calvin founded
a school for training children as well as a hospital for the indigent.
Calvin and witchcraft
John Calvin and the other Reformers (as well as Catholics in Middle Europe)
believed that they should not permit the practice of
witchcraft,
in accord with their understanding of passages such as
Exodus
22:18 and
Leviticus
20:27. Calvin comments on these passages under his analysis of the first of
the
Ten Commandments, which he understands to condemn the practice of other
religions. Of witchcraft in particular, he says, "God would condemn to capital
punishment all augurs, and magicians, and consulters with familiar spirits, and
necromancers and followers of magic arts, as well as enchanters. And...God
declares that He 'will set His face against all, that shall turn after such as
have familiar spirits, and after wizards,' so as to cut them off from His
people; and then commands that they should be destroyed by stoning."[7]
Following this understanding of the Old Testament law, in 1545 twenty-three
people were burned to death under charges of practicing witchcraft and
attempting to spread the
Plague
over a three year period.[8]
""""A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a
coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.
John
Calvin
All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to
our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of
our neighbors.
John
Calvin
Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it
is a faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of
grace; evil, when grace is absent.
John
Calvin
Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master
craftsman of idols.
John
Calvin
For there is no one so great or mighty that he can avoid the
misery that will rise up against him when he resists and strives against God.
John
Calvin
God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His
attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of
their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their
sin, to eternal damnation.
John
Calvin
God tolerates even our stammering, and pardons our ignorance
whenever something inadvertently escapes us - as, indeed, without this mercy
there would be no freedom to pray.
John
Calvin
However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite
liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts.
John
Calvin
I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than
looseness of the bowels.
John
Calvin
Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your
convictions implicitly to the Church?
John
Calvin
Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the
heavenly science of Christ.
John
Calvin
Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so
much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake
God and forge some idol in his own brain.
John
Calvin
No man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of
salvation is set open unto all men: neither is there any other thing which
keepeth us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief.
John
Calvin
Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who
will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no
reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with
weariness.
John
Calvin
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.
John
Calvin
There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than
confidence in our own intelligence.
John
Calvin
There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this
world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
John
Calvin
We must remember that Satan has his miracles, too.
John
Calvin
Yet consider now, whether women are not quite past sense and
reason, when they want to rule over men.
John
Calvin
You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the
completion of joy.
John
Calvin
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