The Legacy of John Calvin

His Influence on the Modern World

David W. Hall

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781596380851
• eBook ISBN: 9781596384606
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

David Hall identifies ten seminal ways that Calvin's thought transformed the culture of the West, complete with a nontechnical biography of Calvin and tributes by other leaders.

JOHN CALVIN: A LIFE WORTH KNOWING

It is admittedly difficult for most people today to relate to John Calvin or to his times. He lived half a millennium ago (b. 1509), but in terms of experience and culture he may seem closer to the Paleolithic period than to our own decade or century. Thus, it is understandable that in order for us to relate to him, he must be personalized and contextualized. That is a fair challenge, and this abbreviated biography seeks to ease that burden and close that gap. Building such a bridge to the past can help us see that this Genevan theologian can still serve as a helpful exemplar for many different fields of human endeavor.¹

In Calvin’s day, Europe was a quilt of various tribes, family alliances, and fiefdoms. The most centralized power was the Roman Catholic Church, which sought to hold Christendom together. The city of Geneva, which became important as the primary staging area of Calvin’s activities, was not removed from these greater trends. Whether priests or governors realized it, a Reformation was about to commence in the early decades of the sixteenth century, and human society would change irrevocably through the decisive leadership of men like this academic who preferred to shun the spotlight.

Calvin stood at the onset of modernity, and his ideas and actions would change history forever. Others—today, mainly forgotten—have previously recognized the influence of Calvin. The highly respected nineteenth-century Harvard historian George Bancroft was one of many who earlier asserted that Calvin’s ideas buttressed liberty’s cause. Bancroft and others noted the influence of this thought on the development of various freedoms in Western Europe and America.² Writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, Bancroft even credited many of the public freedoms in the West as being chiefly transmitted through Calvin’s disciples, the Puritans. Moreover, Bancroft traced the living legacy of Calvin among the Plymouth pilgrims, the Huguenot settlers of South Carolina, and the Dutch colonists in Manhattan, concluding: “He that will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty.”³

Bancroft esteemed Calvin as one of the premier republican pioneers, at one point writing, “ The fanatic for Calvinism was a fanatic for liberty; and, in the moral warfare for freedom, his creed was his most faithful counselor and his never-failing support. The Puritans . . . planted . . . the undying principles of democratic liberty.”⁴ During the nineteenth century, appreciation of the societal impact of Calvin was not limited solely to American scholars. The world-renowned German historian Leopold von Ranke, for example, reached the similar conclusion that “John Calvin was virtually the founder of America.”⁵

Calvin’s Life

Little is known about John Calvin’s mother, Jeanne la France of Cambrai, due to her early death; his father was a dominant presence in his early life and education.

Calvin was born on July 10, 1509,⁶ in Noyon, a small town about 50 miles northeast of Paris in Picardy, France. He was the middle son in a family with five children—three sons and two daughters. His father, Gerard, was an administrative assistant in the nearby cathedral complex, and his mother died when Calvin was only five.⁷ His first biographer, his friend and colleague, Professor Theodore Beza, later described Calvin as “of middle stature, sallow features, and whose piercing eye and animated looks announced a mind of no common sagacity.”⁸

Calvin’s father enrolled him in the College de Montaigu in Paris in 1521, intending for him to enter the priesthood. While at that Parisian college, Calvin studied rhetoric, logic, and arts—common topics for the day—and received a classical education. He was also influenced by the work of the leading Roman Catholic progressive, John Major⁹—a towering intellect—and Peter of Spain.¹⁰ The major theological assumptions during his education at Paris included a hearty concurrence with Augustine on man’s nature, a pessimistic view of humanity flowing from the Fall and original sin, and rejection of salvation by human merit.¹¹ According to one historian, “Calvin’s powers of reasoning and analysis may be traced to his rigorous training” under such Parisian masters. He also could not avoid the deluge of intellectual currents, especially the inchoate Protestantism, swirling through Paris at the time.

His instruction included training in three classic languages: Latin, Greek (learned from Melchior Wolmar at Orleans, to whom Calvin dedicated his commentary on 2 Corinthians), and Hebrew. Calvin’s “humanist” education¹² included enrollments at key education institutions near Paris¹³ (Orleans, Bourges, Basle) and familiarization with other learning centers of the day. He was exposed to the thought of Erasmus, Le Fevre, Wolmar, and Francois Rabelais, a veritable Who’s Who of Western European education for his day. Calvin would later complete in Paris the equivalent of a master’s degree in an education that ranked with or surpassed those of Cambridge or Oxford at the time. A free market of new ideas and Protestantism (originally thought of as “Lutheranism”) surged in Paris while Calvin was a student there.

His education was a bold new one that sought to appreciate the classics of the past and also accorded less reverence to the traditions of Roman Catholicism. Calvin was a modern scholar who understood the role of criticism in arriving at truth. His first published work, a commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia (1532), affirmed the radical notion that “[T]he prince is not above the laws, but the laws above the prince.”¹⁴ Later, his published works would concentrate on a wide array of theological subjects.

Calvin’s father played a dominant role in his early education at Paris, and Gerard eventually persuaded his son to train for the legal profession, which he considered a surer path to wealth than the priesthood. Since France was a monarchy, and the king was above the law, it was too much cognitive dissonance to house a law school in Paris—as if the king might ever be subject to a constitution; thus, France’s leading law school was located in Orleans and not Paris. From 1528 to 1533, Calvin studied law in Bourges and Orleans,¹⁵ a preparation that would assist him in later endeavors, including laying the foundation for subsequent political ideas. He was later licensed to practice law, and his legal training ultimately aided him as he mentored Geneva’s developing republic.

Whether the guiding hand was his father’s or that of the Father of Providence, Calvin was exposed to the best teachers of the day. His education would serve him well all his life, and the opportunity to study under these master teachers was of great value.

If it had been left up to his own wishes, John Calvin would have continued to pursue a comfortable academic career. He did not intend either to serve as a pastor or to work in Geneva, but God had other plans for him.

Calvin’s only autobiographical account of his spiritual conversion appears in the 1557 Preface to his Commentary on Psalms.¹⁶ He did not wear his conversion on his sleeve but took many opportunities to practice what he preached. From Calvin’s own testimony, he rarely saw himself as breaking new ground, and he described the Book of Psalms as “An Anatomy of all the parts of the Soul.” No sterile scholastic, as he has often been maligned, Calvin claimed that “there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here [in the Psalms] represented as in a mirror.” All the “lurking places” of the heart were illumined in these devotional poems.

He prefaced his spiritual testimony by stating his appreciation for other Reformed teachers of the time, particularly praising Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Musculus. He was happy to acknowledge his indebtedness to others, once praising Luther in this fashion: “It was a great miracle of God that Luther and those who worked with him at the beginning in restoring the pure truth were able to emerge from it little by little.”¹⁷ Although Calvin would differ significantly with Luther on several issues, he retained a lifelong admiration for Luther’s work and saw himself as building on a shared foundation. Calvin stated that, should Doctor Martin call him a devil, he would“nevertheless hold him in such honor [and] acknowledge him to be a distinguished servant of God.”¹⁸ While exiled in Strasbourg (1538–41), Calvin also forged a strong relationship with Luther’s understudy, Philip Melanchthon.

In his clearest spiritual autobiography, Calvin likened himself to David, as one who had been taken from a pastoral venue and thrust into a position of public responsibility. He reviewed for his readers how his father had destined him for the priesthood, how Gerard considered the legal profession more lucrative, and had enrolled young Calvin in legal studies. Calvin reflected on his early education, noting that even there divine providence was guiding him, despite his earthly father’s urgings toward law for ignoble reasons.

John Calvin’s religious upbringing (he later called it “superstitious”), was not abandoned easily. Even though he was plunged into a profound spiritual abyss, according to his own account, Calvin was found by God, who used a sudden conversion to “subdue and bring my mind to a teachable frame, which was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected from one at my early period in life.” Apparently Calvin continued traditional Roman Catholic practices until his conversion in 1533–34.

After this “sudden conversion,” the Parisian student found himself “inflamed with an intense desire,” and he fervently pursued Protestant teachings. After a year of diligent study (so intense perhaps because Protestantism was new and also because Calvin studied under some of the finest teachers in the pristine movement), he was surprised that numerous people began to treat him like an expert on these matters. He humbly viewed himself as unpolished, bashful, retiring, and preferring seclusion. Yet, like the author of the Psalms, he sensed that he was inevitably being thrust into the role of a public leader. Instead of successfully living in scholarly quiescence, all his retreats became public debating forums. He wrote:“In short, while my one great object was to live in seclusion without being known, God so led me about through different turnings and changes that he never permitted me to rest in any place, until in spite of my natural disposition, he brought me forth to public notice.”

In the early sixteenth century, Paris had become a hotbed of reform movements that had been particularly influenced by the Italian Reformers Savonarola and Peter Martyr. However, in the fall of 1533, French monarch Francis I cracked down on the burgeoning Protestantism, which was causing considerable commotion in Paris.

The immediate cause of this crackdown was the installation of Nicholas Cop, a Protestant sympathizer, to lead the university. Some theorize that Calvin, perhaps, lent his literary expertise to help draft Cop’s inaugural address. True or not, Calvin himself believed it necessary to leave Paris immediately after Cop’s delivery of the address. His escape from Paris was none too soon, as police seized his personal papers within hours of his departure.¹⁹

Although not as dramatic as Luther’s conversion,²⁰ Calvin’s awakening was nonetheless absolute: he left Paris a committed Protestant in 1533. Recent scholars have rediscovered the “suddenness” of his conversion, the term Calvin himself preferred. Calvin entirely severed his relationship ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• A CHRONOLOGY OF JOHN CALVIN'S LIFE
• TEN WAYS MODERN CULTURE IS DIFFERENT BECAUSE OF JOHN CALVIN
• JOHN CALVIN: A LIFE WORTH KNOWING
• TRIBUTES: MEASURING A MAN AFTER MANY GENERATIONS