Posted on 07/06/2009 6:29:52 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
"I have lived amidst extraordinary struggles. I have been saluted in mockery at night, before my door, by fifty or sixty shots from guns. Think how that would terrify a poor timid scholar such as I am." John Calvin never set out to live a hectic life in the spotlight. "I always longed for repose and quiet," he said. Much less did he imagine he would change the world. Yet historian E. G. Leonard was hardly exaggerating when he concluded his book History of Protestantism with a chapter entitled, "Calvin: The Founder of a Civilization."
Born in Noyon, France on July 10, 1509 - 500 years ago this Friday - Calvin was learning to read and speak Latin at the University of Paris by the time he was 12. At first, his father encouraged him to study for the priesthood. But when he had a falling out with the church and recognized the religious turmoil of the day, he insisted that his son pursue a legal career instead. Throughout his teens and early 20s, Calvin studied civil law and classical literature, solid preparation for the future that lay ahead of him.
In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church at Wittenburg, launching what would come to be known as the Protestant Reformation. Calvin wasn't among its early leaders. He was still just a boy. By the time he converted to the new movement in the early 1530s, the term "protestant" had already been coined. Nonetheless, Calvin would eventually contribute to the movement two things it didn't have before.
First, he took the most basic principles of the Reformation - grace alone, faith alone, Scripture alone - and organized them into a system which he clearly expressed in his most famous book, "The Institutes of the Christian Religion." Second, through his tremendous influence as a writer, preacher, and church statesman in his adopted hometown of Geneva, Calvin left behind a model of how his version of theology could penetrate and shape a society.
From around 1533 until his death 31 years later, Calvin lived as a religious exile from Catholic-dominated France. Most of that time he spent in Geneva. Many other Protestants who had fled their homelands for fear of persecution discovered the city to be a haven. There they found both refuge and a flourishing religious community led by Calvin and his associates.
Once they returned to the places they came from, the future growth of the Calvinist branch of the Reformation was certain.
Most people remember Calvin for two things. First, like most every other leader of his day, he gave his consent to the executions of public heretics. But this reveals not so much a fault in Calvin. Instead, it points to the difference in values between modern America and 16th-century Europe. In recent history, our country has used atomic bombs to annihilate two Japanese cities. We feared the specter of a conventional invasion and viewed our actions as the lesser of two evils. People of the Middle Ages had different fears.
As historian T.H.L. Parker explains, they were terrified at the thought of souls destroyed by false doctrine, of churches torn apart into factions, and of the vengeance of God brought against them in war, pestilence, and famine. They believed it was the government's duty to establish and maintain true religion, and that the execution of a heretic was therefore justified. The Reformation was born into that world.
Calvin has also been remembered for advancing the doctrine of double predestination, which says that God in his sovereignty has decreed that certain individuals will be saved and that all others will be lost. Americans, big on freedom and a person's ability to determine his own course, have typically rejected this teaching on biblical grounds. Alexander Campbell spoke for many when in 1826 he thundered that Calvinism "is not the gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord, and all those texts which are brought to prove it are either wrested, perverted, or misapplied."
But don't count Calvin out. In March, Time magazine listed "10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now." No. 3 was "The New Calvinism," which has taken hold in large segments of conservative U.S. Protestantism, especially among young people.
The new Calvinists even have a representative Bible, the English Standard Version which was released this past October and sold out its first printing of 100,000 copies immediately.
Calvin once called himself "merely a man from among the common people." On his 500th birthday, he isn't finished yet.
good, concise article.
Calvin IS the founder of modern western civilization.
No he is not. Calvin espoused the belief that the church and state should be one and executed this in Geneva. Ecclesiastical tyranny does not equate western civilization.
Hyperbole much?
I believe it was about Calvin's philosophy that Mencken wrote " a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun."
Calvin IS the founder of modern western civilization.
Man you REALLY flunked history.
Bump for later reading....
I believe it was about Calvin's philosophy that Mencken wrote " a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun."
That would be Puritanism, and Mencken was wrong.
He's a million billion times more important than anybody else!
He also invented vegetable hybridization, the Jacquard loom (under a pseudonym), and the automatic drip coffee maker (yes, he was THE Mr. Coffee).
Sheeesh.
Sorry dude, but you're wrong and Mencken was right. Calvinism evolved into puritanism. From one of the many references when you google John Calvin
"Several sects of Calvinism evolved. French Calvinists were known as Huguenots, English Calvinsits as Puritans"But don't take my word for it google him yourself.
Calvin brought systematic life to a religion that (in the hands of countless followers, over hundreds of years - including the Puritans that first set foot on the shores of America) led to more modern economics, to capitalism itself, as well as education and democracy. If you aren’t aware of that, then maybe you were the one who wasn’t paying attention in history class....
Mencken is in that quote, as always, funny and concise. But you can’t take a 20th journalist’s soundbites and pretend that that is serious intellectual history.
I think I’m living on a different planet than you are or at least one with a different history, but have a great day.
I have often stated the John Calvin would be the last to consider himself a “Calvinist”, especially in light of how that moniker has been bastardized by his theological and cultural enemies. Happy Birthday John, I consider you one of the giants of the faith and look forward to seeing you in glory.
Calvinism evolved into puritanism.
I know that. Mencken was wrong in his judgment of Puritanism.
You mean that materialistic, godless construct which is now disintegrating amidst an epidemic of moral relativism?
I wondered whose fault it was.
Was that predestined, too?
Once the spirit of rebellion is loosed, it takes on a life all of its own. It can go to places never imagined. The Reformation didn't end in the 16th century. It is an ongoing and daily occurrence. It is repeated every time somebody carves out their own personal version of morality divorced from reference to God's one, true Church.
Enjoy.
lol
You mean that the definition I found for puritanism as "puritanism: Scrupulous moral rigor, especially hostility to social pleasures and indulgences" with the added attraction of burning innocent women as witches is not correct?
No, the one you quoted.
Then you are stating that “especially hostility to social pleasures and indulgences” is not a restatement of and equivalent to “a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun”?
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