Victor R. Claveau, MJ
John Calvin (b. Jean Cauvin, July 10, 1509), was born at Noyon, Picardy, France, to the parents of Gerard Cauvin, lawyer, and Jeanne LeFranc, and died at Geneva, Switzerland on May 27, 1564. Undoubtedly the greatest of Protestant divines, he was the second most influential of the heresiarchs, and after St. Augustine, the most perseveringly followed by his disciples of any western writer on theology. A generation divided him from Luther, whom he never met. Jean’s mother is known to have led her little son to various shrines and brought him up a Catholic, but as she died when he was still young, her influence may have been modest. His father, however, was more intent on his son’s material than his spiritual welfare. The senior Cauvin and Jean’s elder brother Charles were fiscal procurators of the see of Noyon, and became embroiled in financial difficulties with the canons of the cathedral. In the course of this dispute, they were excommunicated and eventually denied ecclesiastical burial. Such domestic tragedies could scarcely have failed to embitter Jean Cauvin against ecclesiastical authority.
As a second-generation reformer, Calvin was familiar with the writings and theology of Luther, discussed these theories with friends and read his Bible with them in mind. Not an original thinker, his doctrine is largely that of Luther. He believed in the total corruption of human nature as a result of Adam’s sin, the powerlessness of a person to do good, the sinfulness of every act, the impossibility of following the commandments of God, and justification by faith alone. He also taught that it is impossible that a person can merit anything in the sight of God, and the idea that a person’s own good works could have any redeeming value was blasphemy. He claimed that sacraments (two only) are divine signs meant to enliven and to confirm faith and the idea that all people are predestined by God from all eternity to heaven or to hell regardless of the life they lead. The essence of Luther’s message was the essence of Calvin’s message. For both men the foundation of their beliefs was the sacred scriptures, which all people had the right to, and duty to read for themselves. Calvin believed that he was God’s messenger and as such had the right to demand assent to the message he delivered.
Judging from the accounts of contemporary historians, Calvin must have been a perfect type of the Puritan. He was of medium height, lean, sharp-visaged, cadaverous, thin-lipped; his eyes were bright, but restless and sinister in their expression; his head was large; his countenance was cold, stern, and unsympathetic; and his religious declarations were characterized by a canting nasal twang. Every line of his sallow and angular face, every movement of his skeleton frame, every gesture of his bony arms and hands, and every word from his thin, blue lips left an indescribable and indelible impression. He was learned, eloquent, classical, and polished as a writer, but human sympathy, benevolence, charity, and the finer emotions, had no place in his heart. He could thank his God with as much indifference for damning the predestinated victims of His causeless wrath as for saving the elected favorites of His equally causeless mercy. Like the fatalistic Mohammedan, he regarded men as passive and helpless victims of a foreordained and fixed decree of the Almighty. He was heartless, vindictive, cruel, and bloodthirsty as his unrelenting persecutions of his controversial adversaries and his execution of Servetus and Gruet clearly demonstrate. Another illustration of his bloodthirsty and cruel disposition may be found in the active part he took in urging forward the bloody civil wars of the period. “Calvin,” said Bucer, “is a true mad-dog. The man is wicked, and he judges of people according as he loves or hates them.” Baudoin declared “ that he could not endure Calvin, because he bad found him too thirsty for vengeance and blood.” In a letter to his friend, the Marquis du Poet, respecting the Anabaptists and other new dissidents, Calvin declares that such monsters ought to be suffocated, after the manner of Servetus and Gruet.
Calvin taught that the children of the faithful are born in grace and alliance with God, and that they must be saved, with or without baptism, with or without good acts. He taught that whoever has received the Holy Spirit once is fully justified, and can never lose it, or fall from grace. Once the recipient of grace, the predestined mortal must of necessity be saved, though all the imps of darkness afterward possess him and govern him through life. He was, however, continually changing his arbitrary dogmas. He had one confession of faith for Switzerland, another for Germany and a still different one for France. In almost every successive communication he expresses dissatisfaction with the views he had previously advanced, and continually suggested alterations and modifications. Ambitious, vain, boastful, and imperious, he did not hesitate to alter and adapt his doctrines to the peculiarities and prejudices of the various nations of Europe. He believed that he was divinely inspired to properly interpret scripture. His main object was to secure converts and also to extend his own reputation, not to serve his God and his fellow men. His abuse was directed not only against Catholics, but also against all that presumed to differ with him. Even Luther and Zwingli did not escape his bitter taunts and irony.
While Luther scorned logic and research to become an active popular leader, Calvin, on the other hand, was a rigorous logician who exerted his influence by writing and instructing smaller groups. With none of Luther’s pseudomystic enthusiasm or demagogy, Calvin was nonetheless to impress his ideas more firmly on the movement that he initiated than Luther had done on his.
In 1536, the French reformer can be credited with producing the “Institutes”, the standard of orthodox Protestant belief in all the churches known as “Reformed”. It was written in Latin, and its title may be translated: An Education in the Christian Religion, containing almost the whole sun of pious living, and whatever is necessary to the knowledge of the doctrine of salvation; a work recently brought out and well worth reading by all who are zealous for holy living. The Institutes are divided into four books and exhibit a commentary on the Apostles’ Creed. Book I considers God the Creator, the Trinity, revelation, Man’s first estate and original righteousness. Book II describes the Fall of Adam, and treats of Christ the Redeemer. Book III enlarges on justifying faith, election, and reprobation (the allowing of some souls to be lost). Book IV gives the Presbyterian idea of the Church. Though written when Calvin was only twenty-six, has been little modified since. It molded the church of Switzerland, France and Scotland; gave inspiration to Puritans, Congregationalists, Dissenters, and Baptists and even aided in shaping Anglicanism. It is in fact the very soul of Protestantism. Luther made more noise and received the attention of the world, but Calvin sowed the seed that germinates in the stern forms of Protestant theology that exist in the world today.
After many struggles in Geneva, Calvin became a driving force and got his way as a practical reformer. Calvin had the cold ruthlessness of the righteous. Edict followed edict from the councils. Hughes describes some of the restrictions:
“Playing cards were forbidden, and dice, light songs, dancing; the taverns were closed and a new species of eating-house set up where a man could read his Bible in peace. There were, of course, the five weekly sermons which all must attend. The offender’s place in social life was no protection. The great ladies of the community were sent to prison just as easily as their servants would. One man was given a spell for playing bowls during church time and another for leaving church during the sermon. The fashion of dress and of shoes, for men and for women, was relegated, and the women’s hair styles also. All days but Sundays were working days, because the Scripture read, “Six days shalt thou labour.” Needless to say, every least sign of the old religion was most rigorously forbidden; to say a prayer in Latin, for example, to hint a disbelief that the pope was Antichrist, or to repeat that he was said to be kind to the poor. No child was to be given any name except those found in the Bible, and a father who protested when the minister christened his son Abraham paid for his insolence in prison. Anabaptists were banished, with death as the penalty should they return. The rare atheist–the man, who denied that Scripture was inspired or that the soul was immortal–was put to death, tortured and beheaded. The heretic was burned–Calvin’s name is never remembered but that of Servetus comes into the memory.[1] Few crimes were more swiftly and decisively punished than that of contradicting the master’s teaching. Intellectual give-and-take had no place in Geneva. There is quite a litany of distinguished theologians-all of the Reformed school-whom he set on the road to exile for such temerity: Costellio, Bolsec, Zucchi, and Carmel. And even to say that Calvin was not a good teacher could mean prison. Or, such a remark, coming from the sermon, as, ‘Calvin doesn’t like us coughing! We’ll belch and make ruder noises still if we feel that way’ brought a prison sentence.
Naturally there was a censorship against books-even Bullinger, Against the Anabaptists, was forbidden. And authors were compelled to sign each sheet of their manuscripts, which the censors countersigned in approval, and woe to the man who later slipped in any changes. Real sins such as blaspheming, drunkenness, carousing, of course, were dealt with mercilessly. As to wrongdoing in the matters of sex, a special prison was now built to house such offenders. And the inquisition dreamed of from the beginning became a reality. Twice a year a commission of ministers and elders descended on every house in the town to see that all was well and godly, no superstitious pictures on the walls, no wrong ideas in the minds, all diligently attending the sermons and receiving the Lord’s Supper. And all this was entered in a huge register, with notes against the name, ‘pious,’ ‘lukewarm,’ ‘corrupt.’ Calvin could choose without risk of error the men who would be a service to his cause in the councils and public offices. He would know how to block the promotion of others. Add to this the immense body of the pious who voluntarily spied on their neighbors and even drew them on in talk until they tripped. As the years went by, Geneva succumbed. Its population was radically different before the end of Calvin’s rule; with its thirteen thousand or so native Swiss there now mingled six thousand foreign refugees, hot zealots whose prospects depended on the master alone, on their zeal and on their show of zeal.
‘When I first came to the church,’ said Calvin to the ministers as he lay dying, April 28, 1564, ‘there was, as it were, no church at all. There was a little preaching, and that was all. There was indeed some hunting after idols, and they were burned. But there was no reformation. All was Chaos… There is one point I have forgotten: I beg of you to make no changes, don’t bring in anything new-not that I desire what I have done to remain…but because all changes are dangerous and sometimes harmful.’”[2] He was buried without pomp, in a spot, which is not now ascertainable.
Concerning the power of Rome to establish through conciliar decisions the canon of Holy Scriptures Calvin wrote:
“I wittingly pass over what they teach on the power to approve Scripture. For to subject the oracles of God in this way to men’s judgement, making their validity depend on human whim, is a blasphemy unfit to be mentioned. I have already touched on the matter above. Nevertheless, I shall ask this one question: If the authority of Scripture is grounded in the approval of the church, the decree of which Council will they cite on this point? They have none, I believe. Why, then, did Arius allow himself to be overcome at the Council of Nicaea by testimonies drawn from the Gospel of John? For he was-according to these men-free to reject them, since no approval of a general council had preceded. They bring forward as evidence an ancient list; called “canon,” which they say came from the judgement of the church. But I ask once more, in what council was that canon promulgated? Here they must remain mute. However, I should like to know furthermore what sort of canon they think it is. For I see that it was little agreed on among ancient writers. And if Jerome says ought to have weight, the books of Maccabees, Tobit, Ecclesiasticus, and the like, are to be thrown back to the rank of Apocrypha. This the Romanists cannot bear to do.[3] [Author’s emphasis]
Is it possible that Calvin was not aware of the councils previously cited that first established and later ratified the canon?
- [1] Michael Servetus, (Sp. Miguel Serveto) (B. 1511? – d. 1553) A Spanish Physician and theologian whose unorthodox teachings led to his condemnation as a heretic by both Protestants and Roman Catholics and led to his execution by Calvinists from Geneva. Servetus was recognized in Geneva, arrested and tried for heresy from Aug. 14 to Oct. 25, 1553. Calvin played a prominent part in the trial and pressed for execution, although by beheading rather than by fire. -Servetus was found guilty of heresy, mainly on his views of the Trinity and on Baptism. He was burned alive on Oct. 27. His execution produced a Protestant controversy on imposing the death penalty for heresy, drew severe criticism on John Calvin.
- [2] Hughes, pp. 258-259.
- [3] Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 2, pp. 1177-1178.