Victor R. Claveau, MJ
John Calvin (b. Jean Cauvin, July 10, 1509), was born at Noyon, 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 (ministers), he was the second most influential of the heresiarchs and, after St. Augustine, he had the most persevering disciples of any western writer on theology. The Protestant Revolt was twenty years in the making when Calvin wrote his L’Harmonie evangélique, which discusses Saint Luke’s portrayal of Mary.
Père Dupuy, O.P., a French theologian, offers these words of introduction to a study on Calvin’s Mariology:
“When Calvin says Mary is a virgin, holy, the mother of the Lord, he is trying to retain the original meaning of this while at the same time divesting it of the fantasies of piety he believed he saw everywhere.”[1]
Nowhere does Calvin call Mary Theotokos or the Mother of God.
The Virgin Birth
Calvin believed in Mary’s virginity before Christ’s birth and his miraculous conception in her womb. In his Catechism of 1537, he wrote:
“Jesus has been formed in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her flesh, as the descendant of David, as it was foretold; and moreover, this was accomplished by a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit without the work of man.”[2]
Perpetual Virginity
Commenting on the passage “I know not man”, Calvin stated:
“The conjecture which some have drawn from these words, that she had formed a vow of perpetual virginity, is unfounded and altogether absurd…The probable and simple explanation is that the greatness or rather the majesty of the subject made so powerful an impression on the Virgin that all her senses were bound and locked up in astonishment…she imagines something unusual, and for that reason she leaves conjugal intercourse out of view.”[3]
In an opposing view, Saint Augustine wrote: “Mary answered the announcing angel: ‘How shall this be done, because I know not man?’” She would not have said this unless she had already vowed her virginity to God.[4]
Calvin refused to acknowledge any New Testament passage as a denial of Mary’s virginity. Commenting on Saint Matthew’s words that Jesus was Mary’s “first born,” he wrote:
“The phrase afforded the pretext for great disturbances…The inference he [Helvidius] drew from it was that Mary remained a virgin no longer than till her first birth, and that afterward she had other children by her husband. Jerome, on the other hand, earnestly and copiously defended Mary’s perpetual virginity. Let us rest satisfied with this, and no just and well-grounded inference can be drawn from these words of the Evangelist as to what took place after the birth of Christ…What took place afterwards, the historian does not inform us. Such is well known to have been the practice of the inspired writers. Certainly, no man will ever raise a question on this subject, except from curiosity; and no man will obstinately keep up the argument, except from extreme fondness of disputation.”[5]
Mary’s Sanctity
Calvin held no respect for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. He acclaimed it to be unfounded, unscriptural, and unsubstantiated in Christian revelation.[6]
Thomas O’Meara, O.P., summarized Calvin’s theology concerning Mary as follows:
“The Calvinist creeds emphasize the Virgin Birth and Mary’s conception and bearing of God’s Son; they omit, in contrast to their Lutheran counterparts, reference to the perpetual virginity and Mary’s sanctity. They reject any invocation of her.
“This attitude, as decades silenced the sound of the Reformers’ words, placed Mary even more out of sight than the Fathers of Protestantism had intended.
“The second factor was theology. It sparked the battle which had to be waged for the miraculous, and in the first place for the Virgin Birth. Where the historical reality of the Virgin Birth lost ground—in controversy with philosophy, romanticism, or biblical criticism—Mary became even more impugned. As the ever-changing theories of the pagan origin or the mythlike nature of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth were proposed with the most blatant certainty and self-assurance, respect for the Mother of Christ was doomed. For many reasons, the phrase Mother of God lost favor. This source of Mary’s worth was either misunderstood by pastors, whose own creeds avowed it, or else it was not brought into view. The dispute which fell upon the only two remnants of Reformed Marian theology—the Virgin Birth and the Divine Maternity—caused interest in Mary to disappear.
“Finally, there were social and psychological factors. Catholicism increased its devotion to Mary. Protestants were reared in an atmosphere of prejudice, misunderstanding, and bewilderment at the ordinary devotions of their Catholic neighbors. Then too, the northern religious psyche found itself alienated from the Latin forms of Marian devotion, forms which seemed to sum up all that was wrong with Marianism. Criticism of Catholic devotion to Mary became a slogan of Protestantism.
“It was the times with their changes in intellectual and cultural outlook. It was the very history of the Reform with its forgetfulness of the fullness of its Lutheran and Calvinist inheritance, which caused a Christian religion to come into existence without any place for Christ’s mother. We should remember that this was not the view of the Reformers, nor is it intrinsic to Protestantism. In our time we have seen the reaction: a call by Protestants to reconsider Mary.”[7]
However, Mary’s perpetual virginity was most poetically supported by other Protestant leaders. Heinrich Bullinger defended Mary’s perpetual virginity:
“In Mary everything is extraordinary and all the more glorious as it has sprung from pure faith and burning love of God.” She is ‘the most unique and the noblest member’ of the Christian community…
“The Virgin Mary . . . completely sanctified by the grace and blood of her only Son and abundantly endowed by the gift of the Holy Spirit and preferred to all . . . now lives happily with Christ in heaven and is called and remains ever-Virgin and Mother of God.”[8]
[1] Dupuy, D. B., O.P., La Mariologie de Calvin, Intina, V 1958, pp. 479-490.
[2] Calvin, Catechism of 1537, CR 22, 54.
[3] Calvin, On the Harmony.
[4] De Sancta Virginitate iv.
[5] Calvin, Commentary on the Harmony, CR 45, 70 (Pringle edition) p. 107.
[6] Ibid. pp. 87-88.
[7] O’Meara, Thomas, A., O.P., Mary in Protestant and Catholic Theology, (New York: Sheed and Ward), 1966, pp. 136-137.
[8] Hilda Graef, Mary: A history of Doctrine and Devotion, combined ed. of vols. 1 & 2, London: Sheed & Ward, 1965, vol .2, pp. 14-5.