John Calvin: Relevant 500 Years Later

John Calvin (1509-1564) was born just over half a millennium ago in Noyon, France. The son of a lawyer for the Roman Catholic Church, Calvin had a conversion experience as a student sometime after 1528, formally leaving the Catholic Church by 1533. Calvin became a dominant leader in the Protestant Reformation because of his powerful preaching, systematic theological writing, administrative skills, and missionary zeal. Reformers, associated with Calvin in Geneva and Strasbourg, included Guillaume Farel, Martin Bucer, and Theodore Beza.

The Protestant Reformation began on the European continent with intensive study of New Testament texts by scholars such as Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, and John Calvin. Geneva, where John Calvin and Theodore Beza resided, became the center of Reformation scholarship. Both John Calvin and Theodore Beza were Greek and Latin scholars. Many English Protestant leaders also found safe haven in Switzerland and Germany. These Englishmen studied and wrote primarily in Geneva, as well.

The Reformers translated the Scripture into the vernacular. English and French translations of the New Testament and the whole Bible were produced. Miles Coverdale completed the first complete Bible with Apocrypha, in the English language; it was published in Zurich in 1535. A French Bible was translated by Pierre Olivetan, a cousin of Calvin.

Notable English and Scottish Protestant exiles to the continent were William Wittingham, John Knox, John Foxe, John Bodley, John Bale, William Kethe, William Williams, Anthony Gilby, Christopher Goodman, Thomas Wood, Thomas Sampson, William Cole, and Thomas Cole.

The Geneva Bible translation was supported by John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox, all considered some of the greatest Protestant theologians in history. Beza had published several editions of the Greek and Latin New Testaments. The Geneva Bible New Testament was finished in 1557, and the complete Geneva Bible in 1560, a year and a half after the death of Queen Mary, who had persecuted the Protestants. The Geneva Bible was in English, but the sources for the translation were Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French texts, as well as previous English translations.

The Geneva Bible had extensive Calvinist-oriented notes on the Bible text. John Bodley (father of the Bodelian Library of Oxford's namesake, Thomas Bodley) was the primary financial backer of the Geneva Bible. One of the principle translators, William Wittingham, a Greek scholar, was married to the sister of Calvin's wife. The King James Bible was very indebted to the Geneva Bible, as indeed were both translations to the Tyndale Bible. 

John Calvin's followers were leaders in the development of constitutional and representative government, advocating the right of the people to change government, and the separation of church and civil government. In France, Calvin's followers were referred to as Huguenots, and in the British isles and the Americas, as Puritans. Their democratic ideas were originally somewhat limited to the land-owning aristocracy, but over the next century more comprehensive democratic ideals developed and flourished. This culminated in the first flowering of extensive liberty in the small state of Rhode Island, founded by Calvinist Baptists (Particular Baptists) Roger Williams and Dr. John Clarke.

Calvin's administration of justice at times erred. Some of his opponents were tortured and executed, the most notable being Servetus, who was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1559.

Will Durant called John Calvin's massive masterpiece, Institutes of the Christian Religion, one of the ten books that shook the world. The influential and systematic exposition of Bible doctrine, followed and expanded on the Apostles Creed. It was revised at least five times between the 1536 first edition and 1539. The Institutes became the fundamental early treatise of a truly evangelical theology.

Calvin held that the Bible was the basis of all Christian teaching. He was indebted, however, to the writings of Augustine, the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, as well as the writings of the early church fathers.

Calvin published the first of many Bible commentaries, the Commentary on Romans, in Strasbourg in 1539. His extensive writings, contained in 59 volumes, the Corpus Reformatorum, included commentaries on most of the books of the Bible. His writing was done under the press of physical illness and a demanding schedule.

 In 1559 Calvin founded a Geneva academy which subsequently became a university. He lectured weekly to theological students and preached up to five times a week. P. E. Hughes notes that pastoral concern, evangelistic zeal, and a humble sense of God and his Word were hallmarks of Calvin's life.

Calvin's only child died at birth in 1542. His wife died in 1549. He himself suffered from a frail constitution and sundry physical maladies. Calvin has been described as a simple, reticent, private, and austere man. Not much is known about his personal life. But of his secretaries, Nicholas de Gallars, who assisted him for 16 years, wrote admiringly of him, "I certainly cannot find words to express what labours...he endured, with what faithfulness and wisdom he attended to the interests of all, with what frankness and courtesy he received those who visited him,...in short, with what ability and cheerfulness he performed all the duties of a servant of God."

Max Weber's well known, but flawed thesis (translated into English as The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) pictured Calvin as the source and spirit of modern capitalism. Weber drew heavily upon ideas of Benjamin Franklin, and misconstrued prolific English Puritan writer Richard Baxter. Calvinists were portrayed as exhibiting brotherly love only as a means of bringing glory to God, thus devoid of a real interest in the welfare of individuals or the community. 

Calvin did, as opposed to Luther, it is true, encourage the taking of interest. Yet Richard Baxter (1615-1691) himself, better describes this ethic than does Weber. Baxter, in 17th century style, writes, "True Morality of the Christian Ethick, is the love of God and Man, stirred up by the spirit of Christ, through faith, and exercised in works of Piety. Justice, Charity, and Temperance."

Robert Mitchell shines light on the issue: "Calvin's theological doctrines are based upon scripture, and his social and economic views are related to his teachings of the Bible..." Georgia Harness states, "More consistently than the other Reformation leader, Calvin taught that the Bible was the sole authority in matters of faith and conduct." William Williston argues, "...far more than Luther...Calvin treated the Scripture as a new law regulative of the Christian life."

Calvinists are often, and unfairly, criticized for a lack of missionary passion and activity. Roger Greenaway refutes this criticism, using both Scripture and history. He shows that Calvinism stresses truths that encourage missions: the glory of God, the kingdom of God, and the sovereignty of God. Historically, Calvinists have fielded the majority of missionaries in Asia (Korea particularly), the South Pacific, Africa (Robert Moffat, David Livingstone, Robert Laws, Stewart of Lovedale, etc.) and Latin America, and have had a major role in the missionary enterprise for over two centuries. Greenaway writes, "There are critics who argue that Calvin's emphasis on the sovereignty of God discourages mission... Calvinism's defense lies in its submission to the Scriptures which clearly teach both divine sovereignty and Christian duty to co-labor with God in mission."

Calvin was indeed the most mission minded of all the early Reformers. "Christ shall be extolled to the utmost regions of the world" he taught. Calvin sent many evangelists back into his French homeland, and also back to other European countries from which they had fled Catholic persecution-the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Poland, Bohemia, and Britain . He also, in 1555, commissioned four missionaries to evangelize the indigenous people of Brazil. Tragically, the mission and colony were plundered by the Portuguese, and the few survivors were martyred by Jesuits.

Jonathan Bayles shows that Calvin had a clear missionary theology besides actually directing an missionary endeavor throughout Europe. The widespread influence of the Reformed faith, according to Stark was probably even more a result of his giving capable direction and leadership to this missionary movement, than a result of his profound theology, or his strong preaching and writing skills.

Calvin taught that the Bible was the supreme authority not only in spiritual matters, but the authority on the nature of all human institutions. His doctrinal statements begin and end with Scripture, even though he was well versed in the writings of the early church fathers and the classical literature of the ages.

Calvin writes in his Institutes, "Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any others of that class; I grant you that you will be attracted, delighted, moved, enraptured by them in surprising manner; but if after reading them, you turn to the perusal of the sacred volume, whether you are willing or unwilling, it will affect you so powerfully, it will penetrate your heart, and impress itself so strangely on your mind that, compared with its energetic influence, the beauties of rhetoricians and philosophers will almost entirely disappear; so that it is easy to perceive something divine in the sacred Scriptures, which far surpasses the highest attainments and ornaments of human industry."

Calvin concludes, "This is a principle which distinguishes our religion from all others, that we know that God hath spoken to us, and are fully convinced that the prophets did not speak at their own suggestion, but that, being organs of the Holy Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned from heaven to declare."

John Calvin was described by Hughes as a passionate champion of evangelical truth, a voluminous correspondent, a master strategist, and a dynamic and formative force which continues on into modern history.

Calvin dictated his last will and testament in 1564 a month before his death, "I, John Calvin, servant of the Word of God in the church of Geneva, weakened by many illnesses...thank God that He has shown mercy to me, His poor creature, and...has suffered me in all sins and weaknesses, but, what is much more, that He has made me a partaker of His grace to serve Him through my work....Without His infinite goodness all my passionate striving would only be smoke; indeed, the grace itself which He gave me would make me even more guilty. Thus my only confidence is that He is the Father of Mercy, who as such desires to reveal Himself to so miserable a sinner." 

So he died humbly as he had lived. Though a throng of people attended his funeral, his body was buried in a common pine coffin, with no stone or inscription to mark his burial place.

Further Reading:

Bayles, Jonathan, "Calvin the Missionary," in Reformation Today, Issue 231, September-October 2009, pp 3-22

Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by Henry Beveridge, 2 volumes, Grand Rapids: William B. Erdmans Publishing,1983

Harkness, Georgia, John Calvin: The Man and his Ethics, New York: Abingdon Press, 1931,1958

Lane, Anthony N. S., John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1999

Letters of John Calvin: Selected from the Bonnet Edition with an introductory biographical sketch, Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1980 (selections from the Jules Bonnet edition of 4 volumes published between 1855-1857)

P. E. Hughes, "John Calvin: The Man Whom God Subdued," in Puritan Papers, Volume 1, 1956-1959, edited by D. Martyn Loyd-Jones, Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2000

McNeil, John T.,editor and introduction, John Calvin on God and Political Duty, New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1950,1956

Mitchell, Robert M., Calvin's and the Puritan's View of the Protestant Ethic, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979

Stark, R., For the Glory of God, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, pp. 93-95

Van Halsema, Thea B., This was John Calvin, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1959,1990