Abingdon Pillars of Theology is a series for the college and seminary classroom designed to help students grasp the basic and necessary facts, influence, and significance of major theologians. Written by noted scholars, these books outline the contrxt, methodology, organizing principles, primary contributions, and key writings of people who have shaped theology as we know it today. John Calvin (1509-1564) continues to be read and discussed because he illumines our human experience. Although inseparatable from his context, Calvin's theology speaks for itself, thus identifying ways Calvin remains a living voice for those who struggle with the meaning of Christian faith.

Calvin

By George W. Stroup

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2009 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-687-65913-5

Chapter One

Life

Historians have been frustrated in their attempts to write Calvin's biography by his reticence. He tells us little about himself. Unlike Augustine, he left no Confessions; unlike Luther, no one recorded his Table Talk. Beginning in his early twenties, Calvin wrote prolifically (his collected works in the Corpus Reformatorum comprise fifty-nine volumes). Between the publication of his first book in 1532 (when he was twenty-two) and his death in 1564, he wrote theological texts, commentaries on the Bible, sermons, catechisms, plans for church reorganization, and a large number of letters. But with the exception of some of his letters and a few comments elsewhere, he provides few insights into his personal feelings. We do not know his thoughts and feelings about his mother's death when he was very young, his father's request that he give up his studies in theology and turn to law, the excommunication of his father and older brother by the Catholic Church, or any romantic interests he may have had prior to his marriage in 1540 (when he was thirty-one). In his letters he does discuss the death of his wife, Idelette, to whom he was married for nine years, but we know few details about their relationship (except his gratitude she did not hinder his work), his thoughts and feelings on the death of his infant son, or the adultery of his sister-in-law, who lived in his home. His letters provide some insight into his feelings about his expulsion from Geneva in 1538, his struggle over whether to return there in 1541, and his victory over his political opponents in 1555, but not enough for a biographer to reconstruct the emotional life of the man behind the events. Only in a few texts does Calvin write autobiographically and even then somewhat elusively, as though he considered it inappropriate to focus on himself rather than God.

The one text in which Calvin does write about his life is the preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, written in 1557 when he was forty-eight and had only seven years left to live. Not surprisingly historians have pored over this text, but with only limited results. Of particular interest is his reference to an event that happened much earlier in his life, a "sudden" or "unexpected" conversion in which God turned his hardened mind to docility and gave him a taste of what he refers to as "true piety." Unlike Augustine, he does not tell us when or where this event occurred or under what circumstances, whether it was a single, dramatic event or a gradual change in his understanding of his vocational calling.

Furthermore, the first biographies of Calvin were written by people who either revered or despised him. Soon after his death in 1564 the debate over Calvin began between those who understood him to be one of the giants in the history of Christian theology, who transformed the city of Geneva into what the Scottish theologian John Knox described as "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles," and those who viewed him as a narrow-minded bigot, legalistic and autocratic, a tyrant, who from 1536 until 1564 subjected the people of Geneva to a reign of religious terror, tolerated no dissent, and because of his role in the execution of Michael Servetus in 1553, had blood on his hands. Theodore Beza, his colleague for sixteen years in Geneva and his first biographer, wrote that "in him all men may see a most beautiful example of the Christian character, an example which it is as easy to slander as it is difficult to imitate," while a recent, late–twentiethcentury biographer describes him as "an unhappy man, with whom it is difficult for the modern reader to feel any great bond of sympathy."

In order to better understand both Calvin and the tradition that bears his name, we cannot help searching for the "historical Calvin," even if he is maddeningly uncooperative in the quest. Although his biographers disagree about the precise dating of events, Calvin's life invites division into four periods: first, from 1509 to 1536, his birth, education, and emergence as a leader of church reform; second, from 1536 to 1538, his first attempt, with Guillaume Farel and Pierre Viret, to reform the church and civic life of Geneva and their expulsion; third, from 1538 to 1541, his move to Strasbourg at Martin Bucer's invitation to serve as the minister to a French refugee congregation; and fourth, from 1541 to 1564, his return to Geneva to reform its church and civic life until his death on May 27, 1564, at the age of 54.

Childhood, Education, and Conversion (1509–1536)

Born Jean Cauvin on July 10, 1509, in Noyon, in the region of Picardy in northern France, fifty-eight miles northeast of Paris, he was twenty-five years younger than Martin Luther (1483–1546) and Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), eighteen years younger than Martin Bucer (1491–1551), and along with Heinrich Bullinger (1504– 1575) and Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), a member of the "second generation" of Protestant Reformers. He was only eight years old in 1517 when Luther wrote his 95 Theses in Wittenberg.

Much of what we know about Calvin's early life comes from the first biographies written about him, and their historical accuracy is uncertain. His father, Gerard Cauvin, was born in 1454 and settled in Noyon in 1481, eventually found employment with the bishop, Charles de Hangest, and became an administrative official for the cathedral chapter of Noyon. Toward the end of his life, Gerard ran afoul of the church over financial disputes and died excommunicated in 1531. Little is known about Calvin's mother, Jeanne Le Franc, except that she died in about 1515 when Calvin was five or six and was known for her piety. Calvin had an older brother, Charles, who received holy orders but was excommunicated and died in 1537, two other brothers, Antoine and François, and two sisters, Marie and one whose name is unknown. What did Calvin look like? Beza describes him as "of moderate stature, of a pale and dark complexion, with eyes that sparkled to the moment of his death, and bespoke his great intellect."

Calvin probably began to learn Latin as a youth at the College des Capettes in Noyon. In 1521, his father obtained his first benefice or scholarship from the cathedral, which helped finance his education for the next thirteen years until he resigned them in 1534. About 1523, when he was perhaps fourteen, Calvin moved to Paris to prepare for university studies and eventually the priesthood. He may have studied for a few months at the College de La Marche with the Latin scholar Maturin Cordier (who some thirty years later Calvin would bring to teach at the academy he established in Geneva). He then moved to the College de Montaigu, which was founded in the early fourteenth century and where both Erasmus and Rabelais had been students. The school had a reputation for its strict academic life and severe living conditions. He studied what today we would describe as "liberal arts" courses, such as grammar, rhetoric, and logic.

In 1527 his father became embroiled in a dispute with the leaders of the cathedral chapter in Noyon and advised his son to change his vocational plans from the priesthood to law. That same year Calvin moved first to Orleans, where he studied with Pierre de l'Estoile, and then in 1529 to Bourges in order to study with the Italian jurist Andrea Alciati and the Greek scholar...