Reformation John Calvin

1. Reformation John Calvin Born at Noyon in Picardy, France, 10 July, 1509, and died at Geneva, 27 May, 1564. The family name was Cauvin latinized according to the custom of the age as Calvinus. His mother, Jeanne Le Franc, born in the Diocese of Cambrai, is mentioned as "beautiful and devout" She took her little son to various shrines and brought him up a good Catholic.

2. On the father's side, his ancestors were seafaring men. His grandfather settled at Pont l'Evêque near Paris, and had three sons, two became locksmiths; the third Gerard, John’s father became procurator at Noyon Having six children, the family lived in the Place au Blé (Cornmarket). Noyon, a bishop's see, had long been a fief of the powerful old family of Hangest, who treated it as their personal property. John de Hangest became the bishop in 1525 This prelate had Protestant kinsfolk He is charged with having fostered heresy which in those years was beginning to raise its head among the French. Clerical dissensions allowed the new doctrines a promising field; and the Calvins were more or less infected by them before 1530.

3. Gerard's four sons were made clerics and held benefices at a tender age. John was given one when a boy of twelve He became Curé of Saint-Martin de Marteville in the Vermandois in 1527, and of Pont l'Eveque in 1529. Three of the boys attended the local Collège des Capettes where John proved himself an apt scholar. His family was intimate with greater folk, the de Montmors, a branch of the line of Hangest, which led to his accompanying their children to Paris in 1523 His mother was probably dead by this time and his father had married again.

4. Gerard died in 1531, under excommunication from the chapter for not sending in his accounts. The old man's illness, not his lack of honesty, was the cause. His son Charles, nettled by the censure, drew towards the Protestant doctrines. He was accused in 1534 of denying the Catholic dogma of the Eucharist, and died out of the Church in 1536 His body was publicly gibbeted as that of a recusant.

5. John was going through his own trials at the University of Paris The dean or syndic Noel Bédier, had stood up against Erasmus and favored Le Fevre d’Etaples, celebrated for his translation of the Bible into French. Calvin, a "martinet", or oppidan, in the Collèege de la Marche, made Le Fevre's acquaintance and studied his Latin commentary on St. Paul, dated 1512 This has been considered the first Protestant book emanating from a French pen.

6. Another influence swaying Calvin towards the Protestant was that of Corderius Calvin dedicated his annotation of I Thessalonians, to his tutor commenting, "if there be any good thing in what I have published, I owe it to you". Corderius had an excellent Latin style, his life was austere, and his "Colloquies" earned him enduring fame. But he fell under suspicion of heresy, and by Calvin's aid took refuge in Geneva, where he died September 1564. A third herald of the "New Learning" was George Cop, physician to Francis I, in whose house Calvin found a welcome and listened to the religious discussions which Cop favored.

7. By 1527, when no more than eighteen, Calvin's education was complete in its main lines. He had learned to be a humanist and a reformer. The "sudden conversion" to a spiritual life in 1529, of which he speaks, must not be taken quite literally. He had never been an ardent Catholic; but the stories told at one time of his ill-regulated conduct have no foundation By a very natural process he went over to the side on which his family were taking their stand. In 1528 he inscribed himself at Orléans as a law student, made friends with Francis Daniel, and then went for a year to Bourges, where he began preaching in private.

8. John Calvin did not belong to the first generation of Reformers. When Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, he was a child of eight years old. When he entered upon his work as Reformer, the first battle of the Reformation had been fought out. Zwingli was already some five years dead. Luther, although only fifty-two, was already an old man, broken in health and depressed in spirits. Melanchthon was already showing ominous signs of wavering on the first principles of the Reformation. Bucer, at the height of his powers, was laboring fruitfully at Strasburg, striving against overwhelming odds to unite the forces of the Reformation into one common movement for the gospel.

9. By birth, education, and temper Calvin and Luther, were strongly contrasted. • Calvin sprang from the French middle-class, his father, an attorney who practiced civil and canon law. • Calvin never was ordained in the Catholic Church his training was chiefly in law and the humanities; he took no vows. • Calvin spoke to the learned at all times, even when preaching before multitudes. His manner is classical; he reasons on system; he has little humor; he uses the weapons of a deadly logic and persuades by a teacher's authority. • We sum up Calvin as a scholastic. He gives articulate expression to Luther’s principles. The “Institutes” have remained the standard of orthodox protestant belief in all the churches known as “reformed” • Luther was a Saxon peasant, his father a miner • Luther entered the Order of Augustinian Hermits, took a monk's vows, was made a priest and incurred much odium by marrying a nun. • Luther’s eloquence made him popular by its force, humor, rudeness, and vulgar style. Using words as a cudgel and often resorting to a demagogue’s calling of names. • We may term the doctor of Wittenberg a mystic. He stormily threw his principles upon the world in his vehement pamphleteering.

10. The spirit of Zwinglianism reached its fullest development in the theology, political theories, and ecclesiastic thought of John Calvin Perhaps even more so than Martin Luther, Calvin created the patterns and thought that would dominate Western culture throughout the modern period. American culture, in particular, is thoroughly Calvinist in some form or another; Each Calvinist church was governed by elected elders, people choosing their leaders, is democracy. John Calvin made a huge contribution to what we know as the United States. At the heart of the way Americans think and act, you'll find this fierce and imposing reformer.

11. Calvin got his chance to build a reformed church when the citizens of Geneva revolted against their rulers in the late 1520's • Geneva had been under the rule of the House of Savoy, but the Genevans successfully overthrew the Savoys and the local bishop-prince of Geneva in the late 1520's. • The Genevans unlike the citizens of Zurich, Bern, Basel, and other cities that became Protestant in the 1520's, were not German-speakers but primarily French-speakers. • As such, they did not have close cultural ties with the reformed churches in Germany and Switzerland. • The Protestant canton of Bern was determined to see Protestantism spread throughout Switzerland. • In 1533, Bern sent Protestant reformers to convert Geneva into a Protestant city; after considerable conflict, Geneva officially became Protestant in 1535.

12. Calvin, by now a successful lawyer, was invited to Geneva to build the new Reformed church. Calvin's efforts radically changed the face of Protestantism He directly addressed issues that early Reformers didn't know how or didn't want to answer. His French disciples called their sect "the religion"; such it has proved to be outside the Roman world. He wrote French as well as Luther wrote German, and like him has been reckoned a pioneer in the modern development of his native tongue.

13. His most important work involved the organization of church governance and the social organization of the church and the city. • He was the first major political thinker to model social organization entirely on biblical principles. • At first his reforms did not go over well. • He addressed the issue of church governance by creating leaders within the new church; • He himself developed a catechism designed to impose doctrine on all the members of the church. • He and Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) imposed a strict moral code on the citizens of Geneva; This moral code was derived from a literal reading of Christian scriptures. • The people of Geneva believed that they had thrown away one church only to see it replaced by an identical twin

14. They saw Calvin's reforms as imposing a new form of papacy on the people, only with different names and different people. So the Genevans tossed him out. In early 1538, Calvin and the Protestant reformers were exiled from Geneva. Calvin, for his part, moved to Strasbourg where he began writing commentaries on the Bible and finished his massive account of Protestant doctrine, The “Institutes” of the Christian Church.

15. Calvin's commentaries are almost endless, But within these commentaries He developed in his strict reading of the Old and New Testaments all the central principles of Calvinism. The purpose of commentary in Western literary tradition was to explain both the literary technique and the difficult passages in literary and historical works. Calvin wrote commentaries to explain scriptural writings, but in reality he used the commentaries to argue for his own theology as he believed was present in scriptural writings. His commentaries are less an explanation of the Bible than a piece by piece construction of his theological, social, and political philosophy

16. In 1540 a new crop of city officials in Geneva invited Calvin back to the city. As soon as he arrived he set about revolutionizing Genevan society. His most important innovation was the incorporation of the church into city government; He immediately helped to restructure municipal government so that clergy would be involved in municipal decisions, particularly in disciplining the populace. He imposed a hierarchy on the Genevan church and began a series of statute reforms to impose a strict and uncompromising moral code on the city.

17. By the mid-1550's, Geneva was thoroughly Calvinist in thought and structure. • It became the most important Protestant center of Europe in the sixteenth century • Protestants driven out of their native countries of France, England, Scotland, and the Netherlands all came to Geneva to take refuge. • By the middle of the sixteenth century, between one-third and one-half of the city was made up of these foreign Protestants. • In Geneva, these foreign reformers adopted the more radical Calvinist doctrines; • most arrived as moderate Reformers but left as thorough-going Calvinists. • It is probably for this reason that Calvin's brand of reform eventually became the dominant branch of Protestantism from the seventeenth century onwards.

18. Since Calvin literally transformed the philosophical, political, religious, and social landscape of Europe, what was the substance of his radical reform? • The core of Calvinism is the Zwinglian insistence on the literal reading of Christian scriptures. • Anything not contained explicitly and literally in scripture was to be rejected; • Anything contained explicitly and literally in scripture was to be followed unwaveringly. • It is the latter point that Calvin developed beyond Zwingli's model; • not only should all religious belief be founded on the literal reading of Scriptures, • but church organization, political organization, and society itself should be founded on this literal reading.

19. Following the history of the earliest church recounted in The Acts of the Apostles • Calvin divided church organization into four levels: • Pastors: These were five men who exercised authority over religious matters in Geneva; • Teachers: This was a larger group whose job it was to teach doctrine to the population. • Elders: The Elders were twelve men (after the twelve Apostles) who were chosen by the municipal council; their job was to oversee everything that everybody did in the city. • Deacons: Modeled after the Seven in Acts 6-8, the deacons were appointed to care for the sick, the elderly, the widowed and the poor.

20. The most important theological position that Calvin took was his formulation of the doctrine of predestination. The early church had struggled with this issue. Since God knew the future, did that mean that salvation was predestined? That is, do human beings have any choice in the matter, or did God make the salvation decision for each of us at the beginning of time? The early church, and the moderate Protestant churches, had decided that God had not predestined salvation for individuals. Salvation was in part the product of human choice.

21. Calvin built his reformed church on the concept that salvation was not a choice Salvation was rather pre-decided by God from the beginning of time. This meant that individuals were "elected" for salvation by God; this "elect" would form the population of the Calvinist church. This view of human salvation is called either the "doctrine of the elect" or "the doctrine of living saints"

22. In Catholic theology, a "saint" is a human being that the church is certain has gained salvation • In Calvinist theology, a "saint" or "living saint" is a living, breathing human being • who is guaranteed to gain salvation no matter what he or she does here on earth • The elect obviously don't engage in flagrant sin; • Not all good people were among the elect, • People with bad behavior were certainly not among the elect. • It was incumbent on churches filled with living saints to only admit other living saints;

23. This organizational principle was called voluntary associations. Voluntary associations are predicated on the idea that a community or association chooses its own members Those members, of their own free will, choose to be a member of that community or association. In time, the concept of voluntary associations would become the basis of civil society and later political society in Europe.

24. Calvin emphasized a "puritanical" approach to life: no drinking, swearing, card playing, gambling, etc. He thought materialism and wealth were good. To Calvin, material wealth on earth meant salvation. Calvin stressed work: work is good for you, work builds character, and work equals success. So, the middle class was the easiest to convert to Calvinism because Calvin justified their lifestyles. He ended monasteries and celibacy practices for ministers. He simplified worship: prayers, singing of psalms, scripture readings, and a sermon.

25. Calvinism spread throughout Switzerland. They even wanted to make Geneva the new Holy Land. Calvinism had a different name in different parts of the world - there was no central church. In England, Puritans wanted to "purify" the church of its remaining Catholic elements. Scotland had Presbyterians, Dutch had the Dutch Reform, France had Huguenots, And Germany had the Reform Church.

26. By 1560 Geneva sent out pastors to the French congregations and was looked upon as the Protestant Rome. Through Knox, "the Scottish champion of the Swiss Reformation", who had been preacher to the exiles in that city, his native land accepted the discipline of the Presbytery and the doctrine of predestination as expounded in Calvin's "Institutes". The Puritans in England were also descendants of the French theologian. His dislike of theatres, dancing and the amenities of society was fully shared by them. The town on Lake Leman was described as without crime and destitute of amusements. Calvin declaimed against the "Libertines", but there is no evidence that any such people had a footing inside its walls

27. The cold, hard, but upright disposition characteristic of the Reformed Churches, is due entirely to their founder. Its essence is a concentrated pride, a love of disputation, a scorn of opponents. The only art that it tolerates is music, and that not instrumental. It will have no Christian feasts in its calendar, and it is austere to the verge of Manichean hatred of the body. When dogma fails the Calvinist, he becomes, as in the instance of Carlyle, almost a pure Stoic. “ At Geneva, as for a time in Scotland," says J. A. Froude, "moral sins were treated as crimes to be punished by the magistrate."

28. The Bible was a code of law, administered by the clergy. Down to his dying day Calvin preached and taught. By no means an aged man, he was worn out in these frequent controversies. On 25 April, 1564, he made his will, leaving 225 French crowns, of which he bequeathed ten to his college, ten to the poor, and the remainder to his nephews and nieces. His last letter was addressed to Farel. He was buried without pomp, in a spot which is not now ascertainable.