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The year 2009 is the anniversary of John Calvin’s birth on 10 July 1509. For many, he was provocative and controversial. But he was probably the most brilliant of the Reformers during the 16th century Reformation of the Church. Of the second generation of Reformers, John Calvin was born near Paris, France in 1509 and become a Protestant sometime in the late 1520s. Fleeing for his life from Paris, he ended up in Geneva, where, along with William Farel, he led the Genevan Reformation. Although he was forced to briefly flee Geneva, he returned in 1541 and remained there until 1564, the year of his death. He was given the title of “Professor of Sacred Scripture” and began to organize the city around Reformed principles. His most famous work was The Institute of the Christian Religion. First published in 1536, it went through several editions, the final and definitive one in 1559. He organized his theology around the principle of God’s sovereignty. His successors developed the acrostic TULIP to summarize systematized Calvinism. He also wrote commentaries on virtually every book of the Bible and he had a significant written correspondence with other reformers as well. Calvin also established an academy next to St Peters’ church in Geneva, where he taught and gave oversight to the training of the city’s children.
Calvin’s works went beyond theology, because his system incorporated an entire worldview that involved law, politics, and economics and impacted the Netherlands, France, Scotland, England and eventually the New World, especially America with the coming of the Puritans. In fact, many historians argue that you cannot understand colonial New England if you do not understand Calvinism. The political freedoms that exist in the Netherlands, in Scotland and in America, for example, owe a significant debt to Calvinism. Calvin also argued that since God reigns everywhere, His followers should be entrepreneurs in every strategic institution, including government, civil society, commerce, media, law, education, the church and the arts. He wrote a book entitled, Vindication against Tyrants, in which he stressed the limits of political power and that to hold rulers accountable is natural and right. Government must be under God, he declared. Because God is sovereign, Calvin taught that even the simplest of occupations are important to God and that to work is to work for God. Thus was born the famous Protestant work ethic. The famous Calvinist theologian and Prime Minster of the Netherlands in the late 19th, early 20th century, Abraham Kuyper wrote: “In the rise of your university education . . . in the decentralized. . . character of your local governments. . . in your championship of free speech, and in your unlimited regard for freedom of conscience; in all this. . . it is demonstrable that you owe this to Calvinism and to Calvinism alone.”
Calvin is often depicted as a rigid authoritarian at Geneva. Nothing could be further from the truth. While he was in Strasbourg for a time, he met and married a former Anabaptist, Idellete, to whom he had one son, who died after living a few days. Idellete died in 1549 of tuberculosis, leaving him sad and lonely. But Calvin had a pastor’s heart, visiting the sick, doing extensive premarital counseling, playing games with children and even visiting hardened criminals in prison. But after Idellete died, Calvin did not take care of himself. He suffered from stomach ulcers and migraine headaches. He died on 27 May 1564 at the age of 54, having burned himself out in service to the church at Geneva. Western Civilization, as well as the church, owes quite a debt to John Calvin.
See John Piper in World (4 July 2009), p. 58. |
