Calvin's Institutes Research Articles

Book Review: A Reading of Calvin's Institutes

Book Review: A Reading of Calvin's Institutes

:Women, Freedom, and Calvin

Freedom, as understood by John Calvin, and as applied to the role of women in church and society, is the subject of this provocative book. Putting into perspective discussions about women in the church, particularly their ordination, Jane Dempsey Douglass looks not only at Calvin's Institutes but also at the work of humanists who were contemporaries of the Reformer, along with writings by and about women that could have influenced him.

Calvyn en die kerklike orde: Enkele opmerkings

Calvin and Church Order: Some remarks In commemoration of the publishing of Calvin's Institutes in 1536 and in a tribute to Prof Dr PS Dreyer, some of the main principles of Calvin’s church order are discussed. It is pointed out that the christological centre of the church occupied Calvin's attention more than the peripheral question of discipline.

A Benedictine Scholar and Greek Patristic Thought in pre- Tridentine Italy: a Monastic Commentary of 1538 on Chrysostom

There are several questions yet to be answered in the period of Italian religious history leading up to the Council of Trent. One particularly intriguing question is the part played by the Benedictine Congregation of Santa Giustina of Padua, generally known as the Cassinese Congregation. Historians have often observed some of these monks flitting like shadows around the fires of controversy, but what they were actually doing has remained obscure. They had connections with Contarini, Pole, Sadoleto and other spirituali; they gave hospitality to Pier Paolo Vergerio, bishop of Capodistria, before he fled into the Protestant camp; amongst them were many humanist educated biblical scholars, some of whom publicly expounded St Paul; the Congregation's chief spokesman at the Council of Trent was shouted down for what were taken to be his Lutheran sentiments; another monk was the prime author of the tract Il Beneficio di Cristo, later revised by Marcantonio Flaminio and published in 1543 with lengthy extracts from the 1539 edition of Calvin's Institutes woven into its text. It is not surprising that several historians, in common with a number of contemporary observers, have suggested that some of these Benedictines were strongly influenced by Reformation thought.

Calvin and Experience

The caricature of John Calvin as an iron theo-logician,sans cæur et sans entrailles, is endlessly repeated. According to Will Durant, Calvin's ‘genius lay not in conceiving new ideas but in developing the thought of his predecessors to ruinously logical conclusions’. Calvin'sInstitutestherefore are ‘the most eloquent, fervent, lucid, logical, influential, and terrible work in all the literature of religious revolution’. Calvin did not have the tolerance of those who can conceive the possibility that they might be wrong because ‘Calvin, with lethal precosity, had been certain almost from his twentieth year’ Likewise Stefan Zweig saw in Calvin an inexorable logic, a mathematically precise nature, a monomania, and a terrific and sinister self-assurance. H. Jackson Forstmann writes that ‘one of the most impressive facts about Calvin's writings is the absolute certainty reflected by the author at every point’. Again, ‘the most striking impression which comes with reading the work of Calvin is the unfailing certainty which pervades the whole corpus”. Forstmann also quotes Doumergue to the effect that Calvin ‘was tormented by an incomparable need for certainty’. However, Doumergue was talking about something more than logical certainty. Calvin was indeed ‘logical, going to the bottom of questions, practical, completely preoccupied with piety, tormented by an incomparable need of certainty; unifying in rare mixture the reasons and sentiments; preceding Pascal, by invoking the reasons that reason does not know, and preceding also the modern theologians of Christian experience.’

The Spanish Heretic: Cipriano De Valera

The approaching four hundredth anniversary of the publication of the 1559 edition of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion has aroused in Spanish-speaking circles a desire to make more generally available the translation made by Cipriano de Valera in 1597. This labor of love has been undertaken by Professor B. Foster Stockwell in Buenos Aires and his facsimile reproduction of the Spanish translation of the Institutes is being published by La Aurora press.

The Limits of Biblical Theology

WHAT usually spoken of as revival of Theology in our day might perhaps be described more correctly as a reappraisal of relation between two disciplines, Theology and Systematic Theology. We might indeed speak of a third phase in their relation. The first was that of old orthodoxy, for which two were virtually identical. Calvin's Institutes a clear instance of this. For him, justification of a theological statement to be found in exegesis of texts and only there. To present a systematic account of content of Scripture and to set forth Christian faith as it to be believed in writer's day,-these for him are one and same task. The Westminster Confession supports its doctrinal assertions by means of proof-texts chosen, with but little discrimination, from any and every book in Bible. The glory of Protestant dogmatics was that it was and not speculative; nor was it based on authority of Church, like that of Roman Catholicism. Where such presuppositions reigned, a moral issue like slavery was fought out within Church by appeal to passages. The second phase was work of Enlightenment, and it was introduced definitively by Johann Philipp Gabler in his inaugural address at Altdorf in 1787. Biblical he said, is historical in character and sets forth what sacred writers thought about divine matters; dogmatic theology, on contrary, didactic in character, and teaches what a particular theologian philosophically and rationally decides about divine matters, in accordance with his character, time, age, place, sect or school, and other similar influences. Here we have a clear discrimination between what said in Bible and what to be believed by Christian today. They are not necessarily opposed, they may even agree in fact, but exegesis of a book one thing and confession of personal faith another. Of course, once that standpoint had been adopted, further division of Theology into two disciplines, one dealing with Old Testament and other with New, became inevitable. Finally, exact determination of what the sacred writers thought about divine matters was held to require a Pauline, a Johannine Theology, and so on.1

Biblical Theology and Systematic Theology

rule of faith and practice the theological systems of the schoolmen were doomed. As the work of Luther and Calvin shows, theology became exegetical theology. Luther proudly pointed out that his academic work consisted in teaching the Bible, and it is well-known that both Melanchthon's Loci and the first edition of Calvin's Institutes go back to Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Nevertheless, the subsequent development showed that the church could not completely dispense with systematic theology. Not only the attacks of the Catholic polemists, but also the intrinsic logic of their own method of Bible study induced the theologians to proceed beyond their exegetical work to a rational arrangement of their biblical insights. Yet though the theological systems of Protestant orthodoxy pretended to be but systematization of the propositions found in the Bible, with this very claim the Protestant schoolmen had de-

Notes & Queries

Notes & Queries EDITED BY BOYD B. STUTLER 517 Main Street Charleston, West Virginia an open forum for readers of Civil War History for questions on phases of the Great Conflict, and for illuminating notes on newly discovered or unrecorded sidelights of the war. Contributions are invited; address Notes and Queries Editor. QUERIES 11.Lincoln's U.S. Supreme Court Cases: Briefs filed by Abraham Lincoln in his two cases tried in the Supreme Court of the United States are missing; a long search has uncovered nothing more than an outline of Lincoln's oral argument in one case. But it is possible that copies of the briefs still exist buried in the forgotten papers of associate counsel, or other lawyers interested in the causes. In the case of Lewis, for use of Longworth, vs. Lewis, as administrator of BroadweU (1849), attorneys of record are for the plaintiff, "Mr. Wright;" for the defendant, "Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Lincoln." In Forsyth vs. Reynolds (1853), the case was argued by "Mr. Williams" for the plaintiff, and briefs were filed by "Messrs. Lincoln and Gamble." "Mr. Chase" argued for the defendant, and a brief was filed by "Mr. Purple." No first names are given in any of the printed reports. Query: Who were Messrs. Wright, Lawrence, Gamble, Williams and Purple? Where are their papers? Benjamin Barondess 12.Who Was the Army Surgeon? An interesting pamphlet of 26 pages, Reminiscences of an Army Surgeon , 1860-1863, unsigned and without date or place of printing, was issued for private circulation. The text indicates that the author was appointed Assistant Surgeon in 1860, and was stationed at Camp Verdi, about 60 miles north of San Antonio, Texas. In December, 1860, he was 419 420BOYD B. stutler cnroute to Fort Mcintosh; reached San Antonio on December 30 and there met Colonel Robert E. Lee. Paroled in Texas, he later served at Fort Warren, and was sent to the Armory Hospital in Washington, where he met Lincoln. I take the surgeon to be either Charles H. Alden, Orrin Webster, John Van Zandt, or Charles C. Byrne; my list of names is suggested merely because they were the only men appointed Assistant Surgeons in 1860 who were still in service when this man went to Washington in 1865. Query: Who was the author of Reminiscences of an Army Surgeon, 1860-1863? Carl Haverlin 13. Kite-dropping Lincoln's Amnesty Proclamation: I am much interested in propaganda leaflets. I have read some place that General Benjamin F. Butler had copies made of Lincoln's amnesty proclamation and dropped them over Confederate lines by use of a kite. Query: Can anyone cite the source of this statement, and, if known, whore can I get one of the leaflets, or obtain a copy of one? Also, what is known about the Union sympathy of Mrs. Laura Ann Arnold, sister of General Stonewall Jackson? R. K. Haerle Answer, in part: Laura Ann lived with her husband, Jonathan Arnold, and family at Beverly, (W.) Virginia; early in the war she left her home to take residence in the Northern States, where she remained during the period of hostilities and for several years afterwards. As this defection did not concern the career of her famous brother, biographers have omitted mention or details. Private source material exists, but cannot be cited. 14. Jackson's Religious Studies and European Trip: Public interest has been stimulated in the life and career of Lt. General Thomas J. (StonewaU) Jackson, CSA, by his recent election to the Hall of Fame, where a bronze bust will be placed to rank with those of the greatest of our nation. Here are three questions: Was Jackson a student of Calvin's Institutes? Who was his favorite teacher at West Point and why? What historic shrines did Jackson visit on his trip to Europe? E. T. Crowson Answer, in part: Major Thomas J. Jackson, then a professor at Virginia Military Institute, spent the summer of 1856 in Europe, sailing from New York on July 9 and returning to Lexington early in October. His letters to his sister, Laura, in which he details his itinerary are printed in Thomas J. Arnold's Early Life and Letters...

Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion

On account of its influence upon many generations of Protestants, Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion may be regarded as the classical statement of the Protestant Christian faith. It reflects more clearly than any other book produced by the Reformation the thought which inaugurated the whole Protestant movement.

Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion as an Illustration of Christian Thinking

Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion as an Illustration of Christian Thinking