Calvin's Teaching Research Articles

The Grace of God and Faithful Christian Education: Comparing the Synod of Dort and John Calvin on Depravity and Addressing the Problem of the Corruption of the Mind

This article examines how the Synod of Dort further developed John Calvin's ideas on the human depravity of the mind. The Synod of Dort carried forward Calvin's teachings by explaining human depravity in more measured terms and by using more nuanced descriptions of the depraved mind. Though the corruption of the human mind affected humanity's ability to properly learn spiritual truth, the Synod of Dort believed that the grace of God and faithful Christian education could overcome the problem. Dort understood that effective Christian education in homes, schools, and churches would lead to greater theological unity resulting in peace throughout the Netherlands in the early 17th century.

The pain of agreement: Calvin and the Consensus Tigurinus

In 1549, Calvin signed the ‘Agreement of the Ministers of the Church of Zurich and of John Calvin, Minister of the Church of Geneva, on the Subject of the Sacraments’ (=the Zurich Consensus). There can be no argument that to do so, Calvin had to subscribe to formulations he had never previously publicly accepted. So the question persists as to why Calvin did so? Some have pointed out the wandering path of Calvin's teaching on the Lord's Supper, and have suggested that the Zurich Agreement represented Calvin's thought, at least at that time. This article will argue differently, that Calvin's eucharistic doctrine did change over time, but that this agreement represented a special moment of political expediency, and fervor for evangelical union. Yet even though it was a genuine effort at ecumenical union with other evangelicals supported through doctrinal vagueness, it was also an ironic failure which should cause theologians and historians of the early-modern period to think more about the utility of religious compromise for political consensus in the era of the Reformations.

The transconfessional character of the doctrine of justification and its depiction on the title page of the Brest Bible

This article examines the illustration on the Brest Bible's title page, relating it to the woodcut, The Law and the Gospel or Law and Grace, created forty-five years earlier to provide a visual aid for Luther's doctrine of salvation by faith and God's grace alone. Luther's reflections on justification, while original in thrust, had been preceded by centuries of the Church's teaching on the subject. Law and Grace appeared among book illustrations, particularly on the title pages of Bibles, not only in Lutheran editions, but also in those commissioned by other confessions. Sometimes the schema would be deliberately altered to modify the message. This essay shows how the title page of the Brest Bible provides a striking example, and that in light of Calvin's teaching, the image there reveals a subtle, but significantly modified reinterpretation.

Finding Flannery O'Connor's “Good Man” in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Home

Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead is a rich study of need for forgiveness and power of grace. It can also be called, in Rebecca M. Painter's words, a novelized treatise on difficulty of lived virtue (95). (1) ibis novel--in itself but especially as seen in light of Home--gradually reveals how elderly John Ames, who appears at first to be simply a devout and kindly Congregationalist minister, has sinned against his namesake, John Ames Boughton, known as Jack. (2) In course of novel Ames confronts his decades-long rejection of Jack and finally forgives, accepts, and even comes to love him. One way to understand Ames' spiritual journey and Jack's existential questioning is through lens of Flannery O'Connor's A Good Is Hard to Find It seems natural to associate these two writers whose work reflects their Christian faiths. Robinson is a permanent faculty member of Iowa Writers' Workshop, of which O'Connor is probably most famous alumna, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishes both authors. Yet but sympathetic approach of Robinson, a northerner and a Congregationalist, to her subject is very different from O'Connor's, which relies on caricature and satire. Robinson even claims that the influence of Flannery O'Connor has been particularly destructive by leading readers to expect serious fiction to treat religious thought respectfully (A World of Beautiful Souls). O'Connor communicated her Catholic vision by using the grotesque as a primary way to reach unbelieving reader (Hawkins 28); in contrast, in these two novels Robinson shows thoughtful people in ordinary situations working their way to greater receptivity to grace through following both Calvin's teachings and their own charitable inclinations. As Robinson says, Ames' faith is not dogmatic but a process (Interview Part II with Silverblatt). (3) Regardless of whether Robinson intended Gilead as a response to A Good Man it acts as one by using a similar structure and parallel characters, while showing them in a more sympathetic, warmer way. The conventionally characters, grandmother and Ames, dominate first half of each and control information--the grandmother is viewpoint character for most of O'Connor's story, which is written in indirect free discourse, and Ames is novel's narrator--so that readers distrust Misfit and Jack before they appear. These two new characters then engage in debate about Christianity with initial characters. The resemblance between works is brought out by strong echoes of O'Connor's story in passage in which Ames calls Jack a man. In story, grandmother tells Misfit, just know you're a man, and he replies, Nome, I ain't a man ... but I ain't worst in world neither (139). Near end of Gilead Ames writes that he told Jack, ...You are a man,' and he gave me a look, purely appraising, and laughed and said, 'You can take my word for it, Reverend, there are worse' (231). Similarly, when lack tells Glory what Ames has said, she responds, Well, I could have told you you are a man. I've said it in so many words, surely and he replies self-deprecatingly, You're a miserable judge of character. Mine, especially. No objectivity at all (Home 308-09). Gilead climaxes in Ames' acceptance of lack much as O'Connor's A Good Man exists for moment when grandmother realizes her connection to Misfit. Both O'Connor and Robinson want readers to sympathize with their miscreants and to believe in possibility of their salvation. O'Connor wrote that she hoped that grandmother's gesture would grow like mustard-seed in Misfit's heart and turn him into the prophet he was meant to become (On Her Own Work 113). Robinson, similarly, wants her readers to see Jack's goodness, the greatest goodness [being] perhaps awareness of one's own failure to be good (Interview Part II with Silverblatt), a failure which is inevitable because of man's fallen condition. …

Calvin's Influence on the Theology of the English Reformation

AbstractThis paper traces the influence of John Calvin on the English Reformation from the time of the breach with Rome under Henry VIII until the great ejection of dissenting puritan clergy from the ministry of the Church of England in 1662. It argues that Calvin's teaching only began to have an impact on the English Reformation during the reign of Elizabeth I and that although his theology had a widespread impact on both individuals and groups within the Church of England it never shaped the Church's official doctrine, liturgy or pattern of ministry, although it seemed likely that this would be the case at the time of the Westminster Assembly in the 1640s. It also raises the question of whether Calvin sought episcopacy from the Church of England in the reign of Edward VI.

Union and Communion: Calvin's Theology of Word and Sacrament

AbstractSome scholars consider Calvin's teaching on the sacraments to be an integral part of his theology. Others have challenged the Reformer's consistency in this area, regarding Calvin's eucharistic teaching in particular as a ‘foreign, uncongenial element’ in his work. My argument in this article is that Calvin's eucharistic teaching, particularly in its ‘more nearly patristic’ emphases, is neither inimical nor secondary to his system but is in fact an essential and promising outworking of his theology. As with other perspectives, Calvin's understanding of Word and sacrament generates a particular kind of ecclesiology with emphases that remain ecumenically significant and vital for the life and mission of the church.

John Calvin's Soteriology: On the Multifaceted ‘Sum’ of the Gospel

AbstractThis article explores John Calvin's soteriology through examining his multivalent and yet succinct ‘sum’ of the gospel: the double grace of justification and sanctification received in union with Christ. The essay begins with a description of the scope and range of this teaching in Calvin, its biblical, patristic and Reformational sources, and its application to a wide range of doctrinal loci. After this, particular features of Calvin's account are highlighted as promising for contemporary retrieval. The essay concludes with historiographic reflections that intersect with ongoing disputes in interpreting Calvin's teaching on union with Christ and the double grace.

Calvin and Praying for “All People Who Dwell on Earth”

John Calvin's teaching that Christians should pray “for all people who dwell on earth” is based on his interpretation of 1 Tim 2:1–2 and related to the Lords Prayer. It is also illustrated clearly in his daily practice of leading public worship.

The reformation of rights: law, religion, and human rights in early modern Calvinism

John Calvin developed arresting new teachings on rights and liberties, church and state, and religion and politics that shaped the law of Protestant lands. Calvin's original teachings were periodically challenged by major crises - the French Wars of Religion, Dutch Revolt, the English Civil War, American colonization, and American Revolution. In each such crisis moment, a major Calvinist figure emerged - Theodore Beza, Johannes Althusius, John Milton, John Winthrop, John Adams, and others - who modernized Calvin's teachings and translated them into dramatic new legal and political reforms. This rendered early modern Calvinism one of the driving engines of Western constitutionalism. A number of basic Western laws on religious and political rights, social and confessional pluralism, federalism and constitutionalism, and more owe a great deal to this religious movement. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of history, law, religion, politics, ethics, human rights, and the Protestant Reformation.

Constructing and Clarifying the Doctrine of Predestination: Theodore Beza's Letters During, and in the Wake of, the Bolsec Controversy (1551-1555)

In 1551 Jerome Bolsec questioned John Calvin's teaching on predestination. Theodore Beza wrote to Heinrich Bullinger in support of Calvin, and to Calvin himself. The controversy prompted Beza to explore and refine Calvin's doctrine of predestination. Four of Beza's letters written during and in the wake of the controversy are presented and analysed. Beza's detailed understanding of predestination, as revealed in these letters, is compared with Calvin's views, as expressed in his Congregation on Eternal Election, in which he responded to Bolsce. Beza's understanding is shown to be consistent with Calvin's, and he is seen to have had an impressively penetrating insight into some of the issues raised by Calvin's doctrine.

Calvyn se leer oor die kerk<Sup>1<Sup>

Calvin's doctrine concerning the church. A few aspects of Calvin's teachings on the church are pointed out to encourage the two churches involved in the Hervormde Theological Training to reconsider what Calvin himself has to say. This should not be done only in the ligth of his role in the past, but also within the context of the tremendous challenges and responsibilities that these two churches will have to face in the next millennium. Calvin's doctrine on the church can still provide instruction and guidance to the church today.

Religion and politics: Afrikaner right-wing (mis)communication in South Africa in 1994

SUMMARY In this article it is argued that the aim of religious nationalism is not only to establish a national order based on religious values but that religious claims are used as a means of communication to mobilise followers for political objectives and as a strategy to justify political actions. This supposition is investigated by analysing Afrikaner right-wing rhetoric before the 1994 general election in South Africa. Prior to the general election in 1994, a group of Afrikaners under the leadership of the Afrika-nervolksfront (AVF) actively resisted the changes in South Africa on the grounds of apparent religious motives. They invoked the moral authority of John Calvin (1509–1564) for their convictions and manner of protest. An analysis of their religious political rhetoric indicates that for the AVF religion took on an ideological character, and that religion became a vehicle for advancing political ideas in the process. In appraising the authenticity of the AVF's religious claims, by measuring them against John Calvin's teachings, it was found that religion and Calvin's teachings were inappropriately misused and selectively applied to mobilise followers and to serve as a vehicle for promoting ideological messages. The article concludes by suggesting that the threat of religious political militancy (and the impact of religious political communication) can be counteracted by challenging the authenticity of such a movement's religious claims.

Religion, Discipline, and the Economy in Calvin's Geneva

Based on Genevan Consistory records from 1542 to 1564, this article argues that Calvin's teaching on the body social informed ecclesiastical restrictions on usury and other commercial innovations.The tendency of Genevan entrepreneurs to adopt new market strategies in order to profit from French refugees and other newcomers turned Calvin against the most salient instruments of the market. He feared especially for the fate of truth-the reliability of language as a means of social communication-in the midst of entrepreneurial ventures and schemes to commodify credit.Against temptations to individualism, Calvin promoted public admonition and excommunication as forms of corporate discipline.Throughout, he insisted that Genevans identify themselves as members of the body social. This combination of religious discipline and moral theory, grounded in the notion of communication and directed against the market, should cause us to rethink the Weberian formulation of the ethos of Calvinism and its relation to capitalism.

:The Clearest Promises of God: The Development of Calvin's Eucharistic Teaching

This work provides a detailed analysis of the development of Calvin's eucharistic doctrine. In doing so, it demonstrates the importance of examining the full range of Calvin's writings and dispels the notion that one need look only at the 1559 Institutes to grasp Calvin's eucharistic theology. Davis pinpoints the doctrine as the work of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist, accommodation, instrumentality, and the Eucharist as a means of grace. There is a nuanced discussion of substantial partaking not duplicated elsewhere. Davis's work makes clear the exegetical foundations for much of Calvin's teaching on the Eucharist. Finally, Davis demonstrates that there are eucharistic gifts according to Calvin. The more general gift is that of true communion with the body and blood of Christ. However, the specific gift of the Eucharist is the assurance it brings believers of God's good will towards them. Thus, the text underscores Calvin's understanding of the Eucharist as an exhibition of the clearest promises of God, namely, the promise of union with Christ and all which that entails.

Levenspelgrimage of vrome wandeling? Claes Janszoon Visscher en zijn serie Plaisante Plaetsen

Levenspelgrimage of vrome wandeling? Claes Janszoon Visscher en zijn serie Plaisante Plaetsen

Calvin's Teaching: What Still Remains Pertinent?

Calvin's Teaching: What Still Remains Pertinent?

Calvinist Bishops, Church Unity, and the Rise of Arminianism

According to Nicholas Tyacke, the doctrine of predestination worked as a “common and ameliorating bond” between conformists and nonconformists in the late Elizabethan and Jacobean Church of England. Anglicans and Puritans both accepted Calvin's teachings on predestination as a “crucial common assumption.” Puritans were stigmatized either because of their refusal to conform to the church's rites and ceremonies or because of their rejection of the church's episcopal government, but their agreement with the episcopacy on predestinarian Calvinism imposed “important limits” on the extent of persecution. The Synod of Dort, a Dutch conference held in 1619 which included several English representatives, repudiated Arminianism and affirmed the Calvinist view of salvation, Tyacke calls “an event which has never received the emphasis it deserves from students of English religious history,” because the Synod “served to emphasize afresh the theology binding conformist and nonconformist together, and the limits which that common bond imposed on persecution.” The rise of Arminianism broke this common bond and contributed to the causes of the Civil War. To the Arminians, Puritans were those who opposed the new religious policies of King Charles I and archbishop William Laud. The Arminians' elimination of Calvinist influence in the church and at court, along with intensified persecution of Puritans, “generated a Puritan militancy” that erupted in 1640. By that date, Tyacke concludes, predestinarian Calvinism had been “transformed with relative ease into a call for ‘root and branch’ remedies”; at the same time, presbyterianism emerged as “the cure of Arminian disease.”

John Calvin — An Elusive Churchman

It has become almost a commonplace in Calvin studies to assume that his teaching was distorted by later theologians who professed to be his disciples, notably Beza, Zanchi and Turretin. It is held that they transformed his vital teaching into a rigid intellectual and dogmatic scheme whose central tenet was the doctrine of election whereby God by his own inscrutable decree predestined a fixed number to salvation and reprobated all others to damnation. It is claimed that once the shell of this Protestant scholasticism is broken and once the later confessional declarations lose their mesmeric hold then Calvin's teaching can be studied afresh and he will be revealed as a theologian whose central theme is God's saving action in Christ. It will be seen, so it is claimed, that Calvin only dealt with the doctrine of election in the context of his exposition of the Person and Work of Christ, and when it is realised that Christ was the proper man who did a work for all mankind then it will be clear that all are elected in Christ and that the offer of salvation is made to all. Moreover, it is claimed that when due regard is paid to Calvin's pastoral concern for the people of Geneva and to his practical advice given to scores of correspondents then he can no longer be seen as the relentless theologian but as the generous shepherd of the flock.

Calvin and the Duty of Guardians to Resist

Calvin's teaching on the authority of magistrates to resist a tyrannical ruler has been much debated. The main ground of debate has been his discussion of the source of that authority, in the penultimate paragraph of the Institutes. Some commentators have stressed that for Calvin magisterial ‘authority comes from God and not from the people’. Others have insisted that on this question his thought has ‘democratic aspects’, and have argued that these influenced his immediate protestant successors.