Providence: from Pronoia to Immanent Affirmation in John Calvin's Institutes of 1559
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Providence: from pronoia to immanent affirmation in John Calvin's Institutes of 1559 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Sanchez, Michelle Chaplin. 2014. Providence: from pronoia to immanent affirmation in John Calvin's Institutes of 1559. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:12274125 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Providence: from pronoia to immanent affirmation in John Calvin’s Institutes of 1559 A dissertation presented by Michelle Chaplin Sanchez to The Committee on the Study of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of The Study of Religion Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2014 © 2014 Michelle Chaplin Sanchez All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Amy Hollywood Michelle Chaplin Sanchez Providence: from pronoia to immanent affirmation In John Calvin’s Institutes of 1559 Abstract Over the twentieth century and into the present, theorists of secularization and political theology have explored ways that theological arguments have shaped the social, ethical, economic, and political imaginaries of the modern West. In many of these studies, the doctrine of providence has come under scrutiny alongside related theological debates over of the nature of divine sovereignty, glory, the will, and the significance of immanent life in relation to divine transcendence. While it is often taken for granted that the Calvinist branch of Protestant reform likewise had a decisive impact on the shape of the modern West, there has been no extended treatment of Calvin’s writing on providence, or related doctrines, which engages these arguments about secularization. In this dissertation, I argue that Calvin’s Institutes of 1559 presents an excellent example of an intellectual project operating self-consciously at the intersection of the Christian theological tradition and the project of church and political reform, while also pedagogically addressing the reader on an individual level. In this study, I perform a double intervention. On the one hand, I make a critical contribution to philosophical and historical conversations on secularization by offering a reading of Calvin’s Institutes that is critically responsive to these conversations. On the other hand, I provide a reading of Calvin’s doctrine of providence that challenges the common notion that it suggests a deterministic view of divine transcendence. I argue instead that Calvin’s doctrine of providence anchors his larger project of reform by reframing the locus of divine power outside the institutional bounds of the church and in an affirmative relation to the world more generally. iii In my argument, I explore how Calvin’s theology demonstrates an interest in ways that texts, writing, and signification work to shape and organize the human ability to represent and navigate world. To do so, I connect Calvin’s argument about providence to his theory of sacramental signification. I also explore the relationship between texts and bodily practices across Calvin’s Institutes. Finally, I relate the political implications of this sixteenth-century theological work to more recent arguments about secularization from Weber, Nietzsche, Lefort, Kantorowicz, Gauchet, and Agamben. iv Table of Contents Introduction . 1 1. Providence in Theories of Secularization and Political Theology . 27 2. Reading the Discourse on Providence: Early Writings and Practices . 98 3. Approaching Calvin’s Institutes of 1559: Its Genre and Structure . 138 4. The Work of Doctrine: Christian Teaching in Calvin’s Institutes . 196 5. Providence, Affirmation, and Signification: The Anchoring of Reform . 236 Conclusion: from pronoia to immanent affirmation: on writing, politics, and glory . 312 Bibliography . 347 v Acknowledgments This project represents the culmination of some of the most fulfilling years of my life, and I would like to give special thanks to those people without whom this project would not have been possible. First, I am grateful to Amy Hollywood, David Lamberth, and Mark Jordan. I could not have asked for a better advisor than Amy. Her intelligence and attentiveness were matched only by the genuine care she showed me at every step. David’s close readings and energetic conversations helped me to hone many of the most crucial points of this project. I am indebted to Mark for always bringing clarity to my understanding of theology and for teaching me to become a better reader. Thanks to my mother, Jennifer Chaplin, who has been my most abiding friend as well as my earliest and most important theological interlocutor. Growing up in her care, it was always given that theological ideas shape our most profound human desires, and that learning to savor life means learning to think about these things with increasing precision. While neither her education nor her community encouraged her to develop her own theological voice, I am forever glad that she was strong-minded enough to give me mine—and that she wanted to proofread these pages! I am grateful beyond words for the constant love, wisdom, and unwavering support given to me by my husband, Tim. Our relationship is the greatest gift of my life. He is both my biggest fan and my bluntest critic, and his enduring support has made me tough, confident, and unafraid of the prospect of failure. Our conversations are wonderful and unending, giving me my truest foretaste of something like the pleasure of divine contemplation. Finally, I am grateful for the communities which have encircled me during this time: my colleagues and students at Harvard; my friends; and the community at Fourth Presbyterian Church in South Boston, which has been as close as family to me. If my theological work offers any valuable insight, it is because of the profound and challenging love I have seen enacted within those sacred walls. These years have not been without their difficulties. During the time I prepared and wrote this dissertation, I have witnessed the suffering of two people who are very important to me. My first doctoral advisor, Ronald Thiemann, died of pancreatic cancer on the very day I submitted the prospectus for this dissertation. Its contours had been hammered out in a series of conversations that took place in his office, and the memory of all that he taught me haunts these pages. I miss him very much. He and I would often reflect on our respective Lutheran and Calvinist roots, at times regretting the ways our traditions had turned theological arguments into weapons. Yet, Ron always encouraged me to recall the full range of ways in which these theologies can also attune practitioners to the beauty and mystery of human life, enabling startling acts of goodness and justice both in and beyond the borders of the church. The best example of such a living faith has always been my father, Norman Chaplin. Over the last five years, I have watched a brutal, degenerative disease remove his ability to talk and reason. Yet I will never forget the way his unwavering love of God always prompted his love for life, the world, and other people. Although his daily work often consisted of hard labor and struggle, he was never slow to smile or to savor a sunset or a song. He treated animals, plants, and other people of all shapes, sizes, colors, statuses, and walks of life as equally deserving of dignity, care and service. If his disease has made me doubt goodness at times, the memory of his life assures me all the more that there is some goodness shining behind and within the frailty of this existence. To my father and to Ron: this is for you. vi List of Illustrations Figure 1. Melancholia (2011). Directed by: Lars Von Trier. [Film still] Denmark: Zentropa. At: http://butlerscinemascene.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/melancholia-planet.png (Accessed 05.09.2014). Figure 2. Calvin, John (1559). Institutionis Christianae Religionis. Geneva: Oliua Roberti Stephani. Figure 3. Tabula Peutingeriana (1-4th century CE). Fascimile by Conradi Millieri (1887-8). [Map] At: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/TabulaPeutingeriana.jpg (Accessed on 05.09.2014). vii Introduction John Calvin resides in the rarefied company of those theologians who are read both too much and too little. While Calvin’s name continues to carry currency for historians, sociologists, and religious communities—and, indeed, for many Calvin remains a household name—Calvin’s own writing is often overlooked not only by his own followers, but by the growing body of philosophical literature interested in the theological origins of modernity.1 In this work, I argue that another look at Calvin’s writing will prove worthwhile—will perhaps even reveal something fresh and illuminative of a wide array of contemporary questions and interests. I am well aware of the blessing and burden that accompanies any attempt to re-read a figure like Calvin. History, though not always rightly, often disposes its long- dead “great men” into categories of general admiration or easy contempt. Calvin is among the smaller set whose legacy is marked by extreme polarization, to the point of apparent contradiction. This is no doubt the result of many complicated factors: the fights that marked the landscape of sixteenth century Europe and left deep scars on all parties in their wake; the varied behavior of self-described “Calvinists” over the centuries and into the present; and, not least, the association of his Protestant legacy with a “Western modernity”2 that manifests many of these same contradictions. 1 As I will show in chapter one, scholars of secularization theory and political theology have become interested in studying the intellectual debates and contributions of late medieval and early modern theologians as formative in some way for modern methods and conceptualizations of ethical and political life.