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John Calvin & the Calvinists John Calvin & the Calvinists There are lots of problems with building a house on sand. Beyond the obvious — that it's a really dumb idea because it is going to fall over the moment the winds and the rain come — it might convince other people it's a good idea to build their own house in the same place. ​ ​ All it takes is for one person to do something stupid, and all the others are sure to join in. And that's a good introduction to the man we're talking about today, John Calvin. He's one of the three main pillars of the Protestant revolution. But he was only seven years old when Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door in Wittenburg. By the time Calvin joined the revolution, it was already raging: Henry VIII was on his third wife, Luther was up to his nose in heresy and Zwingli was already dead. Even though they never met, Zwingli is an important character in Calvin's tale. By the 1520s Zwingli's unique theological fondue he'd mixed from the teachings of Luther, Erasmus and other guys in the mountains of Switzerland had boiled over and covered everything in cheese — I mean, caused a huge civil war. Most of the cantons (that is, provinces) of Switzerland were now Protestant, with only a few Catholic holdouts. And the unholy cheesy mess had spread all over Europe, too, the five Catholic cantons allied with Austria while the Protestants allied with anyone they could. The continent was rife with peasant revolts, with chaos and disorder ruling the day. In Switzerland, the tide of battle swung back and forth. The Catholics won the two wars of Kappel between 1528 and 1531; the first was where Zwingli died. The Faith was restored in some areas, and the churches and monasteries were rebuilt. Protestant pillaging and murdering slowed down for a while — but that ended when Geneva was captured in 1535. And that is where John Calvin comes on the scene. If Martin Luther represents the happy, oom­pa­pa oom­pa­pa, beer­drinking, sausage­eating version of ​ ​ Protestantism, then John Calvin represents the dour, surly version, sitting in a plain, bleak room with no music, beer or sausages. He probably didn't even like fondue. He was born in Picardy, France, in 1509, to middle­class parents. His father Gerard was a severe, hard­nosed guy. He was apostolic secretary to the bishop of Noyon and also served in various administrative roles we might describe as “treasurer” or “accountant” in local government. He was an important man and hobnobbed with the best families of the neighborhood. Calvin's mother Jeanne was very beautiful indeed, both physically and spiritually. She was noted for her piety, and took her children on pilgrimages. John Calvin was her second son. She taught him the Faith, but he didn't make it his own and never seemed to fall in love with it. She died when he was a child and his father remarried. Maybe it's not fair to say he didn't love the Faith. I mean, if we were teasing someone about a girl or a boy they had a crush on, we might say, “Would you shave your head for them?” Well, Calvin did shave ​ ​ his head for the Faith! He “took the tonsure”; the tonsure is the technical name for the shaved space on a monk's head. Calvin became a clerk for the local bishop — and he was only 12! Now, most of us, when we were 12, got a job delivering papers or cutting lawns. Not Calvin! He was able to get this job because of his father's connections and importance. This practice of giving jobs to friends and family is called nepotism. It is a problem today. How many people do we work with whom 1 we think only got the job because their uncle owns the business? But back in the Renaissance, when the Church was corrupt, it was a huge problem. Men were given a benefice; these were payments for doing jobs for the Church. In the case of a young boy like Calvin, he would be expected to pay that back in the future. And, believe me, he did pay the ​ ​ Church back — just not in the way the bishop might have expected! Because of his father's connections, he got into an excellent university: the College de la March in Paris. There, he learned Latin from a famous tutor called Corderius. Corderius was well known for being a whiz at Latin, but also a humanist — and perhaps Calvin learned more from him than how to decline verbs. Once he had Latin under his belt, Calvin went to the College de Montaigu to learn philosophy, but his father wasn't convinced that would be a good career move for Calvin. I mean, after all, how many philosophy factories are there in your hometown? Instead, Gerard sent him to the University of Orleans to study law (everyone knows being a lawyer is where the money is, right?). Calvin studied quietly for some years, and then in 1529 went to the University of Bourges, interested by the humanist teachings there. Here, he learned Greek, essential for studying the New Testament. So, we can see all the bricks are in place to build some kind of house — a solid education, a connection to the Church, knowledge of biblical languages. But what he had for the foundation — a lack of passion for the faith, an attraction to humanism — looked more like sand than rock. And so it was. His father was excommunicated, probably for heresy, although we aren't sure. He died in 1531 of cancer. Two years later, in 1533, Calvin experienced a religious “conversion.” In his own words: God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame, which was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected from one at my early period of life. Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness, I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress therein, that although I did not altogether leave off other studies, yet I pursued them with less ardor. Later on, he wrote about the same experience a little differently, describing how he suffered anguish and turmoil. Being exceedingly alarmed at the misery into which I had fallen, and much more at that which threatened me in view of eternal death, I, duty bound, made it my first business to betake myself to your way, condemning my past life, not without groans and tears. And now, O Lord, what remains to a wretch like me, but instead of defense, earnestly to supplicate you not to judge that fearful abandonment of your Word according to its deserts, from which in your wondrous goodness you have at last delivered me. Exactly what Calvin experienced — a genuine spiritual revelation he misinterpreted, something induced by stress or grief or other psychological issues, maybe even some darker supernatural influence — we don't know. All we know is what he said about it, and the fact this seems to coincide with his break from Rome. 2 By late 1533, Calvin had returned to Paris and was at the College Royal, which was wracked with divisions between humanist “reformers” and the senior faculty who were loyal to Christ and His Church. In November of that year, Nicolas Cop, the rector of the university, used his inaugural address to call for reform and renewal in the Catholic Church. Of course, this R&R were codewords for Protestant rebellion, and the university faculty rightly denounced it as heretical. Cop fled to Switzerland and Calvin, who was his close friend, was also forced to run away. He spent the next year and a half on the lam in France, perhaps being involved in various anti­Catholic activities. Eventually, in early 1535 he wound up with his buddy Cop in Basel, a city firmly in the hands of the Protestant revolt. It was here Calvin really got down to business. In March 1536 he published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, a statement on his doctrinal position. Throughout his life he added to ​ it and published more editions as his unique and heretical theology developed. Shortly after the book's publication, he went to Italy and then back to France to help his brother sort out his father's estate. But the Eldest Daughter of the Church didn't much like wandering sons who spit on their Mother. The rebellious blasphemers who hadn't run away like Calvin and Cop had been arrested, imprisoned or even executed. King Francis of France ... (Really? King Francis of France? Isn't that like King Jerry of Germany or King Scott of Scotland?) Anyway, King Francis of France had issued the Edict of Coucy which extended pardon to them, but only gave them six months to take advantage of it. Calvin realized there wasn't a future for him in France and planned to go to Strasbourg, which was a refuge for Protestant rebels. Unfortunately for him, war forced him to make a detour south into the Swiss Alps, and he found himself in Geneva. Now, Calvin didn't much want to stay in Switzerland. I guess he really didn’t like fondue! But a ​ ​ Protestant rebel called William Farel called him a coward and told him to stay and fight to “reform” the Church there, telling him it was his duty. And so Calvin stayed there, preaching his own brand of theology and writing rules for the churches in Geneva to follow.
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