(Calvin’s Treatise on Relics reveals the almost unbelievab...)
Calvin’s Treatise on Relics reveals the almost unbelievable deceptions that the Catholic Church has campaigned for, specifically in the veneration of relics purported to possess healing powers or other beneficial spiritual effects. Listing the gamut of objects venerated in various churches he critically shows how little proof their claims have and how obviously they were used to take advantage of the gullible.
(For centuries, Christians of all ages have turned to John...)
For centuries, Christians of all ages have turned to John Calvin’s A Little Book on the Christian Life to help them on their journey as they follow Christ. This book is one of the great classics of the Christian faith, calling believers to pursue holiness and endure suffering as they rest in Christ alone. In this new translation from the Latin, Drs. Aaron Denlinger and Burk Parsons capture Calvin’s biblical faithfulness, theological integrity, and pastor’s heart.
John Calvin was a French reformer, minister, author, and theologian in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. Calvin made a powerful impact on the fundamental doctrines of Protestantism and is widely credited as the most important figure in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation. Although he is considered to be the successor to Martin Luther, he was an independent thinker, and his doctrine, Calvinism, differed to a large extent.
Background
John Calvin was born on July 10, 1509, in Noyon, Picardy, France. His father, Gérard Cauvin, was the apostolic secretary to the Bishop of Noyon and also the proctor in the Chapter of the diocese and the fiscal procurator of the county. His mother, Jeanne Le Franc, was noted for her beauty and piety. John was their second surviving son.
His elder brother was Charles and younger, Antoine. His father wanted all of them to join the church and brought them up accordingly. Calvin’s mother died four or five years after his birth. Shortly after that, his father remarried and he was sent to live with the Montmors, an influential family in the neighborhood. Calvin had two half-sisters through his father's second marriage.
The family name was spelled several ways, but John showed preference while still a young man for "Calvin." An ecclesiastical career was chosen for him, and at the age of 12, through his father's influence, he received a small benefice, a chaplaincy in the Cathedral of Noyon.
Education
Calvin's early education was at a local school, and perhaps also in the company of the youth of the local high noble family that controlled the office of prince-bishop and several other ecclesiastical positions. Calvin entered the Collège de la Marche at the University of Paris in 1523, where he soon became highly skilled in Latin. Subsequently, he attended the Collège de Montaigu, where the humanist Erasmus had studied before him and where the Catholic reformer Ignatius of Loyola would study after him.
Calvin remained in the profoundly ecclesiastical environment of this college until 1528. Then, in 1528, at the behest of his father, he moved to Orléans to study law and then transferred to the University of Bourges. He earned his degree in law in 1531. His father died in the same year and this left him free to follow his scholarly ambitions, Calvin returned to Paris and took up the study of classical literature.
John Calvin had always been an exceptional child. When he turned twelve, he was employed as a clerk by the Bishop. This was also the time when he received his tonsure. In 1532 Calvin published his first book, a commentary on Seneca's On Clemency. Though distinguished for its learning, the book did not win any acclaim. On November 1, 1533, Nicolas Cop, one of Calvin’s close friends and also a protestant reformer and the Rector of the Collège, gave a speech. In it, he stressed the need for reforms within the Roman Catholic Church and defended the doctrine of the Sola Fide (the justification by faith alone).
The speech angered the conservatives to such an extent that Cop was not only forced to flee to Basel but Calvin, being his friend, was also indicted and had to go into hiding. However, till then France maintained a conciliatory attitude to the Protestant movement and so Calvin was considered safe.
In January 1534 Calvin left Paris and went to Angoulême, where he began work on his theological masterpiece, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Several turbulent months later, after a secret journey and two brief periods of arrest, Calvin was forced to flee from France when King Francis I instituted general persecution of heretics. In December 1534 he found his way to Basel, where his friend Cop had gone before him.
Sometime during his last 3 years in France, Calvin experienced what he called his sudden conversion and mentally parted company with Rome. He proceeded to develop his theological position and in 1536 to expound it in the most severe, logical, and terrifying book of all Protestantism, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin followed this first Latin edition with an enlarged version in 1539 and a French translation in 1540, a book that has been called a masterpiece of French prose. The reformer continued to revise and develop the Institutes until his death.
While publication of the Institutes was in progress, Calvin made preparations to leave his homeland permanently. He returned briefly to France early in 1536 to settle personal business, then set out for Strasbourg. Because of the war between France and the Holy Roman Empire, he was forced to take a circuitous route which brought him to Geneva. He intended to continue on to Strasbourg but was persuaded to remain by Guillaume Farel, who had begun a Protestant movement in Geneva. Except for one brief interruption he spent the remaining years of his life there, spreading the word of God as he understood it and creating a theocratic state unique in the annals of Christendom.
In 1537 Calvin was elected to the preaching office by the city fathers, who had thrown off obedience to Rome along with their old political ruler, the Duke of Savoy. A council, now operating as the government, issued decrees in July 1537 against all manifestations of Catholicism as well as all forms of immorality. Rosaries and relics were banished along with adulterers. The austere hand of Calvin was behind these regulations. The new rules were too severe for many citizens, and in February 1538 a combination of Libertines (freedom lovers) and suppressed Catholics captured a majority of the council. This body then banished Calvin and Farel; Calvin went to Strasbourg and Farel to Neuchâtel, where he remained for the rest of his life.
At Strasbourg, Calvin ministered to a small congregation of French Protestants. While he was establishing himself at Strasbourg, things were going badly for the new Protestantism in Geneva. Strong pressure was being exerted on the council from within and without the city to return to Catholicism. Fearing that they might be removed from office and disgusted with the trend toward flagrant immorality among the citizenry, the councilors revoked the ban on Calvin on May 1, 1541.
On 13 September 1541, Calvin once again returned to Geneva on the invitation of the city council. Here he put forward a few proposals for reform. One of them was to provide religious education to the townspeople, in support of which the city government passed the Ordonnances ecclésiastiques. On his advice, the city council also established four groups of church officers: pastors and teachers to explain the scriptures, doctors to instruct believers in the faith, elders to administer the church, and deacons to look after the charities. In addition, a consistory of pastors and elders was also formed to see that the citizens conform to God’s law.
He also proposed a wide range of disciplinary actions. It covered everything from the abolition of what they called Roman Catholic superstition to take steps against dancing, gambling, swearing as well as enforcement of sexual morality and regulation of taverns. Along with reforms, he went on with preaching; giving sermons twice on Sunday and also on three other weekdays. Later, however, he stopped preaching on weekdays. In all, during this period, he had delivered over two thousand sermons. He never used notes; in spite of that, most of them lasted for more than an hour.
Immediately on his return to Geneva, he set about organizing the Reformed Church. On January 2, 1542, the city council ratified the Ordonnances ecclésiastiques, the new regulations governing the Church, formulated by a committee led by Calvin. Charity was placed under municipal administration to eliminate begging. Thus the whole life of Geneva was placed under a rigid discipline and a single Church from which no deviation was permitted. The consistory and the city council worked hand in hand in enforcing the laws, but the moving spirit of all was Calvin, who acted as a virtual dictator from 1541 until his death. During these years 58 people were executed and 76 banished in order to preserve morals and discipline.
The last years of Calvin's life were spent in elaborating Geneva's laws, writing controversial works against spiritual enemies, and laboring prodigiously on the theology of the Institutes. Men trained to the ministry by Calvin carried his doctrines to every corner of Europe. The reformer lived to see his followers growing in numbers in the Netherlands, Scotland, Germany, and even France, the homeland he had been forced to leave. On May 27, 1564, after a long illness, Calvin died.
Calvin was closely tied to the Roman Church. However, by 1527, Calvin had developed friendships with individuals who were reform-minded. These contacts set the stage for Calvin’s eventual switch to the Reformed faith. The 1536 Institutes had given Calvin some reputation among Protestant leaders. Central to Calvin's influence was his ability to define comprehensively the doctrine and liturgy of Christianity in the face of several alternative forms of Christianity.
He confronted not only the Catholic Church but also conflicts among such reformers as Luther and Huldrych Zwingli, the recent German Peasants' movement with its more socially revolutionary understanding of Christianity, and the mostly pacifist but separatist movements known collectively as Anabaptism. Indeed, at about the time of his conversion, the most bizarre and uncharacteristically violent expression of Anabaptism was unfolding in Münster.
Calvin believed, as did Luther, that salvation is God's free gift but contended that God, who is Omniscient, knows who is saved, and who is not. Those who are saved are "living saints" and their salvation is not contingent on anything they do, or indeed on giving their hearts or lives to Jesus.
However, asking how do we recognize the saved, Calvin (like Augustine) replied that we cannot know for sure but we can confidently say that immoral people are not saved and good people are. Thus, the saints will be those who pray, attend divine service, work hard, who are honest, thrifty, and generous of spirit.
Politics
It was Calvin's view that church and state ought to be structurally independent of each other. Church officials are not, by virtue of their office, to have any official voice in the state; and state officials are not, by virtue of their office, to have any official voice in the church. Although he thought that the best form of government would vary with circumstances, Calvin quite firmly believed that the ideal government would be a republic in which those of the aristocracy who are competent to rule are elected by the citizenry, and in which power is balanced and diffused among a number of different magistrates.
The magistrate has his authority from God. In a sense his authority is God's authority; for magistrates, Calvin said, are ministers of Divine justice, vicegerents of God. Thus the duty of the magistrate is to apply the law of God, implanted on the hearts of all and clarified in the Scriptures, to the affairs of civil society. To what extent and under what circumstances Calvin regarded civil disobedience as justified is a matter of debate. What is clear is that Calvin regarded the law of nature as in some sense a standard by which the decisions of the magistrate are to be judged, and at the same time he regarded revolutions that rip apart the entire fabric of human society as not to be condoned.
Views
Calvin was not purely a Renaissance humanist. The culture of the 16th century was peculiarly eclectic, and, like other thinkers of his time, Calvin had inherited a set of contrary tendencies, which he uneasily combined with his humanism. He was an unsystematic thinker not only because he was a humanist but also because 16th-century thinkers lacked the historical perspective that would have enabled them to sort out the diverse materials in their culture.
Thus, even as he emphasized the heart, Calvin continued also to think of the human personality in traditional terms as a hierarchy of faculties ruled by reason. He sometimes attributed a large place to reason even in religion and emphasized the importance of rational control over the passions and the body. The persistence of these traditional attitudes in Calvin’s thought, however, helps to explain its broad appeal; they were reassuring to conservatives.
Quotations:
"There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence."
"The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul."
"Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ."
Personality
Calvin was a reticent man; he rarely expressed himself in the first person singular. This reticence has contributed to his reputation as cold, intellectual, and humanly unapproachable. His thought, from this perspective, has been interpreted as abstract and concerned with timeless issues rather than as the response of a sensitive human being to the needs of a particular historical situation. Those who knew him, however, perceived him differently, remarking on his talent for friendship but also on his hot temper.
Moreover, the intensity of his grief on the death of his wife, as well as his empathic reading of many passages in Scripture, revealed a large capacity for feeling. Calvin’s facade of impersonality can now be understood as concealing an unusually high level of anxiety about the world around him, about the adequacy of his own efforts to deal with its needs, and about human salvation, notably including his own.
Connections
Although Calvin was against the notion of celibacy, he did not marry for a long time. Ultimately in August 1540, urged by his friends, he married Idelette de Bure. She was a widow with two children from her first marriage. On 28 July 1542, Idelette gave birth to their son, Jacques; however, he did not live long. Some also believe that they had one or two daughters, who also died in infancy. Idelette also died on 29 March 1549 after a long illness and Calvin was much grieved by the loss. He never married again.
John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait
A Frenchman, an exile, and a humanist in the tradition of Erasmus, Calvin was unusually sensitive to the complexities and contradictions of later Renaissance culture.
John Calvin, the Church and the Eucharist
Calvin's eucharistic doctrine has been approached in the past from the standpoint of his polemic with the Lutherans and the Zwinglians, but Father McDonnell believes that Calvin’s primary position was determined by his rejection of Roman Catholicism.