Noyon and Paris
John Calvin was born on July 10, 1509, in the French town of Noyon, an ecclesiastical city dominated by its cathedral and bishop, where a body of clerics in effect governed in God's name. His father, Gérard Cauvin, was secretary to the bishop, attorney for the cathedral chapter and the district's financial officer. John's mother died while he was a child and his father remarried; life in a stepmother's house may have made the boy gloomy and withdrawn. Cauvin had resolved that three of his sons should enter the Church and was sure of getting his wish. Two were placed in its service, but the third turned from religion and died without its rites. Cauvin himself, after a quarrel with the chapter over money, was excommunicated, and after his death his relatives could bury him in consecrated ground only with difficulty.
John, known by his Latinized name, Johannes Calvinus, entered the Collège de la Marche at the University of Paris, where he learned to write excellent Latin. He then moved to the Collège de Montaigu, where he apparently heard of Erasmus, a famous earlier student of that college. He remained there until 1528, the year his future rival Ignatius Loyola arrived. A Catholic authority has dismissed the stories told of Calvin's loose conduct in youth, and the evidence we have refutes them: he was a diligent, reserved, quiet and chaste student who "criticized the habits of his friends." His friends nonetheless loved him. He read until midnight, in his hunger for knowledge, the fruit of which later appeared in his compelling system. Even in these years he suffered from illnesses that changed his temper in adolescence.
Law, Humanism and the Turn to Reform
Late in 1528 his father ordered him to go to Orléans to study law, because, in Calvin's opinion, he believed that law enriched those who pursued it. From then on Calvin studied law diligently, ranking it above philosophy and letters as the highest intellectual virtue, a science that subjects man's unruly passions to order and law. He later carried the logic, precision and rigor of Justinian's Institutes into theology and ethics, and gave his masterpiece the same name. In the end he became a lawgiver, a Numa Pompilius and Lycurgus of Geneva.
After taking his licentiate in law (1531), Calvin returned to Paris and eagerly studied the classics. In 1532 he published in Latin a commentary on Seneca's On Clemency, which strict scholars praised. He sent a copy to Erasmus (the book's wording is unclear about who is praised as the "second distinguished figure" after Cicero and the "pride of letters"). When some of Luther's sermons reached him, their bold tone stirred him, though he still appeared devoted to humanism. In Paris circles the story of the German religious revolution, of the fearless monk who burned the pope's bull and defied the emperor's decrees, was on every tongue. Protestants had already given martyrs in France.
Some of Calvin's friends, such as Gérard Roussel, close to Margaret of Navarre, the king's sister, and Nicolas Cop, elected rector of the Sorbonne, favored church reform, and Calvin apparently had a hand in drafting Cop's inaugural address (November 1, 1533). Cop spoke, as Erasmus did, of the need to purify Christianity and, like Luther, of salvation through the believer's faith and the Creator's mercy, and asked his hearers to listen patiently to the new religious ideas. His speech angered the public, disgusted the Sorbonne and led the Parlement of Paris to prosecute Cop for heresy. Cop fled Paris, and a reward of 300 crowns was set on his head, dead or alive. He escaped to Basel, a Protestant stronghold.
Calvin's friends warned him of a plot to arrest him and Roussel, in which Margaret had apparently interceded for them. He left Paris in January 1534 and took refuge at Angoulême, apparently writing the first part of his Institutes in Louis du Tillet's well-stocked library. In May he returned to Noyon and gave up the church income that supported him; he was twice jailed there and released. After his release he went secretly to Paris, spoke with Protestant leaders and met Servetus, who was destined to be burned in the end at Calvin's instance (the book's wording). When a group of extreme Protestants posted insulting placards on Paris walls, Francis I was so enraged that he resolved to take revenge on Protestants. Calvin fled Paris in time (December 1534) and joined Cop in Basel. There, a young man of twenty-six, he finished the most eloquent, fervent, brilliant, logical and forceful systematic work of the age of religious revolution.
The Institutes and the Letter to the King
Calvin published the book in Latin as Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). It was so well received that a new edition was needed that same year. He issued a second Latin edition, much enlarged (1539), and translated it into French in 1541, where it remains among the finest prose works in French literature. The Parlement of Paris banned the book in both languages and had copies burned publicly in the capital. Calvin kept revising and reissuing it all his life, and the last edition ran to 1,118 pages (the book's figure).
The first edition has a preface in which Calvin addresses "the most Christian King of France" in stirring, respectful terms. Two events led him to open his book with Francis's name: the king's edict of January 1535 against French Protestants, and Francis's invitation to Melanchthon and Bucer to come to France to arrange an alliance with the Lutheran princes of Germany against Charles V, nearly at the same time as the king's decree to suppress French Protestants. Calvin hoped to use the political needs of the time to bring Francis, like his sister Margaret, to the Protestant side. In the preface he tried to separate Protestantism from the Anabaptist movement, which was then building a communist society at Münster, and called French reformers patriotic, loyal to the king and opposed to any political or economic disorder.
The preface says in substance (I paraphrase the long passage): he began the work meaning only to give a few elementary principles of religion to guide the seekers of truth to true piety, but the malice of certain wicked men in the king's realm, who gave no room for sound doctrine, made him resolve to offer it to the king, so that the king might understand the real nature of a faith that madmen used as an excuse to throw the kingdom into chaos with fire and sword. He says that wicked men had tried to make the king hate them, charging them with seizing the powers of kings, destroying the courts, overturning society and law, and taking people's property. He asks the king not to think he writes to clear himself so that he may return home safely, for exile does not trouble him; he defends the cause of all God's servants and thus of Christ himself. He asks how it can be believed that such people conspire against the king, when they have never spoken seditious words, were known for peacefulness while they lived under the king's rule, and even in foreign lands pray God for the king's success. And if the slanderers' influence is so strong that the accused may not defend themselves and, with royal leave, scourging, imprisonment, torture and burning continue, then they will be like sheep marked for slaughter, will have to be patient, and will trust God to rescue the oppressed and punish the tyrants. He prays that God establish the king's throne in justice.
The Doctrine
For us, living in a time when the human mind has turned from religious to political disputes, it is hard to grasp Calvin's spirit as he wrote the Institutes. He was more enthralled by the greatness of the Creator than even Spinoza, and thought it an empty fancy that the small, weak human mind could grasp the mind of the universe. Because of this weakness, he said, God revealed himself to us in Scripture, and the clearest proof that Scripture is God's word is its unmatched effect on human minds. Read Demosthenes, Cicero, Plato, Aristotle and the like, and they will charm and delight you; but turn after them to Scripture and, willing or not, it will so pierce your heart and fix itself in your mind that, beside its force, the speech of orators and philosophers will lose its beauty and charm. In Scripture you will find something compared with which the finest discoveries and most delightful works of human art are small.
Therefore, he held, this revealed word of God must be the final standard of judgment not only in piety but in history, politics and every part of life. We must accept the story of Adam and Eve as true, because from their rebellion we learn the sinful nature of man and his loss of free will. Man has so forgotten God's justice that he turns to whatever is foul and corrupt. From his poisoned heart nothing but corruption comes, and when he seems to do good, his thought is stained with cunning and his heart held by licentiousness. How can such a weak and helpless creature deserve eternal happiness in paradise? None of us will enter paradise by good works. Good works are good, but only the saving death of the Son of God can save a man, and not all will be saved: in his justice God has denied this gift to many, and in his mercy has chosen others for salvation and granted them faith in Jesus' intercession, as Paul said, that he chose us before the foundation of the world and predestined us to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will.
Like Luther, Calvin drew from this the conclusion that God, by his own will and without regard to our virtues or sins, chose some people for salvation and condemned others to eternal damnation long before the creation of the world. To the question why the Creator should fix their fates regardless of merit, Calvin again cites Paul: God said to Moses that he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. He concludes that, according to the clear text of Scripture, God by his eternal and unchangeable will chose some for salvation and condemned others to eternal damnation; his purpose for the elect comes from his free mercy, without regard to their merit, and for the condemned from a just judgment that we cannot understand. Even the fall of Adam and Eve, with all its terrible results for the human race, in Calvin's view came from a providence "worthy of praise." Calvin admits that the doctrine of predestination conflicts with reason, but says it is foolish to pry into matters the Creator has hidden from us. Yet he claims to know why the Creator, by his sovereign will, fixed the fate of billions: "to make us glorify him by the instruments of his power." He confesses that predestination is a terrible doctrine, but says that no one can deny that God knew man's fate before creating him, since he himself ordained it. Others, like Luther, may explain predestination by saying that God foresaw man's fate and could not have erred in foreseeing it; Calvin explains it differently, saying that God knows the future because he willed and ordained it so. In his theology condemnation is final and unchangeable, for he does not believe in purgatory, where man after millions of years of suffering is cleansed of sin; therefore believers need not pray for the dead.
From Calvin's doctrine one might suppose there was no reason to pray, since all that happens was ordained from eternity and prayer cannot change it. But Calvin's humanity prevailed over his creed: let us pray to God in humility and faith, he said, and our prayer will be answered. In his system the prayer and its answer are also ordained.
Church, State and Worship
He urged people to worship the Creator in religious assemblies, but warned them against attending the Mass, whose celebrant claims, in an insult to sacred things, to turn earthly matter into the body and blood of Christ. Christ is present in the Supper only spiritually, he said, and worshipping a wafer as Christ's body is idolatry. The veneration of images, contrary to the plain text of the Second Commandment, breeds idolatry. All religious pictures and statues, even the crucifix, should be removed from churches.
Calvin held that the true Church is the invisible assembly of God's elect, dead, living and unborn. The visible Church consists of those who, by confession of faith, by an exemplary life and by taking part in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper (he did not accept the other sacraments), show their faith in God and in Christ. Outside this Church there is no salvation.
Church and state are both creatures of the Creator, he held, and God commissioned them to work in harmony, like the soul and body of Christian society: the Church should set standards for the faith, worship and morals of society, and the state, as its arm, should enforce them. Civil officers must not allow "idolatry" (which in Protestant usage meant Catholicism) and "anything harmful and shameful to religion" to enter society or reach men's ears, and only God's pure word is to be taught. The perfect government is a religious government, and the reformed Church is the voice and representative of God. Calvin revived the papal claim of the Church's superiority to the state by claiming for himself the leadership of his own church.
Sources, Echoes and Why It Worked
The number of traditions and beliefs that passed from Catholicism into Calvin's theology is striking. His thought owed something to the Stoics, especially Seneca, and something to his legal training, but he built his theology above all on Saint Augustine, whose views derived from the writings of Paul, who, we recall, never saw or knew Jesus. Calvin seemed unaware of the Father's love and mercy as Jesus understood and described them, and passed over many biblical passages that testify to man's full freedom to determine his fate (the book's chapter-and-verse references are garbled and are omitted). His genius lay not in grasping new ideas but in extending the ideas of his predecessors to draw their destructive logical conclusions. He expressed them with eloquence like Augustine's and drew up church rules to enforce them. He took salvation by faith and election from Luther, the spiritual interpretation of the Supper from Zwingli, and from Bucer the seemingly contradictory beliefs that all events in the world result from the Creator's will and that piety and virtue are the mark of election. Many of these Protestant ideas, in milder form, are found in Catholic tradition too. Calvin sharpened them and removed some of the consoling features of medieval faith that made them bearable. He was more medieval than any medieval thinker from Augustine to Dante. He ignored the humanists' concern for the dignity of man in this world and turned human thought more and more to the world beyond the grave. In Calvinism the Renaissance was again denied.
A little reflection shows how such an irrational doctrine captivated hundreds of millions in Switzerland, France, Scotland, England and North America. Why should Calvinists, Huguenots and Puritans have sacrificed so much to survive, and how could a theory that makes man a weak and helpless creature produce so many strong personalities? The reason is that the believers' conviction that God had chosen them for salvation from a great multitude gave them more strength than their sense of helplessness to change their fate. Calvin himself, once he thought himself among the elect, found that this "terrible doctrine" of predestination gave him "an invigorating force." Did those who thought themselves elect rejoice that only a few would be saved and the rest damned? Their faith in their own election gave them courage to face despair bravely, as a similar faith had enabled the Jews, when the will to live is taken from man, to struggle to survive. As Protestantism owes many of its beliefs to the Old Testament, Calvin's belief in the election of the saved may have come from the Jews' belief in their own election. It was assurance of election that led the Huguenots to bear heavy losses for their faith and gave English "pilgrims" the courage to leave their birthplace and make a new homeland on foreign shores. If a sinner was reformed, regained self-confidence and came to believe God had chosen him, he stayed unshaken to the end of his life. By raising the elect to a kind of hereditary aristocracy regardless of their wealth, Calvin strengthened his followers' pride and confidence: the children of the elect, by God's will, are themselves elected. We see that a man with simple faith and trust, even in a world of fancy, can think paradise his own; for these men sure of their immortality, confessing man's weakness was a road to success.
Calvin's followers needed such consolation, because he taught them, following the medieval view, that life in this world is nothing but suffering. He agreed with those who said that the happiest are those never born, and next those who leave the world early, and with those who wept at the birth of kinsmen and rejoiced at their deaths. His only regret was that these wise pessimists, mostly pagans ignorant of Christ, would go to hell. Only faith in eternal bliss makes life in this world bearable: "If heaven is our homeland, the world is but a place of exile; and if we enter life by leaving the world, the world is nothing more than a grave." Unlike Dante, Calvin devoted the most eloquent pages of his work, not to the horrors of hell, but to the enchanting picture of paradise. The elect bear life's suffering cheerfully, "for they remember the day when the Creator will admit his faithful servants into his restful kingdom, wipe every tear from their eyes, clothe them in the robe of joy, set the crown of glory on their heads, receive them with inexpressible happiness and make them partners in his own joy." For the poor and wretched who fill the world, such faith may be necessary.