John Calvin

John Calvin (né Jean Cauvin) (10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was a French theologian during the Protestant Reformation who established the system of Christian theology called Calvinism or reformed theology. He was originally trained in Orléans and Bourges to be a humanist lawyer when he experienced a sudden conversion to the reformed faith. Due to a violent uprising against Protestants in France, he was forced to flee to Basel, Switzerland where in 1536 he published the first edition of his seminal work, Institutes of the Christian Religion.

He was invited by another reformer, William Farel, to help him carry out the work of reforming the church in the city of Geneva. The city council resisted implementing Calvin and Farel's ideas and consequently they were expelled from the city. On the invitation of Martin Bucer, Calvin proceeded to Strasbourg where he became the minister of the church of French refugees. He met and married his wife, Idelette de Bure, while in Strasbourg.

Calvin continued to support the reform movement in Geneva and he was eventually invited back to lead its church. Upon his return, he introduced new forms of church government and liturgy. Several powerful families in the city opposed his reforms and tried to curb his authority. During this period, a Spaniard known for his heretical views, Michael Servetus, arrived in Geneva. He was denounced by Calvin and executed by the city council. Following new elections to the council, Calvin’s authority over the church was no longer questioned.

His final years were marked by persistent promotion for the Reformation both within the city of Geneva and throughout Europe. He exchanged cordial and supportive letters with many of the reformers and he counted several, including Philipp Melanchthon and Heinrich Bullinger, as among his friends. Through his work of writing, preaching, and exhortation, his lasting contribution was to provide the seeds to the branch of theology that bears his name.

Calvin was born Jean Cauvin in Noyon, a small town in the Picardie region of France. He was the second of three sons that survived infancy. His father, Gérard Cauvin, had a prosperous career as the cathedral notary and the registrar to the ecclesiastical court. His mother, Jeanne le Franc, was the daughter of an inn-keeper from Cambrai. She died a few years after his birth. Gérard intended that his three sons, Charles, Jean, and Antoine, should attain the priesthood. Jean was particularly precocious and by the age of twelve, he was employed by the bishop as a clerk and he received the tonsure. He also won the patronage of an influential family, the Montmors.^[1] Through their assistance, Calvin was able to attend the Collège de la Marche in Paris, where he was taught Latin by one of the greatest of Latin teachers, Mathurin Cordier.^[2] Once he completed the course, he proceeded toward the philosophia arts course in the Collège de Montaigu. The college's most influential headmaster, Jean Standonck, had reformed it into an educational monastery for the poor.^[3]

In 1525 or 1526, Gérard withdrew his son from Montaigu and enrolled him in the University of Orléans to study law. Contemporary biographers of Calvin, Theodore Beza and Nicolas Colladon, as well as Calvin himself, assigned Gérard's motive to better earnings in a legal career. After a few years of quiet study, Calvin set off for the University of Bourges in 1529 when he learned that the humanist lawyer, Andreas Alciati, had taken up residence there. His eighteen-month stay in Bourges had a decisive impact on his development as it was here where he learned Greek, a necessary scholarly component in New Testament studies. Sometime during this period, Calvin was converted to the reformed faith. Not much is known of the circumstances surrounding his conversion. He made one reference to the event in his preface to his Commentary on the Book of Psalms:

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.^[4]

Scholars have argued on the interpretation of this account, but it is agreed that his conversion corresponded with a rupture with the Roman church.^[5]

By 1532, he received his licentiate in law and he published his first book, a commentary on Seneca's De Clementia. After uneventful trips to Orléans and his hometown of Noyon, Calvin returned to Paris in October 1533. During this time, the university was under some tension between humanists/reformers of the Collège Royal (later to become the Collège de France) and conservative senior faculty members. One of the reformers, Nicolas Cop, was a close friend of Calvin. Cop was elected that autumn as rector of the university and on 1 November 1533 he devoted his inaugural address to the need for reform and renewal in the church. It provoked a strong reaction from the faculty and they denounced the address as heretical. Cop was forced to flee to Basel. Calvin was also implicated in Cop's offence and for the following year, he went into hiding. He remained on the move, sheltering with a friend, Louis du Tillet, in Angoulême and taking refuge in Noyon and Orléans. He was finally forced to flee France during the Affair of the Placards in mid-October 1534. In that incident, unknown reformers had posted placards in various cities attacking the mass and this provoked a violent backlash against the Protestants. In January 1535, Calvin joined Cop in Basel, a city under the influence of the reformer, Johannes Oecolampadius.^[6]

In March 1536, Calvin published his first edition of the Institutio Christianae Religionis or Institutes of the Christian Religion. The work was an apologia or defense of his faith, a statement of the doctrinal position of the reformers. He intended that it serve as an elementary instruction book for anyone interested in the Christian religion. The book was the first expression of his theology and Calvin would later update and expand it, publishing new editions throughout his life.^[7] Shortly after its publication, he left Basel for Ferrara in Italy where he served as secretary to Princess Renée of France. He did not stay there long and by June he was back in Paris with his brother Antoine who was in the process of winding up his father's affairs. Following the Edict of Coucy which gave a limited six month period for heretics to reconcile with the Catholic faith, Calvin decided that there was no future for him in France. In August he set off for Strasbourg, a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire and a place of refuge for reformers. Due to military manoeuvres of imperial and French forces, he was forced to make a detour to the south and this brought him to the city of Geneva. Calvin had only intended to stay a single night, but William Farel, a fellow French reformer who resided in the city, implored Calvin to stay and assist him in his cause to reform the church in Geneva.^[8]

The office to which Calvin was initially assigned is unknown. He was eventually given the title of "reader" which most likely meant that he could give expository lectures on the Bible. Sometime in 1537 he was selected to be a "pastor", although he never received any pastoral consecration.^[9] For the first time, the lawyer-theologian took up pastoral duties such as baptisms, weddings, and conducting church services.^[10] On 16 January, Farel and Calvin presented their Articles concernant l'organisation de l'église et du culte à Genève (Articles on the Organisation of the Church and its Worship at Geneva) to the city council.^[11] The document described how and how often the Lord's Supper would be celebrated, the reason for the need and the method of excommunication, the requirement to subscribe to the confession of faith, the use of congregational singing in the liturgy, and the revision of marriage laws. The council accepted the document on the same day.

Throughout the year, however, Calvin and Farel's reputation with the council began to suffer. Only a few citizens had subscribed to the confession of faith. On 26 November, there was a heated debate between the two ministers and the council on the reluctance to enforce the subscription requirement. Secondly, as France was taking an interest in Geneva and as the two ministers were Frenchmen, rumours were started among the councillors raising suspicion on whether they were loyal to the city. Finally, a major ecclesiastical-political quarrel developed when Bern, Geneva's evangelical ally, proposed to introduce uniformity in the ceremonies of the Swiss reformed churches. One proposal required that the bread used for the eucharist be unleavened. The two ministers were unwilling to follow Bern's lead and delayed using unleavened bread until a synod in Zürich would be convened to take the final decision. Eventually the council ordered Calvin and Farel to use unleavened bread for Easter Communion. The ministers preached as usual during Easter, but did not administer communion in protest. A riot broke out during the service and the very next day, the council told the ministers to leave Geneva.^[12]

Farel and Calvin went to Bern and to Zürich in order to plead their case. The synod in Zürich placed most of the blame on Calvin for not being sympathetic enough toward the people of Geneva, but it asked Bern to mediate in order to get the ministers restored. A delegation was sent to Geneva, but the council refused to readmit the two ministers. Farel and Calvin took refuge in Basel and subsequently Farel received a call to lead the church in Neuchâtel. As for Calvin, the leading reformers of Strasbourg, Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito, took an interest and invited him to come and lead a church of French refugees within their city. Initially, Calvin refused as Farel was not included in the invitation. When Bucer appealed to him again, Calvin agreed to go. By September, Calvin had taken up his new position in Strasbourg, fully expecting that this time it would be permanent. A few months later, he applied for and was granted citizenship of the city.^[13]

Calvin ministered to four or five hundred members in his church. He preached or lectured every day with two sermons on Sunday. Communion was celebrated monthly and congregational singing was encouraged.^[14] He also worked on the second edition of the Institutio. Although the first edition was sold out within a year, Calvin was dissatisfied with it. He greatly expanded the second edition and published it in 1539. He worked at the same time on another book, the Commentary on Romans which was published in March 1540. The form of the book was the model for his commentaries that were to follow. It included a translation from the Greek rather than the Latin Vulgate followed by the exegesis and the exposition.^[15] In a dedicatory letter to Simon Grynaeus, Calvin praised the work of his predecessors, Philipp Melanchthon, Heinrich Bullinger, and Martin Bucer, but he also took care to state that his own work was distinct and he courteously criticised some of the shortcomings of the three major reformers.^[16]

It was while in Strasbourg that Calvin's friends began to urge him to marry. Several candidates were presented to him including one young lady from a noble family. Reluctantly, Calvin agreed to the marriage, on the condition that the young lady would learn French. Although a wedding date was planned for sometime in March 1540, he changed his mind. Instead in August of that year, he married a widow, Idelette de Bure, who had two children from her first marriage.^[17]

Meanwhile Geneva had begun to reconsider its expulsion of Calvin. Church attendance had dwindled and the political climate had changed with the alliance with Bern in decline as the two cities quarreled over the control of certain lands. When Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto wrote a letter to the city council inviting Geneva to return to the Catholic faith, the council searched for an ecclesiastical authority to respond to him. At first Pierre Viret was consulted, but when he refused to take the task, the council asked Calvin to take the task. He agreed and his Responsio ad Sadoletum (Letter to Sadoleto), while courteous, strongly defended Geneva's position concerning reforms in the church. The council came to the conclusion that Geneva needed John Calvin back.^[18] On 21 September 1540 the council commissioned one of its members, Ami Perrin, to find a way to recall him. An embassy reached Calvin while he was at a colloquy in Worms. His reaction to the suggestion of returning to Geneva was one of horror in which he wrote,

Rather would I submit to death a hundred times than to that cross on which I had to perish daily a thousand times over.^[19]

Despite his hesitation, he also wrote that he was prepared to follow the Lord's calling. A plan was drawn up in which Viret would be appointed to take temporary charge in Geneva for six months while Bucer and Calvin would visit the city to determine the next steps. However, the city council pressed on in negotiating the immediate appointment of Calvin in Geneva. By summer 1541, it was finally decided that Strasbourg would lend Calvin to Geneva for six months. Calvin returned on 13 September 1541 and quite unlike his first entry into Geneva as a refugee, he arrived with an official escort and a wagon for his family.^[20]

In supporting Calvin's proposals for reforms, the council passed the Ordonnances ecclésiastiques (Ecclesiastical Ordinances) on 20 November 1541. The ordinances defined four orders of ministerial function: pastors to preach and to administer the sacraments; doctors to instruct believers in the faith; elders to provide discipline; and deacons to care for the poor and needy.^[21] They also called for the creation of the Consistoire (Consistory), an ecclesiastical court comprised of the lay elders and the ministers. The city government retained the power to summon persons before the court and the Consistoire could judge only ecclesiastical matters, having no civil jurisdiction. Originally, the court had the power to mete out sentences and its most severe penalty was excommunication. However, the government contested this power and on 19 March 1543 the council decided that all sentencing would be carried out by the government.^[22]

In 1542, Calvin adapted a service book used in Strasbourg and he published La Forme des Prières et Chants Ecclésiastiques (The Form of Prayers and Church Hymns). Calvin recognised the power of music and he intended that it be used in supporting the scripture readings. The original Strasbourg psalter contained twelve psalms by Clément Marot and Calvin added several more hymns of his own composition in the Geneva version. At the end of 1542, Marot became a refugee in Geneva and contributed nineteen more psalms to the psalter. Another refugee, Louis Bourgeois lived and taught music in Geneva for sixteen years and Calvin took the opportunity to add his hymns, the most famous being the Old Hundredth.^[23]

In the same year of 1542, Calvin published Catéchisme de l'Eglise de Genève (Catechism of the Church of Geneva). He had written an earlier catechism during his first stay in Geneva which was largely based on Martin Luther's Large Catechism. The 1542 version made a theological rearrangement with the priority set on faith. This version was inspired by Bucer's Kurze Schrifftliche Erklärung of 1534.^[24]

During his ministry in Geneva, Calvin preached over two thousand sermons. Initially he preached twice on Sunday and three times during the week. This proved to be too heavy a burden and late in 1542 the council allowed him to preach only once every Sunday. However, in October 1549, he was again required to preach twice on Sundays and in addition, every weekday of alternate weeks. His sermons lasted more than an hour and he did not use notes or manuscripts. An occasional secretary tried to take notes of his sermons, but up to 1549 very little of his preaching was preserved. However, in that year a professional scribe, Denis Raguenier, who had learnt or developed a system of shorthand, was assigned to record all his sermons. In analysing his sermons, Calvin was a consistent preacher and his style changed very little over the years.^[25]

Very little is known about Calvin's personal life in Geneva. His house and furniture were owned by the council. The house was big enough to accommodate his family as well as Antoine's family and some servants. On 28 July 1542, Idelette gave birth to a son, Jacques, but he was born prematurely and survived only briefly. Idelette fell ill in 1545 and she died on 29 March 1549. Calvin never married again. He expressed his sorrow in a letter to Viret:

I have been bereaved of the best friend of my life, of one who, if it has been so ordained, would willingly have shared not only my poverty but also my death. During her life she was the faithful helper of my ministry. From her I never experienced the slightest hindrance.^[26]

Throughout the rest of his life in Geneva, he maintained several friendships from his early years including Montmor, Cordier, Cop, Farel, Melanchthon, and Bullinger.^[27]

Calvin encountered bitter opposition to his work in Geneva. Around 1546, the uncoordinated forces coalesced into an identifiable group of whom he referred to as the libertines. According to Calvin, these were people who felt that by being liberated through the grace of their salvation, they were emancipated from both ecclesiastical and civil law. The group consisted of wealthy and politically powerful, inter-related families of Geneva.^[28] At the end of January 1546, Pierre Ameaux, a maker of playing cards by trade who had already been in trouble with the Consistoire, attacked Calvin by calling him a "Picard", an epithet showing anti-French sentiment, and accused him of false doctrine. Ameaux was punished by the council and forced to make expiation by parading through the city and begging God for forgiveness.^[29] A few months later Ami Perrin, the man who was given responsibility for bringing Calvin to Geneva, moved into open opposition. Perrin had married Françoise Favre, daughter of François Favre, a well-established Genevan merchant. Both Perrin's wife and father-in-law had previous quarrels with the Consistoire. The court noted many of Geneva's notables, including Perrin, had breached a law against dancing. Initially, Perrin ignored the court when he was summoned, but after receiving a letter from Calvin, he acquiesced and appeared quietly before the Consistoire.^[30]

By 1547, opposition to Calvin had grown to the point where they constituted the majority of the syndics, the civil magistrates of Geneva. On 27 June an unsigned threatening letter in Genevan dialect was found at the pulpit of St. Pierre Cathedral where Calvin preached. Suspecting a plot against both the church and the state, a commission was appointed by the council to investigate. One from Favre's group, Jacques Gruet was arrested and incriminating evidence was found when his house was searched. Under torture, he confessed to several crimes. The civil court condemned him to death and with Calvin's consent, he was beheaded on 26 July.^[31]

The libertines continued their opposition taking opportunities to stir up discontent, to insult the ministers, and to defy the authority of the Consistoire. The council straddled both sides of the conflict, alternately admonishing and upholding Calvin. When Perrin was elected first syndic in February 1552, Calvin's authority appeared to be at its lowest point. After some losses before the council, Calvin was beaten and on 24 July 1553 he asked the council to be allowed to resign. Although the libertines controlled the council, however, the request was refused. The opposition realised that Calvin's authority could be curbed, but they did not have enough power to banish him as was done after his first tenure in 1538.^[32]

The turning point in Calvin's fortunes occurred when a fugitive from justice, Michael Servetus, suddenly appeared in Geneva on 13 August 1553. Servetus was a Spaniard who boldly criticised Christian dogma. In particular, he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. In July 1530 he was in Basel where he disputed with Oecolampadius and was eventually expelled from the city. He went to Strasbourg where he published a pamphlet against the Trinity. Bucer publicly refuted it and he also asked Servetus to leave. Returning to Basel, Servetus published Dialogorum de Trinitate libri duo (Two Books of Dialogues on the Trinity) which caused a sensation among Reformers and Catholics alike. The Inquisition in Spain ordered his arrest.^[33]

Calvin and Servetus were first brought into contact in 1546 through a common acquaintance, Jean Frellon of Lyon. They started to exchange letters with Servetus asking questions on doctrine, Calvin sending replies, followed by Servetus disputing his answers. The exchange continued until Calvin lost patience and refused to respond to Servetus who wrote in total around thirty letters to Calvin. When Servetus mentioned that if Calvin agreed, he would come to Geneva, Calvin wrote a letter to Farel on 13 February 1547 noting that if Servetus were to come, he would not give him safe conduct:

... for if he came, as far as my authority goes, I would not let him leave alive.^[34]

In 1553 when the inquisitor-general of France learned that Servetus was hiding in Vienne under another name, he contacted Cardinal François de Tournon, the secretary of the archbishop of Lyon to take up the matter. He was arrested and taken in for questioning. When he was presented his letters to Calvin as evidence for heresy, he denied that he was the person who wrote the letters. He managed to escape from prison and the Catholic authorities sentenced him in absentia to death by slow burning.^[35]

While Servetus was fleeing to Italy, for unexplained reasons he stopped in Geneva and attended Calvin's sermon in St Pierre. Calvin had him arrested and he composed a list of accusations that was submitted before the court. The prosecutor was Philibert Berthelier, a member of a libertine family, and the sessions were led by Pierre Tissot, Perrin's brother-in-law. The libertines allowed the trial to drag on in an attempt to harass Calvin. The difficulty in using Servetus as a weapon against Calvin was that the heretical reputation of Servetus was widespread and most of the cities in Europe were observing and awaiting the outcome of the trial. This posed a dilemma on the libertines, so on 21 August the council decided to write to other Swiss churches for their opinion which would mitigate the responsibility for the final decision. While awaiting for the replies, the council also asked Servetus if he preferred to be judged in Vienne rather than in Geneva. He begged that he stay in Geneva. On 20 October the replies from Zürich, Basel, Bern, and Schaffhausen were read and the council condemned Servetus as a heretic. The following day the sentence of burning at the stake was pronounced, the same sentence as in Vienne. Calvin and other ministers asked that he be spared being burnt and be beheaded instead. This was refused and on 27 October, Servetus was burnt alive at the Plateau of Champel at the edge of Geneva.^[36]

With the death of Servetus, Calvin was being acclaimed as the defender of the faith. But his triumph over the libertines was still two years away. He had always insisted that the Consistoire retained the power of excommunication despite the council's past decision to take away that power. During Servetus' trial, Philibert Berthelier asked the council for permission to take the Lord's Supper. Calvin protested that the council was not competent in making that decision. He was not confident of the outcome of his objection and in a sermon on 3 September 1553, he hinted that he might be dismissed by the authorities. The council decided to re-examine the Ordonnances and on 18 September it voted that excommunication was in the jurisdiction of the Consistoire. But this small victory did not last as Berthelier was persistent and he applied for reinstatement with a larger administrative assembly, the Deux Cents (Two Hundred) in November. They voted that the final arbiter concerning excommunication was the council. However, the ministers continued to protest and as in the case of Servetus, the opinions of the Swiss churches were sought. The affair dragged on through 1554. Finally, on 22 January 1555 the council announced the decision of the Swiss churches: the original Ordonnances must be kept and the Consistoire was to regain its official powers.^[37]

The libertines' final downfall began with the February 1555 elections. By then, many of the French refugees were given citizenship and with their support, Calvin's partisans overwhelmed Perrin's Genevan supporters in the elections. The syndics and the councillors were now on Calvin's side. But the libertines plotted to make trouble and on 16 May they set off to burn down a house that was supposedly full of Frenchmen. The syndic, Henri Aulbert tried to intervene, carrying with him the baton of office that symbolised his power. Perrin made the mistake of seizing the baton thereby signifying that he was taking power, a virtual coup d'état. The insurrection was over as soon as it started when another syndic appeared and ordered Perrin to go with him to the town hall. Perrin and other leaders were forced to flee the city. With the approval of Calvin, the other plotters who remained in the city were found and executed. The opposition to Calvin's church polity came to an end.^[38]

Calvin's final years was a time when his authority was practically uncontested. He enjoyed an international reputation as a reformer distinct from Luther.^[39] Initially, Luther and Calvin had mutual respect for each other, but the doctrinal divide between Huldrych Zwingli and Luther on the eucharist forced Luther to place Calvin into Zwingli's camp. Polemics were exchanged between the Lutheran and Reformed branches of the Reformation movement and Calvin participated actively. In 1555 he wrote Defensio sanae et orthodoxae doctrinae de sacramentis (A Defence of the Doctrine of the Sacrament) in response to Joachim Westphal's treatises that attacked Calvin's doctrine. At the same time, Calvin was dismayed by the lack of unity among the reformers. He took steps toward rapprochement with Bullinger by signing the Consensus Tigurinus, a concordat between the Zürich and Geneva churches. He then reached out across the Continent to England when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, called for an ecumenical synod of all the evangelical churches. Calvin praised the idea and told him that he greatly wished that he could participate, but ultimately Cranmer was unable to bring his idea to fruition. Calvin's greatest contribution toward the English-speaking community was through his sheltering of refugees in Geneva starting in 1555. Under the city's protection, they were able to develop and form their own reformed church under John Knox and William Whittingham. They carried with them Calvin's ideas on doctrine and polity on their return to England and Scotland.^[40] But the land that Calvin was devoted to most of all was his homeland, France. He supported the building of churches by distributing literature and providing ministers. Between 1555 to 1562 over one hundred ministers were sent to France and this support came purely from the church in Geneva. The council had noted to Calvin that it would not get involved in the missionary activities due to the difficult political situation with France at the time.^[41]

Within Geneva, Calvin's main concern was the creation of a collège, an institute for the education of children. A site for the school was found on 25 March 1558 and it opened the following year on 5 June 1559. Although the school was one unique institution, it was in fact divided into two parts: a primary grammar school called the collège or schola privata and an advanced school called the académie or schola publica. Some of the professors Calvin tried to recruit for the institute included his old friend, Cordier, and Emmanuel Tremellius, the Cambridge Regius professor of Hebrew. Neither were available, but he succeeded in obtaining Théodore de Bèze as rector. Within five years there were one thousand two hundred students in the grammar school and three hundred in the advanced school. The collège eventually became the Collège Calvin, one of the college preparatory schools of Geneva, while the académie became the University of Geneva.^[42]

In autumn 1558, Calvin became quite ill with a fever. As he was afraid that he might die before completing the final revision of the Institutio, he forced himself to work. The final version was greatly expanded and rearranged so that within the subtitle, he referred to it as nearly a new piece of work.^[43] Shortly after he recovered, he overstrained his voice while preaching which brought on a violent fit of coughing. He burst a blood-vessel in his lungs and his health steadily declined. He preached his final sermon in St Pierre on 6 February 1564. On 25 April, he made his will in which he left small sums to his family and to the collège. A few days later, the ministers of the church came to visit him and he bid his final farewell which was recorded in Discours d'adieu aux ministres. He recounted his life in Geneva, sometimes recalling bitterly some of the hardships he suffered. Calvin died on 27 May 1564. At first his body was laid in state, but as many came to see the body, the reformers were afraid that they would be accused of creating a cult of a new saint. On the following day, he was buried in an unmarked grave in a common cemetery.^[44]

In the preface to the final edition of his magnum opus, the Institutio, Calvin wrote that he intended the book to be used as a summary of his views of Christian theology. He also pointed out that it was meant to be read in parallel with his commentaries. Thus in order to obtain a complete picture of his theology, the commentaries as well as his sermons and treatises need to be examined. But it is the Institutio that gives the most comprehensive and concise expression of Calvin's thoughts.^[45] The various editions span nearly his whole career as a reformer and an analysis of the evolution of the book shows that his theology changed very little from his youth to his death.^[46] The first edition from 1536 consisted of only six chapters. The second edition published in 1539 was three times as long as the first edition. He developed further the original material and added chapters on subjects that appear in Melanchthon's Loci Communes. In 1543, he again added new material and expanded a chapter on the Apostles' Creed. This was in anticipation of the final form of the Institutio which appeared in 1559. By then, the work consisted of four books of eighty chapters and each book was subtitled following statements from the creed: Book 1 on God the Creator, Book 2 on the Redeemer in Christ, Book 3 on receiving the Grace of Christ through the Holy Spirit, and Book 4 on the Society of Christ or the church.^[47]

The first statement in the Institutio acknowledges its central theme. It states that the whole sum of our wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.^[48] Calvin argues that the knowledge of God is not inherent in man nor can knowledge be discovered in observing this world. The only way to obtain it was to be taught through scripture. Calvin wrote, "For anyone to arrive at God the Creator he needs Scripture as his Guide and Teacher."^[49] He does not try to prove the authority of scripture, but he describes it as autopiston or self-authenticating. He defends the trinitarian view of God and he notes that images or visual representations of God leads to a form of idolatry, a strong polemic stand against the Catholic Church.^[50] At the end of the first book, he gives his concept of Providence, the view of God's omnipotence. He wrote, "By his Power God cherishes and guards the World which he made and by his Providence rules its individual Parts."^[51] Man is not able to comprehend why God performs any particular action, but whatever good or evil men may practise, their efforts result in the execution of his judgements.

In the second book, Calvin examines the nature of sin and the fall of man. Sin began with the fall of Adam and propagated to all of mankind. The domination of sin is complete to the point that man is driven to evil. Calvin acknowledges that this doctrine originated with Augustine.^[52] Thus fallen man is in need of redemption that is to be sought in Christ. But before Calvin expounded on this doctrine, he described the special situation of the Jews who lived during the time of the Old Testament. God made a covenant with Abraham and the substance of the promise was the coming of Christ. Hence, this old covenant was not in opposition to Christ. Calvin then describes a new covenant using the passage recorded in the Apostles’ Creed starting from Christ's suffering under Pontius Pilate to his return to judge the living and the dead. It was the whole course of Christ's obedience to the Father that removed the discord between man and God.^[53]

Calvin describes how the spiritual union of Christ and man is achieved in the third book. He first defines faith as the firm and certain knowledge of God in Christ. The effects of faith are repentance and the remission of sin. This follows with the regeneration of life or the return to the image of God before Adam’s transgression. However, complete perfection would be unattainable in this life and a continual struggle against sin would be expected. Several chapters are then devoted to the subject of justification by faith alone. He defined justification as "the acceptance by which God regards us as righteous whom he has received into grace."^[54] In this definition, it is clear that it is God that initiates and carries through the action and that man plays no role. Near the end of the book, Calvin describes and defends the doctrine of predestination. This doctrine was established by Augustine in opposition to the teachings of Pelagius. Fellow theologians who accepted this Augustinian tradition included Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther. The principle, in Calvin’s words, is that "God adopts some to the hope of life and adjudges others to eternal death."^[55]

The final book describes what he considers to be the true church and its ministry, authority, and sacraments. He denied the papal claim to primacy and the accusation that the reformers were schismatic. For Calvin the church was defined as the body of believers who placed Christ at its head. By definition, there was only one "catholic" or "universal" church. Hence, he argued that the reformers, "had to leave them in order that we might come to Christ".^[56] The scriptural basis for the type of ministers is taken from a passage in Ephesians and they consisted of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and doctors. Calvin regarded the first three offices as temporary, limited in their existence to the time of the New Testament. The latter two offices were put into practice in the church in Geneva. Although Calvin respected the work of the Ecumenical Councils, he did not consider them as authoritative. He also believed that the civil and church authorities were separate and should not interfere with each other. Calvin defined a sacrament as an earthly sign associated to a promise from God.^[57] He accepted only two sacraments as valid under the new covenant, baptism and the Lord's Supper in opposition to the Catholic acceptance of seven sacraments. He completely rejected the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and the treatment of the Supper as a sacrifice. He also could not accept the Lutheran doctrine of sacramental union in which Christ was "in, with and under" the elements. His own view was close to that of Zwingli's but it was not identical. Rather than holding a purely symbolic view of the eucharist, Calvin noted that with the participation of the Holy Spirit, faith was strengthened by the sacrament. In his words, it was, "a secret too sublime for my mind to understand or words to express. I experience it rather than understand it".^[58]

Calvin's first published work was a commentary of Seneca's De Clementia. Published at his own expense in 1532, it showed that he was a humanist in the tradition of Erasmus with a thorough understanding of classical scholarship.^[59] His first theological work, the Psychopannychia, attempted to refute the doctrine of soul sleep as promulgated by the Anabaptists. Calvin probably wrote it during the period following Cop's speech, but it was not published until 1542 in Strasbourg.^[60]

Calvin produced commentaries on most of the books of the Bible. His first commentary on Romans was published in 1540 and he planned to write commentaries on all of the New Testament. However, it took six years before he wrote his second book, a commentary on I Corinthians. He did not lose any more time in reaching his goal. Within four years he had published commentaries on all the Pauline epistles. The commentary on Romans was also revised. He then turned his attention on the general epistles and these commentaries were dedicated to Edward VI of England. By 1555 he had completed his work on the New Testament, finishing with the Acts and the Gospels. He did not include the Revelation of St John. For the Old Testament, he wrote commentaries on Isaiah, the books of the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and Joshua. The material for the commentaries often originated from lectures to students and ministers and then he would re-work the lectures into a commentary. However, from 1557 and onwards, he could not find the time to continue working with this method and he gave permission for his lectures to be published from stenographers' notes. These so-called, Praelectiones, covered the minor prophets, Daniel, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and part of Ezekiel.^[61]

Calvin wrote many letters and treatises in addition to what has been previously mentioned. Following the Responsio ad Sadoletum and at the request of Bucer, Calvin wrote an open letter to Charles V in 1543, Supplex exhortatio ad Caesarem, to defend the reformed faith before the emperor. This was followed by an open letter to the pope (Admonitio paterna Pauli III) in 1544, in which Calvin admonished Paul III for depriving the reformers from any prospect of rapprochement. The pope proceeded to open the Council of Trent which resulted in decrees against the Reformation. Calvin refuted the decrees by producing the Acta synodi Tridentinae cum Antidoto in 1547. When Charles tried to find a compromise solution with the Augsburg Interim, Bucer and Bullinger urged Calvin to respond. He wrote the treatise, Vera christiannae pacificationis et Ecclesiae reformandae ratio in 1549 where he described the doctrines that should be upheld including justification by faith.^[62]

Calvin provided many of the base documents in the support and the organisation of the church. These included the aforementioned documents on the catechism, the liturgy, and church governance. He also produced several confessions of faith in order to bring unity to the church. In 1559, he drafted the French confession of faith, the Confessio Gallicana and the synod in Paris accepted it with very few changes. The Dutch confession of faith, the Belgic Confession of 1561, was partly based on the Confessio Gallicana.^[63]

After Calvin and de Bèze, the Geneva city council gradually gained control over areas of life that was previously in the ecclesiastical domain. Increasing secularisation was accompanied by the decline of church. Even the Geneva académie was eclipsed by universities in Leiden and Heidelberg which became the new strongholds of the ideas of Calvin, first identified as "Calvinism" by Joachim Westphal. By 1585, Geneva, once the wellspring of the reformed movement, had become merely its symbol.^[64] However, Calvin had always advised against the consideration of himself as an "idol" and of Geneva being recognised as a new "Jerusalem". He encouraged people to adapt themselves to different environments. Even during his polemical exchange with Westphal, he advised a group of French-speaking refugees that had settled in Wesel, Germany to integrate with the local Lutheran churches. Despite his differences with the Lutherans, he did not deny they were members of the true church. Calvin’s recognition of the need to adapt to local conditions became an important characteristic of his reformation movement as it spread across Europe.^[65]

Due to his missionary work in dispatching pastors throughout France, his programme of reform eventually reached the French-speaking provinces of the Netherlands. Leading divines, either Calvinist or those sympathetic to Calvinism, settled in England (Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr, and Jan Laski) and Scotland (John Knox). During the English Civil War, Calvinists produced the Westminster Confession which became the confessional standard for Presbyterians in the English-speaking world. Calvinism was adopted in the Palatinate under Frederick III which led to the formulation of the Heidelberg Catechism in 1563. Having established itself throughout Europe, the movement continued to spread to other parts of the world including North America, South Africa, and Korea.^[66]

Calvin did not live to see the foundation of his work growing into an international movement. But his death allowed his ideas to break out of its city of origin, to succeed far beyond its borders, and to establish its own distinct character.^[67]

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• Bouwsma, William James (1988), John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-504394-4.
• Cottret, Bernard (2000), Calvin: A Biography, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, ISBN 0-8028-3159-1 Translation from the original Calvin: Biographie, Editions Jean-Claude Lattès, 1995.
• De Greef, Wulfert (2004), "Calvin's writings", in McKim, Donald K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-81642-2 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• De Greef, Wulfert (2008), The Writings of John Calvin: An Introductory Guide, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, ISBN 0664232302
• DeVries, Dawn (2004), "Calvin's preaching", in McKim, Donald K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-81642-2 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Ganoczy, Alexandre (2004), "Calvin's life", in McKim, Donald K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-81642-2 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Holder, R. Ward (2004), "Calvin's heritage", in McKim, Donald K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-81642-2 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Hesselink, I. John (2004), "Calvin's theology", in McKim, Donald K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-81642-2 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• McGrath, Alister E. (1990), A Life of John Calvin, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-16398-0.
• McNeil, John Thomas (1954), The History and Character of Calvinism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195007433.
• Helm, Paul (2004), John Calvin's Ideas, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0199255695.
• Olsen, Jeannine E. (2004), "Calvin and social-ethical issues", in McKim, Donald K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-81642-2 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Parker, T. H. L. (1995), Calvin: An Introduction to His Thought, London: Geoffrey Chapman, ISBN 0-225-66575-1.
• Parker, T. H. L. (2006), John Calvin: A Biography, Oxford: Lion Hudson plc, ISBN 978-0-7459-5228-4.
• Pauck, Wilhelm (1929), "Calvin and Butzer", The Journal of Religion, Vol. 9, No. 2, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Pettegree, Andrew (2004), "The spread of Calvin's thought", in McKim, Donald K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-81642-2 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Potter, G. R.; Greengrass, M. (1983), John Calvin, London: Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd., ISBN 0-7131-6381-X.
• Steinmetz, David C. (1995), Calvin in Context, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195091647.

• Works by John Calvin at Project Gutenberg
• Writings of Calvin at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
• Sermons by Calvin
• Psychopannychia

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