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John Calvin
The most important figure in the next generation of Reformers was, of course, John Calvin. As a young man in Paris, Calvin was active in the movement for reform within the Catholic Church, as a result of which he found it prudent to leave France in 1533. He went to Basel in Switzerland, where he came to adopt a more purely Protestant view of things. From 1536 to 1538 he lived in Geneva, where he worked on behalf of the city’s nascent reformation until the (Protestant, but tepidly so) city council expelled him. He sojourned in Strasbourg, Germany until 1541,when Geneva invited him to return to help overcome the city’s resistance — or indifference to the Reformed cause.
In Geneva, Calvin was able — despite occasional conflict arid failure to create a Church organization and social order consonant with his theological vision. Churches were run by elders, duly constituted pastors preached and taught, and deacons looked after the needs of the community. Moreover, the Genevans’ morals were now matters not only of social concern hut of criminal law: licentiousness, dancing, gambling, profane speech, improprieties of dress or comportment, irreverence or blasphemy, absence from church and all other forms of moral laxity were to be reported by community invigilators and punished by magistrates, often in a vividly public way. And false doctrine was not to be tolerated.
These measures point to certain profound differences between the Lutheran and Calvinist understandings of grace. Luther might well have regarded many of Calvin’s vice laws as signs of an excessive anxiety regarding personal righteousness, and even as a form of justification by works. Calvin, though, believed that the gift of justification really makes men and women righteous, and that any society made up of the elect should reflect the sanctity instilled in human hearts by grace, as evidence of God’s workings.
In most respects, the elements of Calvin’s theology were typically Protestant: the unique authority of scripture, the absolute gratuity of justification, the impotence of the human will to merit salvation, the uselessness of fasts and penances, and predestination.
In this last case, though, Calvin’s emphasis differed from that of Luther. No other theologian ever put so great a stress upon the sheer sovereignty of God, as an explanation of the mystery of God’s actions in creation and redemption. He went so far as to assert that God eternally foreordained even the original fall of humanity from grace, that he might by the working of his will display the glory of his sovereignty in the gratuitous salvation of the elect and in the fitting damnation of the derelict. This theology of absolute divine sovereignty became one of the most characteristic features of the high Reformed tradition.
The Curious Case of Michael Servetus
Whatever the Magisterial Reformation was, it certainly was not a movement for greater freedom of conscience — much less freedom of religion. The aim of reform was a stricter adherence to the rule of scripture (as interpreted by reforming theologians) and a renewal of piety and moral purpose among the faithful. But Protestant regimes were no more tolerant of aberrant theological opinions than were their Catholic counterparts.
Prime evidence of this would be the case of Michael Servetus (c. 1510-53), the Spanish physician, scholar of science, astrologer, discoverer of blood circulation and amateur theologian who — though a Catholic and attracted to the cause-of reform — offended against Protestant and Catholic orthodoxy alike by publishing two books (the first in 1531 ,the second in 1532) attacking the doctrine of the Trinity. and proposing in its place a kind of complex Unitarianism.
In 1534, a proposed debate in Paris between Servetus and John Calvin failed to -materialize, but Servtus clearly came in the years that followed to regard Calvin as his natural theological interlocutor. In 1546, he sent the manuscript of his treatise ‘The Restoration of Christianity’(which attacked Nicene theology as extra biblical) to Calvin in Geneva and attempted to initiate a dialogue by post. After a few exchanges, however; Calvin terminated the correspondence and even refused to return the manuscript: he also vowed to his fellow Genevan reformer Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) that, if Servetus ever came to Geneva, he would not be allowed to leave alive.
Calvin was as good as his word. In 1553, Servetus fleeing the inquisitor in Lyon entered Geneva where he was recognized, arrested and put on trial for heresy. Calvin argued forcefully in favor of execution, and — enraged by Servetus’ defense of his positions before the court — peevishly remarked that he would have liked to see the Spaniard’s eyes scratched out by chickens.
Servetus was convicted and sentenced to be burned at the stake. To his credit, perhaps, Calvin expressed a preference for quick and merciful decapitation. This did not prevent him later, however, from mocking Servetus’ cries of torment amid the flames.
‘For I do not disguise it that I considered it my duty to put a check so far as I could, upon this most obstinate and ungovernable man, that his contagion might not spread further.
John Calvin. Letter Regarding Servitus
September 1553
Nice guy, that John Calvin
More Strange Tales from the Reformation here:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/03/10/the-reformation/
dj
John Calvin
The most important figure in the next generation of Reformers was, of course, John Calvin. As a young man in Paris, Calvin was active in the movement for reform within the Catholic Church, as a result of which he found it prudent to leave France in 1533. He went to Basel in Switzerland, where he came to adopt a more purely Protestant view of things. From 1536 to 1538 he lived in Geneva, where he worked on behalf of the city’s nascent reformation until the (Protestant, but tepidly so) city council expelled him. He sojourned in Strasbourg, Germany until 1541,when Geneva invited him to return to help overcome the city’s resistance — or indifference to the Reformed cause.
In Geneva, Calvin was able — despite occasional conflict arid failure to create a Church organization and social order consonant with his theological vision. Churches were run by elders, duly constituted pastors preached and taught, and deacons looked after the needs of the community. Moreover, the Genevans’ morals were now matters not only of social concern hut of criminal law: licentiousness, dancing, gambling, profane speech, improprieties of dress or comportment, irreverence or blasphemy, absence from church and all other forms of moral laxity were to be reported by community invigilators and punished by magistrates, often in a vividly public way. And false doctrine was not to be tolerated.
These measures point to certain profound differences between the Lutheran and Calvinist understandings of grace. Luther might well have regarded many of Calvin’s vice laws as signs of an excessive anxiety regarding personal righteousness, and even as a form of justification by works. Calvin, though, believed that the gift of justification really makes men and women righteous, and that any society made up of the elect should reflect the sanctity instilled in human hearts by grace, as evidence of God’s workings.
In most respects, the elements of Calvin’s theology were typically Protestant: the unique authority of scripture, the absolute gratuity of justification, the impotence of the human will to merit salvation, the uselessness of fasts and penances, and predestination.
In this last case, though, Calvin’s emphasis differed from that of Luther. No other theologian ever put so great a stress upon the sheer sovereignty of God, as an explanation of the mystery of God’s actions in creation and redemption. He went so far as to assert that God eternally foreordained even the original fall of humanity from grace, that he might by the working of his will display the glory of his sovereignty in the gratuitous salvation of the elect and in the fitting damnation of the derelict. This theology of absolute divine sovereignty became one of the most characteristic features of the high Reformed tradition.
The Curious Case of Michael Servetus
Whatever the Magisterial Reformation was, it certainly was not a movement for greater freedom of conscience — much less freedom of religion. The aim of reform was a stricter adherence to the rule of scripture (as interpreted by reforming theologians) and a renewal of piety and moral purpose among the faithful. But Protestant regimes were no more tolerant of aberrant theological opinions than were their Catholic counterparts.
Prime evidence of this would be the case of Michael Servetus (c. 1510-53), the Spanish physician, scholar of science, astrologer, discoverer of blood circulation and amateur theologian who — though a Catholic and attracted to the cause-of reform — offended against Protestant and Catholic orthodoxy alike by publishing two books (the first in 1531 ,the second in 1532) attacking the doctrine of the Trinity. and proposing in its place a kind of complex Unitarianism.
In 1534, a proposed debate in Paris between Servetus and John Calvin failed to -materialize, but Servtus clearly came in the years that followed to regard Calvin as his natural theological interlocutor. In 1546, he sent the manuscript of his treatise ‘The Restoration of Christianity’(which attacked Nicene theology as extra biblical) to Calvin in Geneva and attempted to initiate a dialogue by post. After a few exchanges, however; Calvin terminated the correspondence and even refused to return the manuscript: he also vowed to his fellow Genevan reformer Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) that, if Servetus ever came to Geneva, he would not be allowed to leave alive.
Calvin was as good as his word. In 1553, Servetus fleeing the inquisitor in Lyon entered Geneva where he was recognized, arrested and put on trial for heresy. Calvin argued forcefully in favor of execution, and — enraged by Servetus’ defense of his positions before the court — peevishly remarked that he would have liked to see the Spaniard’s eyes scratched out by chickens.
Servetus was convicted and sentenced to be burned at the stake. To his credit, perhaps, Calvin expressed a preference for quick and merciful decapitation. This did not prevent him later, however, from mocking Servetus’ cries of torment amid the flames.
‘For I do not disguise it that I considered it my duty to put a check so far as I could, upon this most obstinate and ungovernable man, that his contagion might not spread further.
John Calvin. Letter Regarding Servitus
September 1553
Nice guy, that John Calvin
More Strange Tales from the Reformation here:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/03/10/the-reformation/
dj
