RITE AND REASON:This week will witness celebrations of the birth of one of the great Protestant reformers, John Calvin, writes BILLY KENNEDY
NEXT FRIDAY the Swiss border city of Geneva marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, a 16th-century Protestant reformer whose theology has greatly influenced much of Christian and secular thinking over recent centuries.
Calvinism was a progression of the Protestant Reformation begun by Martin Luther with his 95 theses at Wittenberg in October 1517 when he expounded the message of justification by faith and denounced Roman Catholic indulgences practices.
The theological direction charted by French-born scholar Calvin is deeply grounded in Presbyterianism and also impacts on Methodism, Congregationalism and Anglicanism, and even to attitudes within Catholicism.
Jean Cauvin or John Calvin was born on July 10th, 1509, at Noyon in the Picardie region of France. His father Gerard was local cathedral notary and registrar to the ecclestiastical court and John, after training as a humanist lawyer, left the Catholic Church in the 1520s.
This was a period of religious tension across Europe and, after a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel in Switzerland where, in 1536 at the age of 27, he published the first edition of his seminal work, Institutes of the Christian Religion, setting out the basic Protestant theological position.
This far-reaching document, written in five separate Latin editions and later in French translations, prompted an invitation to help reform the church in Geneva, but the city administrators spurned the ideas and Calvin was expelled. He headed for Strasbourg, where he ministered to a group of French Protestant refugees. His links with Geneva had not ended, however; he was invited back to lead the church there which he did with a reforming zeal that won him a reputation far beyond the confines of Switzerland and France.
Geneva and Strasbourg were at the crossroads of 16th-century Europe and were regularly visited by international diplomats, churchmen and academics. The Calvinist doctrines propounded there were soon radicalising religion across the continent.
Calvin, directly conveying his message not just from the pulpit of Geneva’s Cathedral of St Pierre but also as a prolific writer, introduced new forms of church governance with eldership structures and a liturgy that departed fundamentally from the rituals of the old Catholic order, vested in Roman practices.
He was personally influenced by the teachings of the Augustinian tradition of the fourth/fifth centuries and this led him to the exposition of the doctrine of predestination, which propagates the certainty of God’s absolute sovereignty in a person’s salvation.
This is among the most challenging doctrines in Christianity, with Protestant denominations tracing it to the New Testament teachings of the Apostle Paul and placing it as a central core of their justifying witness.
In Calvin’s lifetime Geneva became a mecca for Protestant theologians and students. For 20 years before his death on May 27th, 1564, he sought to evangelise Europe with his message finding a ready response from believers across the continent.
Most 17th and 18th century American settlers were Calvinists, including English Puritans, French Huguenots, Dutch peoples and the Ulster-Scots Presbyterians of the Appalachian backcountry. Calvinist missionaries also spread the doctrine to Africa.
Since those centuries secular governance around the world has come to be based on Calvinist principles of democracy and freedom of expression. Calvin wrote celebrated commentaries on the Old and New Testament and provided many foundational documents for Reformed churches, including documents on catechisms, liturgy and church governance.
Geneva in the 16th century was a city of intense spirituality and study – it was there that the concept of dividing the Bible into chapters was conceived. The 1560 Geneva Bible became a best-seller – it was the version taken by the Pilgrim Fathers to America and also the Bible used by William Shakespeare, John Bunyan (author of Pilgrim’s Progress), and Scottish Presbyterian John Knox.
John Calvin and his reforming doctrines were opposed by the Catholic Church and he was looked upon as a “heretic” by the then popes Paul III and Pius IV. However Catholicism has come to acknowledge John Calvin as “a Protestant divine”.
Ahead of the Geneva commemoration this week the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has praised Calvin as an “extraordinary figure” – “a Christian who had a major impact on European life”.
It described his as an “ingenious creation” which resisted “all the changes or revolutions of modern life”.
John Calvin left a lasting legacy which will be given impetus with the celebration of his works in Geneva this week.
Billy Kennedy is churches correspondent of the
News Letter
newspaper in Northern Ireland