John Kelvin

John Calvin

Introduction

The French Protestant reformer and humanist John Calvin (in Latin, Johannes Calvinus) developed the notion of holy community, a godly Christian society, which still exercises much influence on Protestant evangelical movements who strive to ground all spheres of life on God's word. For Calvin, the common goal of the Christian social organism, the glory of God, should be placed before the individual's interests. In this context there is a close affinity between Calvin and contemporary communitarianism, which stresses the social nature of individual rights and obligations (Prestwich, 1986).

Life and Works

Calvin was born in Noyon, Picardy, in France. He studied arts in Paris from 1521 to 1526; there he was introduced to humanistic scholarship and appeals to reform the church. On his father's insistence, he transferred into the University of Orléans in 1528 to study civil law. At the University of Orléans he became more familiar with the ideas of Humanism and of the Protestant reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546). Upon the death of his father in 1531, Calvin went back to Paris and returned to his first love—classics and theology (Muller, 2000).

Forced to flee France in 1535 because of his support for the ideas of the Protestant Reformation, he went to Basel, Switzerland, where he composed the Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), in which he set down his reformed belief and defended the cause of the persecuted French Protestants, or Huguenots. The book provided a massive account of Protestant doctrine and soon became the most important theological text of the Protestant Reformation. It was the Reformation's only genuine systematic theology and for that reason exerted extraordinary influence on future generations of theologians. In 1536, while passing through the city of Geneva, Calvin was persuaded by the minister Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) to assist in organizing the reformation in that city. Strong opposition from civil authorities led to his departure in 1538. He went to Strasbourg, staying there for three years, continuously revising his Institutes (Monter, 1967).

In 1541, Calvin was invited back to Geneva and during the next years devoted himself to establishing a theocratic regime there. The city adopted his ecclesiastical ordinances, which dealt with the form of church government, and accepted his view that ecclesiastical discipline should be placed in the hand of a consistory. This church-run moral and religious judiciary, a type of morals court with the power to impose spiritual penalties, was established in order to control the behavior of the entire population and to see that everyone accepted the Reformed doctrine and behaved in a godly, Christian way. By these means and others, Calvin transformed Geneva into Protestant Rome. In 1559, with the founding of the Genevan Academy for the education of theologians, the city became the center of international Protestantism (McNeill, 1962).

Holy Community

According to Calvin, life should be based on total obedience to God, whose moral order is declared in the scriptures. A wellordered Christian community results from a synthesis of rule, cooperation, and order emanating from the divine laws of God, and it ...