John Calvin, father of Calvinism

Nowadays, many people know more about the cartoon characters Calvin and Hobbes than John Calvin of Geneva fame. Ironically, the cartoon Calvin was intentionally based on the original John Calvin.

In 1529, John Calvin expressed contempt for the ‘gospellers’, the French Huguenots, seeing them as a heretical movement which would damage the French Church. He was strongly tempted as a matter of duty to turn in his Huguenot friend Pierre Roberts to the French authorities. But he didn’t.

One day, while still in France, an old man grabbed him, saying “Young man, have you heard of God’s free gift?” A week later, he watched that same man being burned at the stake while calmly singing ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God.’  This brought about ‘a sudden conversion’ to Calvin’s resistant heart.  He later wrote: “God subdued my heart to docility, which had become hardened against the truth of the gospel.” This began a journey for Calvin of humbly surrendering again and again, often very reluctantly to the sovereign will of God.  “Calvin,” said JI Packer, “was transformed by conversion to become a God-centered, God-mastered, God-honouring man who bowed humbly to God’s will and listened humbly to God’s Word.”

Born in 1509 in Noyon, France, Calvin was a second-generation Church reformer. His original French name was Jehan Cauvin. Calvin or Calvinus was his Latinized name. Luther was already 25 years old when Calvin was born. They never met nor communicated directly with each other.

Calvin’s mother, Jeanne le Franc, died before he was twelve years old. He had three brothers, all who were encouraged by their father Gerard to study for the priesthood. Everyone expected that John would also become a priest, like his older brother Charles.

Calvin’s father was a church lawyer. At the age of 12, Calvin was tonsured and admitted to be the clerk to the Bishop, similar to his father’s position. At College de La March, Calvin was trained in Latin and rhetoric. Then he moved to the College de Montague to learn Philosophy.  

Everything changed when his dad Gerard was excommunicated because of alleged underhanded dealings in connection with the estate of two priests.  He died two years later in disgrace. If it were not for the older brother Charles’ intervention, his father Gerard would not have even been buried in holy ground. This family tragedy resulted in John Calvin switching to the Universities of Orleans and Bourges to become a lawyer rather than a priest. As a renaissance humanist, Calvin loved studying the bible in the original Greek and Hebrew. In contrast, the Sorbonne Theological Faculty in Paris condemned and declared the study of Greek and Hebrew as irrelevant for understanding the bible.

In 1532, Calvin published his first book, a commentary on Seneca’s “De Clementia,” where he controversially argued that the lex (law) is above the rex (king).  France at the time was an absolute monarchy, based on the doctrine of the divine right of kings to do whatever the King wanted. While in France, Calvin ghostwrote an inaugural address on justification by grace through faith in 1533 for Nicholas Copp, the new Rector/President of the University of Paris. It caused such a stir that both Calvin and Copp had to flee for their lives. The French King Francis called them ‘cursed Lutherans.’ Calvin disguised himself as a peasant worker and later escaped to Basel, Switzerland (1533-1536).  

While in Basel, at age 27, Calvin anonymously wrote the bare basics of the Institutes of the Christian Religion.  It swept like wildfire through Europe.  No one knew who had written it. Addressed in Latin to King Francis, Calvin vainly tried to convince the King that the Huguenots were loyal to the Crown. JI Packer commented: “though the Institutio is a work of tremendous power, learning, and ability, a book that reveals a truly staggering intellectual grasp at every point, one cannot read a page of it without realizing that, for all its positiveness of assertion and sharpness in controversy, it is fundamentally a humble book.”

Calvin’s Institutes grew by 500 percent in length (from six chapters to eighty) during six revisions, until it became the most substantial theological work of the reformation. While defending infant baptism in the Institutes, Calvin developed a rich covenant theology of grace. In order to reach his own people, he translated the Institutes in 1541 into French. His French translation even shaped the formation of the French language itself. Calvin commented: “I laboured at the task [writing The Institutes] especially for our Frenchmen, for I saw that many were hungering and thirsting after Christ and yet that only a few had any real knowledge of him.” Packer said: “The readability of (Calvin’s Institutes), considering its size, is remarkable…Calvin’s Institutes is one of the wonders of the literary world, of the spiritual world, and of the theological world.”

A war between King Francis of France and Emperor Charles V led Calvin to go to Geneva, Switzerland, for one night rather than go directly to Strasbourg. Calvin was determined to study in privacy in some obscure place, certainly not Geneva, Switzerland. Fellow French reformer William Farel began to curse him, resulting in Calvin fearfully staying in Geneva: “I felt as if God in heaven had laid his mighty hand upon me to stop me in my course – and I was so stricken with terror that I did not continue my journey.”

Just weeks before Calvin entered Geneva, the city council had officially adopted the Protestant Reformation, an action encouraged by their protector city of Berne, Switzerland. Because Geneva was French-speaking, many French Huguenot refugees flocked there, doubling the size of the city.

Calvin never had a ‘honeymoon’ phase in his first two years of ministry in Geneva. Rather at age 27, he was the classic angry young man, bold, untrained, and unwise in navigating human relations, acting at times like an inflexible bull.  His enemies, known as the Libertines who controlled the Town Council, felt that they could promote wild, licentious living and still receive communion. The conflict came to a head on Easter Sunday 1538 when Calvin refused to serve unleavened communion bread to them as mandated by the Town Council. He was given three days to leave. Looking back at those two difficult years in Geneva, Calvin said, “I can truly testify that not a day passed in which I did not long for death ten times over.”

Escaping to Strasbourg, his next three years were times of much growth and maturing, being mentored by the older and wiser Martin Bucer. Calvin confessed to Bucer that he struggled with the wild beast of anger. Also, while in Strasbourg, he married Idolette Dubure in 1540, a widow with two children.  He had earlier commented: “If I take a wife, it will be because, being better freed from numerous worries, I can devote myself to the Lord.” Calvin was not a natural romantic, commenting: “The only beauty that allures me is this that she be chaste, not too nice or fastidious, economical, patient, and likely to take care of my health.” He deeply cared for Idolette in their nine years of marriage. However, all their children died in infancy. When she died as well, he wrote: “I have been bereaved of the best companion, one who had it been so ordained would have willingly shared not only my poverty but even my death. During her lifetime, she was the faithful helper of my ministry.”

By 1541, the City Council begged Calvin to return to Geneva.  Of the four City Councillors who drove Calvin out, one had to be condemned to death for murder, one for forgery, one for treason, and the other died while trying to escape arrest.  Calvin wrote: “Rather would I submit to death a hundred times than to that cross (Geneva) on which I had to perish daily a thousand times over.” Calvin reluctantly returned to Geneva out of humble obedience to God: “when I remembered that I am not my own, I offered up my heart presented as a sacrifice to the Lord.”

Upon returning, Calvin went to his Genevan pulpit, picking up at the exact same spot in the bible where he had left off when kicked out three and a half years earlier. For the next 23 years, he preached over 4,000 scriptural sermons from that very pulpit.  An average of 1,000 of the 20,000 Genevans heard him preach every day.

Calvin was very shy, preferring to avoid the spotlight.  His ideal life was to be left alone so that he could participate in academic study, but God sovereignly had other ideas in mind. Unlike Martin Luther, he rarely used the first person singular. In contrast to his reputation as cold and rational, he felt things deeply, experiencing a profound heart transformation. Calvin didn’t merely know about God; he sought to know Him personally. His heart was aflame for God.

Most people did not love Calvin like they did Luther. While Luther was known to be vivacious and dynamic, the younger Calvin was more systematic and bookish. The clarity of Calvin’s writings, however, won countless people over after his death. He wrote 59 major theological works, and 4,000 letters. Calvin covered 75 percent of the bible in his 24 commentaries of the 39 books in the Old Testament, and commentaries on every New Testament book, except 2nd John, 3rd John, and the Book of Revelation.

Calvin established schools for children, so that they would be able to read the bible for themselves.  In 1559, he founded the Geneva Academy which trained clergy. By the time of Calvin’s death in 1564, there were 1,200 students in the college and 300 in the seminary. Scottish Reformer John Knox called this seminary ‘the most perfect school of Christ seen on earth since the days of the Apostles.’ Calvin’s students joked that their certificates served a dual purpose as a death certificate. It became known as Calvin’s school of death, because these refugee students felt called to go back to the very countries where they had been persecuted.  Calvin trained up and sent 1,300 Huguenot missionaries back to France, many of whom paid with their lives. By 1562, there were between 1,200 to 2,000 Protestant Churches in France. One third of the French nobility and three million citizens in France (10 percent of the population) became Huguenots. Currently, two million Huguenots/Protestants still live in France, with millions scattered throughout the world.

Calvin’s mentor Bucer was invited to England to help Archbishop Thomas Cranmer write the Anglican Prayer Book.  Calvin and Cranmer corresponded by letter. Bishop John Bale of England said: “Geneva seemed to me to be the wonderful miracle of the world; so many from all countries come together, as if it were to a sanctuary…joined only with the yoke of Christ and they live together so lovingly and friendly…”  Geneva was seen by many to be the most Christian city on earth.  Charles Spurgeon said that Calvin “propounded truth more clearly than any other man that ever breathed, knew more of Scripture, and explained it more clearly.”

With Luther’s death in 1546, Calvin became the prominent voice in Protestantism, leaving an indelible mark on Christianity and Western civilization. Concepts like individual responsibility, work ethic, and the separation of church and state can be traced back to Calvin’s ideas.

Contrary to modern misconceptions, Calvin did not burn Michael Servetus, the ‘father’ of Unitarianism, at the stake. He asked the Geneva City Council for clemency, but the Council tragically said ‘No’.  

Calvin struggled with lung problems, gout, and excruciating pain in his kidneys and bladder. Even years before his death, he was described as a skeleton covered with skin. Did he work himself to death? When confronted with the need to rest, Calvin commented: “What? Would you have the Lord find me idle when he comes?” He embodied both the strengths and excesses of the protestant work ethic, saying: ‘all these ailments muster in troops against me.’ He was often carried in a chair to preach because he was too weak to walk.

Calvin died at age 54 on May 27, 1564. At Calvin’s insistence, he was buried with no gravestone so that no one would put him on a pedestal. Luther, in contrast, was buried under the Wittenberg Church pulpit.

Presently, fifty million people in more than eighty countries identify as Reformed or Presbyterian. For Calvin, everything had to be humbly done for the glory of God. May all of us, like Calvin, be willing to do everything to the glory of God.