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Calvin

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This is a great sympathetic, yet critical, tour through the life of one of the great Christian theologians. Gordon successfully sets Calvin in his humanistic setting, pointing out how much of Calvin's work was part and parcel of renaissance reform movements. While today the name of Calvin dominates the field of 2nd generation Reformers, in his own day he was one among many, Gordon faithfully portrays this fact. Great book, well written.

A biography of John Calvin is of necessity a history of his time. The religious landscape of Europe during Calvin's lifetime [1509-1564] was most complex in terms of grassroots pastoral piety, theological exploration, and international relations. And then there is Calvin: his own religious journey, from French Catholic reformer to Protestant patriarch. There is the corpus of Calvin's theological thought and writing, enduring and controversial to this day. And finally, there is the matter of Calvin's ecclesiology: what structural and communal body of belief and practice did he leave his followers. Bruce Gordon has produced an eminently readable and highly manageable general study of these questions in producing a remarkable introduction to John Calvin for the informed reader with at least a basic grasp of Reformation dynamics.

As Robert Bireley has narrated in his fine work, "The Refashioning of Catholicism 1450-1700," [1999] the spirit of church reform was not the exclusive provenance of Luther. Grassroots outcroppings of lay spirituality emerged side-by-side with wholesale reform of many existing Catholic religious orders to improve the tenor of church life by 1500. It is not surprising, then, that the young Catholic Calvin would by his early adulthood identify himself as an apostle of reform. but as Gordon observes, reformist Catholics in France had nowhere to lay their heads in the face the crown's opposition to Luther and seminal Protestant uprisings of independence on the continent.

Calvin began his studies in theology but turned instead to law. A true humanist of the time, he immersed himself in the Roman philosopher Seneca. At some point in 1533 the Protestant conviction that the papacy was beyond repair was embraced by Calvin, though at this early time such French converts did not as yet have ecclesiastical bodies to align with. Like many of his mindset, Calvin remained a vocal and prolific voice of change within Catholicism until his writings and other agitations made his life in Catholic France intolerable. In 1534 he moved to a more affable setting in Switzerland.

Switzerland's Protestant reform was rich in zeal but poor in unity. Each of its major cities hosted major proponents of Protestant reformed theology. The major overarching conflict upon Calvin's arrival was the significant tension between Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli, with the latter advocating a much more radical abandoning of traditional church life than Luther. Gordon pays close attention to the various points of contestation elaborated by such theological masters as Bucer, Oecolampadius, Melancthon, Erasmus, and others, and he rightly distinguishes Calvin as a theologian with a long view of the future, and the realization that if Protestant reform was to survive, it must be united.

As Gordon chronicles Calvin's life, it becomes clear that Calvin cannot pull together the Christian church. But it is not for lack of trying. As is often the case with great thinkers of all disciplines, Calvin's most lasting contribution to Christianity was written in his relative youth, his "Institutes of Christian Religion." In this work, revised several times during his lifetime, Calvin outlines what might be called reformist ecclesiology for the first time. He weaves together doctrinal foundations, church structure, and personal piety. It is in this work that we come across his controversial definition of "predestination." Gordon's handling of the question is eminently clear and lucid. Calvin believed in what one might term "a double call." The Institutes sites Old Testament metaphor, noting that while Esau and Jacob are both of the chosen people, Jacob had been chosen before birth for special election. On its face Calvin's theory did not convince me, but it may have made more sense at the time of his writing when all warring Christian parties could claim the blessing of baptism but not all, at least in Calvin's eyes, were worthy of eternal election.

Calvin, of course, is historically identified with the city of Geneva. As a young man with zeal and perhaps restless disregard, he took the pulpit as a layman in the company of close and equally outspoken fellow warriors. Theological and personal conflicts led to his discharge from ministerial duties, but he would be invited back by the city magistrates a few years later. Gordon notes that upon his return Calvin was charged with creating a church order that would satisfy divergent expectations in Geneva. Calvin never "mellowed" strictly speaking, but age brought him a greater sense of his personal charism in the pulpit and his organizational role as leader.

Thus, Calvin's ministerial persona was centered on preaching. While he defended a modified sacramental system, it is very clear that the preaching of the Bible and its moral implications for personal and civil life was the fulcrum of ecclesiology and ministerial identity. Gordon describes Calvin as a highly respected preacher, whose sermons did not hesitate to address matters of public conduct and controversy. One gets the impression that he was greatly revered if not greatly loved in Geneva.
It is equally clear from the text that Calvin, whatever he might say about Catholic orders, functioned as a bishop. He fully embraced a magisterial role for the reformed church throughout Europe. This is evident in his recruitment and support of reform missionaries for work in Catholic France, for example, where many of his missionaries came to ultimate cruel martyrdom. Calvin was criticized for not joining them in France, but he defended himself on the grounds that his life was too important for the life of the church as a whole. ["Strike the shepherd, and the sheep scatter."] Clearly, Calvin was neither a Congregationalist nor a mystic. Gordon repeatedly underscores Calvin's identification with St. Paul--theologian and definitely churchman.

Gordon is not sentimental about Calvin, but the thought occurs that the reformed church's first true shepherd resembles in many aspects the Catholic Ignatius of Loyola. By his straightforward rendering of the story, Gordon has made the case for the tragedy and cost of disunion.

This book is not an easy read. However, in the end, it is a rewarding read. This book is hard to start out, as there is little recorded about Calvin's early life, and the author is interested in really setting the stage in which Calvin grows up. A confusingly large number of names becomes easier to manage as you progress through the book and see certain people come to the front of Calvin's life and the time period. The book is not entirely in an entirely chronological format; instead, in a generally chronologically manner, with a good bit of overlap, the author tackles major events in Calvin's life, many of which took place over many years. This is a great book for learning about both Calvin, and about the Reformation during his lifetime. One of the more interesting things that really came through a lot was the struggle & cooperation between church & state at a time when the two governments were largely held to be in many ways one. It provided some food for thought: considering what the good points of a system like that are, and what are the bad points. In the end, it does seem that the bad out-weighs the good, as even I, as a Reformed (Calvinist) Baptist, would be considered a heretic by Calvin because I'm not a pado-baptist.

Calvin, authored by Bruce Gordon (professor of Reformation history at Yale Divinity School) was a book I had been looking forward to reading for some time. Its publication date was back in 2009, so my interest in the book had been brewing for a while, in part because of its subjectcthe great sixteenth century theologian John Calvin, and also the high recommendations it had received from the likes of Tim Challies, who regards it as among the best biographies of Calvin. Further, the book was also among Timfs gtop 9 books read in f09. Perhaps the expectation was set too high when I picked up the book and started reading it.

I have been doing a fair amount of reading lately, but this was the first biography I had read in a while, and this book reminded me why that is the case. They are just not my cup of tea. Stated very simply, I did NOT enjoy reading this book. It was a labor to plow through, and I was never so happy to see the final chapter of a book as I was with this one. None of that is to say that this is a horrible book. It was very informative, and I did learn a great deal about its subject. And I will give Tim Challies the benefit of the doubt when he says this is an outstanding biography of Calvin. I certainly will not be challenging him by reading another.

My specific complaint was that the approach Gordon took was to not trace the life of Calvin in a sequential fashion, from young to old with all the details in between. Instead, his approach was to reveal Calvin in a variety of different contexts with relatively little concern over their date sequence. Or perhaps more clearly stated, the contexts demanded that there be a repeating timeline where we see Calvin over and over again in the period from the 1530s to the 1560s. It is not that this approach was confusing, instead it was just frustrating in the sense that the whole book seemed to have a circular flow, never making much progress forward, just looping back around to examine another context during a period of time you had already examined with respect to another context. Some who are fond of biographies may have found this approach refreshing. While it left me informed, it was not without frustration.

To Gordonfs credit, he revealed Calvin in what seemed like an unbiased and even unvarnished manner, demonstrating both the theologianfs brilliance, determination and passion for the sovereignty and grace of God, along with his cranky manner, dogmatism, sometimes even spiteful interpersonal relationships. Another positive for the book is that Gordon also managed to provide helpful looks at a number of Calvinfs contemporaries, usually, as they interacted with the man.

I am glad I finally read this book. That said, I am even more glad to have it behind me. If you are inclined to read a biography of John Calvin, read Tim Challies review and roll the dice based on your impression from him, not from my delight that I can now move on to something else.

The book does a reasonably good job of covering Calvin's background and humanizing this theologian who is so often considered a monster. The material dealing with the execution of the troublesome Servetus is handled very well. I was disappointed that the book said nothing about Calvin's relations with the Anabaptists, especially his objections to their view of baptism.

Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2009)
This is one of a spate of Calvin biographies to have been published in 2009, the 500th year of John Calvin's birth, in France. While I have read no other biographies of Calvin, comparing this to the two each I've read of Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, I suspect this volume is not a definitive Calvin biography, and that we can hope that a more thorough one is in the works or hidden in the dust of time on library shelves. This volume has the advantage over the other four 2009 volumes I've seen of being the longest, and the one written by an historian rather than a theologian (that has some drawbacks as well as advantages). The book is an easy read, since it deals primarily with political narrative rather than theological content. The main problem with this is that it is on his theological writings that Calvin's enduring place in the history of Christianity is based.

Overall, I fall between the two other principal reviewers in welcoming this work, but sensing that someone can still do better.

Calvin is the star of the Reformed Protestant movement (antecedent of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches), and, if you will excuse such a popular comparison, he is the Rolling Stones to Martin Luther's Beatles, except that Calvin was in the second generation of reformers. He was a contemporary of Luther's young Wittenberg colleague, Phillip Melanchthon. He followed in the wake of the leading Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli of Zurich and Calvin's mentor, Martin Bucer of Strasbourg.
This is one reason my Lutheran inclinations were bruised a bit when Gordon begins his preface with `John Calvin was the greatest Protestant reformer of the sixteenth century, brilliant, visionary and iconic. The superior force of his mind was evident in all that he did.' I concede virtually everything in that statement except `...greatest...', as it was clear to Calvin as to everyone else on the stage at that time that Calvin, Bucer, Bullinger, Melanchthon, and all the others stood on the shoulders of Luther (and Zwingli). Calvin was certainly the greatest theologian of the era, followed by Bullinger and Melanchthon. Luther, with his enormous volume of writing, was less the theologian than he was Biblical scholar and polemicist. (One of the more interesting discoveries I made in this book was the relative importance at that time of Martin Bucer and Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli's successor in Zurich, ally in political matters with Calvin, and second only to Calvin among Swiss Reformed theologians.)
It is probably only a small coincidence that both Calvin and Luther began in the study of law. In the early Renaissance, that was one of only three major professions which offered secure advancement and financial reward, along with medicine and theology. But Calvin advanced much further along in his studies. While Luther was distracted into the church by the famous experience with lightning, Calvin was distracted from the law to a career as a scholar and translator, attracted by the career of that other northern Renaissance giant, Desiderius Erasmus. Calvin's first published work (in 1531) was a commentary on the Roman Seneca's (the Younger) De clementia, a treatise written for the emperor Nero, encouraging the virtue of clemency in a ruler. Erasmus had just published such a work in 1529. Calvin's volume fell stillborn from the presses, in spite of his intense emulation of Erasmus' technique of quoting ancient sources.
Following Calvin's conversion to Reformed theology, his first theological work was a Biblical meditation, Psychopannychia, which set out a theme Calvin followed throughout his life, `...the Christian life as a pilgrimage through the world towards eternity...' using the Biblical examples of Job and Abraham as models for that journey. `Death was a joyful release from the pain and suffering of the world...God (is) ...the source of all goodness and in whom there is certainty'. While Calvin's inner life as depicted in this book does not seem to exhibit the Sturm und Drang of Luther's bouts with doubt, the two men certainly shared this sense, which must have loomed far larger to these men in a world of nearby war, plague, and unrest than it does to us today.
It should not be too surprising that the first edition of the work for which Calvin is best known today, his Institutes of the Christian Religion, was first published in Basel, in 1536, and was heavily influenced by Martin Luther's Small Catechism of 1522 and Large Catechism of 1529. Like Luther's works, this edition was instruction on `...the Law, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the sacraments of the LORD's Supper and Baptism.' The sense of the title is lost on us, because it is based on Roman usage by writers such as Quintilian and Lactantius, a usage followed by both Erasmus and Luther in their works. The work underwent many revisions until, in 1559, his final Latin and French edition was a major theological work where `God is revealed in the created order and all humans possess some sense of the divine. Through the theatre of glory, God, the supreme being beyond all comprehension, is knowable. This knowledge strips humanity of any excuse for not acknowledging God, but it is not sufficient for salvation. Scripture is essential to reveal God's redeeming action. God can only be known through Jesus Christ, who is revealed in the Bible....humans can be saved only by external help, and that is the work of Jesus Christ. ...the law...addresses three forms: it teaches, it is used to control the community, and it instructs the faithful to submit to the will of God.' This edition summarizes the results of long, bitter struggles with both the Lutherans and other Swiss on the nature of communion. Calvin, like Melanchthon (in his 1555 Loci communes), was a master of theological instruction, and his lucid exposition has much to do with his enduring influence. This may be one of the main fruits of the Renaissance, as the work is influenced by the writings of Plato and Cicero rather than by the Medieval schoolmen.
The frequent revisions to the Institutes reflects the fact that Calvin's career seems like a constant struggle over both theological and ecclesiological issues with both the Swiss reformers (Calvin is always referred to as `the Frenchman) in Basal, Zurich, and Berne; Spanish, French, and Italian writers; and Luther's heritage among the Wittenberg professors. The extent to which all this spilled over into civil unrest makes it clear why, 250 years later, the authors of the American constitution wrote in both religious freedom and the separation of church and state.
Rather than clarifying the picture we have of the roots of the Reformation, this book makes it clear that it is more complicated than `Luther and everyone who came after him'.
It is rather surprising that in a book by the Yale University press, I found at least three typographical errors and a date which was off by 100 years. This may be a symptom of rushing the book out to make the year of Calvin's 500th anniversary. I am also just a bit suspicious of the author's description of Protestant reformers as `humanists', as their world view is distinctly different from the classic early humanist, Erasmus.

I had high expectations of this - but I would say my expectations were not quite met - I was disappointed - I felt that the author brought too much personal baggage to the table (particularly in the first half) to make it an exceptional biography. To be fair to the author though - Calvin is a tough subject matter to remain impartial on. This book is not without merit though, as there were a number of themes running through it which I found helpful. I will touch on these later in the review.

Let me make it clear - I am not approaching this stone cold turkey - I have a number of Bible commentaries of Calvin's that I have worked through at various times since becoming a Christian - they have been greatly edifying to me. I have also on occasion referred to Calvin's Institutes of the Christian religion.

Calvin can be one of those touchstone individuals - you could put him perhaps in the same bucket as Oliver Cromwell or Martin Luther, Thomas Cranmer or any Pope come to think of it. Throughout the history of biographies on such individuals there has been an almost magnetic tendency to bring ones personal outlook to the table and add it to the mix - tainting an otherwise objective biography with personal pre texts. To some degree I think that this is unavoidable with a character like John Calvin - particularly given the lack of personal information there is about him.

In the preface Gordon stresses that he wrote this book for the average reader - he also makes it clear that he has made great efforts to avoid overly technical theological language. With this in mind I found some of his comments fell short of the Biblical worldview which Calvin promoted.

Here are a couple of examples which I believe very subtly downgrade the Sovereignty of God which was central to Calvin's theology; firstly Gordon accused Calvin (P27) of taking the congenial bits of Philosophy and Christianizing them - big call - he then states that the impact of Calvin's legal training on his theology was enormous (P28) - both of these are quirky things to say of Calvin who boasted in the total sovereignty of God.

Also when talking of Calvin's documented conversion the author comes to the following conclusion as to why he said he had been brought up in the church;

In saying that he had been brought up in the Church, Calvin wanted to indicate that his was not a conversion to the Christian life from nothing. P 35

So where's the total depravity there?

Okay so now that I've given you some of the detractors - there are some positives.

Firstly Gordon's strengths lie in setting the scene for Calvin - he knows his history - and expresses himself well.

Secondly it was really helpful to see the impact of others in the same era as Calvin - men who I haven't read a lot about (but should) men such as Bucer, Melanchthon, Bullinger, Zwingli (and Beza). These guys are rarely mentioned but they had a massive impact during the reformation.

Thirdly I also have a greater appreciation for Calvin's Institutes - which I previously thought were written once by Calvin - I now realised that these were continually refined over his whole life and represented for him a living document of his belief. I think they in themselves are one reason why Calvin is so deeply appreciated in many Christian circles today. The Good Book aside - they are one of the most comprehensive statements on the Christian faith available to man.

Fourthly I appreciated Gordon's portrayal of the character of Calvin - although at times a tad subjective it was refreshing as compared to many Christian authors who feel obliged to "smooth over the cracks" and wax lyrical over the character of a man who like all Sons of Adam was a dirty rotten sinner.

Ok so there you have it - I think at the end of the day - whilst this book is helpful to read - it certainly is nuanced - I would also encourage the reader to read the Institutes and some of his commentaries if they want to know Calvin better.

The new book by Bruce Gordon is a scholarly yet highly readable account of the Reformer. It will add to the accessible books on him in this special year. The book is well printed and the illustrations of good quality.

"Calvin" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Gordon's book interview ran here as the cover feature on April 21, 2010.