30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bouwsma, the interdisciplinary historian, January 12, 2000
In John Calvin, a Sixteenth Century Portrait Bouwsma attempts to find the historical Calvin. In other words, he seeks to strip Calvin of all the baggage which he has picked up over the last few centuries and show his reader a real man, not just the cold, hard, tight lipped, iron fist of Geneva. As an interdisciplinary historian Bouwsma makes use of disciplines such as sociology and psychology to reach back into the sixteenth century and uncover the insecure, dual personality of John Calvin. This book suprised me. Bouwsma's Calvin is one I never met in the Reformed tradition. It is important to note, however, that Bouwsma is by no means the final word on Calvin. One of Bouwsma's mistakes, in my judgement, is that he seemed to interpret all of Calvin's thoughts and actions in light of his own psychological analysis of Calvin. This becomes problematic when, according to Bouwsma, Calvin's Sola Fide is only a result of his psychological uneasiness. Bouwsma completely disregards Calvin's Sola Scriptura and reverence for sacred scripture. He interprets Calvin's doctrines of election and predestination in a like fashion. Calvin, according to Bouwsma, had a deep need for order; God's election and predestination provided this order for Calvin. The elect and reprobate could never be mixed. Therefore, in a fundamental sense, the doctrines of election and predestination provide psychological peace for an otherwise frightened and undone Frenchman. Bouwmsa is just as interested in examining the sixteenth century as he is in finding Calvin within it. He uses Calvin as a figure to illustrate the century and he shows how the century sculpted the reformer. Bouwsma's interdisciplinary style of history, his extensive use of Calvin's commentaries, letters, sermons, and Institutes, and his readability make him a good read for all sorts of people, who may be looking for very different things from a study of the great reformer.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Calvin and the Sixteenth Century, September 17, 2003
William J. Bouwsma considers John Calvin the least known and most misunderstood of all the great figures of the sixteenth-century. Bouwsma's unique attempt to elucidate John Calvin for a contemporary thinker is contextually driven and methodologically persistent. John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait aims to read, understand, and interpret Calvin within his sixteenth-century setting.
In order to give the reader a clear picture of Calvin and through him the mood of his generation, Bouwsma begins with Calvin's anxiety. This aspect of Calvin's life gives the contemporary reader, in Bouwsma's opinion, the opportunity to get a glimpse of an anxiety-filled age. This approach allows Bouwsma, at least in theory, to understand Calvin even better than Calvin understood himself. Taken together, the external influences and internal struggles show Calvin as a man who saw himself in a world on the edge of a great calamity, even divine judgment.
This aspect of Calvin and his society is the point of departure for Bouwsma's major thesis: humanism is the umbilical cord between the "labyrinth" and the "abyss" in Calvin's thought. Bouwsma uses "labyrinth" to denote the safe, yet problematic philosophical worldview the Europeans inherited from the Hellenistic and Hebraic cultures. While these two worldviews were woven together with relative ease in antiquity, the Renaissance would unravel and lay bare the problem. Bouwsma believes Calvin has but a glimpse of this and knows that his sixteenth-century context is a labyrinth of dangers, but still safer than the "abyss" of doubt.
Bouwsma asserts that as Calvin tried to alleviate his anxieties he clung to certain assumptions inherent in the labyrinth. The issues brought forth by the labyrinth include the cosmological inheritances such as an intelligible universe, a cyclical view of time, and the imago dei. In addition to this view, Calvin continually strove for order through moderation, control, and high moralism. Finally, Calvin's "cultural baggage" in Geneva was his strict adherence to rational religion (i.e., the mind rules the other human faculties and is capable of grasping reality). Ultimately Calvin was unable find solace in the complexities of his inherited philosophical culture and sought an opening.
The opening for Calvin was Humanism. Here, Calvin found a way to hold to the eruditio while pursuing persuasio. The task of the preacher is not just to explicate the scriptures; it is also to move the listener to action. Humanistic rhetoric allowed Calvin to do this in a manner he found comfortable.
In a strange semantic twist Bouwsma's opening for Calvin finds its way into the "abyss" where a rhetorical culture had presuppositions about the human condition, the possibilities of knowledge, human experience of the world, and the organization of life. Bouwsma now uses "abyss" in a manner which left Calvin on the edge of an ambiguous unknown. What is human? What capacity do humans have for knowledge of God? What is God? What is the human role in the drama? Bouwsma treats these questions and more as he moves Calvin through the abyss.
Bouwsma concludes by looking at Calvin's programs as they appear in society, polity, and the church. Calvin's moderation is evident in his social thought and the power of God places the government in a subordinate position to the church. Bouwsma is aware that those fans of Calvin at either extreme might not be pleased with his account, yet he is quick to point out the complexities in Calvin that are often overlooked by both margins.
Bouwsma succeeds in offering a unique contribution to the corpus of Calvin scholarship. He takes a serious look at Calvin in his historical context while looking at Calvin's historical context through Calvin's eyes. This is achieved by extensive referencing of primary sources and pertinent secondary sources. Bouwsma weaves the abundance of quotations together in a surprisingly readable manner.
In light of widespread confusion and misunderstanding over Calvin and his thought, this book offers a "man behind the myth" picture of John Calvin. A related issue stems from the church audience to which Calvin continues to speak. Bouwsma's intended audience is of secondary importance here. The first section, "Quest for the Historical Calvin," is instrumental as a contextual compass. While this book is not intended for a small-group discussion or as a devotional aid, it is accessible to the average reader, thanks in large to the first fifty pages.
Two words of caution must be added to this review. Bouwsma does an outstanding job of giving a close-up of Calvin and a panoramic of the society, but does he get a glimpse of the local, the towns? What about Geneva and Strasbourg? Bouwsma inadequately treats the immediate physical setting and its relationship to Calvin's thought. He makes use of the events in Geneva and Strasbourg only in passing. It is clear that Calvin was influenced by the world at large. It also follows that he must have been greatly influenced by the events on his doorstep. Bouwsma only uses these events with reference to Calvin's continued struggle in feeling overwhelmed with work and frustration with the local polity. The additional information in this area would strengthen the book as a whole and portray a more accurate scene of Calvin in his context.
Second, at times Bouwsma's attempt to get a portrait of the sixteenth-century from Calvin's perspective paints an inaccurate picture of the relationship between the two. For example, Bouwsma uses "drama" as a window that the modern reader can see into Calvin and out toward the world. The weakness is that Calvin's relationship to drama was only an ostensible one. Drama, then, is a tool to introduce the role of the believer in Calvin's thought and then becomes a symbolic shape as the drama is "played out." If one is not careful he or she will miss the portrait for the background.
These two criticisms aside, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait is a great tool for any study of Calvin. One would do well to own it and use it.
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