The Root of It All
I just finished Alistair McGrath's A Life of John Calvin. It is appropriately named--it is hardly a full-fledged biography of the man, but to be honest, he wasn't someone who wrote a great deal about himself, definitely not the celebrity Luther was. I still say if I could sit down with any historical figure in the last millennium it would be Luther (with an interpreter). But McGrath makes a good case for Calvin's influence being more long-term than Luther's at least in terms of politics and the economy.
If there is one thing I like to study it is "where do ideas come from?" and Calvin is the person to study if one wants to understand the root of it all type questions. This means that if I'm serious I would have to tackle the Institutes. McGrath makes several arguments:
1. Calvin was who we was because of Geneva. This is as much a book about Geneva, Swiss urban life, Renaissance humanism, and French society as about Calvin.
2. Calvin and Calvinism are related but not the same; Calvinism is an interpretation of the Institutes a generation or two or three after Calvin's death.
3. The time for the Reformation, both from Calvin's and Luther's ends of it, was ripe--they were both in the right place at the right time.
4. Calvin was a lot more open-minded (even about biblical inerrancy and predestination) than we are led to believe. Personally, I had a little trouble with this one. McGrath interprets Calvin's accommodationist view of revelation to mean that the Genesis accounts were essentially simplifications for the "backward" people of that time--implying that Calvin wouldn't have had a problem with Darwin. This is a big stretch. Holding that the six-day creation is a way to explain the complexity of creation to human minds is a long way from accepting evolution. It's hard to see McGrath's position as saying anything other than that Calvin held the book of Genesis as untruthful. I also got the impression that Calvin,like Luther, was anti-Semitic, although it doesn't come up in this book. McGrath quotes his passages that seem to denigrate the Jews and the Old Testament. So, I have to come to the conclusion that McGrath is trying to defend Calvin to a post-Enlightenment audience and does so by ignoring some things or recasting some others. But I still liked the book and learned a great deal of it. He himself says that historians have axes to grind!
5. Weber didn't quite get it right in terms of Protestant work ethic. Calvin didn't lead to capitalism--it was already around. He led to modern capitalism, well, pre-Industrial Revolution capitalism, sans the laissez faire part.
6. Luther's intellectual influence was not as long-lasting as Calvin's.
7. France was far more Protestant than I thought in the 16th century. When the aristocracy ran off the Huguenots, they ... did a bad, bad thing. I would have to conclude that was a seminal act in French history.
8. Predestination was not all that important or central to Calvin; it came from his interpreters who were trying to cast a theological system, a la Aristotelianism, in the next century.
I have to wonder if Calvinism is the exact opposite of Romanticism. Thought to explore. One thing for sure. What I thought I knew about Calvin, which wasn't much, was pretty much wrong.
If there is one thing I like to study it is "where do ideas come from?" and Calvin is the person to study if one wants to understand the root of it all type questions. This means that if I'm serious I would have to tackle the Institutes. McGrath makes several arguments:
1. Calvin was who we was because of Geneva. This is as much a book about Geneva, Swiss urban life, Renaissance humanism, and French society as about Calvin.
2. Calvin and Calvinism are related but not the same; Calvinism is an interpretation of the Institutes a generation or two or three after Calvin's death.
3. The time for the Reformation, both from Calvin's and Luther's ends of it, was ripe--they were both in the right place at the right time.
4. Calvin was a lot more open-minded (even about biblical inerrancy and predestination) than we are led to believe. Personally, I had a little trouble with this one. McGrath interprets Calvin's accommodationist view of revelation to mean that the Genesis accounts were essentially simplifications for the "backward" people of that time--implying that Calvin wouldn't have had a problem with Darwin. This is a big stretch. Holding that the six-day creation is a way to explain the complexity of creation to human minds is a long way from accepting evolution. It's hard to see McGrath's position as saying anything other than that Calvin held the book of Genesis as untruthful. I also got the impression that Calvin,like Luther, was anti-Semitic, although it doesn't come up in this book. McGrath quotes his passages that seem to denigrate the Jews and the Old Testament. So, I have to come to the conclusion that McGrath is trying to defend Calvin to a post-Enlightenment audience and does so by ignoring some things or recasting some others. But I still liked the book and learned a great deal of it. He himself says that historians have axes to grind!
5. Weber didn't quite get it right in terms of Protestant work ethic. Calvin didn't lead to capitalism--it was already around. He led to modern capitalism, well, pre-Industrial Revolution capitalism, sans the laissez faire part.
6. Luther's intellectual influence was not as long-lasting as Calvin's.
7. France was far more Protestant than I thought in the 16th century. When the aristocracy ran off the Huguenots, they ... did a bad, bad thing. I would have to conclude that was a seminal act in French history.
8. Predestination was not all that important or central to Calvin; it came from his interpreters who were trying to cast a theological system, a la Aristotelianism, in the next century.
I have to wonder if Calvinism is the exact opposite of Romanticism. Thought to explore. One thing for sure. What I thought I knew about Calvin, which wasn't much, was pretty much wrong.
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