WHO IS JOHN CALVIN?

Portrait of John Calvin. Public domain.

There are few theologians whose legacy combines pervasive influence and searing controversy in the same degree as John Calvin. After all, Calvinism, the theological system of belief which bears the Reformer’s name, has had numerous prominent adherents (full or partial), (1) from Dutch Neo-Calvinists and statesmen such as Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck to the prominent Swiss Reformed theologian who stood against Nazism, Karl Barth. Calvinist theology lives on today in the Presbyterian tradition and various other church bodies, such as some Reformed and Baptist congregations. Calvin, himself a brilliant and highly trained thinker, authoritative and forceful public figure, and meticulous theological writer, is often remembered in the same breath as Martin Luther as one of the central figures of the Protestant Reformation.

The mention of Calvinism today may also prompt less favorable connotations. A group of largely Southern Baptist Convention pastors and thinkers including John Piper, Wayne Grudem, and John MacArthur have been popularly associated with Calvinism, especially within evangelical circles. These individuals’ espousal of complementarian gender roles, double predestination, and, in Grudem’s case, the questionable Trinitarian doctrine of eternal functional subordination (which argues that God the Son is eternally submissive to the Father, providing a basis for marital submission) (2) lead to erroneous assumptions about the theology of Calvin himself. And, to be sure, Calvin was no less polarizing a figure: he notoriously approved the execution in Geneva of Servetus for heresy, made troubling comments about women, and is popularly characterized as a dour and strident figure who possessed a sort of macabre glee at the concept of human souls’ damnation.

Are these sketches of Calvin fair? An examination of Calvin’s life certainly reveals a deeply flawed man, if one hardly unusually so amidst the religious and political figures of his day; his polemical statements and brash condemnations sound jarring to our ears but were quite commonplace in his milieu. Likewise, denunciations and killings of perceived heretics were ordinary fare in the religious landscape of the 16th century; as Bruce Gordon notes, heresy in the early-modern time was seen as a “moral error” which could compromise entire communities, and which both Catholicism and the fledgling Protestantism sought to establish themselves in opposition to. (3) Nevertheless, Calvin’s approval of Servetus’ execution is inescapably blameworthy, and the attitude displayed towards women in some of his writings is no less inexcusable. (4) Is Calvin, then, little more than a troubling precursor to the current brand of misogynists cloaked in Scripture who adopt his name? 

I argue that an examination of Calvin’s theology reveals a far more rigorous, pastoral, biblical, and orthodox thinker than one might expect from the appropriation of his name by individuals who do not as carefully emulate his theology. Calvin’s context, moreover, should be remembered: he was a religious refugee, forced to flee from both Paris and Geneva within his lifetime. (5) Geneva itself was a habitat for immigrants, receiving 7,000 of them between 1550 and 1562; as the population of Geneva was only about 10,000 near Calvin’s arrival, refugees came to account for a substantial portion of his congregants. (6) It is easy to forget Calvin’s identity as a refugee and a pastor to refugees, but scholars have increasingly noted pastoral themes of liberation and of God’s providential care for exiles as likely informed by his own context. (7)

First, let’s take a look at Calvin’s Trinitarian theology, particularly as it occurs within his doctrine of atonement. In addition to structuring his magnum opus of systematic theology, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, in a Trinitarian fashion, Calvin’s Trinitarian doctrine is steeped in the ancient creeds of the Trinitarian faith. (8) Following the Council of Chalcedon’s (451) insistence that the human and divine natures of Christ must be understood to exist without separation or confusion, (9) Calvin similarly contended for the divinity and distinctiveness of each divine Person, whilst emphasizing the unity of the one Triune God. (10) Calvin uses the Chalcedonian language of hypostasis in speaking of the persons of the Trinity, their relation, and distinction; he notes of the Triune persons, “in each hypostasis the whole divine nature is understood, with this qualification – that to each belongs his own peculiar quality”. (11) 

Calvin’s insistence on upholding both the distinctiveness as well as the unity of the Godhead is never more apparent than in his doctrine of atonement (detailing what Christ’s death accomplished); yet curiously, this is precisely where some of Calvin’s interpreters get him wrong. As I’ve written at greater length elsewhere for Earth & Altar, a common accusation levied against penal substitutionary atonement, which developed out of Calvin’s doctrine, is that it depicts God the Father as abusing God the Son on the cross in order to accomplish humankind’s forgiveness and redemption. (12) Such a splintered view of the Trinity is not supported by Calvin’s writings. (13) Calvin takes pains in his construal of atonement to emphasize both the Holy Spirit’s role throughout (Calvin asserts, with the epistle of Hebrews, that the Spirit was involved in Christ’s self-offering on the cross!) (14) and Christ’s agency and perfect willingness in offering himself. The Father did not force the Son onto the cross; all three Persons participated in the work. It is additionally worth noting that Calvin’s atonement theology is a far more comprehensive one than those who only view him as an advocate of penal substitution recognize. His language of Christ’s victory through atonement is not far afield from Luther’s, (15) and Calvin scholar Robert Peterson traces at least six atonement motifs within his thought. (16)

A second aspect of Calvin’s theology which engenders controversy is his articulation of double predestination. The view that God ordains both who will receive salvation and who will not has been so wildly unpopular that Calvin interpreters such as Randall Zachman imagine (perhaps based more on conjecture than Calvin’s writings) that Calvin must have comforted himself in the face of jeering congregants by assuring himself of God’s hatred of said parishioners and their future damnation. (17) On the contrary, Calvin considered predestination to be a pastoral doctrine of comfort, bestowing assurance of faith and an awareness of God’s grace upon those who embraced it. (18) Calvin emphasized the love and free grace of God as foregrounding election and salvation, (19) and taught that God would keep his people eternally secure. (20)

Calvin’s view of predestination is of a piece with his theology of divine providence, in which nothing happens by chance but rather by God’s governance and care over all creation and each individual within it; in this schema, even evil deeds are used by God for his sovereign purpose. (21) However, Calvin is careful to note that those who do injustice are still wholly responsible for their wicked acts. (22) God does not command evil; “rather we rush headlong” into sin, violating his laws. (23) God’s will “is a unity”—God’s use of evil for good does not mean that God secretly wills evil. God has a united, perfect will which causes all things to work together for good. (24) Therefore, in Calvin’s view, humans both act in deserving the judgement to which they are subject without Christ, and God is glorified by using their evil deeds for his own purposes, whilst ensuring ultimate justice. (25) Though those who do evil may be allowed to go unpunished for some time on earth and God’s people to suffer, God will ultimately bring about justice for the oppressed and condemn the wrongdoers. (26) Knowledge of God’s salvation of the elect in contrast to this judgment, Calvin insists, “illumines God’s grace” and robs humans of the ability to boast in their own efforts. (27) Though this construal of double predestination is undoubtedly not acceptable to all readers of this piece, it is nevertheless important to acknowledge that Calvin did not view this doctrine as a method of crowing over others from a place of superior election, but rather saw this doctrine as bestowing comfort and consolation, for it reveals both God’s abundant grace and perfect justice.

Calvin was a complex individual: a refugee, public leader, Protestant reformer, careful systematician and thinker. He was, as we have seen, a flawed man, some of whose decisions and views have indelibly colored his reception. While Calvin should be read discerningly, he nevertheless offers far more than either his detractors or some of the modern proponents of Calvinism represent. His theology, in fact, serves as an excellent corrective to those who adopt the title of Calvinist yet promote heretical views of a divided Trinity. Calvin shows us a better way: One God in three Persons, who sovereignly cares for all, including the outcast and refugee, who was in Christ’s very self the atonement we need, who acts in pure grace, and who will bring complete justice.

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1. As Richard Muller points out, the term ‘Calvinist’ is a clunky and at times obfuscating one, since so-called Calvinists have varied so widely in their retrieval of Calvin’s doctrine. Muller suggests that ‘Reformed’ is a far more accurate moniker for many of Calvin’s later interpreters. See Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: Volume One: Prolegomena to Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1987), 30.

2. C.f., Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology, Second Edition: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, 2nd edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2020), 250–51.

3. Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 217–18, 224.

4. For instance, Calvin’s treatment of Sarah and of Dinah in his commentary on Genesis, though his misogynistic comments are by no means limited to these. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1854), “Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis,” in.

5. Gordon, Calvin, 35–38, 78–81.

6. Robert Vosloo, “The Displaced Calvin: ‘Refugee Reality’ as a Lens to Re-Examine Calvin’s Life, Theology and Legacy,” Religion and Theology 16, no. 1–2 (January 1, 2009): 43, https://doi.org/10.1163/156973109X449994.

7. See Vosloo’s use of Dutch Theologian H. J. Selderhuis’ Calvijn als asielzoeker (Calvin as Asylum Seeker).Wheaton Professor Jenniffer Powell McNutt has also reflected on this theme in lectures and podcasts on Calvin. Vosloo, 45–47.

8. Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: Volume Four: The Triunity of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2003), 74.

9. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), II.xiv.1,4, pp. 482, 486–87.

10. Calvin, Institutes, 1: I.xiii.14-20, pp. 138–45.

11. Calvin, 1: I.xiii.19, p. 143.

12. “SUBSTITUTE, VICTOR, LIBERATOR: THE POSSIBILITIES OF A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ACCOUNT OF ATONEMENT FOR FEMINIST THEOLOGY - PART II,” Earth and Altar, accessed February 28, 2023, https://earthandaltarmag.com/posts/substitute-victor-liberator-the-possibilities-of-a-multi-dimensional-account-of-atonement-for-feminist-theology-part-ii.

13. See Myk Habets, The Anointed Son: A Trinitarian Spirit Christology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), 470-72 on Calvin's use of this doctrine.

14. Calvin, 1: II.xvi.6, p. 511.

15. C.f. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 26: Lectures on Galatians Chapters 1-4, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2007), 158–60.

16. Robert A. Peterson, Calvin and the Atonement (Fearn, Scotland: Mentor, 2009).

17. Randall C. Zachman, Reconsidering John Calvin (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 163–64, 170.

18. Charles Partee, The Theology of John Calvin (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 108.

19. Calvin, 2: III.xxi.5, p. 927.

20. Calvin, 2: III.xxiv.6, pp. 971–72.

21. Calvin, 1: I.xvi-xviii, pp. 197–237.

22. Calvin, 1: I.xvii.5, I.xviii.1-2, pp. 216–17, 229-32.

23. Calvin, 1: I.xvii.5, pp. 216–17.

24. Calvin, 1: I.xviii.3, pp. 232–34.

25. Calvin, 2: III.xxiii.6, pp. 953–54.

26. Calvin, 1: I.v.7, p. 60.

27. Calvin, 2: III.xxi.1, pp. 921–22.