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    John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography
    John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography
    John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography
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    John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography

    By Bruce Gordon

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    An essential biography of the most important book of the Protestant Reformation

    John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion is a defining book of the Reformation and a pillar of Protestant theology. First published in Latin in 1536 and in Calvin's native French in 1541, the Institutes argues for the majesty of God and for justification by faith alone. The book decisively shaped Calvinism as a major religious and intellectual force in Europe and throughout the world. Here, Bruce Gordon provides an essential biography of Calvin's influential and enduring theological masterpiece, tracing the diverse ways it has been read and interpreted from Calvin's time to today.

    Gordon explores the origins and character of the Institutes, looking closely at its theological and historical roots, and explaining how it evolved through numerous editions to become a complete summary of Reformation doctrine. He shows how the development of the book reflected the evolving thought of Calvin, who instilled in the work a restlessness that reflected his understanding of the Christian life as a journey to God. Following Calvin's death in 1564, the Institutes continued to be reprinted, reedited, and reworked through the centuries. Gordon describes how it has been used in radically different ways, such as in South Africa, where it was invoked both to defend and attack the horror of apartheid. He examines its vexed relationship with the historical Calvin—a figure both revered and despised—and charts its robust and contentious reception history, taking readers from the Puritans and Voltaire to YouTube, the novels of Marilynne Robinson, and to China and Africa, where the Institutes continues to find new audiences today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateMay 17, 2016
    ISBN9781400880508
    John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography
    Author

    Bruce Gordon

    About the Author Bruce Gordon’s adventures with flying and the military started when he first was taken aboard the Pan American Clipper during its first flight to Manila in 1935. He saw planes flying low over his home in Honolulu on December 7, 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He wore a life jacket as a 7-year-old refugee in a convoy from Honolulu to San Francisco. His junior high school years were in Hong Kong, where he heard stories of the Japanese conquest of the city. As the Chinese Communists approached Hong Kong in 1949, he was a refugee again, this time going to Massachusetts for high school and college. After AFROTC and graduating from Tufts University, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and went to pilot training. He flew the T-34, T-28, T-33, T-37, F-86, F-100, F-102, and F-106. He often carried his camera in his cockpit and took some remarkable photographs as he flew in Alaska, Korea, and during his 132 combat missions in Vietnam. After Vietnam, he put his experience with airborne radar to use at Air Force Systems Command at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, where he was in the Electronic Warfare Systems Program Office. An offer of good money took him to Saudi Arabia, where he managed a motor pool of 214 cars,56 buses, a “black fleet” of 8 limousines for VIPs, and three business jet aircraft. He returned to the USA and helped develop software systems to manage depot maintenance of Air Force aircraft and Army tanks. He retired to Kentucky, where he is the proud patriarch of a family of his wife, three children and six grandchildren.

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      Book preview

      John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion - Bruce Gordon

      LIVES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS

      John Calvin’s

      Institutes of the Christian Religion

      LIVES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS

      The Dead Sea Scrolls, John J. Collins

      The Bhagavad Gita, Richard H. Davis

      John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bruce Gordon

      The Book of Mormon, Paul C. Gutjahr

      The Book of Genesis, Ronald Hendel

      The Book of Common Prayer, Alan Jacobs

      The Book of Job, Mark Larrimore

      The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

      C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, George M. Marsden

      Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, Martin E. Marty

      Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, Bernard McGinn

      The I Ching, Richard J. Smith

      The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, David Gordon White

      Augustine’s Confessions, Garry Wills

      FORTHCOMING

      The Book of Exodus, Joel Baden

      The Book of Revelation, Timothy Beal

      Confucius’s Analects, Annping Chin and Jonathan D. Spence

      The Autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila, Carlos Eire

      Josephus’s The Jewish War, Martin Goodman

      The Koran in English, Bruce Lawrence

      The Lotus Sutra, Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

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      The Passover Haggadah, Vanessa Ochs

      The Song of Songs, Ilana Pardes

      The Daode Jing, James Robson

      Rumi’s Masnavi, Omid Safi

      The Talmud, Barry Wimpfheimer

      John Calvin’s

      Institutes of the Christian Religion

      A BIOGRAPHY

      Bruce Gordon

      PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

      Princeton and Oxford

      Copyright © 2016 by Princeton University Press

      Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

      In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

      press.princeton.edu

      Jacket art: Sadao Watanabe, Flight to Egypt, hand-colored kappazuri stencil print on momigami wrinkled paper, 1987

      All Rights Reserved

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Gordon, Bruce, 1962– author.

      Title: John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian religion : a biography / Bruce Gordon.

      Description: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University, 2016. | Series: Lives of great religious books | Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2015048197 | ISBN 9780691152127 (hardcover)

      Subjects: LCSH: Calvin, Jean, 1509–1564. Institutio Christianae religionis.

      Classification: LCC BX9420.I69 G67 2016 | DDC 230/.42—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048197

      British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

      This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro

      Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

      Printed in the United States of America

      10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

      For Sebastian Moser, my Swiss godson

      Calvin may not be as much fun as driving a tractor, but he’s close

      With what clear manifestations his might draws us to contemplate him!

      —Institutes 1.5.6

      CONTENTS

      PREFACE   xi

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS   xvii

      NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION USED   xix

      AFTERWORD   219

      NOTES   229

      INDEX   255

      PREFACE

      In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that this book is none of the following: a theology of John Calvin, a history of Calvinism, or an overview of scholarship on the Frenchman and his most famous theological creation. A short book of this sort could never hope to address such enormously complex topics, and I am the wrong person for all three. My goal is rather different, though equally quixotic. I intend to take the reader on a journey from the desk of the young John Calvin in Basel in 1536 to our world of social media religion by following the lives of one of the great books of the European Reformation, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. My investigation makes no pretense of exhaustive coverage, and the narrative is necessarily selective, privileging certain characters and events, yet mindful of omissions and silences.

      I wish to introduce readers to Calvin’s Institutes as an account of Reformation thought penned by a luminary of the Northern Renaissance. The Institutes was never a dusty reference volume confined to the scholar’s desk; a passionate author conceived it for flesh-and-blood Christians, and it was written for laity who hungered for knowledge of salvation and for young men training to serve as pastors in the emerging churches in a France where martyrdom was their likely fate. John Calvin wrote his book in Geneva, but it transcended that place to become a book for the church and for many churches spread across Europe.

      Calvin knew the faces of those for whom he wrote. They gathered in worship before his pulpit in Geneva, in the classroom, and on the streets of his adopted city. He spoke to the crowds of refugees that swelled the population of the city to the breaking point, stirring the enmity of locals, and he knew what it was like to be among the displaced and impoverished. At the same time, Calvin taught young men to be ministers of the Gospel, preparing clergy to instruct their flocks that God’s promises in Christ are certain, that there is assurance of true faith.

      Calvin wrote the Institutes in Latin and French, creating two distinct books. In French, as well as in the other vernacular languages into which the work was translated, the Genevan reformer reached readers, both men and women, drawn to his account of God and salvation. It has long been the fate of the Institutes to be classified as a book of theology, an extended argument over four books, a system to be cracked. Today, the Institutes continues to be gutted to provide a Reformation reading for university-level theology courses in which selections (usually passages on predestination) are read without the slightest awareness of their historical context.

      Calvin would have hated the designation of his Institutes as a book of academic theology. That was precisely what it was not. Above all, his creation was a structured exposition of the biblical account of divinity and humanity, of what Christians should know and how they should live. The opening words of the book set the tone for the whole. Calvin moved directly to how we know God and ourselves, to how we are in a relationship with a God who has reached out to a lost people. The Institutes is about relationships, principally God with us, but also us with our neighbors and ourselves. These relationships are inseparable in the sanctified life Calvin envisaged for women and men. Calvin walks us through the redemption and sanctification of life, not in some abstract argument but as Moses forging a path in the desert. The Institutes is a book to be lived.

      In the following, we will think a good deal about the reception of the Institutes in the centuries following the reformer’s death. The book was read in diverse contexts and through the lenses of intellectual and cultural forces of passing ages. Multiple, even contradictory, readings are the fate of all enduring books. Calvin could hardly have anticipated the worlds in which the Institutes would be studied, cited, and referenced (not the same thing), and much of our story will be about the ways in which both he and his book were appropriated to an extraordinary range of theological and ecclesiastical causes.

      Memory and the written word are familiar to all of us surrounded by shelves of books that both define our living space and remind us daily of volumes read and unread, despite our best intentions. Our books point to our past and present. Various factors determine our relationship to those books: how we choose to arrange them, and which ones we make visible to our eye and the eyes of others. Books we choose to forget are left in boxes or given away. We make choices about our books that tell a story about each one of us, even if we opt to pile or shelve them in a state of chaos.

      Many books are of value to us because they were received as gifts, were inherited, or were obtained as prizes. In each case our book memories are shaped by recollections of the people and events involved in the procurement of a volume, what we have read of it, what we hoped we would learn, and what we unexpectedly discovered. Books return us briefly to what was going on in our lives when they entered our world. Occasionally, we find as a bookmark a letter from a family member or a forgotten friend. Our marginal notes reveal how much or little we understood of the author’s intentions.

      Such seemingly random reflections on our relationship to books are wholly germane to our story of Calvin. The Institutes never disappeared over the past five hundred years, though it often sat on shelves for long periods of time. Even as a book neglected, it continued to occupy the mental and spiritual space of the age. When cited, referred to, or read, whether from deep reading or as a talismanic reference, Calvin’s book appeared in the selective memories of individuals and cultures. It was placed in a variety of narratives drawn from historical and theological memories essential to the formation of contemporary identities. In nineteenth-century France, Calvin represented Protestant clericalism and a hated minority, while in the next century he was a voice in the struggle against apartheid and spoke to an aspirational middle class in China. Labile, the term psychiatrists apply to unstable moods, can be applied also to Calvin’s Institutes, which has never had a sole proprietor and could represent both the aspirations and nightmares of different folks.

      Our story is of Calvin read and unread, of fulsome engagement and silences. How much did the Institutes shape the theological conversations of the eighteenth century? Very little, but to name Calvin and his book remained a provocative act, a statement of confessional identity. More often than not, references and citations formed cultural or theological markers to indicate that a person was positioning himself or herself within a certain understanding of a tradition. And the death of Michael Servetus played an enormous role in the reception of Calvin’s person and book, so much so that by the beginning of the twentieth century, the two men could not be separated, and both had to be turned into monuments. Servetus’s execution in 1553 remains an unresolved debate for Reformed Protestants that to this day colors the reception of the Institutes. (For an account of the Servetus affair, see appendix 1.)

      The Institutes and its author have inspired and horrified men and women from the 1530s until our day for Calvin’s book is immensely powerful. From Theodore Beza to Friedrich Schleiermacher, and from Karl Barth to Marilynne Robinson, the Institutes has engaged, enraged, and stimulated the minds and imaginations of the most thoughtful and creative men and women, who have wrestled with its ambitious and arresting opening consideration: the nature of true wisdom.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Calvin had a high view of friendship. In the preparation of this book, I have been extremely fortunate to benefit from the wisdom, knowledge, and wit of many friends, to whom I wish to express my deep gratitude. Brad Abromaitis, Jamie Dunn, Bill Goettler, Ward Holder, Mark Letteney, Christopher Ocker, Fred Simmons, Nick Wilson, and Jonathan Yeager read parts of the manuscript at an early stage, and I benefited enormously from their insights, corrections, and recommendations. I wish to make particular mention of Randall Zachman for his generosity. In the final stages, Nate Anteil offered invaluable feedback and suggestions. I owe a great debt to Brad Holden, whose good-natured yet iron-fisted editing and creative insights were invaluable.

      In spring 2014, I had the great pleasure of reading through the Institutes with a group of twenty-five students. Their contribution to the book is evident in the final chapter. I am humbled by all that I learned from them. I wish to thank in particular the instigators of that journey: Toni Alimi, Martha Brundage, Steven Harris, Justin Hawkins, and Andrew Schuman.

      My good friends Carlos Eire and Michael Walker have taught me much about Calvin(ism), and I hope they will find in these pages something of the wisdom they shared.

      My fellow Winnipegger Fred Appel at Princeton University Press kindly invited me to contribute to his wonderful series and has been supportive throughout the process. I offer him heartfelt thanks.

      Much of this book was written while I was in Berlin with Rona and Charlotte. To be in a great city with your two favorite people (and Calvin), what inspiration, joy, and fun.

      Finally, I dedicate this book with love to my godson, Sebastian.

      NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION USED

      Unless otherwise stated, the translation used is Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion in two volumes, edited by John T. McNeill, translated and indexed by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960).

      LIVES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS

      John Calvin’s

      Institutes of the Christian Religion

      Remembering a Man and His Book

      INTRODUCTION

      In the 1559 letter to the reader that accompanied his last Latin edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin permitted himself a degree of satisfaction:

      For I believe I have so embraced the sum of religion in all its parts, and have arranged it in such an order, that if anyone rightly grasps it, it will not be difficult for him to determine what he ought especially to seek in Scripture, and to that end he ought to relate its contents.¹

      Calvin had labored for more than twenty years to find that order, an explanation of Christian doctrine that not only instructed readers in the faith but also moved their hearts and minds to accept the truth of the Gospel. Through those years of writing, revision, and additions, Calvin created one of the great books of his age.

      Posterity for Calvin and his book has been complicated in light of their curious, often strained relationship with the past four hundred and fifty years. Unflattering caricatures of the reformer endure in our day, often with little reference to the Institutes, which is assumed to express Calvin’s repugnant vision of a tyrannical God. From the sixteenth century onward, numerous detractors have asserted that Calvin’s book is covered with the ashes of Michael Servetus, the Spanish heretic executed in Geneva in autumn 1553 following a trial in which Calvin played a central role.² Servetus stalks the story of Calvin’s Institutes to this day.

      Equally, among those today who praise the Frenchman, even to the extent of calling themselves Calvinists or New Calvinists, familiarity with the contents of the Institutes is patchy, often mediated through figures such as Jonathan Edwards or leading modern church and scholarly interpreters such as John Piper, Richard Muller, and Mark Dever (all three very different). Calvin and his Institutes have been regarded as one and the same, in a symbiotic relationship, with the book, whether read or not, the manifestation of the man.

      Yet such assumptions rest uneasily on the foundations of history. Calvin was no one-book wonder, and he never saw himself as having a singular relationship to the Institutes despite the years devoted to the work. The Institutes belonged to a larger body of writing that included Calvin’s voluminous biblical commentaries, where, it could be argued, his heart truly lay. The Institutes and commentaries were to be read side by side. Both provided interpretation of God’s Word, but in different yet complementary ways. The commentaries followed the grain of the biblical text and explained the meaning of the words, while the Institutes offered instruction in doctrine found in scripture. Calvin’s letter to the reader reminds us of his compelling desire to interpret the Word of God. He did have an intimate relationship with one book, but that book was the Bible.

      Nevertheless, Calvin was immensely proud of the content of the Institutes and believed that its powerful arguments should determine his persona as a doctor of the church.³ He saw his work as a sum of doctrine for the Reformed churches across Europe, which he reached in both Latin and vernacular translations in increasing numbers. The Institutes grew over the years on account of Calvin’s reading and preaching, as the result of theological controversies and exigencies, and through the influence of colleagues and friends, notably Martin Bucer and Philip Melanchthon. Study and debate spurred Calvin in his search for a book that articulated the proper order of doctrine whereby the church would rightly teach scripture.

      The backwash of the Servetus execution in 1553, combined with the hostility of Lutherans, ensured Calvin and the Institutes a troubled legacy. To name Calvin and "Institutes" in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries was to voice assumptions and prejudices that often had little to do with either the historical figure or the content of his book. On the one hand, the book could mean the authentic Reformed tradition, as it did for Charles Hodge in Princeton of the nineteenth century or does for John Piper today. On the other, it could refer to a problematic bundle of doctrine and moral attitudes, such as we find in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel about Calvinism in eighteenth-century Rhode Island, The Minister’s Wooing.

      At times the pious devotion accorded the work proved insufficient. The Institutes was summoned to fight the battles of a new age. Reform-minded persons believed Calvin’s book to express something contemporary writings could not match. In disruptive moments of controversy, Calvin’s words in the Institutes burst through the mere symbolic qualities of the text. We will encounter, for example, Karl Barth and Emil Brunner in the 1920s and 1930s and Allan Boesak in the 1980s, crucial figures who lived in times of crises when what Calvin said shaped theological debates. Suddenly, how one reclaimed the Reformation and read Calvin was of the utmost importance. In America, Calvin’s influence was found in the religious disputes of the Civil War and the visceral debates between Mercersburg and Princeton Theological Seminary. The Frenchman was given voice for the twentieth century by the lion of Princeton, Benjamin B. Warfield, and his close friend Abraham Kuyper.

      The Institutes has been employed to justify and raze hierarchies of power. Like its author, the Institutes was forged in controversy and did not want for polemic. Its pages tell the stories of Calvin’s arguments with Lutherans, Anabaptists, Catholics, and the ever-present Servetus after 1553. It pulses with life, a mixture of elegant prose and pugnaciousness. Calvin’s work is not a book for complacent, bourgeois churches, tepid Christians, or indifferent secularists. Today it nurtures growing house churches struggling in China and rapidly expanding Reformed communities in Brazil. Regardless of whether its reader professes a faith, the Institutes challenges and encourages, informs

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