This is a most-welcome volume featuring eleven essays based on presentations at the 2017 Calvin Studies Society Colloquium at Baylor University. The fine scholars here cast much light and draw very helpful conclusions on the early years of John Calvin. These pieces give us a picture of wide dimensions of Calvin's world then and the people, movements and controversies which were formative in Calvin's emergence as a reformer and leading theologian.
A key insight from Calvin's earliest education at the Collège de la Marche was the influence of his teacher Maturin Cordier, a humanist who introduced Calvin to this movement. As Whitford indicates, ‘it is not an overstatement to note that the rest of Calvin's life would be devoted to the humanist ideals espoused by Cordier and others in Paris’ (p. 4).
Greta Grace Kroeker's ‘Calvin, Erasmus, and humanist theology’ is an excellent discussion to the point that ‘a discernible humanist theology did arise in the first part of the sixteenth century’ (p. 15). In brief, ‘Humanist theology grew out of a protest against scholastic methods and religious priorities and was influenced by the Renaissance ideal of human potential’ (p. 16). This emerged in relation to an educational paradigm and methodology which ‘sought to institute the studia humanitatis with its emphasis on the liberal arts, the return ad fontes, with an emphasis on philology, grammar and rhetoric’ (p. 16). When applied to Christianity, ‘some Christians began employing those methods to challenge Catholic doctrine and practice’ (p. 17). Thus ‘humanist theology’ was devoted to Scripture – with Erasmus being a leading model.
Calvin's humanist training provided him with philological skills and the drive to critique scholastic emphases on reason over Scripture and to follow Scripture, when human understanding is surpassed. The church Fathers were privileged as interpreters of Scripture (p. 20) and – for Calvin, later – ‘the apostolic church served the Genevan as the model for his contemporary Christian community’ (p. 21). This accorded with the humanist emphasis on ‘a rhetorically rich and pastoral form of Christianity that recognized the need for a living Gospel’ (p. 22). Pastoral care and rhetoric – in preaching – were marks of Calvin's Genevan ministry during which he preached some 4,000 sermons in the thirteen years after he returned there (p. 23).
These perspectives helpfully set the stage for James K. Farge's ‘The intellectual, political, and legal milieu in France during the life of John Calvin’. In the struggles between scholasticism and humanism in Paris, Francis i's change of attitude from toleration to persecution of those humanists and evangelicals whom he had earlier protected was important. Farge argues that even prior to the Affair of the Placards (October 1534), when blasphemous posters against the Roman Catholic mass were put up in Paris, Francis had already begun to change his views. Farge says that Francis's recovery from imminent death, nine years before, when he rose up when the consecrated host was elevated in the mass and then declared, ‘This is my God who will heal me, body and soul; please, let me receive him’ – led the king to proclaim that God had raised him from death to life (p. 34).
Calvin fled Paris in late 1533 after Nicholas Cop's address, due to the dangers for those associated with reforms. Thus emerged the importance of Calvin's dedicatory letter, which was maintained through all editions of his Institutes, trying to convince Francis i that evangelicals were more in line with the early Church than their opponents (p. 32). However, notes Farge, ‘we don't know whether King Francis ever read Calvin's address to him or if he was even informed about it’ (p. 33).
The essay by Jonathan A. Reid, ‘The Meaux group and John Calvin’ and Michael W. Bruening's ‘Calvin, Farel, Roussel, and the French “Nicodemites”’, show how in Calvin's early years in Paris he formed networks that were long-lasting and which helped to shape the ways in which he thought about issues of reform.
Christoph Strohm's ‘Sixteenth-century French legal education and Calvin's legal education’ is especially interesting. It includes Strohm's discussion of the effects of Calvin's legal education on his theology. Humanistic jurisprudence provided a context and, notes Strohm, ‘Calvin's entire doctrinal profile was influenced by the formative years he spent in the milieu of humanistic jurisprudence’ (p. 51). First, here, is the concept of ‘accommodation’ – so key for Calvin's biblical interpretation, corresponding – says Strohm – ‘in principle to the doctrine of equity that humanistically-oriented jurists had moved to the center of their interpretation of Roman law’ (p. 52). This meant ‘the application of a single legal statute needed always to be determined in light of the meaning of the whole and in the context of the foundational rulings of the body of Roman law’. This is a valuable insight for Calvin's education and his theology.
Calvin's controversies are treated in Brian C. Brewer's “‘Those satanic Anabaptists”: Calvin, soul sleep, and the search for an Anabaptist nemesis’ and John L. Thompson's ‘Confessions, conscience, and coercion in the early Calvin’ which examines Calvin's 1537 defence of Farel and himself against charges of Arianism.
Of special value too is Amy Nelson Burnett's ‘John Calvin and the First Eucharistic Controversy’ showing early influences on Calvin and then, after the Marburg Colloquy, how ‘Calvin's treatment of the Supper would reflect current debates’ (p. 196).
Barbara Pitkin's ‘Calvin on the early Reformation’ surveys ways in which Calvin evaluated the religious landscape in which he participated in his early years – trying to establish the validity of the emerging reformed faith as biblical and necessary for reform, especially for the French Church. Over the years of Calvin's teaching office in Geneva, Pitkin shows he viewed himself and other reform leaders as ‘having a special duty to speak out against abuses’ (p. 219). Calvin came to portray the early Reformation as ‘a movement raised up by God, centered on Luther, and spread by others to restore neglected doctrine, purify the polluted sacraments, and undo the tyranny of the present-day church’ (p. 221).
This splendid volume is a compact, compelling and highly useful resource for understanding Calvin and the early Reformation.
