This volume is intended to enhance a wider audience's knowledge of John Calvin's life, his theological work and the lasting impact of his ideas. In the first of a total of twelve essays, Philip Benedict gives an excellent survey of Calvin's reforming activities in Geneva. Emidio Campi and Christian Moser undertake the difficult task of summarising Calvin's relations to the Swiss Confederacy, illustrated by Geneva's always delicate connections to three major cities during Calvin's lifetime: Berne, where church politics was dominated by a powerful magistrature which advocated a different pattern of church government; Basle as a stronghold of irenic humanist theologians who more often than not opposed Calvin's rigidity; and Zurich – during the era of Heinrich Bullinger an increasingly close ally. Taking a bird's eye view, Andrew Pettegree (sadly, like the following essay in a rather poor German translation) delineates the influence of Calvinism in sixteenth-century Europe – a formidable tour de force that takes the reader through France, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, the Holy Roman Empire and Europe, not without constant hints that international Calvinism was a driving force behind particular developments. Unfolding another complex story, James D. Bratt shows the impact of Calvinism on the various Protestant denominations of North America from the Pilgrim Fathers into the twentieth century, especially highlighting ambiguities like the conflicts between congregationalism and the tendency to form state Churches, between religious personalism and the desire for a unifying creed, and between piety and intellectual ambition.

The reader, left somewhat breathless by the wealth of historical information, will find that the essays that follow, centred around several central theological topics, take a more meditative approach: Calvin's lifelong work as interpreter of the Bible is summarised by Wulfert de Greef who does not not so much inform about the historical context and Calvin's actual exegetical works and sermons but rather provides a comprehensible and systematic introduction. Christopher L. Elwood shows the importance of ecclesiological issues for Calvin's doctrine of salvation, highlighting unity, preaching and the sacraments as core elements in church organisation. Elwood holds that Calvin's pattern of spiritually-minded Christianity, uniting ‘catholic’ as well as radical elements, has been adopted by many Reformed believers as a personal model. Eva-Maria Faber sums up Calvin's ecclesiology, drawing primarily from his commentaries on Corinthians. Christian Link convincingly explains Calvin's doctrine of predestination and election in Christ as depth structure of his ecclesiology (because its origin lies in the question of the existence of the elect), displaying a keen sense of the soteriological and eschatological presuppositions and consequences. There are few essays in German which sum up the topic in all its differentiated shades between God's freedom and God's grace as concisely as this one. Having understood this crucial theologumenon, it will become much more evident that divine providence (which grants all those who stay within God's love his graceful assistance) is to be seen as the pillar upon which Calvin's ethics rest. Eric Fuchs describes the three functions of the law in Calvin's teaching and the consequences for the lifestyle of a Christian who is meant freely to respond to God's gifts (here non-theological readers might like to learn more about how the Calvinist tradition relates to Luther's and Melanchthon's ethics as well as to contemporary legal views of the law).

The final three essays thematise controversial issues where Calvin's legacy is still debated: Ulrich H. J. Körtner traces the connection between Calvinism and capitalism, criticising the Weber thesis on the basis of established research. He argues that Calvin himself clearly put charity (as against profit-seeking) at the centre of his business ethics. In a very balanced account Christoph Strohm discusses whether there are elements of tolerance in the work of Calvin – who undeniably was not able to yield even the slightest in the case of Servet. Strohm shows that in his latter days, Calvin was less inclined to stick to his former principle of a clear division between worldly and spiritual power and punishment. His vision of church unity, his engagement in theological controversy and the persecutions of his fellow believers made him intolerant; his insistence on spiritual freedom could not negate his intellectual conditioning by Roman law, his exegetical preference for the law of the Old Testament and the philosophical background of Platonism. In his erudite concluding essay, Mario Turchetti discusses the place of Calvinism in the development of modern democracy. Always stressing the difference between the ordinance of Christian congregations and the organisation of the polity, while advocating obedience to political powers, Calvin himself may not be seen as an ideal champion of the early modern struggle for liberty; but his insistence on freedom of conscience which is eventually bound only by celestial regiment and the law of nature may grant him a place in the history of democratic thought. Turchetti underlines that Calvin left an intellectual legacy that was open to very different interpretations – as would occur especially among political thinkers in the Age of Enlightenment.

This volume offers a sound mixture of well-established knowledge and new insights to anyone who is interested in the premier theological personage of 2009 – provided that the reader is prepared to tolerate the rather unhistorical and theologising passages which some of the contributors did not manage to eschew.