He fled and took refuge in Basel where he started writing his major work published in Latin in The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Jean Calvin wanted to go to Strasburg.
He had to stop over in Geneva because of the wars. He met Guillaume Farel, the pastor of the city who had adopted the Protestant reform. Farel asked Calvin to stay in Geneva and help him establish the Protestant Church. Calvin stayed there from to They settled in Strasburg, a Protestant city, where he was a pastor from to He was the son of a property administrator working for the Noyon canons and of a pious Catholic mother who died at an early age.
Calvin received a scholarship from the Church, making it possible for him to continue his studies in Noyon. Later, he studied in Paris, at the La Marche and Montaigu schools.
His father had planned that his son should take holy orders but quarrels with the Noyon canons made him orientate his son towards law studies. Calvin studied law in Orleans and in Bourges where he had access to the best masters of his time.
Unlike Luther, he always considered law in a positive way. He had frequent contacts with humanistic and theological circles engaged in the debate of new ideas.
He studied Greek and Hebrew. His conversion may go back to but this remains uncertain. In , he broke away from the Catholic Church and renounced to his scholarship. During the repression, he left France and took refuge in Basel where he continued his theological work. His first dogmatic text is the introduction to the translation of the Bible into French by his cousin Olivetan.
His second work is a summary of the Christian faith : The institutes of the Christian faith It was the first edition in Latin of his most important work which — throughout his life — he kept reorganising and expanding.
Had it not been for the providential intervention of fate, Calvin could have pursued his brilliant intellectual career as a thinker. He wished to go to Strasburg. The direct route was closed on account of the wars. He was obliged to go through Geneva which had just adhered to the Reformation under the influence of the Reformer Guillaume Farel. When the latter heard that Calvin was in Geneva, he immediately thought that Calvin, author of the Institutes of the Christian Religion , was the ideal person to help him in the task of structuring the Reformation in Geneva.
He sent him an urgent call. Calvin remained in Geneva and, even though it was no easy task, he endeavoured to put his ideas into practice. Calvin and Farel did not agree with the town government about the respective powers of the Church and State, especially concerning religious matters.
They did not have the final say and were expelled by the town authorities in At the request of the reformer Martin Bucer, Calvin settled in Strasburg. There the three most pleasant years of his life were awaiting him. He worked both as a pastor and a teacher.
He met numerous intellectuals. He married a young widow, Idelette de Bure. She gave him a son who died when still an infant. Bucer had a decisive influence on the thought of Calvin, yet the latter did not hesitate to criticize him.
He clearly demonstrated how far he stood from Luther : there is no absolute opposition between law and Gospel. That same year, the first French edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion appeared ; it was an expanded version of the edition.
Calvin received international recognition in Strasburg. With Bucer he attended several conferences organised by Charles the Fifth in order to attempt bridging the gap between the Churches. On such an occasion, he met Melanchthon and befriended him. He was urged to come back on two occasions : in and in January He was not to return until September , convinced that he would stay no more than six months.
He was desperate for help as he strove to organize a newly formed Protestant church in town. He rushed to the inn and pleaded with Calvin, arguing it was God's will he remain in the city. Calvin said he was staying only one night. Besides, he was a scholar not a pastor. Farel, baffled and frustrated, swore a great oath that God would curse all Calvin's studies unless he stayed in Geneva. Calvin, a man of tender conscience, later reflected on this moment: "I felt as if God from heaven had laid his mighty hand upon me to stop me in my course—and I was so terror stricken that I did not continue my journey.
To this day, Calvin's name is associated, for good and for ill, with the city of Geneva. And Calvin's belief in God's election is his theological legacy to the church. Calvin was born in in Noyon, France. His father, a lawyer, planned a career in the church for his son, and by the mids, Calvin had become a fine scholar. He spoke proficient Latin, excelled at philosophy, and qualified to take up the intensive study of theology in Paris.
Suddenly, though, his father changed his mind and decided John should achieve greatness in law. John acquiesced, and the next five or six years saw him at the University of Orleans, attaining distinction in a subject he did not love. During these years, he dipped into Renaissance humanism. He learned Greek, read widely in the classics, and added Plato to the Aristotle he already knew. He developed a taste for writing so that by age 22, he had published a commentary on Seneca's De Clementia.
Then word of Luther's teaching reached France, and his life made an abrupt turn, though his own account is reticent and vague:. And so this mere taste of true godliness that I received set me on fire with such a desire to progress that I pursued the rest of my studies more coolly, although I did not give them up altogether.
He became marked out as a "Lutheran," and, when persecution arose in Paris where he had returned to teach , he sought refuge in Basel. There he penned the first edition of a book that was to affect Western history as much as any other. The Institutes of the Christian Religion was intended as an elementary manual for those who wanted to know something about the evangelical faith—"the whole sum of godliness and whatever it is necessary to know about saving doctrine. In The Institutes , Calvin outlined his views on the church, the sacraments, justification, Christian liberty, and political government.
His unique and overarching theme is God's sovereignty. He taught that original sin eradicated free will in people. Only by God's initiative can anyone begin to have faith and thus experience assurance of salvation. In this and later editions, Calvin developed the doctrines of predestination, or election. More importantly, he argued for the indefectability of grace—that is, grace will never be withdrawn from the elect.
This was Calvin's pastoral attempt to comfort new believers. In medieval Catholicism, believers remained anxious about their spiritual destinies and were required to perform more and more good works to guarantee their salvation. Calvin taught that once a believer understands he is chosen by Christ to eternal life, he will never have to suffer doubt again about salvation: "He will obtain an unwavering hope of final perseverance as it is called , if he reckons himself a member of him who is beyond hazard of falling away.
After fleeing France to escape persecution, Calvin settled in Geneva at Farel's bidding. But after a mere 18 months, he and Farel were banished from the city for disagreeing with the city council.
Calvin headed again for Strasbourg, where he pastored for three years and married Idellete de Bure, the widow of an Anabaptist, who brought with her two children. By Calvin's reputation had spread: he wrote three other books and revised his Institutes.
Still more revisions came in and , eventually amounting to 80 chapters.
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