Calvin

Author: (English) Maret
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2001-01-01
Features: We can read between the lines of this text the influence of humanism reinforced on this transformation of belief, especially the tone of humanists' aversion to superstition. However, Calvin himself firmly believed that his transformation of faith was an intervention of divine will in his life, so like Luther's explanation of his own experience of a faith transformation, Calvin tended to emphasize it as a dramatic and unexpected encounter in which God seized and grasped him. His rejection of the Catholic Church was undoubtedly abrupt, but it led him into a state of mind willing to learn, which in turn produced a slower and more active process of doctrinal reconstruction. Of course, it is possible (whether consciously or not) that Calvin's critique of the Roman Curia was prompted by the long-standing conflict between his father and the ecclesiastical authority of Noyon, and his death after being excommunicated by that church; while Calvin's training in the 1920s and 1930s was also a period in early Reformation history when Christian humanists were forced to make a life-or-death choice of faith. Some veteran critics of the old church's faults (if not fundamental beliefs), such as Erasmus or Le Fèvre, had abandoned their original dissatisfaction or become milder, choosing tradition over division; while Calvin and other former disciples of Erasmus, like the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli, continued to develop their ideas, choosing the path of protest, and ultimately diverged from the Roman Curia. Regarding the time of his faith transformation, Calvin did not provide us with any clues: in some sense, the resistance to Rome may have been completed as early as 1534; while the re-establishment of his faith was a gradual process, only coming to fruition in the Christian Institutes of 1536. Of course, by late 1533, the gap between Calvin and the Roman Church had become increasingly deep, and he was dangerously involved in the scandal of the controversy between orthodoxy and heresy. The ideas of the Gospel Reformation had spread from Germany to France in the 1920s and 1930s, and were supported by the sister of the French king, Margaret of Navarre. At that time, the conservative views in France (represented by the Sorbonne) harbored a morbid suspicion of any threat to rigorous orthodoxy: various events (especially those involving Margaret) were closely monitored and seen as signals of the current state of hostile religious groups. In autumn 1533, the new rector of the Sorbonne, Nicolas Cop, was a friend of Margaret. Following tradition, he delivered a speech on the "Eight Beatitudes," turning it into a sermon. This lecture showed the influence of Erasmus and Luther, calling for a thorough spiritual renewal of the church; it indicated that the Reformation had already into the stronghold of the upper orthodoxy, the Sorbonne. This lecture was declared heretical, and Cop fled to avoid arrest. It was once thought that Calvin had drafted the speech for Cop (this view has recently been revived). If so, it would show Calvin's position in autumn 1533: a Gospel Reformer with a strong critical stance toward the defects of the Catholic Church. Calvin's reform based on the New Testament was connected to Le Fèvre's, and undoubtedly he would...