JOHN CALVIN

 John Calvin and the Geneva Movement

                 The life of John Calvin was very ambivalent in the sense of the Geneva Movement. Interestingly, many of Calvin’s biographers marginalize his Geneva experience. In this paper, I will look at the thought of several Edwardian biographers regarding Calvin’s life and the Gene Movement.

         Several authors research Calvin’s life and his work. These authors show that Calvin had many dimensions to his life.  John Calvin, A Biography written by T. H. L. Parker talks about how Calvin consecrates his complete approach to theology (37). The life of Calvin, written by Alister E. McGrath Informed us that as “Calvin was expelled from Geneva; his initial temptation was to return to the obscurity of his private life” (100). John Calvin, A Sixteenth- Century Portrait was written by William J. Bouwsma. He talks about how Calvin broke up with the Roman Catholic Church. John Calvin, The Man and His Ethics, Written by George Harkness, shows when Calvin adopted the protestant faith and when he wrote the first of his epoch-making treaties, the institutes of the Christian religion (16).

       Reading and analyzing the Life and work of John Calvin, I concluded that he was an extraordinary man of God who sees himself no less than a Spiritual ancestor of God. He indulged himself in several dement ions when delivering the message as a theologian. People like McGrath who writes about him, understands that his doctrine was centered on salvation.  With an echoing tone of voice, McGrath used his intelligence, to observe a man like Calvin and he wrote.  “His presentation of almost the whole world sum of piety and whatever it is necessary to know in the doctrine of salvation is intended to demonstrate the orthodoxy of the views of those working for reform, and thus to discredit those for political purposes (Francis I needed the support of the German princes against the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V), sought to portray them as heretical and radical” (77). It seem like Calvin was against people who worked for gain in the political agenda and not for God. Nevertheless, he requested their support to fight against the Roman’s Emperor.

       It is impossible to talk about a person without having any connection with him. At this time, I will introduce you briefly  to John Calvin  “Calvin was born on July 10, 1509, in Noyon, a small Episcopal town in Picardy, France, the youngest of four (or possibly five) Children, all boys. His father held a position of some responsibility in the service of the cathedral chapter. His mother, the daughter of a town notable, died four or five years after Calvin’s birth, and his father soon remarried.  Shortly after Young Calvin was sent from his father’s house to that of the Montmors, a neighbor noble family, where he received some of his earliest education. He intended his son for priesthood; Calvin’s father dispatched him to the University of Paris when he was about twelve, than the normal age for beginning high education.

          Here Calvin finished the arts course and took a master’s degree; and like many other students of his generation, he was attached to the novel evangelical humanism and the eclectic spirituality of Erasmus and Jacques lefe’vre d’Etaples.  However, before young Calvin reached age of twenty, his father decided that he should become a lawyer rather than a priest. Between 1528 and 1533, therefore, Calvin worked on a law degree in the schools of Bourges and Orleans, and was licenci’e  in the law. He continued his humanistic studies, and in 1532, he published an edition. With learned commentary, of Seneca’s essay on clemency. His father, excommunicated in dispute with the cathedral chapter, had died the year before” (John Calvin, 10).

                       One will not hesitate to say Calvin was from an excellent background due to his biography.  In addition, it the entire true Calvin reveals himself to be a man who attained enough education to lead and reform people to God.   What we must acknowledge here about Calvin, even though he lost his mother at an early age that did not stopped him from be the man he wants to be. A theologian It seems that Calvin shift over the earliest part of his life:  “Because of the significance attributed to his supposed “conversion” to Protestantism” (John Calvin, 10).  It seems like such change of character, has become a problem for Calvin because he intended to focus more spiritually on religion and Christianity. . Bowman He talks about Calvin’s life before he was converted. He said, “Life before conversion, from this standpoint, is irrelevant except as preparation for this break or as a stimulus to repentance; life afterward is made new” (John Calvin, 10).

       Calvin knew that before a man can be spiritually set to preach the word of God he has to be converted, so he took that stepped. He feels that is only a swift from sin to conversion, we must remember that throughout Calvin’s life  his father wants him to be a priest from he was a child. Calvin wrote:  “God drew me from obscure and lowly beginnings and conferred on me that most honorable office of herald and minister of the Gospel. My father had intended me for theology from early childhood” (John Calvin, 10).  

Calvin wants his readers to understand that he had taught about God at an early age and such became a part of his life. He shows honor to the gospel as a theologian. Why?  According to his biography, his father switched him from being a priest, to study law.  Calvin then sees that law is very common, so he changed his mind. Bouwsma, wrote, “When he reflected that the career of the law proved everywhere very lucrative for its practitioners, the prospect suddenly made him change his mind” (John Calvin, 10).

       As we continue to journey through Calvin’s life, work and movement in Geneva, we found out that Calvin had changed his life, when he was converted. He did not mention anything about any belief that associated with him being an evangelist or a humanism of many past students at Paris, those who are remembered.  In spite of their hostility to what they believe and somehow described as myth that took place in the church.  Bouwsman wrote, “ All we can be assure of, from this account, is that much later in life, Calvin believed that at this time he became more open- “teacher” is  his word. There is nothing here that that would suggest what would subsequently be called “Protestantism,” a word unknown before 1529” (11). It seems like even though Calvin spoke of “conversion” he shows little or no concerned about it.  “Calvin feels Paul’s conversion were not important.

       He looked back in time in the sixteenth –century, whereas conversion was as myth proportions. Looking back at Calvin’s childhood, it shows that Calvin was a Reformer.  Parker wrote, “Calvin could sometimes speak of himself as “merely a man from among the common people; with his grandfather the first of the family that we met. They were called the Calvin and lived in Pont1’Eveque, a village where stone bridge spanned the Oise a couple of miles from Noyon, which is served at port. The Calvin have been well been established in  Port-1Eveque, but the last quarter of the century saw the break-up of the family has two.” (1). in this chapter, it shows that there were family problems that separated the family, sons moved out to be independent somewhere. It seems like they intended to worked as lock –smith in Parish,  close to Saint- Germain- Auxerrois, the other in the rue de Reynard, near Saint- Merry  (1). Parker acknowledged a glimpsed of Calvin’s childhood which he considered to be excited religious including treats and feasts. “During that time he was on a pilgrim with his mother to our scamp Abbey, where he was allowed to kiss the holy relic, the fragment of the body of  St Ann, the mother of our Lady. There were the Christmas and Michaelmas celebrations in Sainte- Godeberte. (2).  Parker stated that “Calvin’s life reflected on his childhood days with his friends in which they were all boys of his own age under pedagogue and master of schools; but he  outstripped the others, thanks to his quick intelligence and excellence  memory” ( 3).

        Calvin’s approach on theology shows that he was a man of intelligence. “Calvin on 1521 received the chaplaincy attached to the alter or Gesine in the cathedral of Noyon, in such case he was able to received a regular Income.” (4). it seem like Calvin was a lover of arts. Parker started that he attended arts school in Paris. Sometime in the 1520 or 1521, The Montmors accompanied him, may they were attending the same college. in addition, Parker started that “ “Calvin  and member of the same college or living together under surveillance of common tutor. The early period when he attend the college de le Marche, has not been generally well understood. He was not year reading for the art degree but was only preparing for it” (4).  Parker continues his argument by saying, “Calvin was trained terminist philosophy, a complete intellectual reversal would be necessary before he could confidently and joyfully understand that knowledge. Was relationship between subject and object that the term genuinely for the object by inherent character, and that the intellect, far from molding the object, itself formed to the capacity of the knowledge of the object by the object itself?” (4).

          Throughout Calvin’s life, it seems like he had studied three languages: Latin, Greek and Hebrew in the scholarly and educational program of Christianity shows that Lefebvre and Erasmus inspired Calvin. Christianity had plat formed itself in Parish Intellectual during the generation before Calvin’s arrival.  Looking at the works that Calvin had done, it allows his readers to believe that he is famous the Geneva Movement.

        It seems like one of Calvin’s greatest work took place in the Genever Movements, according to an Jean Calvin established a college in Geneva to include the teaching of religion. In two sections, its Academy has since become the University of Geneva. He preached at Geneva’s Protestant Cathedral of St. Pierre. In its shadow stands the Jean Calvin Auditory where he lectured his reformed theology. A small chapel constructed on the site of other religious edifices, the Calvin Auditory is in the sober, even austere, Gothic style. Extensive renovation was completed in 1959.

At the University of Geneva, the Reformation Wall is a city landmark. Work began in 1909 to mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of Jean Calvin and the 350th of the foundation of the Academy of Geneva. In Geneva’s Bastion Park, the monument is backed against part of the ancient defensive walls that surrounded the city until middle of the nineteenth century.

At the centre of the Wall, five meters high, are the four great figures of the movement: Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) one of the first to preach the Reformation in Geneva, Jean Calvin (1509-1564) the “pope” of the Reformers, Theodore (1513-1605) first rector of the Academy, and John Knox (1513-1572) founder of Presbyterianism in Scotland. Behind the statues stands the motto of the Reformation and of Geneva “Post Tenebras Lux”… After darkness, there is light.

On either side, statues and bas-reliefs represent the great Protestant figures of the different Calvinist countries and crucial moments in the development of the movement representing 150 years in the history of Protestantism. During the Reformation Geneva was called the ‘Protestant Rome’.

Inaugurated in 2005, the award-winning International Museum of the Reformation is housed in a historical villa where the city’s citizens voted to adopt the Protestant Reformation in 1536. Using state-of-the-art and audio-visual displays, it traces the turbulent history of the Protestant movement initiated by John Calvin and its ideas to the present time. The Museum is holding a special exhibition in 2009 to mark the 500th anniversary of Jean Calvin’s birth.