CALVINISM

in Protestant Christianity, the theology developed and advanced by John Calvin. The term also is used to identify the development of some of Calvin's doctrines by his followers, and also doctrines and practices derived from the works of Calvin and his followers that became the distinguishing characteristics of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches. In his theology, Calvin sought to hold in balance the full range of biblical teaching, arranged in a coherent pattern but not with absolute logical precision. He often refused to make conclusions that his followers were willing to make. Calvinism in its second form began to develop after Calvin's death in 1564. Certain developments, never postulated by him, tended to produce a more legalistic pattern in doctrine and discipline. Calvin's successor at Geneva, Theodore Beza, reverted to the medieval Scholastic practice of discussing predestination (the doctrine that some persons are elected to be saved) under the heading of God and Providence, whereas Calvin had eventually related it to the Person and work of Christ. Thus, a powerful element of speculative determinism was introduced into the doctrine. Beza also emphasized literalism in the inspiration of the Bible, which led him to believe that the only true ministry of the church must be presbyterian and not episcopal. Beza and his followers in England (Thomas Cartwright) and Scotland (Andrew Melville) emphasized church discipline exercised by presbyterian organization as being fundamental to the church's existence. The Five Articles of the Synod of Dort (161819) represented a powerful definition of this post-Calvin Calvinism and included the proposition that Christ died only for the elect (chosen), a statement that Calvin himself did not formally propose. The deterministic element in Beza's Calvinism was modified by the introduction of covenant theology, which emphasized the successive covenants made by God with man (from Adam through Moses to Christ) in which man is to respond in obedience in daily life to God's commandments in the moral law, through the covenant of grace in Christ. The Westminster Confession (1646), for many years the standard creed of English-speaking Presbyterians, was influenced by covenant theology. Another modification of Calvin's original theology was the pietistic and pragmatic concern for personal salvation that developed among English Puritans. Calvinism also refers to the theological emphasis and forms of church organization, worship, and discipline that became widespread in the 16th century. This emphasis is reflected in the various confessions, catechisms, and statements of faith of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches. in Protestant Christianity the theology advanced by John Calvin and its development by his followers. The term also refers to doctrines and practices derived from the works of Calvin and his followers that became the distinguishing characteristics of the Reformed churches. While Lutheranism was largely confined to parts of Germany and to Scandinavia, Calvinism spread into England, Scotland, the English-speaking colonies in North America, France, the Netherlands, much of Germany, and parts of central Europe. This expansion began during Calvin's lifetime and was encouraged by him. Religious refugees had poured into Geneva, especially from France during the 1550s as the French government became increasingly intolerant but also from England, Scotland, Italy, and other parts of Europe into which Calvinism had spread. Calvin welcomed them, trained many of them as ministers, sent them back to their countries of origin to spread the Gospel, and then supported them with letters of encouragement and advice. Geneva thus became the centre of an international movement and a model for churches elsewhere. John Knox, the Calvinist leader of Scotland, described Geneva as the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on the earth since the days of the Apostles. Efforts to explain the appeal of Calvinism in social terms have had only limited success. In France it may have been primarily attractive to the nobility and the urban upper classes, in Germany it found adherents among both townsmen and princes, but in England and the Netherlands it made converts in every social group. It seems likely, therefore, that its appeal was based on its ability to explain disorders of the age afflicting all classes as well as on the remedies and comfort provided both by its activism and by its doctrine. Having said this much, however, it is important to observe that the later history of Calvinism has often been obscured by a failure to distinguish between (1) Calvinism as the beliefs of Calvin himself, (2) the beliefs of his followers, who, though striving to be faithful to Calvin, modified his teachings to meet their own needs, and (3) more loosely, the beliefs of the Reformed tradition of Protestant Christianity, in which Calvinism proper was only one, if historically the most prominent, strand. The Reformed churchesin the 16th century referred to in the plural to indicate, along with what they had in common, their individual autonomy and varietyconsisted originally of a group of non-Lutheran Protestant churches based in towns in Switzerland and southern Germany. These churches have always been jealous of their autonomy, and Geneva was not alone among them in having distinguished theological leadership. Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger in Zrich and Martin Bucer in Strasbourg also had a European influence, which combined with that of Calvin, especially in England, to shape what came to be called Calvinism. The church in Geneva continued to venerate Calvin and aimed to be faithful to his teaching under his successors, first among them Theodore Beza, Calvin's chief lieutenant during the latter part of his life. But in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, in the atmosphere of what can be appropriately described as a Protestant Counter-Reformation, Calvinism in Geneva underwent a change. Abandoning Calvin's more humanistic tendencies and drawing more on other aspects of his thought, Calvinism was increasingly intellectualized and came more and more to resemble the Scholasticism that Calvin had abhorred. Under the influence of Aristotle the theology of Geneva became increasingly systematic. Faith, in this new atmosphere, was less a lively trust in God's promises than assent to a body of theological propositions. Especially the doctrine of predestination began to assume an importance such as had not been attributed to it before. Whereas Calvin had been led by personal faith to an awed belief in predestination, it now, considered an eternal decree of God and a metaphysical necessity, became the basis of faith. Developments in Geneva illustrate what happened to Calvinism elsewhere. In 1619 they reached a climax at the Synod of Dort in the Netherlands, which spelled out various corollaries of predestination, as Calvin had never done, and made the doctrine central to Calvinism. Although the controversy that provoked this formulation was local, the synod was attended by representatives of Reformed churches elsewhere and assumed somewhat the same importance for them as the Council of Trent did for Roman Catholics. In keeping with these developments Calvinist theologians, apparently finding Calvin's loose rhetorical style of expression unsatisfactory, began deliberately to write like Scholastic theologians, in Latin, and even appealed to medieval Scholastic authorities. The major Calvinist theological statement of the 17th century was the Institutio Theologiae Elencticae (1688) of Franois Turretin, chief pastor of Geneva. Although the title of his work recalled Calvin's masterpiece, the work itself bore little resemblance to the Institutes; it was not published in the vernacular, its dialectical structure followed the model of the great Summae of Thomas Aquinas, and it suggested Thomas' confidence in the value of human reason. The lasting significance of this shift is suggested by the fact that Turretin, in Latin, was the basic textbook in theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, the most distinguished intellectual centre of American Calvinism, until the middle of the 19th century. Historians of Calvinism have continued to debate whether these developments were essentially faithful to the beliefs of Calvin or deviations from them. In some sense they were both. Later Calvinism, though abandoning Calvin's more humanistic tendencies, found precedents for these changes in the contrary aspects of his thought. They were untrue to Calvin, however, in rejecting his typically Renaissance concern to balance contrary impulses. These changes, moreover, suggest the stage in the development of a movement that Max Weber called routinization. It is the stage that comes after a movement's creative beginnings and, as a kind of reaction against the disorderly freedom of individual creativity, represents the quite different values of order and regularity. It is also relevant to explaining these changes in Calvinism that they occurred during a period of singular disorder, caused among other things by a century of religious warfare, which generally produced a longing for certainty, security, and peace. Additional reading See Robert V. Schnucker (ed.), Calviniana: Ideas and Influence of Jean Calvin (1988); and Menna Prestwich (ed.), International Calvinism, 15411715 (1985). For Calvinist political thought, see Quentin Skinner, Calvinism and the Theory of Revolution, in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2, The Age of Reformation (1978), pp. 189358. William J. Bouwsma