Calvin. History and Reception of a Reformation Week 5. Reading Calvin Today Sequence 1. Calvin's Cultural and Religious Legacy Welcome to today's sequence, in which I will give a very broad overview of Calvin's cultural and religious legacy. When it comes to the relationship between Calvin and culture, the first thing to point out is that this area of study has been explored to a much greater extent by Anglo-Saxon academics
than by their European counterparts. Case in point: the last chapter of historian Alister McGrath's influential book, "A Life of John Calvin" (1990), is entitled "Calvin and the Shaping of Western Culture." Another example: in the United States, the year 2009 (the 500th anniversary of Calvin's birth) saw an explosion of new publications devoted to the Reformer. Among them was a collection of essays,
contributed by several noted Calvin scholars, entitled "Calvin and Culture" (2010). What do we mean by "culture"? The term encompasses not only art, literature, music, fine arts -- areas we've touched on, here and there, over the past few weeks -- but also, as you are aware, a certain vision of the
world, i.e. the manner in which people see themselves, both in society and in relation to others. All of these aspects are included when we speak of Calvin's "cultural legacy" today. Here I'd like to quote an author who is not in the least a Reformed Protestant or a Calvinist. The following words, written by the great Catholic novelist François Mauriac, appeared in the January 1951 edition of the Figaro Littéraire: "Calvinism's greatest achievement is to have given birth to a certain type of human, very noble, very secretive, whose pride, though somewhat shadowy, knows how not to be troublesome, who has
the exquisite manners of the world but not its spirit -- a type of man whose conscience, ever awake, monitors each of his movements and thoughts, and whose dominant virtue is perhaps self-modesty." A wonderful tribute from a Catholic author. Calvin has given birth to a certain type of human. That said, historians today are less inclined to the kind of effusive praise that characterizes Emile Léonard's assessment of Calvin, whom he described as the "founder of a
civilization" in his "History of Protestantism" (1961). For Léonard, "Luther liberated the soul; Calvin founded a civilization." And again: "To Calvin, we owe the creation of a new man, the creation of a new world." Quite a statement. Yet it is a statement that conceals a profound truth. McGrath (who I mentioned earlier) suggests that what we owe to Calvin, from a cultural point of view, can be characterized as follows. 1. The movement that arose from the thought and writings of Calvin is an international movement. As we've learned in this course, there is a vast diaspora of Reformed Protestants, spanning every continent. 2. The thought and writings of Calvin -- as you already know by now -- are not restricted to the field of religion. Calvin's thought is not interested in abstract versions of theological speculation -- as we've seen on several occasions. Rather, Calvin was what we would today refer to as a "socially committed intellectual." There is a gap to be bridged between confessing one's faith and putting it in practice on a daily basis: at every turn, Calvin is constantly working to bridge this gap,
and inviting the reader to do the same. Consequently (and this brings us to our third point), Calvinism is not merely a theology; it is also a way to live in the world. In our increasingly secularized world, most people who identify with the Reformed tradition have probably never read Calvin. Yet they've retained from him a certain number of principles, in their political life, in their social life and, more generally, in their ethical life. Their outlook on the world is steeped in Calvinism. It will be our task, in this last week of our course, to explore this legacy of John Calvin in terms of both culture and religion. This is, of course, an impossible task and we won't have time to mention everything. There are things which, though important in their own right, we'll have to leave out, such as the the relationship between Calvinism and science, or the relationship between Calvinism and the
development of various exegetical disciplines (the interpretation of Scripture). Today, both of these fascinating topics constitute particularly active and fruitful areas of academic research. This last week will be divided into three parts: Part 1: Two visions of Calvin (the first negative, the second positive). In Part 2, we'll invite you to travel with us around the world -- to Asia, to Africa, to the Americas -- to explore how Calvin's legacy can best be defined. In Part 3, some of our colleagues at the University of Geneva will present their personal assessment of Calvin's legacy today. We've reached the end of today's sequence. Thank you for your attention.
