Calvin. History and Reception of a Reformation Week 5. Reading Calvin Today Sequence 12. Conclusion Hi, my name is Sarah Nicolet and I am scientific collaborator here at the University of Geneva. We met at the very beginning of this course, and here I am again, for the last sequence, in which I'll try to "close the loop," so to speak. Today's sequence is being filmed in front of the Wall of the Reformers, where Christophe Chalamet first introduced this course. Over the past five weeks, I've had the pleasure, like you, of discovering the life of Calvin, his theology and ethics, and the way in which his ideas have spread throughout the world. To be honest, when I started this course, my knowledge of Calvin was somewhat limited. The image I had of him was essentially negative: an austere theologian, enemy of pleasure, intolerant of his enemies, responsible for the unjust execution of Servetus... In short, not a very flattering picture -- one reinforced by the way people tend to talk about Geneva, also known in some circles as Calvingrad, namely, a bleak and boring city in
which no one has much fun. Has this image of Calvin changed over the course of these five weeks? More importantly, what does Calvin have to teach us today? I'd like to suggest some answers to these two questions in today's sequence. This last sequence should not be construed as an ending. Rather, I hope it will serve as an invitation to further discussion -- our "virtual" round table is open to each and everyone
of you and we look forward to discussing with you anything and everything related to this course. I'd like to highlight three aspects in particular of Calvin's thought: his vision of God, of the human being, and of society. Let's start with God. At first glance, Calvin's God is above all a God of judgment, a God who elects, sure, but more than that a God who reproves, who judges and who condemns
to eternal punishment. Yet, as we learned in the second week of our course, this description fails to encompass all that God signifies in Calvin's theology. Indeed, Calvin's God is first and foremost a good God, a benevolent father. In the words of theologian Marc Vial, whose work I'll be quoting throughout this sequence, "God’s fatherly goodness […] is attested with respect to every human being by the very fact
that God decided to be the creator."
(Marc Vial, John Calvin. An Introduction to his Theological Thought, 2009, p. 73) In other words, God's goodness is revealed in the fact that he creates. For Calvin, all things are created for man. To quote him directly: "But we ought in the very order of things diligently to contemplate God’s fatherly love toward
mankind, in that he did not create Adam until he had lavished upon the universe all manner
of good things. […] Now when he disposed the movements of the sun and stars to human uses, filled the earth, waters, and air with living things, and brought forth an abundance of fruits to suffice as foods,
in thus assuming the responsibility of a foreseeing and diligent father of the family he shows
his wonderful goodness toward us." (Institutes I, 14, 2). Thus everything is created for man, and this is why, according to Calvin, man himself was ultimately created. Furthermore, we learned that God does not abandon God's creation, leaving it to its own devices. According to Marc Vial, for Calvin, "God’s creative act is continuous: he does not just give life,
but also sustains and governs it." (Vial, 2009, p.73). This idea is encapsulated in Calvin's concept of providence. Indeed, Calvin sees God not only as one who governs the world as a whole, but also as one who cares for each of his creatures on
an individual basis. Thus, when Calvin speaks of "knowing God," he means, first and foremost, the ability to recognize God's goodness, to recognize that God cares about our welfare. Calvin's vision, then, is far removed indeed from that of a God whose sole purpose is to judge and condemn people to eternal death. For Calvin, God's action is that of a beneficent Father, a Father in whom one may trust. Calvin's message to the believer is thus a message of hope. Whatever happens, you can trust in God; God takes care of us. Which brings me to my second point: Calvin's vision of humanity. At first, I thought that Calvin's vision of human beings was nothing more than man as sinner: man as fallen, man as helpless without God. And this certainly forms a part of Calvin's vision. For Calvin, ever since Adam, humanity is sinful; humanity is fallen. As Vial points out, Calvin equates man with original sin, a sin that consisted in an act of pride: man's attempt to rise above
his condition as creature and reject God's authority. As a result of this sin, human faculties were corrupted: "Man, left to himself, has neither free judgement to discern good from bad,
nor free will to desire good." (Vial, 2009, p.88) In other words, man, having sinned, loses his capacity for free will. Yet man, for Calvin, remains responsible -- and this is what I'd like to highlight, echoing what we learned when we studied Calvin's ethics. For Calvin, man, this sinner, is saved by the sole grace of God, as expressed in the agency of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. All three of these elements (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) are included in Calvin's definition of faith: "We call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the
truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon
our hearts through the Holy Spirit." (Institutes III,2,7) In this definition, we have the idea of God's fatherly benevolence as regards God's creation, which manifests itself in Jesus Christ's salvational work of redemption,
i.e. his death on the cross on our behalf. And it is the Holy Spirit, operating within us, that gives us the faith to participate in this salvific event. Thus faith is above all an expression of trust, of confidence in God's benevolence towards God's creation. Still, for Calvin, this trust in God's action and justice does not mean a loss of responsibility for man. Man cannot simply put everything in God's hands and claim a total lack of influence on anything that happens. On the contrary: faith in God is a summons, a call to human responsibility, an ethical responsibility. Man is called to experience and carry out his new identity as a believer,
as a sinner saved by grace, in everyday life and in the world. Man's responsibility consists in attempting to change the world to conform to God's will, while remaining aware of his own human limitations. Eric Fuchs has summarized Calvin's ethical principle quite elegantly: "Act fully responsibly, as if everything depends upon you, knowing all the while
that ultimately everything depends on God and God’s providence." Thus, for Calvin, the believer's place is in the world. It is a mistake for one to remove oneself from the world in order to focus exclusively on one's spiritual life, to create for oneself
an internal monastery of sorts. This focus on responsibility, on real-world commitment, remains an important message for Protestantism today. More than any political program, or membership in such-and-such a political party, more than attracting any amount of voters, Protestant political engagement is governed by what journalist
and essayist Rémy Hebding has called "a Protestant spirit, culture and style in politics." The Gospel does not provide us with a political program or a ready-made recipe. It is up to each individual believer to act, with insight and responsibility, to make the world a better
and fairer place for all, i.e. to reshape the world according to God's plan. So that's the second aspect of Calvin's thought which I'll retain: Calvin's insistence, which has become to a large extent synonymous with Protestantism, on man's ethical responsibility. Now, let's turn to our third and final theme: Calvin's vision of society. Here again, there is an abundance of negativity concerning Calvin's thought. Calvin has been criticized for his intolerance, his tendency to excessive moralization, his desire to turn Geneva
into one big convent, his theocratic leanings, etc. These criticisms are well known, and not entirely unjustified. Yet it seems worthwhile to also highlight Calvin's legacy in a more positive light. In Geneva -- and this is a crucial point, in my opinion -- the Reformation of the 16th century was also a social reformation. One of Calvin's great concerns was to combat poverty, to find a way to uplift the poor out of their poverty. This endeavor was carried out in two main ways. On the one hand, the goal was to help the poor, to take care of the sick, of widows and orphans, of the elderly and destitute, but also to help the victims of large-scale historical events. Thus Geneva, under the influence of Calvin, himself a foreigner, offered itself as a haven to a considerable number of refugees. Yet, in Calvin's view, only those unable to work are entitled to receive this kind of assistance. The way to help the able-bodied get out of poverty is not to give them hand-outs (Calvin outlawed begging in Geneva), but to give them jobs, and specifically jobs that lead to
their reinsertion into society. To this end, as we learned early in our course, Calvin implemented a system of free and mandatory education. From his point of view, educating children was not only the
responsibility of parents, but of the entire community of believers. In the words of Eric Fuchs, according to Calvin, "The best way to fight mendicity and immorality is to fight the economic and moral causes of
such things, to enable everyone to find work and to be educated." In other words, Calvin's ethical system involves not only an insistence on the individual believer's responsibility, but also a societal dimension, a certain vision of society, based on Scripture,
the central ethical requirements of which include justice and solidarity. In conclusion, there are three main elements of Calvin's thought that really stand out in my mind: a sense of trust in the benevolence of divine action; a call to individual human responsibility;
and a set of ethical requirements for society. As I mentioned at the beginning of this sequence, I began this course with a caricatural and mostly negative image of Calvin's thought. In this sequence, perhaps in an effort to balance things out, I've tried to highlight some of its more positive aspects and, in particular, those aspects that still remain relevant today,
that still have something to say to us, to teach us, in terms of our beliefs,
and in terms of our responsibilities as individuals and as a community. Thus I'm leaving this course with a much more nuanced understanding of Calvin, one that has gained in depth, in complexity, in subtlety; one that can no longer be reduced to a series of
ready-made clichés. And as a result, the question I'm now asking myself is:
how will I continue to read Calvin today?
