Calvin. History and Reception of a Reformation Week 5. Reading Calvin Today Sequence 9. Calvin and the Christianity of Tomorrow The point of today's sequence is not to predict, quantitatively or qualitatively, how Calvinism will influence the Christianity of tomorrow. Everything suggests that Christianity in Western Europe is waning. Yet ecclesiastical communities, though small and sparse, continue to exist. In some places, like Romania (just a short flight from Geneva), Christianity is alive and well. Today, Calvin remains a thinker to which we can turn for guidance. His thought is entirely turned toward God and the reality of human experience, rather than purely abstract speculation.
Everything in Calvin revolves around the Scriptural message. As we've seen, knowledge of God and knowledge of self are inherently intertwined. This teaching remains as relevant as ever today. Christianity must not stop speaking about God, who reaches out to humanity through his life-giving Word. Christianity must not lose track of the intended recipient of this life-giving Word: humanity as a whole. Needless to say, the world that Calvin knew is not the world we know today. Christians no longer persecute and kill each other. In most countries, heretics are no longer burned. Those who have the "wrong beliefs," theologically speaking, are no longer banished (which is not to say that banishment itself is a thing of the past). Can Calvin help us avoid an erroneous understanding of God? Calvin, it seems to me, allows us to avoid the quasi-heretical vision of God, prevalent in some places today, according to which God reacts to our deeds by rewarding or punishing us. This vision of a God more reactive than active is a sort of modern-day heresy -- and yet, it is not nearly as modern as we might think. The book of Job, already, challenged this view, according to which the just receive blessings, in the form not only of a full life but of material possessions as well,
whereas the wicked, the evildoer, the non-believer is punished. Calvin's thought rejects this simplistic way of seeing things. For Calvin, God takes the initiative. This is the point of his doctrine of predestination, in fact: faith does not depend on the subject who believes. Even though Calvin's doctrine of double predestination is open to criticism, this notion of divine initiative remains essential, in that it denies all attempts to manipulate God for ulterior
purposes and to inject materialistic desires into our vision of God. Will Pentecostalism, which is experiencing rapid growth throughout the world, be able to escape this vision of God -- a vision that ignores the disinterested aspect of love -- and present God as
something else than a mere Santa Claus, distributing gifts to those who believe in him? Here's another problem, another heresy (the term is perhaps a little strong): the absolutizing of the relative. In other words, the human tendency to self-deification, or to deify such-and-such an aspect of worldly reality -- whether it be country, race, personal success, beauty, glory or power. We've seen in this course that the Protestant tradition, following in the footsteps of Calvin, Zwingli, and others, has provided a framework through which its members, at times, have
been able to take a stand against totalitarian or dictatorial worldviews. Granted, some Calvinists allowed themselves to be seduced by these 20th century political pitfalls, and supported them. Let us not imagine that Calvinism always and necessarily leads to an opposition to totalitarianism or racism -- as we saw in the case of South African apartheid. Things are more complicated than that. Calvin himself does not always plead for resistance to tyranny; at times, he supports the status quo as relates to political authority. Nonetheless, from the moment one declares "for the glory of God alone," one is clearly taking a stand against every one of humanity's attempts to claim this glory, which belongs to
God and God alone, for itself. Hence the absolutely unequivocal positions adopted, throughout the 20th century, by prominent figures of Reformed Protestantism: Karl Barth, Madeleine Barot (co-founder of the
Cimade, the French organization for the defense of migrants' rights), and André Trocmé -- -- against Hitler and nazism; in favor of persecuted populations (in the case of Barot and Trocmé); and in favor of radical pacifism (in the case of Trocmé). Furthermore, Calvin can help us in the struggle against religious egoism. In his reply to Cardinal Sadoleto's 1539 letter to the Genevans, in which Sadoleto enjoined them to return to obedience to the Roman Pope, Calvin wrote that a true theologian, rather than to always relate man to himself, should remind man that "the prime motive of his existence [is] zeal to illustrate the glory of God. (...)
It certainly is the part of a Christian man to ascend higher than merely to seek and secure
the salvation of his own soul." There is a form of religious egoism that constitutes no less than a betrayal of the Biblical message, which commands us to acknowledge our neighbor, to hear our fellow man's call. For Calvin, the Christian faith necessarily implies service of God and of one's neighbor. You cannot have one without the other. The Christian faith does not remove us from the world; it inserts us in it so that we may change it and make it more human. The Christian faith is not experienced in solitude, says Calvin; it is experienced in a community, namely, the Church. It is nourished by the Word, proclaimed and shared among the faithful through the sacrament of the eucharist (or Lord's Supper). Yet, having thus been nourished, the community is then called to leave the confines of the church and give its witness into the world. It does not segregate itself in a space purported to be "sacred," holy," or "pure." For Calvin, the Church is a frail, fragile reality; far from being wealthy or robust, it is similar to a makeshift raft on a tempestuous sea. The Church is not made up of pastors and ministers, but of an entire congregation, among which there can be no division into first-class Christians and the rest,
into clerics and non-clerics. As for the future of Christianity? Calvin would say that although we are responsible, on a human level, for shaping this future, it is ultimately in God's hands -- as are the future of humanity
and of our planet. Yet this belief in no way absolves us of our human responsibility. Today, Christianity is increasingly becoming a non-Western religion. We must hope that from Christianity's ecclesiastical communities, powerful new voices, like that of John Calvin, will emerge on every continent.
