Evangelicalism and John Calvin

Barth has suggested that Calvin was so concentrated on heaven impressing its order on the world that the world itself was lost. This explains why he rejected Copernicus. Any aid to religious experience was discounted because it originated, as it were, below. Here is yet another conflict with his humanism. But surely the incarnation, that God became man in Jesus, conjoined the voice from below with that from above. Revelation thus did not simply come down from above but consisted of a conversation between heaven and earth, a conversation that will continue to eternity. But Calvin's idea of revelation was top down, once and for all and unsympathetic to the human condition. In his reading of the bible, he missed the many accounts of men and women finding themselves in unresolvable circumstances that could not be moralised away.

This conflict was observable in Calvin's own life. He married a widow who gave him three children all of whom died as infants. He refused to grieve their deaths, but when his wife died, he found himself unmanned. The misery of her loss overwhelmed him to the extent that he lost all control of himself i.e. lost all sense of the order of his life. He determined not to marry again.

Evangelical Christianity often mirrors Calvin's view. We see the same unrelenting moral absolutism, the same judgment that "sinners" will burn in hell and the same self-righteousness. Meanwhile, a much softer Christianity has evolved that places more emphasis on the kingdom of God being quietly established among the faithful, that emphasises the grace of God rather that His judgement. This is called "liberalism" by evangelicals, a loosening of essential, hard, aspects of the faith. But it has come about, not through a conforming to the world but careful scholarship that sees more clearly who Jesus was and how His presence persists with us, transforming us, not through fear and threat, but through compassion for the human condition.

Calvin was no innovator in theology. He affirmed the traditional doctrines of the Church and is, today, regarded as one of the great theologians. However, his circumstances and personal makeup ensure that we must, while respecting his achievement, realise that our understanding of God and the world has moved on. This is of great importance to the Protestant denominations who are in schism over sexual morality, reading the bible and sacramental worship. A study of John Calvin and his world holds the promise of that schism being healed.

This might be the time that evangelicals listened to Isaiah;

Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
¹⁹ Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isa.43:18,19)