One of the centerpieces of the Calvin Jubilee of 2009, the 500th anniversary of his birth, was the international conference held in Geneva, “Calvin and His Influence, 1509–2009.” In the volume with the same name, Irena Backus and Philip Benedict have gathered together the plenary addresses from that conference. The addresses have been thoroughly rewritten and edited together to form an excellent volume. Frequently, the problem with the publication of conference proceedings is a volume that contains some gems, but is not thematically coherent enough to say something as a book. Scholars buy it, or more likely arrange for an interlibrary loan, so the relatively small number of excellent articles can be copied. Backus and Benedict are to be congratulated on the adroit manner in which they have avoided this by providing the theme of influence, and then tracing that model in both Calvin and Calvinism.
The book is divided into two large sections — the first looks at Calvin himself, and the second examines Calvinism. The editors begin with an excellent introductory article that should be required reading for all students of Calvin and Calvinism, both those who are still writing theses and those who delve into his thought and the movement that bears his name. Here, they set out the difficulties: the term Calvinism was hardly Calvin’s own choice, and frequently has been a term of derision from his enemies, and from rival confessions. But from about 1800, some groups began to self-identify as Calvinists, bringing a positive connotation to the term. The editors conclude that far more work needs to be done on the evolution of the term.
The first article is Diarmaid MacCulloch’s consideration of Calvin as the fifth Latin doctor of the Church, joining Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory. While this inclusion would aggravate conservative Roman Catholic thinkers, MacCulloch’s argument that Calvin’s Chalcedonian and Augustinian cast makes this a worthy concept to consider. Further, he clarifies that this is not simply a lauding of Calvin — while Calvin would have celebrated Chalcedon, MacCulloch considers the possibility that Chalcedon was a disaster in the history of the Church, one that split it deeply.
This measured evaluation of Calvin, seeing both problems and successes, defines most of the essays in the first half of the volume. Harro Höpfl’s consideration of Calvin’s use of the aristocracy in his own political and ecclesiological vision is balanced by his analysis that found this ideal to be badly suited for the actual circumstances in which many Calvinist communities found themselves, forcing them to accommodate in a manner that created a Calvinist political tradition that was only loosely related to Calvin’s thought. Max Engammare’s discussion of Calvin’s workaholism both notes that this was actual, and also revealed a certain manner of thinking about divine judgment about one’s use of time. Olivier Millet’s analysis of Calvin’s self-understanding as an author demonstrates how Calvin took over the humanistic model from Erasmus, but transformed it with a prophetic cast, though refusing to abandon the wider connotation and audience of the world of letters. Articles from William Naphy and Emidio Campi contextualize Calvin, first in Geneva, and then setting Calvin’s Geneva in its situation in Swiss and European reform.
The second half of the volume attempts to build a conception of Calvinism through a series of explorations of Calvinism after Calvin, paying attention both to the wide geographic dispersion of Calvinist Christian communities, and to the long duration; five centuries have given occasion for a varieties of Calvinisms to bloom, even in the same location. Heinz Schilling’s article on Calvinism as an influence in the early modern state system near the beginning of the seventeenth century opens this section. Richard Muller’s close examination of how seventeenth-century theologians used Calvin’s thought nicely dovetails with Schilling’s. But these early examinations are quickly balanced by Ernestine Van Der Wall’s consideration of Calvin in the Dutch Enlightenment; André Encrevé’s discussion of Calvin in French Protestantism from 1830–1940; and Friedrich Wilhelm Graf’s consideration of the diversity of modern interpretations of Calvinism in the German- and English-speaking world. The volume ends with John W. De Gruchy’s examination of Calvinism’s role in South African apartheid — where both the apartheid and anti-apartheid camps depended on Calvinism, though different versions of it.
It would be impossible for a volume of essays to exhaust even the current state of the research on Calvin or Calvinism. But this well-chosen set of articles both illustrates some of the ways that Calvin and Calvinism have functioned across the centuries, and is richly suggestive of those directions that further research should follow. Backus and Benedict are to be thanked for turning one of the most illustrious conferences of the Calvin Jubilee into what promises to be one of its more lasting fruits.
