A Brief History on Calvinism and the Calvinists

In Switzerland he was influenced by several leading reformers already preaching there. In 1536 he published the first of many editions of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which was outlawed and burned in France from 1542. Nevertheless, it became the key reformist text in shaping French Protestantism in particular, as well as defining a community of believers more generally. His adherents were soon called ''Calvinists,'' distinguishing them from followers of the German reforms of Martin Luther. Calvin moved to Geneva in 1536 and immediately tried to institute his reforms in the city's law and practice. This proved too much for a population who only recently had disposed of a Catholic bishop and was in no mood to accept a new dogmatist: Calvin was dismissed in April 1538. He resided in Strasbourg from 1538 to 1541, refining and revising his views. Then he returned to Geneva, where he moved more cautiously to put ''godly rule'' into practice. In the interim he published Ordonnances eccle´siastiques (1541). Once firmly established, he ruled with a hard hand against all he deemed ''heretics.'' His political and religious enemies were burned or beheaded, infamously including, in 1553, the physician Michael Servetus, an incident Reformation historians depict as the Calvinist equivalent of the Catholic inquisition trial and ultimate silencing of Galileo Galilei.

Calvin accepted many of Luther's published positions: justification by faith alone (though with greater emphasis on the ''Fall from Grace''); the literal truth of the Christian Bible and corresponding primacy of scripture over papal and episcopal authority; the associated doctrine of a ''priesthood of all believers''; the sanctifying role of grace; and the doctrine of predestination (''eternal election, by which God has predestined some to salvation, others to destruction''), in which faith is the fruit of a predestined salvation and ''divine grace'' offers no consolation for the damned. Also with Luther, Calvin rejected Catholic ideas about Purgatory, praying for the dead, the cult of saints, and intercession through prayer. Calvin's lasting impact thus did not lie in developing much new theology but instead in providing an expanded, more legally informed and clearly reasoned, and above all more easily communicated set of explanations of reformed beliefs.

Calvin also dwelled on the dark, corrupt attributes of human nature, seeing the ''ways of the flesh'' as perversely opposed to a disciplined will beloved of God. This gave his views a distinct sexual puritanism that he combined with an overbearing personal paternalism. On the other hand, Calvin freed many laity from the Catholic cult of celibacy, which he dismissed as ''this ornament of chastity.'' Approving clerical marriage, one of the truly successful reforms of the Reformation, arose partly from Calvin's own lusty appetites but also because celibacy was observed mainly in the breach by a corrupt Catholic clergy that openly practiced concubinage then forgave each other's sexual sins in the confessional. In other ways Calvin opposed the severe asceticism espoused by more radical Protestant reformers. But his paternalistic instincts as well as the tenor of the Age drove him to favor strict obedience to secular authorities as God's lieutenants on Earth. This was the defining characteristic of early Calvinists: their insistence that true faith transformed not just the inner life of individuals but the pubic sphere as well. Calvin's refusal to sanction the Huguenot revolt in France did not prevent a good many rulers, Lutheran and Catholic, from suppressing Calvinism there or elsewhere. Still, Calvinism spread across Germany where the ground was prepared by Lutheranism; throughout the Swiss Confederation, where by mid-century Calvinists and Zwinglians joined in confessional and military alliance against Swiss Catholics; and into southern France. Calvin's teachings crossed the Channel to Scotland and England, carried there by refugees returning from Geneva, most notably John Knox. Calvinist political thought after the death of the founder in 1564 often tended to political radicalism which threatened or alienated temporal rulers. What offended Catholic and Lutheran monarchs especially were the social implications of the way Calvinist communities were organized and Calvinist doctrine enforced-this was crucial, as all three confessions saw Christianity more as a body of believers than a body of beliefs, and all thought the 16th-century state duty-bound to intervene in spiritual affairs. In Calvinist communities social and spiritual discipline was upheld by a council of elders (consistory), that merged church and state into one body with powers of punishment in both the mortal and immortal realms: death and excommunication. These twin threats, and much social coercion, were used to restrain natural human passions, condemn backsliding and perceived spiritual weakness, and govern and guide the laity in the way of the flesh and the ways of the Lord. If Catholic and Lutheran communities used the church to legitimate and uphold temporal power, in Calvinist communities the reverse was true.