“Knowing Who (and Whose) We Are: Celebrating our Spiritual  Heritage

Join us throughout this year as we learn more about the ideas that make us who we are from our spiritual forefather John Calvin.

Sunday Nov. 1, 2009…. #1: The Sovereignty of God

Sunday Dec 6, 2009….. #2…Election and Grace

Sunday Jan 3, 2010….. #3…Priesthood of all Believers

Sunday Feb. 7, 2010…. #4…The Word and our Worldview

Sunday April 11, 2010… #5…Transforming Society

Sunday May 2, 2010….. #6…Church Order

Sunday June 1, 2010….. #7…The Providence of God

Join the conversation! Go to our Calvin Blog and offer your Opinion.

Brief Biography on John Calvin

John Calvin was born on July 10, 1509, in Noyon, in the northern French province of Picardy.  His father was a highly esteemed notary, solicitor to the bishop, and administrator to the Noyon clergy.  His mother was known for her religious piety, motherly affection, and beauty.  She died when Calvin was still a little boy.  In his early schooling, Calvin distinguished himself as having an extraordinary intellect and strength of character.

Martin Luther (German reformer) and Ulrich Zwingli (Swiss reformer) were both about 25 years old when Calvin was born.  Philip Melanchton, Luther’s systematizer, was 12 years older than Calvin.  Thus, Calvin was a second generation Reformer.  Calvin was born the same year as King Henry the VIII of England.  Calvin was 8 years old when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church, on October 31, 1517, the act that ignited the Protestant Reformation. 

When John was 12, his father decided that he should become a priest. To provide him with the best possible education, and to avoid the plague in their area, at age 12 Calvin’s father sent him with some other boys to Paris to begin his studies at the University there, the most famous educational institution in Europe (1521).  After one year of study there, Calvin’s father transferred him to the lice-ridden College de Montaigu, another college in the University of Paris.  (Calvin was followed here by Ignatius Loyola.)  After 3 years, Calvin graduated with an M.A. degree at the age of 16.  An exception was made for him, since most students had to be 21 years old to receive this degree. 

Upon graduation, Calvin’s father decided that the legal profession would be better for him, so he transferred to the University of Orleans to study civil law under the leading law professor in France.  Within a year, he had so distinguished himself that he began to teach classes himself.  He left there at age 20 in 1529 or 1530 to study law at the University of Bourges.  He returned home in 1530 to oversee the burial of his father who had died excommunicate, having fallen out of favor with the church over a business matter.  He then returned to Paris for more studies, receiving a Doctorate in Law. 

In 1532, Calvin experienced an unexpected conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism.  He was a brilliant young scholar, with one of the most thoroughly trained legal minds of his time taught by the best authorities in Europe. Many people came to him to listen to his teaching.  Because he had converted to Protestantism, he began to preach and teach Reformation teachings.  At the age of 25, the normal age for ordination into the priesthood, Calvin resigned his church benefices on May 4, 1534, and thus closed all formal connections with the Catholic Church. 

In 1534, a major persecution broke out in Paris against the Protestants. With the personal safety of reform-minded scholars like Calvin in jeopardy (one of his best friends was burned at the stake) in 1535, Calvin left Paris for the safety of the Swiss city of Basel.   There Calvin worked with others on a new translation of the Bible which became known as the Geneva Bible, becoming the most popular translation in France for 200 years. 

The intellectual ferment in Basel motivated Calvin in 1536, at the age of 26, to publish the first edition of the book that would forever change his destiny, The Institutes of the Christian Religion.  This book was addressed to King Francis I of France and contained a reasoned defense of the reformed ideas of faith and doctrine.  It was profoundly successful, selling out its first edition within a year and going on to many revisions until its final form in 1559.  Here is Calvin’s motivation in his own words:

While I lay hidden at Basel, and known only to few people, many faithful and holy persons were burnt alive in France…It appeared to me, that unless I opposed [the perpetrators] to the utmost of my ability, my silence could not be vindicated from a charge of cowardice and treachery.  This was the consideration which induced me to publish my Institutes of the Christian Religion…It was published with no other design than that men might know what was the faith held by those whom I saw basely and wickedly defamed. 

Choosing to move on to the city of Strasbourg, on August 5, 1536, Calvin stopped for a night’s stay in the city of Geneva that became the defining moment of his life. When the reformed leader in the city named William Farel discovered that the famous author of the Institutes was there for the night, he implored Calvin to stay and work with him for the cause of reform.  Calvin initially protested, saying that he was a scholar not a pastor.  But Farel, 20 years Calvin’s elder, threatened him with the curse of Almighty God if he preferred the scholar’s work to the cause of Christ in Geneva.  Terrified by his words, Calvin wrote that “he felt as if God from on high had reached out his hand to arrest me.”  So, he agreed to stay.  This became known as his “first Geneva period.”  He served there for 2 ½ years, the first six months without pay. 

Here, Calvin worked with Farel to show that reform meant more than agreeing with certain lofty ideas, but involved the transformation of life.  They wrote a confession of faith to be endorsed by city inhabitants, a catechism for use in teaching the young, and new laws concerning public morals.  Before too long, however, Calvin fell out of favor with the city leaders, because he refused to serve communion to everyone, believing that faith in Christ was necessary to receive the sacrament.  The dispute became so difficult, that Calvin was asked to leave Geneva in 1538.  So at the age of 29, Calvin left Geneva, a disappointed young Reformer, with no job and no income.

Soon however, the Reformer Martin Bucer invited Calvin to come to Strasbourg, where he pastored a Protestant congregation of 400 – 600 French refugees until 1541.  In 1539, the Catholic Cardinal Sadoleto appealed to Geneva to return to the Catholic faith.  The city leaders, who had run Calvin out of town, now asked him to write their response.  Calvin’s “Reply to Cardinal Sadoleto” became regarded over time as one of the best defenses of the Protestant cause ever produced, for it expressed the thoughts and feelings of Protestants everywhere.  It moved Calvin to the forefront of the Reformation movement, and earned him new respect and support in Geneva.  Meanwhile, in March of 1540, Calvin married Idelette de Bure, a widowed member of his Strasbourg congregation, and the mother of a boy and a girl.

In 1540, Calvin was invited by the Geneva authorities to return to their city.  Geneva was rampant with gambling, street brawls, drunkenness, adultery, public indecency, and anarchy.  They viewed Calvin as the only man they knew who could save their city.  In September of 1541, Calvin finally agreed to return to Geneva, older and wiser (at the age of 32).  When Calvin resumed his position as a Bible teacher on September 13, 1541, he began teaching from the very verse with which he had left off in 1538!

He still had a strong vision to make Geneva a Reformed city – regular preaching and catechism for children and adults, along with close regulation of businesses and the moral life of the community.  Calvin’s second Geneva period lasted from 1541 – 1564.  The ministry was difficult for the first 14 years, but then much more successful for the last nine years.  Calvin republished his Institutes in 1543, 1550, and 1559, the final edition consisting of four books and 80 chapters.

Some people distance themselves from Calvin because of his role in the execution of  Michael Servetus, the arch-heretic of his day.  Servetus denied the doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Christ.  Servetus had the kind of personality that did everything to provoke and nothing to conciliate.  He had been convicted of heresy and blasphemy at a papal tribunal in Vienne, France.  He had already been sentenced to burning at the stake when he escaped and showed up in Geneva.  The authorities in Geneva were afraid of a backlash from the Catholic Church if they spared Servetus. Calvin agreed that he should be put to death, but used his influence to try to persuade people not to burn Servetus at the stake, believing that other means would be more humane.  Calvin did not win that argument, and Servetus was burned at the stake. 

John Calvin’s influence spread all over Europe because he started the Geneva Academy, an intellectual center for Reformed thinking which today has become the University of Geneva.  Among those who flocked to study with him was John Knox, who brought the Reform movement to Scotland, becoming the founder of Scottish, English, and American Puritanism.  At the time of the American Revolutionary War, one-third of the people living in the colonies were Scottish or Scotch-Irish.  When you include the English, the Dutch, the German, and the French who had been influenced by Calvin’s Reformed teachings, two-thirds of people in the colonies had been trained in his religious and political thought.  More than one-half of the officers and soldiers in the American Revolutionary War army were Presbyterians. 

As Calvin grew older, he began to suffer from asthma, indigestion, and migraine headaches.  In 1558, he had a long bout with malarial fever from which he never fully recovered. He also suffered with arthritis, gum disease, and ulcerous hemorrhoids. In his later years, his body was constantly wracked with pain. Despite all these maladies, Calvin was the author of 71 volumes of some of the greatest theological writings in existence, including commentaries on practically every book of the Bible. 

John Calvin preached his final sermon on February 6, 1564.  He attended church for the last time on April 20 (Easter Sunday).  On April 25 he dictated his will, and on May 27, he died of pulmonary tuberculosis, five weeks shy of his 55th birthday.  He was buried the next day.  At Calvin’s request, he was buried in an unmarked grave.  Today, no one knows where he is buried.