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John
Calvin

1509  —  1564
Historical Archive  ·  Portrait Study
John Calvin
John Calvin
Noyon, Picardy, 1509  ·  Geneva, 1564

The lawyer-turned-reformer who built a theology of God's absolute sovereignty — and a city to match it.

He published the Institutes of the Christian Religion at twenty-six and revised it for the rest of his life. Farel's curse kept him in Geneva; Geneva expelled him and begged him back. He preached daily, wrote commentaries on nearly the whole Bible, and trained the refugees who carried his Reformation to France, Scotland, the Netherlands, and New England.

He consented to the burning of Servetus. He never repented of it. He asked to be buried in an unmarked grave, and he was.

Consultation

The knowledge of God
and of ourselves.

Calvin speaks from 5,178 chunks across seven works — both volumes of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, two volumes of his letters, the great tracts including the Reply to Sadoleto, and his commentaries on Romans and Genesis.

His discourse holds Luther's Bondage of the Will — the doctrinal ground he built on — and Max Weber's Protestant Ethic, the most influential modern argument about what his theology made of the world.

Ask him whether predestination leaves any room for human effort. Ask him about Servetus — he will not pretend it didn't happen. Ask him whether Weber was right that his theology built capitalism. Ask him why he stayed in the city he never wanted.

PredestinationSovereignty of GodThe InstitutesGenevaThe Servetus AffairReformationThe Weber Thesis
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.
Institutes of the Christian Religion  ·  Book I, Chapter I  ·  1559

Drawn From the Corpus