Calvin is Complicated: The Redefining of Success
John Calvin is known today as the illustrious Swiss reformer of the Christian church of the sixteenth century. However, he did not dream of such high and influential realms of persisting success from an early age. As a young boy, Calvin was far from religious, even though his father worked as a clerk of sorts for the local church, which is a humorous twist on the “clerical” job (Holder). It was not just his father’s affluent job or Calvin’s own innate ambition that stirred his brilliance that brought his lasting fame, but also a matter of sheer luck: that he was born at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the exact time the Christian Reformation in Europe was just getting legs is nothing short of a miracle (“The Reformation”). Malcolm Gladwell would agree that Calvin had “intelligence, personality, [and] ambition,” but more importantly was a “product of particular places and environments” (Gladwell 119). Calvin’s success also owes to the historical fact that Switzerland had quite recently (relative to his birth) formally declared itself to be militarily neutral, lending itself to the advancement of Switzerland as a center of European trade and philosophical-religious ideology which it inhabits to this day. Calvin is also widely recognized today because of the relative novelty of the “movable type” printing press which made possible the mass production of written material. Yet all these historical coincidences afforded to John Calvin and all the Gladwellian advantages inherent of particular places, pedigrees, and pedagogues from which he profited would have been worthless without Calvin’s characteristically modest desire to model a changing paradigm of success: that living life to the fullest is walking humbly before God. Thus, Calvin’s success as a religious (and by extension, philosophical) reformer is not only complicated by the unique circumstances of his life, but also redefined by his lifelong mission of emptying himself to further the gospel and reform the church.
Though there is not much recorded of Calvin’s early life (that is, before his writings began to chronicle his presence), Rev. Ward Holder recounts one story that Calvin’s mother once “[took] him to visit shrines” (Holder). This is surprising that visiting shrines is the extent of young Calvin’s religious experience, especially as his father was employed by the church, and this demonstrates that Calvin was not raised in the tutelage of the church. The next recorded event of John Calvin’s life is of scoring a position in private tutoring from a nearby wealthy family for whom his father worked (Holder). This fact heavily complies with Gladwell’s argument that successful people are geniuses who “don’t do it alone” (Gladwell 119). Had Calvin not been born to a relatively wealthy family in the sixteenth century, all of his great intelligence and ambition would have been fruitless without a proper education from a young age provided for in private tutelage. Holder calls this circumstance of Calvin’s education as being completely dependent on “the good fortune of his father’s professional relationship” to this nearby family of nobility (Holder). Gladwell would call this provision by merit of his father’s occupation one of Calvin’s “hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow [those who emerge successful] to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot” (Gladwell 19). His father’s relatively affluent career and the people in high places he knew gave his son, John Calvin, the means to practice the extraordinary academic talents Calvin demonstrated.
However, this is not to downplay Calvin’s intelligence or drive for excellence: Calvin is next recorded to have distinguished himself in his studies sufficient to gain the “support of a benefice, a church-granted stipend, at the age of 12, so as to support him in his studies” (Holder). Holder is also quick to point out the unusual nature of this benefice: “Although normally benefices were granted as payment for work for the church, either present or in the future, there is no record that Calvin ever performed any duties for this position. Later [in his life] he held two more benefices, for which he also did no work” (Holder). This is immensely important because it reveals the nature of Calvin’s emerging ambition and academic knack for excellence at the age of 12, being paid with a scholarship to continue his studies, as opposed to the normal purpose of a benefice being a wage to pay church workers (Holder). John Calvin was also encouraged onwards in his studies by his father, who willed all of his sons to enter the priesthood (“John Calvin: Biography”). Calvin himself writes in a rare reflective portion of his Commentary on the Psalms, “My father had intended me for theology from my early childhood” (Bouwsma 10). This urging is also important to note, as Calvin aimed to be successful as a priest at this time not because of a desire to reform the church, but as a simple means of acquiring a professional and well-paying job (of the sixteenth century, at any rate) that his father desired him to achieve. Without the availability of financial support of the local church, John Calvin would not have been able to pay the expensive bills of sixteenth century private education.
Calvin was not only lucky to be born of a family with ties to higher places and in the range of a parish that could recognize and support his talent, but he was also lucky to be born in the exact first decade of the sixteenth century. Anticipated by the Bubonic Plague (the “Black Death”) and the Western Schism of the Roman Catholic Church, Martin Luther struck the nail in the coffin when he pounded his hammer against the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, thus starting the Reformation with his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences in 1517 (Bouwsma 8). John Calvin was born in 1509, was given his benefice in 1521, and finished his first edition of Institutio Christianae religionis (The Institutes of the Christian Religion) in 1536 (Cline). Gladwell would again compare Calvin to Joe Flom, that
[“the sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our particular place in history presents us with. For a would-be lawyer, being born in the early 1930s was a magic time, just as being born in 1955 was for a software programmer, or being born in 1835 was for being an entrepreneur” (Gladwell 137). ]
Being born in the early 1500s was a prime time to succeed as a Christian reformer. Martin Luther of Germany is credited with the beginning of the Protestant Reformation when he published his Ninety-five Theses in 1517, just twenty years before Calvin would begin reforming Geneva and his writing of the Institutes of the Christian Religion and numerous commentaries. Had he been born at the end of the fourteenth century, Calvin would have attended college before Luther’s controversial publication, and become a Roman Catholic priest, as Luther’s works “were early [read] during Calvin’s first years at the University” (Bouwsma 13). Had he been born later in the century, Calvin would have continued in his father’s urging to become a humanist lawyer, as he would have missed the opportunity to learn Greek and Latin from the aged masters in the Parisian universities, who died shortly after the 1520s (Bouwsma 12). Calvin’s brilliant skills as a writer, speaker, pastor, and reformer would either be impossible or unnecessary had he been born in a different generation.
The fact that John Calvin was born in Noyon, France is also incredibly lucky. France was not the birthplace of the Renaissance (though it gave a French title to the era), but it was a major hub for the development of science, literature, and art. The universities of Paris were among the best in Europe at the time. Most importantly to Calvin’s eventual success as a writer of the Reformation, Parisian universities were renowned for their excellence in languages. At several Parisian universities, Calvin mastered Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, “the three languages in the scholarly and educational program of Christian reform” (Bouwsma 12). Mathurin Cordier, called “one of Latin’s greatest teachers,” tutored Calvin in the development of his Latin so thoroughly that Calvin would dedicate to Cordier his Commentary on Ephesians (Ganoczy). But the advantages of France did not end with the obvious availability of quality education; when Calvin was exiled from France for being implicated with the controversial Nicolas Cop, he was forced to flee to the nominally-neutral Switzerland. Switzerland had declared its neutrality in 1515, when Calvin was six years old. Though Switzerland continued to belie its neutrality by continuously hiring its fighting forces as mercenaries to other nations such as France and the Austrian territories, this neutrality allowed the sixteenth-century Switzerland to become a safe haven for exiles and strangers alike. As Calvin spent almost half of his lifespan working as a reformer, writer, and pastor in Geneva, the geographic location of his birthplace in France allowed him the formal Parisian education in law and theology, and the ability to evade the violent Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church beginning in 1545 (Bouwsma 15). Without his formal education in France and the call to reform Geneva, Calvin would not be remembered today as a reformer.
The reason Calvin is still thought of as hugely influential and a primary source in theology, philosophy, and sociology is complicated by the novelty of the moveable type printing press, having been invented only eighty years before Calvin would begin publishing. This style of print allowed for the mass production of (mainly scholastic) books, which allowed ideas and books to travel more widely around the world. Thomas Tahoe et. al., professors at Union County College, state simply that, because of the invention of the moveable type printing press in 1455, “books, and the ideas contained in them, became available to a much wider audience since they no longer had to be laboriously copied by hand. Literacy for the masses became feasible” (Tahoe et al.). However, though Calvin’s success may be complicated by the necessity of the printing press to publish and widely disperse his writings, his style and purpose for writing, as well as his commitment to Scripture being the highest authority over all, are what set him apart from the other writers of the Reformation and Renaissance. Calvin took extraordinary measures to writing solely on the expounding of Scripture and its applications in the constant revisions of his Institutes (Bouwsma 4). This highly academic tone (so far as to seem bereft of human emotion) was produced only as a result of his “aristocratic leanings and [his] education in law” (Anders 5). Unlike Martin Luther, who also wrote extensively on theological topics and Scripture, Calvin did not detail his thought processes nor did he write much in the way of autobiography, which seem to respectively entail a lesser degree of clarity and remembrance (Bouwsma 16). On the contrary, according to William Bouwsma, “Calvin’s place in human history rests largely upon his ideas” (Bouwsma 19). Calvin’s place in the Reformation was spurred by the printing press and driven by the advantages of his origins, but he made his indelible mark on history in the substance of his writing.
Calvin did not, however, pursue scholarship as a reformer for the reasons his father desired him to pursue a profession in the Roman Catholic Church. He “always believed that even his scholarship was justified only by its utility” of serving the church of Christ (Bouwsma 17). This, according to Anders, explains the lack of autobiographical details or any humor in his books. However, this humility was only cultivated at the unbearable anxiety Calvin suffered. Bouwsma records in “John Calvin’s Anxiety” that Calvin’s “anxiety drove him through his career of strenuous and distinguished accomplishment,” but that his anxiety above all else bound him “to his time” (Bouwsma). This anxiety felt almost universally in the sixteenth century could be compared to the angst of the modern twentieth century; both eras were brimming with political and religious tension. Calvin attempted to deal with his fear and trembling by pouring himself into his work, thus “much of what he had to say was consciously intended to soothe a peculiarly anxious generation” (Bouwsma 32). All of his philosophical reasoning and biblical exegesis was committed to the continuous humble assertion of the security of his faith. Calvin trusted the words of Christ, who said “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own life? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his life” (The New Open Bible, Matt.16:24-25)? These words were Calvin’s comfort and pushed him onward to write his commentaries and suffer oppression and opposition for the sake of Christ.
Calvin was successful because he chose to forsake the conventional definition of success. Calvin cleaved to the spirit of renaissance when he was born again and, as a reformer of the Christian church, entered the academic realm of scholastic publishing, made possible by the novelty of the moveable type printing press. He chose to seemingly give up his trainings as both lawyer and priest in order to speak for the truth he found in the Bible, utilizing his unique education in the biblical languages and systematic thought in order to leave behind a legacy of philosophical reform. He grasped the Gladwellian advantages that came before him in the area of his early education, and cultivated his innate intelligence with the benefice of the local parish. But most of all, Calvin pursued humility in the face of history, turning away from the conventional means of success, requesting that his grave remain unmarked so that his written contributions of the reformation would be his only remembrance (Anders). His life’s thesis can be summed up in his unusually passionate declaration: “I offer my heart to You, O Lord, promptly and sincerely” (“John Calvin”). John Calvin, however long and winding the road to his success may be, was following a redefinition of success that those who empty their lives for the sake of Jesus will have found life.
Works Cited:
"John Calvin." Grandpa Pencil. 2011.Web. 3 Feb.
2012.http://www.grandpapencil.net/projects/concepts/calvin.htm
"John Calvin: Biography." Calvin 500. The Standard Theme, 2012.Web. 18 Jan.
2012.http://www.calvin500.com/john-calvin/biography/
The New Open Bible. Ed. Arthur L. Farstad. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990. Print.
"The Reformation: general overview." Swissworld.org. Federal Department of Foreign Affairs,
2012.Web. 11 Mar. 2012. http://www.swissworld.org/en/history/the_reformation/general_overview/
Anders, Albert D. "Prophets from the ranks of shepherds: John Calvin and the challenge of
popular religion (1532-1555)." Dissertation. The University of Iowa,2002. Web.
Accessed March 5, 2012. ProQuest. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=765114221&Fmt=2&clientId=1568&RQT=309&VName=PQD 5 Mar. 2012.
Bouwsma, William J. "Explaining John Calvin." The Wilson Quarterly 13.1 (1989): 68-75. Print.
14 Mar. 2012. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40257444
---. John Calvin: a sixteenth-century portrait. 1st ed. New
York, New York, United States of America: Oxford University Press, 1988. Print.12 Feb. 2012.http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ADdQiBaLW_kC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=John+Calvin+France+1500&ots=NnJOhQzcEZ&sig=qKjnhV
---. "John Calvin's Anxiety." Essay. American Philosophical Society,1984. Print. Accessed
March 14, 2012. Historical Abstracts. 14 Mar. 2012.
Cline, Austin. "John Calvin." About.com. The New York Times Company, 2012.Web. 17 Jan.
2012.http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/western/bldef_calvinjohn.htm
Ganoczy, Alexandre. "Calvin's life." The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin.
Ed. Donald K. McKimCambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2004. : 3-4. Print. 1 Feb. 2012.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York, New York, United States of
America: Little, Brown and Company, 2008. Print.1 Mar. 2012.
Holder, Ward. "John Calvin (1509-1564)." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 17 4. 2001.Web.
19 Jan. 2012. http://www.iep.utm.edu/calvin/
Tahoe, Thomas J., Jose M. Duvall and Harold E. Damerow. "Renaissance."
Faculty Research Pages of Economics, Government, and History. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 1997.Web. 21 Feb. 2012.http://faculty.ucc.edu/egh-damerow/renaissance.htm
John Calvin is known today as the illustrious Swiss reformer of the Christian church of the sixteenth century. However, he did not dream of such high and influential realms of persisting success from an early age. As a young boy, Calvin was far from religious, even though his father worked as a clerk of sorts for the local church, which is a humorous twist on the “clerical” job (Holder). It was not just his father’s affluent job or Calvin’s own innate ambition that stirred his brilliance that brought his lasting fame, but also a matter of sheer luck: that he was born at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the exact time the Christian Reformation in Europe was just getting legs is nothing short of a miracle (“The Reformation”). Malcolm Gladwell would agree that Calvin had “intelligence, personality, [and] ambition,” but more importantly was a “product of particular places and environments” (Gladwell 119). Calvin’s success also owes to the historical fact that Switzerland had quite recently (relative to his birth) formally declared itself to be militarily neutral, lending itself to the advancement of Switzerland as a center of European trade and philosophical-religious ideology which it inhabits to this day. Calvin is also widely recognized today because of the relative novelty of the “movable type” printing press which made possible the mass production of written material. Yet all these historical coincidences afforded to John Calvin and all the Gladwellian advantages inherent of particular places, pedigrees, and pedagogues from which he profited would have been worthless without Calvin’s characteristically modest desire to model a changing paradigm of success: that living life to the fullest is walking humbly before God. Thus, Calvin’s success as a religious (and by extension, philosophical) reformer is not only complicated by the unique circumstances of his life, but also redefined by his lifelong mission of emptying himself to further the gospel and reform the church.
Though there is not much recorded of Calvin’s early life (that is, before his writings began to chronicle his presence), Rev. Ward Holder recounts one story that Calvin’s mother once “[took] him to visit shrines” (Holder). This is surprising that visiting shrines is the extent of young Calvin’s religious experience, especially as his father was employed by the church, and this demonstrates that Calvin was not raised in the tutelage of the church. The next recorded event of John Calvin’s life is of scoring a position in private tutoring from a nearby wealthy family for whom his father worked (Holder). This fact heavily complies with Gladwell’s argument that successful people are geniuses who “don’t do it alone” (Gladwell 119). Had Calvin not been born to a relatively wealthy family in the sixteenth century, all of his great intelligence and ambition would have been fruitless without a proper education from a young age provided for in private tutelage. Holder calls this circumstance of Calvin’s education as being completely dependent on “the good fortune of his father’s professional relationship” to this nearby family of nobility (Holder). Gladwell would call this provision by merit of his father’s occupation one of Calvin’s “hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow [those who emerge successful] to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot” (Gladwell 19). His father’s relatively affluent career and the people in high places he knew gave his son, John Calvin, the means to practice the extraordinary academic talents Calvin demonstrated.
However, this is not to downplay Calvin’s intelligence or drive for excellence: Calvin is next recorded to have distinguished himself in his studies sufficient to gain the “support of a benefice, a church-granted stipend, at the age of 12, so as to support him in his studies” (Holder). Holder is also quick to point out the unusual nature of this benefice: “Although normally benefices were granted as payment for work for the church, either present or in the future, there is no record that Calvin ever performed any duties for this position. Later [in his life] he held two more benefices, for which he also did no work” (Holder). This is immensely important because it reveals the nature of Calvin’s emerging ambition and academic knack for excellence at the age of 12, being paid with a scholarship to continue his studies, as opposed to the normal purpose of a benefice being a wage to pay church workers (Holder). John Calvin was also encouraged onwards in his studies by his father, who willed all of his sons to enter the priesthood (“John Calvin: Biography”). Calvin himself writes in a rare reflective portion of his Commentary on the Psalms, “My father had intended me for theology from my early childhood” (Bouwsma 10). This urging is also important to note, as Calvin aimed to be successful as a priest at this time not because of a desire to reform the church, but as a simple means of acquiring a professional and well-paying job (of the sixteenth century, at any rate) that his father desired him to achieve. Without the availability of financial support of the local church, John Calvin would not have been able to pay the expensive bills of sixteenth century private education.
Calvin was not only lucky to be born of a family with ties to higher places and in the range of a parish that could recognize and support his talent, but he was also lucky to be born in the exact first decade of the sixteenth century. Anticipated by the Bubonic Plague (the “Black Death”) and the Western Schism of the Roman Catholic Church, Martin Luther struck the nail in the coffin when he pounded his hammer against the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, thus starting the Reformation with his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences in 1517 (Bouwsma 8). John Calvin was born in 1509, was given his benefice in 1521, and finished his first edition of Institutio Christianae religionis (The Institutes of the Christian Religion) in 1536 (Cline). Gladwell would again compare Calvin to Joe Flom, that
[“the sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our particular place in history presents us with. For a would-be lawyer, being born in the early 1930s was a magic time, just as being born in 1955 was for a software programmer, or being born in 1835 was for being an entrepreneur” (Gladwell 137). ]
Being born in the early 1500s was a prime time to succeed as a Christian reformer. Martin Luther of Germany is credited with the beginning of the Protestant Reformation when he published his Ninety-five Theses in 1517, just twenty years before Calvin would begin reforming Geneva and his writing of the Institutes of the Christian Religion and numerous commentaries. Had he been born at the end of the fourteenth century, Calvin would have attended college before Luther’s controversial publication, and become a Roman Catholic priest, as Luther’s works “were early [read] during Calvin’s first years at the University” (Bouwsma 13). Had he been born later in the century, Calvin would have continued in his father’s urging to become a humanist lawyer, as he would have missed the opportunity to learn Greek and Latin from the aged masters in the Parisian universities, who died shortly after the 1520s (Bouwsma 12). Calvin’s brilliant skills as a writer, speaker, pastor, and reformer would either be impossible or unnecessary had he been born in a different generation.
The fact that John Calvin was born in Noyon, France is also incredibly lucky. France was not the birthplace of the Renaissance (though it gave a French title to the era), but it was a major hub for the development of science, literature, and art. The universities of Paris were among the best in Europe at the time. Most importantly to Calvin’s eventual success as a writer of the Reformation, Parisian universities were renowned for their excellence in languages. At several Parisian universities, Calvin mastered Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, “the three languages in the scholarly and educational program of Christian reform” (Bouwsma 12). Mathurin Cordier, called “one of Latin’s greatest teachers,” tutored Calvin in the development of his Latin so thoroughly that Calvin would dedicate to Cordier his Commentary on Ephesians (Ganoczy). But the advantages of France did not end with the obvious availability of quality education; when Calvin was exiled from France for being implicated with the controversial Nicolas Cop, he was forced to flee to the nominally-neutral Switzerland. Switzerland had declared its neutrality in 1515, when Calvin was six years old. Though Switzerland continued to belie its neutrality by continuously hiring its fighting forces as mercenaries to other nations such as France and the Austrian territories, this neutrality allowed the sixteenth-century Switzerland to become a safe haven for exiles and strangers alike. As Calvin spent almost half of his lifespan working as a reformer, writer, and pastor in Geneva, the geographic location of his birthplace in France allowed him the formal Parisian education in law and theology, and the ability to evade the violent Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church beginning in 1545 (Bouwsma 15). Without his formal education in France and the call to reform Geneva, Calvin would not be remembered today as a reformer.
The reason Calvin is still thought of as hugely influential and a primary source in theology, philosophy, and sociology is complicated by the novelty of the moveable type printing press, having been invented only eighty years before Calvin would begin publishing. This style of print allowed for the mass production of (mainly scholastic) books, which allowed ideas and books to travel more widely around the world. Thomas Tahoe et. al., professors at Union County College, state simply that, because of the invention of the moveable type printing press in 1455, “books, and the ideas contained in them, became available to a much wider audience since they no longer had to be laboriously copied by hand. Literacy for the masses became feasible” (Tahoe et al.). However, though Calvin’s success may be complicated by the necessity of the printing press to publish and widely disperse his writings, his style and purpose for writing, as well as his commitment to Scripture being the highest authority over all, are what set him apart from the other writers of the Reformation and Renaissance. Calvin took extraordinary measures to writing solely on the expounding of Scripture and its applications in the constant revisions of his Institutes (Bouwsma 4). This highly academic tone (so far as to seem bereft of human emotion) was produced only as a result of his “aristocratic leanings and [his] education in law” (Anders 5). Unlike Martin Luther, who also wrote extensively on theological topics and Scripture, Calvin did not detail his thought processes nor did he write much in the way of autobiography, which seem to respectively entail a lesser degree of clarity and remembrance (Bouwsma 16). On the contrary, according to William Bouwsma, “Calvin’s place in human history rests largely upon his ideas” (Bouwsma 19). Calvin’s place in the Reformation was spurred by the printing press and driven by the advantages of his origins, but he made his indelible mark on history in the substance of his writing.
Calvin did not, however, pursue scholarship as a reformer for the reasons his father desired him to pursue a profession in the Roman Catholic Church. He “always believed that even his scholarship was justified only by its utility” of serving the church of Christ (Bouwsma 17). This, according to Anders, explains the lack of autobiographical details or any humor in his books. However, this humility was only cultivated at the unbearable anxiety Calvin suffered. Bouwsma records in “John Calvin’s Anxiety” that Calvin’s “anxiety drove him through his career of strenuous and distinguished accomplishment,” but that his anxiety above all else bound him “to his time” (Bouwsma). This anxiety felt almost universally in the sixteenth century could be compared to the angst of the modern twentieth century; both eras were brimming with political and religious tension. Calvin attempted to deal with his fear and trembling by pouring himself into his work, thus “much of what he had to say was consciously intended to soothe a peculiarly anxious generation” (Bouwsma 32). All of his philosophical reasoning and biblical exegesis was committed to the continuous humble assertion of the security of his faith. Calvin trusted the words of Christ, who said “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own life? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his life” (The New Open Bible, Matt.16:24-25)? These words were Calvin’s comfort and pushed him onward to write his commentaries and suffer oppression and opposition for the sake of Christ.
Calvin was successful because he chose to forsake the conventional definition of success. Calvin cleaved to the spirit of renaissance when he was born again and, as a reformer of the Christian church, entered the academic realm of scholastic publishing, made possible by the novelty of the moveable type printing press. He chose to seemingly give up his trainings as both lawyer and priest in order to speak for the truth he found in the Bible, utilizing his unique education in the biblical languages and systematic thought in order to leave behind a legacy of philosophical reform. He grasped the Gladwellian advantages that came before him in the area of his early education, and cultivated his innate intelligence with the benefice of the local parish. But most of all, Calvin pursued humility in the face of history, turning away from the conventional means of success, requesting that his grave remain unmarked so that his written contributions of the reformation would be his only remembrance (Anders). His life’s thesis can be summed up in his unusually passionate declaration: “I offer my heart to You, O Lord, promptly and sincerely” (“John Calvin”). John Calvin, however long and winding the road to his success may be, was following a redefinition of success that those who empty their lives for the sake of Jesus will have found life.
Works Cited:
"John Calvin." Grandpa Pencil. 2011.Web. 3 Feb.
2012.http://www.grandpapencil.net/projects/concepts/calvin.htm
"John Calvin: Biography." Calvin 500. The Standard Theme, 2012.Web. 18 Jan.
2012.http://www.calvin500.com/john-calvin/biography/
The New Open Bible. Ed. Arthur L. Farstad. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990. Print.
"The Reformation: general overview." Swissworld.org. Federal Department of Foreign Affairs,
2012.Web. 11 Mar. 2012. http://www.swissworld.org/en/history/the_reformation/general_overview/
Anders, Albert D. "Prophets from the ranks of shepherds: John Calvin and the challenge of
popular religion (1532-1555)." Dissertation. The University of Iowa,2002. Web.
Accessed March 5, 2012. ProQuest. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=765114221&Fmt=2&clientId=1568&RQT=309&VName=PQD 5 Mar. 2012.
Bouwsma, William J. "Explaining John Calvin." The Wilson Quarterly 13.1 (1989): 68-75. Print.
14 Mar. 2012. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40257444
---. John Calvin: a sixteenth-century portrait. 1st ed. New
York, New York, United States of America: Oxford University Press, 1988. Print.12 Feb. 2012.http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ADdQiBaLW_kC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=John+Calvin+France+1500&ots=NnJOhQzcEZ&sig=qKjnhV
---. "John Calvin's Anxiety." Essay. American Philosophical Society,1984. Print. Accessed
March 14, 2012. Historical Abstracts. 14 Mar. 2012.
Cline, Austin. "John Calvin." About.com. The New York Times Company, 2012.Web. 17 Jan.
2012.http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/western/bldef_calvinjohn.htm
Ganoczy, Alexandre. "Calvin's life." The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin.
Ed. Donald K. McKimCambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2004. : 3-4. Print. 1 Feb. 2012.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York, New York, United States of
America: Little, Brown and Company, 2008. Print.1 Mar. 2012.
Holder, Ward. "John Calvin (1509-1564)." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 17 4. 2001.Web.
19 Jan. 2012. http://www.iep.utm.edu/calvin/
Tahoe, Thomas J., Jose M. Duvall and Harold E. Damerow. "Renaissance."
Faculty Research Pages of Economics, Government, and History. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 1997.Web. 21 Feb. 2012.http://faculty.ucc.edu/egh-damerow/renaissance.htm
Oh, well done, sir! ;)
ReplyDeleteThis is very well-written, and the last paragraph is quite beautiful.
Calvin was such a fascinating individual. I think you're right, though, when you say that he lacked Luther's cheer. He was so...hardcore.
Oh ne. I didn't even look at this after I copied and pasted it here. I fixed the weird blanked out paragraphs at the expense of the death of the works cited and the impossibility of the little block quote. Can't win it all.
ReplyDelete