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Calvin – A Biography
B.Cottret, Eerdmans, 2000,
376pp.
Review by Rev. J. Westendorp
Unlike Lutherans, Reformed and
Presbyterians do not name their churches after a particular person –
although we may refer to ourselves as ‘Calvinist churches’ and Christian
Reformed Churches have long endured the name ‘Calvinettes’ as the name
of their girls club.
Reading this biography of John Calvin I came away with the impression
that Uncle John would not have wanted it any other way. In some circles
Calvin has been promoted as a rather authoritarian and arrogant leader
of the church. His French biographer, Bernard Cottret, sees it a little
differently. Calvin was above all a scholar and would have liked nothing
better than to live his life in quiet seclusion as a writer and teacher.
He began his life in relative obscurity and his mortal remains lie
somewhere in Geneva in an unmarked grave. Yet God called Calvin to
leadership in the fledgling churches of the Reformation. He was on a
pathway of becoming the French answer to the scholar and philosopher,
Erasmus, but something changed the brilliant humanist author into Calvin
the Reformer. According to Cottret God chose Calvin and Calvin did not
choose God.
Calvin’s story also challenges a few other preconceived ideas. We may
think that the Reformation brought about the reading of Scripture. The
Reformers brought people back to the Bible... and some argue that what
we need today is a new reformation to bring people back to the Word. But
there is a sense in which the reverse is true. “The reading of Scripture
brought about, partially at least, the Reformation.” During that era the
Bible was the frontier of expectation. Luther’s translation merely
accentuated what was already a growing phenomenon right across Europe as
the Bible appeared in many local languages... already prior to Luther.
We also tend to think of Geneva as ‘the city of God’ – a theocracy.
There, more than anywhere else, the principles of the Word of God were
applied to all areas of life. Cottret argues that Geneva was never a
theocracy but that the spiritual and temporal areas of life remained
distinct. Calvin did not rule the city “but the Reformation still had to
fight inch by inch to maintain the independence of the decisions of the
church against the encroachments of the Council.”
This English translation of Cottret’s biography is not always easy
reading but it is thorough. It gives a good context with the past.
Cottret has a chapter with the telling title, ‘Dwarves perched on the
shoulders of giants’ to highlight Calvin’s indebtedness to the
Rennaisance. But there is also the contemporary context: ‘What it meant
to be 21 in 1530’. Cottret reconstructs the lives of some of Calvin’s
contemporaries so that we can better understand Calvin’s lasting place
in history.
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