Admiration

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "The whole tendency of Calvin was practical; learning was subordinate; the salvation of the world, the truth was to him the main thing. His spiritual tendency was not philosophical, but his dialectical bent ran principles to their utmost consequences. He had an eye to the minutest details. His former study of law had trained him for business.... He was a watchman over the whole Church.... All his theological writings excel in acuteness, dialectics, and warmth of conviction. He had great eloquence at command, but despised the art of rhetoric.... Day and night he was occupied with the work of the Lord. He disliked the daily entreaties of his colleagues to grant himself some rest. He continued to labor through his last sicknesses, and only stopped dictating a week before his death, when his voice gave out.... All sought his counsel; for God endowed him with such a happy spirit of wisdom that no one regretted to have followed his advice. How great was his erudition! How marvellous his judgment! How peculiar his kindness, which came to the aid even of the smallest and lowliest, if necessary, and his meekness and patient forbearance with the imperfections of others!" Dr. L. Stähelin. Johannes Calvin. Leben und ausgewählte Schriften. Elberfeld, 1863. Vol. II. pp. 365–393. This description of Calvin’s character as a man and as a Christian is faithful in praise and censure, but too profuse to be inserted. Dr. Stähelin emphasizes the logic of his intellect and conscience, his firm assurance of eternal election, his constant sense of the nearness of God, "the majesty" of his character, the predominance of the Old Testament feature, his resemblance to Moses and the Hebrew Prophets, his irritability, anger, and contemptuousness, relieved by genuine humility before God, his faithfulness to friends, his life of unceasing prayer, his absolute disinterestedness and consecration to God. He also quotes the remarkable testimony of Renan, that Calvin was "the most Christian man in Christendom." Dr. Friedrich Trechsel (1805–1885). Die Protestantischen Antitrinitarier. Heidelberg, 1839–1844 (I. 177). "People have often supposed that they were insulting Calvin’s memory by calling him the Pope of Protestantism! He was so, but in the noblest sense of the expression, through the spiritual and moral superiority with which the Lord of the Church had endowed him for its deliverance; through his unwearied, universal zeal for God’s honor; through his wise care for the edifying of the kingdom of Christ; in a word, through all which can be comprehended in the idea of the papacy, of truth and honor." Ludwig Häusser (1818–1867). Professor of history at Heidelberg. The Period of the Reformation, edited by Oncken (1868, 2d ed. 1880), translated by Mrs. Sturge, New York, 1874 (pp. 241 and 244).

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "John Calvin had the spirit of an ancient lawgiver, a genius and characteristic which gave him in part unmistakable advantages, and failings which were only the excess of virtues, by the assistance of which he carried through his objects. He had also, like other Reformers, an indefatigable industry, with a fixed regard to a certain end, an invincible perseverance in principles and duty during his life, and at his death the courage and dignity of an ancient Roman censor. He contributed greatly to the development and advance of the human intellect, and more, indeed, than he himself foresaw. For among the Genevese and in France, the principle of free inquiry, on which he was obliged at first to found his system, and to curb which he afterwards strove in vain, became more fruitful in consequences than among nations which are less inquisitive than the Genevese, and less daring than the French. From this source were developed gradually philosophical ideas, which, though they are not yet purified sufficiently from the passions and views of their founders, have yet banished a great number of gloomy and pernicious prejudices, and have opened us prospects of a pure practical wisdom and better success for the future." Fr. August Tholuck (1799–1877). Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 3d ed. 1831, p. 19. "In his [Calvin’s] Exposition on the Epistle to the Romans are united pure Latinity, a solid method of unfolding and interpreting, founded on the principles of grammatical science and historical knowledge, a deeply penetrating faculty of mind, and vital piety." Dr. Twesten (1789–1876). The successor of Schleiermacher in the chair of systematic theology at Berlin, and an orthodox Lutheran in the United Evangelical Church of Prussia. From his Dogmatik der evangelisch Lutherischen Kirche, I. 216 (4th ed. Hamburg, 1838). After speaking very highly and justly of Melanchthon and John Gerhard, Twesten thus characterizes Calvin’s Institutes: — "Mehr aus einem Gusz, als Melanchthon’s Loci, die reife Frucht eines tief religiösen und ächt wissenschaftlichen Geistes, mit groszer Klarheit, Kraft und Schönheit der Darstellung geschrieben, einfach in der Anlage, reich und gründlich in der Ausführung, verdient es neben jenen auch in unserer Kirche als eins der vorzüglichsten Werke auf dem Gebiete der dogmatischen Literatur überhaupt studirt zu werden." Paul Henry. Doctor of theology and pastor of a French Reformed Church in Berlin, author of two learned biographies of Calvin: a large one, in 3 vols. (1833–1844), which is chiefly valuable as a collection of documents, and a popular one in 1 vol. From Das Leben Johann Calvins (Hamburg and Gotha, 1846), pp. 443 sqq.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Calvin’s labors were so highly useful to the Church of Christ, that there is hardly any department of the Christian world to be found that is not full of them,—hardly any heresy that has arisen which he has not successfully encountered with that two-edged sword, the Word of God, or a portion of Christian doctrine which he has not illustrated in a remarkable manner. Certainly his commentaries on the Old and New Testaments are all that could be desired; every one of his sermons is full of unction; his Institutes bear the most complete and finished execution; his doctrinal treatises are distinguished by solidity; his critical works by warmth and fervor; his practical writings by virtue and piety; and his letters by mildness, prudence, gravity, and wisdom." Judgments of German Scholars. John Lawrence Mosheim (1695–1755). From the English translation of his Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, by James Murdock, D. D., New York, 1854, vol. III. 163, 167, 192. "Calvin was venerated, even by his enemies, for his genius, learning, eloquence, and other endowments, and moreover was the friend of Melanchthon. "Few persons of his age will bear any comparison with Calvin for patient industry, resolution, hatred of the Roman superstition, eloquence, and genius. Possessing a most capacious mind, he endeavored not only to establish and bless his beloved Geneva with the best regulations and institutions, but also to make it the mother and the focus of light and influence to the whole Reformed Church, just as Wittenberg was to the Lutheran community. "The first rank among the interpreters of the age is deservedly assigned to John Calvin, who endeavored to expound nearly the whole of the sacred volume. "His Institutes are written in a perspicuous and elegant style, and have nothing abstruse and difficult to be comprehended in the arguments or mode of reasoning." Johannes von Müller (1752–1809). The great historian of Switzerland, called "the German Tacitus." Allgemeine Geschichte, Bk. III.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Let us not give him praise which he would not have accepted. God alone creates; a man is great only because God thinks fit to accomplish great things by his instrumentality. Never did any great man understand this better than Calvin. It cost him no effort to refer all the glory to God; nothing indicates that he was ever tempted to appropriate to himself the smallest portion of it. Luther, in many a passage, complacently dwells on the thought that a petty monk, as he says, has so well made the Pope to tremble, and so well stirred the whole world. Calvin will never say any such thing; he never even seems to say it, even in the deepest recesses of his heart; everywhere you perceive the man, who applies to all things—to the smallest as to the greatest—the idea that it is God who does all and is all. Read again, from this point of view, the very pages in which he appeared to you the haughtiest and most despotic, and see if, even there, he is anything other than the workman referring all, and in all sincerity, to his master.... But the man, in spite of all his faults, has not the less remained one of the fairest types of faith, of earnest piety, of devotedness, and of courage. Amid modern laxity, there is no character of whom the contemplation is more instructive; for there is no man of whom it has been said with greater justice, in the words of an apostle, ’he endured as seeing him who is invisible.’ " From Dutch Scholars. James Arminius (1560–1609). The founder of Arminianism. "Next to the study of the Scriptures which I earnestly inculcate, I exhort my pupils to peruse Calvin’s Commentaries, which I extol in loftier terms than Helmich himself (a Dutch divine, 1551–1608]; for I affirm that he excels beyond comparison (incomparabilem esse) in the interpretation of Scripture, and that his commentaries ought to be more highly valued than all that is handed down to us by the library of the fathers; so that I acknowledge him to have possessed above most others, or rather above all other men, what may be called an eminent spirit of prophecy (spiritum aliquem prophetiae eximium). His Institutes ought to be studied after the [Heidelberg] Catechism, as containing a fuller explanation, but with discrimination (cum delectu), like the writings of all men." Dan. Gerdes (1698–1767). Historia Evangelii Renovati, IV. 41 sq. (Groningae, 1752).

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Calvin was one of those absolute men, cast complete in one mould, who is taken in wholly at a single glance: one letter, one action suffices for a judgment of him. There were no folds in that inflexible soul, which never knew doubt or hesitation.... Careless of wealth, of titles, of honors, indifferent to pomp, modest in his life, apparently humble, sacrificing everything to the desire of making others like himself, I hardly know of a man, save Ignatius Loyola, who could match him in those terrible transports.... It is surprising that a man who appears to us in his life and writings so unsympathetic should have been the centre of an immense movement in his generation, and that this harsh and severe tone should have exerted so great an influence on the minds of his contemporaries. How was it, for example, that one of the most distinguished women of her time, Renée of France, in her court at Ferrara, surrounded by the flower of European wits, was captivated by that stern master, and by him drawn into a course that must have been so thickly, strewn with thorns? This kind of austere seduction is exercised by those only who work with real conviction. Lacking that vivid, deep, sympathetic ardor which was one of the secrets of Luther’s success, lacking the charm, the perilous, languishing tenderness of Francis of Sales, Calvin succeeded more than all, in an age and in a country which called for a reaction towards Christianity, simply because he was the most Christian man of his century (l’homme le plus chrétien de son siècle, p. 342)." Felix Bungener (1814–1874). Pastor of the national Church of Geneva, and author of several historical works. From Calvin, sa vie, son oeuvre et ses écrits, Paris, 1862; English translation (Edinburgh, 1863), pp. 338, 349.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Calvin justly enjoyed a great reputation—a literary man of the first rank (homme de lettre du premier ordre)—writing in Latin as well as one could do in a dead language, and in French with singular purity for his time (avec une pureté singulière pour son temps). This purity, which our able grammarians admire even at this day, renders his writings far superior to almost all those of the same age, as the works of the Port-Royalists are distinguished even at the present day, for the same reason, from the barbarous rhapsodies of their opponents and contemporaries. Frederic Ancillon (1767–1837). Tableau des Révolutions du Système Politique de l’Europe. "Calvin was not only a profound theologian, but likewise an able legislator; the share which he had in the framing of the civil and religious laws which have produced for several centuries the happiness of the Genevan republic, is perhaps a fairer title to renown than his theological works; and this republic, celebrated notwithstanding its small size, and which knew how to unite morals with intellect, riches with simplicity, simplicity with taste, liberty with order, and which has been a focus of talents and virtues, has proved that Calvin knew men, and knew how to govern them." Fr. Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787–1874). Celebrated French historian and statesman, of Huguenot descent. From St. Louis et Calvin, pp. 361 sqq. "Calvin is great by reason of his marvellous powers, his lasting labors, and the moral height and purity of his character.... Earnest in faith, pure in motive, austere in his life, and mighty in his works, Calvin is one of those who deserve their great fame. Three centuries separate us from him, but it is impossible to examine his character and history without feeling, if not affection and sympathy, at least profound respect and admiration for one of the great Reformers of Europe and of the great Christians of France." By the same (1787–1874). From Musée des protestants célèbres. "Luther vint pour détruire, Calvin pour fonder, par des nécessités égales, mais differentes.... Calvin fut l’homme de cette seconde époque de toutes les grandes révolutions sociales, où, après avoir conquis par la guerre le terrain qui doit leur appartenir, elles travaillent à s’y établir par la paix, selon des principes et sous les formes qui conviennent à leur nature.... L’idée générale selon laquelle Calvin agit en brûlant Servet était de son siècle, et an a tort de la lui imputer." François Aug. Marie Mignet (1796–1884). Celebrated French historian and academician. From his Mémoire sur l’établissement de la Réforme à Genève.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The same passage, with additions, occurs in French. Simon says that no author "had a better knowledge of the utter inability of the human heart," but that "he gives too much prominence to this inability," and "lets no opportunity pass of slandering the Roman Church," so that part of his commentaries is "useless declamations" (déclamations inutiles). "Calvin displays more genius and judgment in his works than Luther; he is more cautious, and takes care not to make use of weak proofs, of which his adversaries might take advantage. He is subtle to excess in his reasoning, and his commentaries are filled with references skilfully drawn from the text—which are capable of prepossessing the minds of those readers who are not profoundly acquainted with religion." Simon greatly underrates Calvin’s knowledge of Hebrew when he says that he knew not much more than the Hebrew letters. Dr. Diestel (Geschichte des Alten Test. in der christl. Kirche, 1869, p. 267) justly pronounces this a slander which is refuted by every page of Calvin’s commentaries. He ascribes to him a very good knowledge of Hebrew: "ausgewählt mit einer sehr tüchtigen hebräischen Sprachkenntniss." Pierre Bayle (1647–1706). Son of a Reformed minister, educated by the Jesuits of Toulouse, converted to Romanism, returned to Protestantism, skeptical, the author of a Dictionnaire historique et critique. "That a man who had acquired so great a reputation and so great an authority should have had only a hundred crowns of salary, and have desired no more, and that after having lived fifty-five years with every sort of frugality, he left to his heirs only the value of three hundred crowns, including his library, is a circumstance so heroical, that one must be devoid of feeling not to admire it, and one of the most singular victories which virtue and greatness of soul have been able to achieve over nature, even among ministers of the gospel. Calvin has left imitators in so far as regards activity of life, zeal and affection for the interest of his party; they employ their eloquence, their pens, their endeavors, their solicitations in the advancement of the kingdom of God; but they do not forget themselves, and they are, generally speaking, an exemplification of the maxim that the Church is a good mother, in whose service nothing is lost.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "It is a weak feeling which makes us desirous to find anything extraordinary in the death-beds of these people. God does not always bestow these examples. Since he permits heresy for the trial of his people, it is not to be wondered at that to complete this trial he allows the spirit of seduction to prevail in them even to the end, with all the fair appearances by which it is covered; and, without learning more of the life and death of Calvin, it is enough to know that he has kindled in his country a flame which not all the blood shed on its account has been able to extinguish, and that he has gone to appear before the judgment of God without feeling any remorse for a great crime .... "Let us grant him then, since he wishes it so much, the glory of having written as well as any man of his age; let us even place him, if desired, above Luther; for whilst the latter was in some respects more original and lively, Calvin, his inferior in genius, appears to have surpassed him in learning. Luther triumphed as a speaker, but the pen of Calvin was more correct, especially in Latin, and his style, though severe, was much more consecutive and chaste. They equally excelled in speaking the language of their country, and both possessed an extraordinary vehemence. Each by his talents has gained many disciples and admirers. Each, elated by success, has fancied to raise himself above the Fathers; neither could bear contradiction, and their eloquence abounds in nothing more largely than virulent invective." Richard Simon (1638–1712). One of the greatest critical and biblical scholars of the Roman Catholic Church. From his Critical History of the Old Testament (Latin and French). "As Calvin was endued with a lofty genius, we are constantly meeting with something in his commentaries which delights the mind (quo animus rapitur); and in consequence of his intimate and perfect acquaintance with human nature, his ethics are truly charming, while he does his utmost to maintain their accordance with the sacred text. Had he been less under the influence of prejudice, and had he not been solicitous to become the leader and standard-bearer of heresy, he might have produced a work of the greatest usefulness to the Catholic Church."

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  From Les Recherches de la France, p. 769 (Paris, 1633). … "He [Calvin) wrote equally well in Latin and French, the latter of which languages is greatly indebted to him for having enriched it with an infinite number of fine expressions (enrichie d’une infinité de beaux traits), though I could have wished that they had been written on a better subject. In short, a man wonderfully conversant with and attached to the books of the Holy Scriptures, and such, that if he had turned his mind in the proper direction, he might have been ranked with the most distinguished doctors of the Church." Jacques Auguste de Thou (Thuanus, 1553–1617). President of the Parliament of Paris. A liberal Roman Catholic and one of the framers of the Edict of Nantes. From the 36th book of his Historia sui Temporis (from 1543–1607). "John Calvin, of Noyon in Picardy, a person of lively spirit and great eloquence (d’un esprit vif et d’une grande eloquence),379 and a theologian of high reputation among the Protestants, died of asthma, May 20 [27], 1564, at Geneva, where he had taught for twenty-three years, being nearly fifty-six years of age. Though he had labored under various diseases for seven years, this did not render him less diligent in his office, and never hindered him from writing." De Thou has nothing unfavorable to say of Calvin. Testimonies of Later French Writers. Charles Drelincourt (1595–1669). "In that prodigious multitude of books which were composed by Calvin, you see no words thrown away; and since the prophets and apostles, there never perhaps was a man who conveyed so many distinct statements in so few words, and in such appropriate and well-chosen terms (en des mots si propres et si bien choisis).... Never did Calvin’s life appear to me more pure or more innocent than after carefully examining the diabolical calumnies with which some have endeavored to defame his character, and after considering all the praises which his greatest enemies are constrained to bestow on his memory." Moses Amyraut (1596–1645). "That incomparable Calvin, to whom mainly, next to God, the Church owes its Reformation, not only in France, but in many other parts of Europe." Bishop Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704). From his Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes (1688), the greatest polemical work in French against the Reformation. "I do not know if the genius of Calvin would be found as fitted to excite the imagination and stir up the populace as was that of Luther, but after the movement had commenced, he rose in many countries, more especially in France, above Luther himself, and made himself head of a party which hardly yields to that of the Lutherans. By his searching intellect and his bold decisions, he improved upon all those who had sought in this century to establish a new church, and gave a new turn to the pretended reformation.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Calvin is an instructive and learned theologian, with a higher purity and elegance of style than is expected from a theologian. The two most eminent theologians of our times are John Calvin and Peter Martyr; the former of whom has treated sound learning as it ought to be treated, with truth and purity and simplicity, without any of the scholastic subtleties. Endued with a divine genius, he penetrated into many things which lie beyond the reach of all who are not deeply skilled in the Hebrew language, though he did not himself belong to that class." "O how well Calvin apprehends the meaning of the Prophets! No one better … O what a good book is the Institutes! ... Calvin stands alone among theologians (Solus inter theologos Calvinus)." This judgment of the greatest scholar of his age, who knew thirteen languages, and was master of philology, history, chronology, philosophy, and theology, is all the more weighty as he was one of the severest of critics. Florimond De Ræmond (1540–1602). Counseiller du Roy au Parlement de Bordeaux. Roman Catholic. From his L’histoire de la naissanse, progrez, et decadence de l’hérésie de ce siècle, divisé en huit livres, dedié à nôtre saint Père le Pape Paul cinquième. Paris, 1605. bk. VII. ch. 10. "Calvin had morals better regulated and settled than N., and shewed from early youth that he did not allow himself to be carried away by the pleasures of sense (plaisirs de la chair et du ventre) … With a dry and attenuated body, he always possessed a fresh and vigorous intellect, ready in reply, bold in attack; even in his youth a great faster, either on account of his health, and to allay the headaches with which he was continually afflicted, or in order to have his mind more disencumbered for the purposes of writing, studying, and improving his memory. Calvin spoke little; what he said were serious and impressive words (et n’estoit que propos serieux et qui portoyent coup); he never appeared in company, and always led a retired life. He had scarcely his equal; for during twenty-three years that he retained possession of the bishopric (l’evesché) of Geneva, he preached every day, and often twice on Sundays. He lectured on theology three times a week; and every Friday he entered into a conference which he called the Congregation. His remaining hours were employed in composition, and answering the letters which came to him as to a sovereign pontiff from all parts of heretical Christendom (qui arrivoyent à luy de toute la Chrétienté hérétique, comme au Souveraine Pontife).... "Calvin had a brilliancy of spirit, a subtlety of judgment, a grand memory, an eminent erudition, and the power of graceful diction.... No man of all those who preceded him has surpassed him in style, and few since have attained that beauty and facility of language which he possessed." Etienne Pasquier (1528–1615). Roman Catholic. Consellier et Avocat Général du Roy an la Chambre des Comptes de Paris.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Upon the whole, the verdict of history is growingly in his favor. He improves upon acquaintance. Those who know him best esteem him most. The fruits of his labors are abundant, especially in the English-speaking world, and constitute his noblest monument. The slanderous charges of Bolsec, though feebly re-echoed by Audin, are no longer believed. All impartial writers admit the purity and integrity, if not the sanctity, of his character, and his absolute freedom from love of gain and notoriety. One of the most eminent skeptical historians of France goes so far as to pronounce him "the most Christian man" of his age. Few of the great luminaries of the Church of God have called forth such tributes of admiration and praise from able and competent judges. The following selection of testimonies may be regarded as a fair index of the influence which this extraordinary man has exerted from his humble study in "the little corner" on the south-western border of Switzerland upon men of different ages, nationalities, and creeds, down to the present time. Tributes of Contemporaries (Sixteenth Century). Martin Luther (1483–1546). From a letter to Bucer, Oct. 14, 1539. "Present my respectful greetings to Sturm and Calvin (then at Strassburg], whose books I have perused with singular pleasure (quorum libellos singulari cum voluptate legi)." Martin Bucer (1491–1551). "Calvin is a truly learned and singularly eloquent man (vere doctus mireque Facundus vir), an illustrious restorer of a purer Christianity (purioris Christianismi instaurator eximius)." Theodore Beza (1519–1605). From his Vita Calvini (Latin) at the Close (Opera, XXI. 172). "I have been a witness of Calvin’s life for sixteen years, and I think I am fully entitled to say that in this man there was exhibited to all a most beautiful example of the life and death of the Christian (longe pulcherrimum vere christianae tum vita tum mortis exemplum), which it will be as easy to calumniate as it will be difficult to emulate." Compare also the concluding remarks of his French biography, vol. XXI. 46 (Aug. 19, 1564). John Sturm of Strassburg (1507–1589). "John Calvin was endued with a most acute judgment, the highest learning, and a prodigious memory, and was distinguished as a writer by variety, copiousness, and purity, as may be seen for instance from his Institutes of the Christian Religion … I know of no work which is better adapted to teach religion, to correct morals, and to remove errors." Jerome Zanchi (1516–1590). An Italian convert to Protestantism. Professor at Strassburg and Heidelberg. From a letter to the Landgrave of Hesse. "Calvin, whose memory is honored, as all Europe knows, was held in the highest estimation, not only for eminent piety and the highest learning (praestanti pietate et maxima eruditione), but likewise for singular judgment on every subject (singulari in rebus omnibus judicio clarissimus)." Bishop Jewel (1522–1571). "Calvin, a reverend father, and worthy ornament of the Church of God." Joseph Scaliger (1640–1609).

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Older editions appeared at Geneva, 1617, in 7 vols., in 15 fol., and at Amsterdam, 1667–1671, in 9 vols. fol. The English translation, Edinburgh, 1843–1854, has 62 vols. 8°. Several works have been separately published in Latin, French, German, Dutch, English, and other languages. See a chronological list in Henry: Das Leben Joh. Calvins, vol. III. Beilagen, 175–252, and in La France Prot. III. 545–636 (2d ed.). The literary activity of Calvin, whether we look at the number or at the importance of works, is not surpassed by any ecclesiastical writer, ancient or modern, and excites double astonishment when we take into consideration the shortness of his life, the frailty of his health, and the multiplicity of his other labors as a teacher, preacher, church ruler, and correspondent. Augustin among the Fathers, Thomas Aquinas among the Schoolmen, Luther and Melanchthon among the Reformers, were equally fruitful; but they lived longer, with the exception of Thomas Aquinas. Calvin, moreover, wrote in two languages with equal clearness, force, and elegance; while Augustin and Thomas Aquinas wrote only in Latin; Luther was a master of German; and Melanchthon, a master of Latin and Greek, but his German is as indifferent as Luther’s Latin. Calvin’s works may be divided into ten classes. 1. Exegetical Writings. Commentaries on the Pentateuch and Joshua, on the Psalms, on the Larger and Minor Prophets; Homilies on First Samuel and Job; Commentaries on all the books of the New Testament, except the Apocalypse. They form the great body of his writings.370 2. Doctrinal. The Institutes (Latin and French), first published at Basel, 1536; 2d ed., Strassburg, 1539; 5th Latin ed., Geneva, 1559.371 Minor doctrinal works: Three Catechisms, 1537, 1542, and 1545; On the Lord’s Supper (Latin and French), 1541; the Consensus Tigurinus, 1549 and 1551 (in both languages); the Consensus Genevensis (Latin and French), 1552; the Gallican Confession (Latin and French), 1559 and 1562.372 3. Polemical and Apologetic.373 (a) Against the Roman Church: Response to Cardinal Sadoletus, 1539; Against Pighius, on Free-will, 1543; On the Worship of Relics, 1543; Against the Faculty of the Sorbonne, 1544; On the Necessity of a Reformation, 1544; Against the Council of Trent, 1547. (b) Against the Anabaptists: On the Sleep of the Soul (Psychopannychia), 1534; Brief Instruction against the Errors of the Sect of the Anabaptists, 1544. (c) Against the Libertines: Adversus fanaticam et furiosam sectam Libertinorum qui se Spirituales vocant (also in French), 1545. (d) Against the Anti-Trinitarians: Defensio orthodoxae fidei S. Trinitatis adversus prodigiosos errores Serveti, 1554; Responsum ad Quaestiones G. Blandatrae, 1558; Adversus Valentinum Gentilem, 1561; Responsum ad nobiles Fratres Polonos (Socinians) de controversia Mediatoris, 1561; Brevis admonitio ad Fratres Polonos ne triplicem in Deo essentiam pro tribus personis imaginando tres sibi Deos fabricent, 1563. (e) Defence of the Doctrine of Predestination against Bolsec and Castellio, 1554 and 1557.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  reveals some interestingly individual features. Some of the mosaics in Sant’ Apollinare are contemporary with its construction in the early sixth century. Two sequences depicting the Court of Theoderic and notables at his port city of Classis both now make no visual sense, as the figures have rather ineptly been replaced by abstract mosaic designs; these heroic portrayals of a heretical monarch and his retinue could not be allowed a place of honour in what had become a Catholic building. One intact sequence of original mosaic friezes, safely remote from the viewer at the very highest level of the walls, although it spans the whole length of the church on either side of the nave, seems to emphasize the Arian view of the nature of Christ. It tells stories of Jesus Christ’s life on earth: on the north side of the church the miracle worker and teller of parables is depicted as a young beardless man, while on the south side, which shows the Passion and Resurrection, he is portrayed as older and bearded. So the Redeemer lives his life and grows and matures as a truly human being who suffers as a human and yet is resurrected for our sakes (see Plate 19). Theoderic thus proclaimed his Arian faith to the world with all the resources of Christian art and architecture. Despite bombing hits in both world wars of the twentieth century, Sant’ Apollinare and the other Ostrogothic survivals in Ravenna are among the few witnesses to Arian culture and literature, when virtually everything else produced by the Arians has been deliberately erased from the record. Here we glimpse the splendour and richness of Arian Christianity, elsewhere so successfully obliterated by the medieval Latin Church of the West. Alongside his lavish gifts to the Arian Church, Theoderic allowed the Catholic Church to flourish, and used the skills of Roman and Catholic aristocrats in his administration. The most distinguished and learned of them, Boethius, was also one of the least fortunate: his service at Court ended around 524 with his execution on charges of treasonous intrigue with the Byzantines. Yet he played a great part in shaping the future of Christian culture in the West. Boethius had a fluency in Greek which was increasingly rare in the West: he knew its literature widely and intimately. He had planned to undertake a major programme of translations of Plato and Aristotle into Latin; in the end he completed only a few of Aristotle’s treatises on logic, but books which could provide a structured framework for clear thinking were precious enough amid the increasingly scarce resources of scholarship in the West. Equally significant was the treatise which Boethius wrote in prison while awaiting execution, The Consolation of Philosophy. There is not much that is Christian about the Consolation: it is the work of a man whose intellectual formation has been in Neoplatonism. Yet that was part of its value. It embedded Plato in Western thought for the next few

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years — Notes & Bibliography (2009)

  S. H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (Princeton, 2008). A masterly study of the crisis caused by the Mongols with a wider perspective than its already wide title implies is P. Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (Harlow, 2005). Richly enjoyable in its no-nonsense sifting of probability from wishful thinking in Ethiopian Church history is S. Munro-Hay, The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant: The True History of the Tablets of Moses (London, 2006). PART IV: THE UNPREDICTABLE RISE OF ROME (300–1300) General Reading Quite magnificent in its originality and powers of synthesis is the work of the doyen of the field, P. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity AD 200–1000 (Oxford, 1997). From a master of a previous generation comes a fine introduction, R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (London, 1970). An introduction which usefully draws on social and economic history, and which takes no prisoners, is R. Collins, Early Medieval Europe 300–1000 (Houndmills, 1991). 9: The Making of Latin Christianity (300–500) For the beginning of the period, see the reading for Chapter 6, but to those works should be added the particular focus on the city of Rome in J. R. Curran, Pagan City and Christian Capital: Rome in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 2000), also against the wider background presented with concise brilliance in P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (London, 1981). Much profit and entertainment can be derived from the essayists of A. Momigliano (ed.), The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century: Essays (Oxford, 1963). Augustine is perhaps the only Father of the Church whom non-Christians can read for pleasure, at least in two key works, H. Bettenson and D. Knowles (eds.), Augustine: Concerning the City of God against the Pagans (London, 1967), and R. S. Pine-Coffin (ed.), Saint Augustine: Confessions (London, 1961). Two splendid lives of this most central of Western theologians are G. Bonner, Saint Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies (2nd edn, Norwich, 1963) and P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London, 1969). An absorbing effort to squeeze as much as possible out of the limited evidence, although there have been archaeological discoveries

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years — Notes & Bibliography (2009)

  77 Galatians 2.11–14. 78 I Corinthians 10.23–32. 79 Martin Goodman has recently restated the case first made by the Jewish historian Josephus for accidental destruction: Goodman, esp. 440–44. One does not have to accept that argument to admire his masterly treatment of the era. 80 M. Goodman, ‘Trajan and the Origins of Roman Hostility to the Jews’, PP, 182 (February 2004), 28. On the genuine likelihood that the Capitoline Temple was built over the site of the crucifixion and tomb of Jesus, see J. Murphy O’Connor, The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford, 1980), 49–61. 81 Eusebius, Church History (NPNF, n.s. I, 1890), 158–9 (III.27.1–4). 82 Goodman, 103. 83 It was in thistradition that Nazi-sympathizing Christians in the twentieth century claimed that Nazareth lay in an enclave of ‘Aryanism’ and that the population of Galilee was not Jewish: see p. 942 and C. Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (Cambridge, 2006), Ch. 6. 84 Revelation 21.22 (see p. 104). The view which I am presenting has been challenged in recent years by scholars who argue for a much later and piecemeal separation between Judaism and Christianity, more or less complete only in the early fourth century. The case is eloquently stated in D. Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, 2004): see esp. xiv–xv, 192–201. 85 A useful treatment of this theme is L. W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, 2003), esp. 1–78, 575–6. 86 C. Harline, Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Super Bowl (New York, 2007), 6–17. 87 Stringer, 42. 88 Harline, Sunday, 4–6. 89 Goodman, 454, 469–70, 530–31. 90 Acts 11.26; see Goodman, 539–40. 91 For a careful though not dogmatically positive account of the evidence for Peter’s death in Rome, see J. Toynbee and J. Ward-Perkins, The Shrine of St Peter and the Vatican Excavations (London, 1956), 127–8, 133, 155–61. 4: Boundaries Defined (50 CE–300)

• From Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex (2023)

  What most viewers focus on in her ad is the dildo. Most analyses invariably describe it as “the phallus,” attempting to elevate the toy several intellectual levels by using its Latin signifier, cloaked with heavy symbolism. Meyer laments, “Critics and curators tend to look through or past the image to find the message they want it to provide, whether it be that Benglis ‘explicitly collapsed the phallus with the penis’ … or ‘subvert[ed] the psychic symbology of the penis itself.’ The high-mindedness of such prose robs the image of its sexual lawlessness and graphic immediacy.” But even Meyer is unable to categorize the ad as “either a feminist critique of pornography or a pornographic critique of feminism.” I choose to see it as the latter. At a time when second-wave feminists and radical lesbians were trying to organize a feminist movement against pornography around analyses like Robin Morgan’s “pornography is the theory, and rape the practice,” Benglis, too, was “really studying pornography,” in her own words. Her studies resulted in an abrasive and wild self-portrait, gripping her own cock; theirs in the assertion that—from Andrea Dworkin, this time—“I don’t want to be part of a movement that has a sense of priorities that says, ‘Sticking a dildo up my vagina is more important than [fighting] pornography as an institution of sexual abuse for women.’” Further, such feminists often disavowed both dildos and women with dicks, believing any cock or cock-like object to be a violent tool of patriarchy; as Dworkin felt, “men use the penis to deliver death to women.” (Unsurprisingly, these women were always anti-prostitution crusaders, as well.) I read Benglis’s ad less as a commentary on the psycho-sexual significance of the phallus and more as a visual representation of girls just wanna have fun. Her gender presentation is ambiguous; at the time, it would have been uncommon for critics to acknowledge the possibility that she was presenting her gender differently, as opposed to making a comment about gender. Forty years on, in 2014, Kathe Burkhart explored this idea: “She’s performing gender, not performing ‘male.’ Phallic women who don’t cleave to the ‘norms’ of a gender binary are still the elephant in the room. It’s still a touchstone image for me, which existed before we had the term gender non-conforming.” She holds her dick, extending from her body. She can do whatever she wants. Not everyone so easily enjoys this aesthetic freedom, though. Also speaking in 2014, LaToya Ruby Frazier recalled the limits of the piece, saying it represents social and economic exclusivity and inequality. How many artists can afford to take out a $3,000 advertisement? How many non-white women artists are represented by galleries in New York City? … As an African-American woman from a working-class background, I am aware that my artistic labor and artwork are devalued when compared to male artists as well as white women artists.

• From On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy (1961)

  Milton Erickson revived hypnotic techniques and used them impishly, turning the therapist into a master manipulator who catapults the patient past developmental impasses. Carl Whitaker stressed the hindrance of theory in clinical practice, demanding of the therapist both an existential presence and an awareness of local family customs. To this list could be added the names of immigrants—Erich Fromm, Victor Frankl, Hellmuth Kaiser, Erik Erikson, Heinz Kohut—whose work took on a decidedly American cast, free and experimental and socially aware. Although he rejects the Puritan premise of original sin, Rogers—in taking care to understand the other as a free individual, in focusing on his own authenticity and active presence, in trusting the positive potential in each client—creates a therapeutic view of man that conforms to important aspects of the American ethos. Rogers’s central premise is that people are inherently resourceful. For Rogers, the cardinal sin in therapy, or in teaching or family life, is the imposition of authority. A radical egalitarian, Rogers sees individuals as capable of self-direction without regard for received wisdom and outside of organizations such as the church or the academy. Despite its origins in the helping relationship, Rogers’s philosophy is grounded in Thoreau and Emerson, in the primacy of self-reliance. In embracing Rogers, Americans took important parts of themselves to heart—parts about which, however, the nation remains ambivalent. Does individualism imply fresh exploration of values by each person in each new generation, or must individualism be linked to fixed traditions and a view of man as selfish and competitive? Returning to established curricula and orthodox values, conservatives today attack not only Rogers but also an important strain of American humanism. It is perhaps because of Rogers’s American core that he is so much more respected—understood as a distinctive voice, taught with earnestness—in dozens of countries outside the United States. Rogers’s voice—warm, enthusiastic, confident, concerned—is what binds the disparate essays in On Becoming a Person. We encounter a man trying patiently, but with all the resources at his command, to hear others and himself. This attentive listening is in the service of both the individual and the grand question, what it means to become a person. In describing clients, Rogers assumes the language and prosody of existentialism. Of one struggling man, Rogers writes, “At that moment he is nothing but his pleadingness, all the way through . . . [F]or that moment he is his dependency, in a way which astonishes him.” Any notion that Rogers is not serious, not aware of human frailty, not intellectual must dissolve in response to his transcripts of painstaking clinical work. Rogers does what generations of psychology students have satirized him for doing, namely, repeat clients’ words. But he also summarizes clients’ feelings with precision, beauty of expression, and generous tentativeness. And he has a genius for accepting others. In her fifth psychotherapy session with Rogers, Mrs. Oak, a troubled homemaker, catches herself singing a “sort of a song without any music.” Rogers’s summary of her sequence of feelings leads Mrs.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  2. Calvin is, in the next place, a legislator and disciplinarian. He is the founder of a new order of Church polity, which consolidated the dissipating forces of Protestantism, and fortified it against the powerful organization of Romanism on the one hand, and the destructive tendencies of sectarianism and infidelity on the other. In this respect we may compare him to Pope Hildebrand, but with this great difference, that Hildebrand, the man of iron, reformed the papacy of his day on ascetic principles, and developed the mediaeval theocracy on the hierarchical basis of an exclusive and unmarried priesthood; while Calvin reformed the Church on social principles, and founded a theocracy on the democratic basis of the general priesthood of believers. The former asserted the supremacy of the Church over the State; the latter, the supremacy of Christ over both Church and State. Calvin united the spiritual and secular powers as the two arms of God, on the assumption of the obedience of the State to the law of Christ. The last form of this kind of theocracy or Christocracy was established by the Puritans in New England in 1620, and continued for several generations. In the nineteenth century, when the State has assumed a mixed religious and non-religious character, and is emancipating itself more and more from the rule of any church organization or creed, Calvin would, like his modern adherents in French Switzerland, Scotland, and America, undoubtedly be a champion of the freedom and independence of the Church and its separation from the State. Calvin found the commonwealth of Geneva in a condition of license bordering on anarchy: he left it a well-regulated community, which John Knox, the Reformer of Scotland, from personal observation, declared to be "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles," and which Valentin Andreae, a shining light of the Lutheran Church, likewise from personal observation, half a century after Calvin’s death, held up to the churches of Germany as a model for imitation.363 The moral discipline which Calvin introduced reflects the severity of his theology, and savors more of the spirit of the Old Testament than the spirit of the New. As a system, it has long since disappeared, but its best results remain in the pure, vigorous, and high-toned morality which distinguishes Calvinistic and Presbyterian communities.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years — Notes & Bibliography (2009)

  “Where does Christianity begin? In Athens, Jerusalem, or Rome? How did the early creeds of the church develop and differentiate? What was the impact of the Reformation and the Catholic Counterreformation? How have vital Christian communities emerged in Asia, Africa, and India since the eighteenth century? Award-winning historian MacCulloch attempts to answer these questions and many more in this elegantly written, magisterial history of Christianity. … He offers sketches of Christian thinkers from Augustine and Luther to Desmond Tutu. … His monumental achievement will not soon be surpassed.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A prodigious, thrilling, masterclass of a history book. MacCulloch is to be congratulated for his accessible handling of so much complex, difficult material. … He keeps the reader engaged with wit and choice anecdotes and throughout the entire book he retains his own distinctive, slightly irreverent perspective, and an unerring instinct for when to go from macro to micro history.” —John Cornwell, Financial Times “A triumphantly executed achievement. This book is a landmark in its field, astonishing in its range, compulsively readable, full of insight even for the most jaded professional and of illumination for the interested general reader. It will have few, if any, rivals in the English language.” —Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury “[MacCulloch’s] writing is brilliant, critical, inspiring, humorous.” —Brother Curtis, The Society of Saint John the Evangelist “Excellent … I suspect it will quickly become the go-to book for those seeking information on this major world religion.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “Diarmaid MacCulloch’s splendid account of Christianity’s long, momentous, non-ignorable life among us is in one way an account of everything that has gone on during the three millennia in which he sets his story. … A well- informed and—bless the man—witty narrative, fluent, well-judged and wholly free of cant. Christianity, the book, is more than informative, more than measured and temperate. It’s enjoyable—a jolly good read.” —The Washington Times “I heartily recommend Christianity to anyone with an interest in the history of the Church. The book is very accessible and readable. Both the novice and the expert should find it profitable. Believers will find challenges which we should be willing to face, and which should be a catalyst for some appropriate soul- searching. Cynics may just find some things that might make them willing to open up a dialog with the Faithful.” —HollywoodJesus.com “Diarmaid MacCulloch’s monumental book is essential reading for those enthralled by Christianity and for those enraged by it, while those who protest indifference may be ambushed by surprise at its force in world culture over the millenniums.” —Melvyn Bragg, The Observer, choosing Christianity as Book of the Year

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  1. Calvin was, first of all, a theologian. He easily takes the lead among the systematic expounders of the Reformed system of Christian doctrine. He is scarcely inferior to Augustin among the fathers, or Thomas Aquinas among the schoolmen, and more methodical and symmetrical than either. Melanchthon, himself the prince of Lutheran divines and "the Preceptor of Germany," called him emphatically "the Theologian."359 Calvin’s theology is based upon a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He was the ablest exegete among the Reformers, and his commentaries rank among the very best of ancient and modern times. His theology, therefore, is biblical rather than scholastic, and has all the freshness of enthusiastic devotion to the truths of God’s Word. At the same time he was a consummate logician and dialectician. He had a rare power of clear, strong, convincing statement. He built up a body of doctrines which is called after him, and which obtained symbolical authority through some of the leading Reformed Confessions of Faith. Calvinism is one of the great dogmatic systems of the Church. It is more logical than Lutheranism and Arminianism, and as logical as Romanism. And yet neither Calvinism nor Romanism is absolutely logical. Both are happily illogical or inconsistent, at least in one crucial point: the former by denying that God is the author of sin—which limits Divine sovereignty; the latter by conceding that baptismal (i.e. regenerating or saving) grace is found outside of the Roman Church—which breaks the claim of exclusiveness.360 The Calvinistic system is popularly (though not quite correctly) identified with the Augustinian system, and shares its merit as a profound exposition of the Pauline doctrines of sin and grace, but also its fundamental defect of confining the saving grace of God and the atoning work of Christ to a small circle of the elect, and ignoring the general love of God to all mankind (John 3:16). It is a theology of Divine sovereignty rather than of Divine love; and yet the love of God in Christ is the true key to his character and works, and offers the only satisfactory solution of the dark mystery of sin. Arminianism is a reaction against scholastic Calvinism, as Rationalism is a more radical reaction against scholastic Lutheranism.361 Calvin did not grow before the public, like Luther and Melanchthon, who passed through many doctrinal changes and contradictions. He adhered to the religious views of his youth unto the end of his life.362 His Institutes came like Minerva in full panoply out of the head of Jupiter. The book was greatly enlarged and improved in form, but remained the same in substance through the several editions (the last revision is that of 1559). It threw into the shade the earlier Protestant theologies,—as Melanchthon’s Loci, and Zwingli’s Commentary on the True and False Religion,—and it has hardly been surpassed since. As a classical production of theological genius it stands on a level with Origen’s De Principiis, Augustin’s De Civitate Dei, Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, and Schleiermacher’s Der Christliche Glaube.