Overview

Who was John Calvin and why is he still read five hundred years after his birth? In this volume an international and interdisciplinary group of leading specialists explores both the reasons for Calvin's enduring influence and the story of his reception across five centuries. The book's initial essays lay bare features of his ideas, his work as a church reformer, and his manner of presenting himself in his books and letters that clarify his impact both in his lifetime and after his death. The second half of the volume examines how he was read, perceived, and appropriated in different times and places from the seventeenth century to the present. If Calvin's writings were widely cited by leading Reformed theologians in the generations immediately after his death, they receded from view in the eighteenth century. What was most often recalled was his role in the burning of Michael Servetus, for which he was widely criticized in those quarters of the Reformed tradition now attached to the idea of toleration or the ideal of a free church. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his theology was recovered again in a variety of different contexts, while scholars drew his treatises and letters together into the monument to his life and work that was the Opera Calvini and undertook major studies of his life and times. Church movements claimed the label ""Calvinist"" for themselves with insistence and pride, whereas before the term had been derogatory. The movements that identified themselves as Calvinist nonetheless varied considerably in the manner in which they understood or misunderstood Calvin's thought. Calvin and His Influence, 1509-2009 should become the starting point for further reflection about Calvin's impact in his own time and throughout the subsequent history of Calvinism, as well as, more broadly, about the relationship between leading figures of the Reformation and the traditions subsequently associated with their names.

Full Product Details

Author:   Irena Backus (Professor, Professor, Institute of Reformation History, University of Geneva) ,  Philip Benedict (Professor, Professor, Institute of Reformation History, University of Geneva)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 23.90cm , Height: 3.80cm , Length: 16.00cm
Weight:   0.502kg
ISBN:  

9780199751853

ISBN 10:   0199751854
Pages:   368
Publication Date:   29 September 2011
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Irena Backus and Philip Benedict Chapter One: Calvin: Fifth Latin Doctor of the Church? Diarmaid MacCulloch Chapter Two: The Ideal of Aristocratia Politiae Vicina in the Calvinist Political Tradition Harro Höpfl Chapter Three: Calvin the Workaholic Max Engammare Chapter Four: Calvin's Self-Awareness as Author Olivier Millet Chapter Five: Calvin's Church in Geneva: Constructed or Gathered? Local or Foreign? French or Swiss? William Naphy Chapter Six: Calvin, the Swiss Reformed Churches, and the European Reformation Emidio Campi Chapter Seven: Calvin 1509-2009 Herman Selderhuis Chapter Eight: Calvinism as an Actor in the Early Modern State System around 1600: Struggle For Alliances; Patterns of Eschatological Interpretation; Symbolic Representation Heinz Schilling Chapter Nine: Reception and Response: Referencing and Understanding Calvin in Seventeenth-Century Calvinism Richard Muller Chapter Ten: The Dutch Enlightenment and the Distant Calvin Ernestine van der Wall Chapter Eleven: Lost, then Found: Calvin in French Protestantism, 1830-1940 André Encrevé Chapter Twelve: Calvin in the Plural: The Diversity of Modern Interpretations of Calvinism, especially in Germany and the English-Speaking World Friedrich W. Graf Chapter Thirteen: Calvin, Modern Calvinism and Civil Society: The Appropriation of a Heritage, with Particular Reference to the Low Countries Cornelis van der Kooi Chapter Fourteen: Calvin and British Evangelicalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries David Bebbington Chapter Fifteen: Calvin(ism) and Apartheid in South Africa in the Twentieth Century: The Making and Unmaking of a Racial Ideology John W. de Gruchy Index

Reviews

This volume of thoughtful and nuanced essays faithfully echoes Calvin's sense of himself as a scriptural teacher and pastor, and as one theologian among many, albeit an exceptional one. It explores his relationship with his contemporaries and with subsequent traditions in a carefully balanced way. Calvin would surely have approved. --Euan Cameron, Henry Luce III Professor of Reformation Church History, Union Theological Seminary

The volume consists of a substantial and very useful introduction by the two editors, and fifteen articles. ... This collection of essays provides an excellent snapshot of the current state of Calvin studies, and must be regarded as required reading for anyone interested in this area. * Kenneth Austin, Journal of Ecclesiastical History * A myriad of volumes similar to this one have appeared in the wake of the 2009 anniversary of John Calvin's birth 500 years ago, some are very good. But for our money, this is easily amoug the best and may possibly be the best ... Its appearance is to be welcomed heartily by anyone interested in the study of Calvin, early modernity, the influence of Calvin on subsequent eras, or Genevan history. ... The volume has been nicely produced by Oxford University Press and contains an extensive index, which is sometimes missing from essay collections such as this one. * Jon Balserak, The Sixteenth Century Journal *

Author Information

Irena Backus and Philip Benedict are Professors at the Institute for Reformation History at the University of Geneva.

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