Important Calvinists from Europe include: Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Huldrych Zwingli, and from England, reformers Thomas Cranmer and John Jewel. Because John Calvin had great influence and played an important role in the confessional and ecclesiastical debates throughout the 17th century, the tradition generally became known as Calvinism.
Today, this term also means the doctrines and practices of the Reformed churches, of which Calvin was an early leader, and the system is perhaps best known for its doctrines of predestination and total depravity.
John Calvin's international influence on the development of the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation began at the age of 25, when he started work on his first edition of the "Institutes of the Christian Religion" in 1534 (published 1536). Alongside the work he contributed to confessional documents for use in churches, Calvin's beliefs and practices left a direct influence on Protestantism. He is only one of many people to influence the doctrines of the Reformed churches, but he eventually became one of the most prominent theologians.
The rising importance of the Reformed churches, and of Calvin, happened in the second phase of the Protestant Reformation, when evangelical churches began to form, after Martin Luther, another important Reformer, was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. Calvin was a French exile in Geneva. He had signed the Lutheran Augsburg Confession in 1540, but his importance came from the Swiss Reformation. This was not Lutheran, but followed Huldrych Zwingli and then Calvin.
True Calvinism (historical Calvinism) does not teach that God chooses who will be saved and who will not be saved. Instead, it teaches that for God's own glory, He recreates men with a new nature - a nature that loves God and hates sin - instead of men keeping their old nature, as if they kept their old nature, they would not want to follow God. Historical Calvinism also teaches that if God did not choose to save someone, there would be no-one to be saved.
Although much of Calvin's practice was in Geneva, his publications spread his ideas of a reformed church to many parts of Europe. Calvinism became the theology of most Christians in Scotland (see John Knox), the Netherlands, and parts of Germany, and was influential in France, Hungary, Transylvania, and Poland. Calvinism was popular as well for some time in Scandinavia, especially Sweden, but was rejected in favor of Lutheranism after the synod of Uppsala in 1593.
Most settlers in the American Mid-Atlantic and New England were Calvinists, including the Puritans and Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (New York). Dutch Calvinist settlers were also the first successful European colonizers of South Africa, beginning in the 17th century, who became known as Boers or Afrikaners.
Some of the largest Calvinist communions were started by 19th and 20th century missionaries; especially large are those in Korea and Nigeria.
John Calvin
Jean Cauvin, also Jean Calvin (John Calvin in English) (July 10, 1509 – May 27, 1564), was a French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation and was a central developer of the system of Christian theology called Calvinism or Reformed theology. In Geneva, he rejected Papal authority, established a new scheme of civic and ecclesiastical governance. He is famous for his teachings and writings and infamous for his role in the execution of Michael Servetus.
Calvin was born with the name "Jean Chauvin" (or "Cauvin", in Latin "Calvinus") in Noyon, Picardie, France, to Gérard Cauvin and Jeanne Lefranc. In 1523, Calvin's father, a lawyer, sent his fourteen-year-old son to the University of Paris to study humanities and law. By 1532, he had attained a Doctor of Law degree at Orléans.
In 1536, he settled in Geneva, Switzerland. After being expelled from the city, he served as a pastor in Strasbourg from 1538 until 1541, before returning to Geneva, where he lived until his death in 1564.
Calvin trained to be a lawyer. He studied with some of the best teachers of the Renaissance in France. Some of the training used newer humanistic methods of trying to understand, dealing with a text directly. The training was important for Calvin. When he started to believe in Evangelicalism, he used these methods with the Bible. He used the bible to form his thoughts. He taught and preached what he believed the Bible taught.
Reformers such as Jan Hus and Martin Luther are seen as original thinkers that started a movement. Calvin was a great logician. He organised a movement. He was not so much an innovator in doctrine. Calvin knew the writings of the early Church Fathers and the great Medieval schoolmen very well. Earlier Reformers also influenced him. Calvin did not disagree with the Scholastics of the Middle Ages completely. He used them and adapted their thoughts according to his understanding of the Bible.
Calvin is often associated with the doctrines of predestination and election. He had similar ideas to the other magisterial Reformers about these doctrines.
Calvin's power was very great in his last years. He was known all around the world as a reformer different from Martin Luther. Mainly, Luther and Calvin respected each other. However, Luther and a Zürich reformer Huldrych Zwingli thought differently about the eucharist. Calvin's thoughts about it made Luther believe that Calvin agreed with Zwingli. At the same time, Calvin was sad that the reformers were not all together. He tried to join them together by signing the "Consensus Tigurinus". This was an agreement between the Zürich and Geneva churches.
Calvin's greatest help to the English-speaking people was by giving Marian exiles in Geneva protection. He did this starting in 1555. With the city's protection, they could make their own reformed church under John Knox and William Whittingham. They later carried many of Calvin's ideas back to England and Scotland. However, Calvin was most interested in trying to change his homeland, France. He helped the building of churches by giving out literature and offering ministers. Between 1555 and 1562, over one hundred ministers were sent to France.
Inside Geneva, Calvin mainly wanted to make a "collège", a school for children. A place to build the school was picked on March 25, 1558. It was opened the next year on June 5, 1559. It was divided into two parts. One part was a grammar school. The grammar school was called the "collège" or "schola privata". The other part was an advanced school called the "académie" or "schola publica". In five years there were 1,200 students in the grammar school and 300 in the advanced school. The "collège" later became the Collège Calvin, one of the college preparatory schools of Geneva. The "académie" became the University of Geneva.