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  • Calvin im Kontext der Schweizer Reformation: Historishe und theologische Beiträge zur Calvinforschung
  • Paul L. Nyhus
Peter Opitz , ed. Calvin im Kontext der Schweizer Reformation: Historishe und theologische Beiträge zur Calvinforschung. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 2003. 336 pp. index. €39. ISBN: 3-290-17252-X.

The mere mention of Calvin and Geneva evokes a very polarized response in the popular mind. His supporters laud him as a paragon among theologians and view Geneva as the model for reformed churches. His critics condemn him as hypermoralistic and disdain Geneva the fount of all evils wrought by puritanical societies. Both stereotypes attribute a nearly absolute power to Calvin. He is pictured very like his statue in Geneva, a stone figure outside of time and history. Recent scholarship has developed a more nuanced image. This study promises a contextualization of Calvin among his Swiss colleagues, a study of his triumphs and defeats, his friends and enemies.

The first three essays (Augustijn, van Stam, and Burger) offer intimate portraits of Calvin based on correspondence with other reformers during his first ministry in Geneva (1536–38). Bern, having enabled Geneva to break free from Savoy, assumed that the city and its church were Bernese dependencies. Bern viewed Farel and Calvin as junior partners subject to the direction of Bernese clergy. Farel and Calvin refused to accept this control, resisting Bern on issues such as the Eucharist. The Bernese clergy responded by sneering at the tumultuous French. On the other hand, Calvin asked for help from Bern when he needed to be absolved of charges of heresy. Augustijn suggests that, in the end, Bernese authorities played a role in his dismissal from Geneva. [End Page 272]

Three other essays (Kuropka, Opitz, and Strohm) analyze writings by Calvin which attempt to create brotherly amity with other reformers but which also reveal persistent theological disagreements. Kuropka observes that Calvin's introduction to his commentary on Romans was dedicated to Grynaeus in Basel and echoes earlier Romans commentaries by Melanchthon, Bullinger, and Bucer, thus suggesting a reformed unity. However, shortly thereafter, Calvin wrote a harsh attack on Luther's eucharistic teachings, an attack which remained unpublished at Melanchthon's request. Interpretations of the Lord's Prayer are analyzed by Opitz. Again, there are points of unity but the kingdom to come is read by Calvin as the militant church — witness the persecuted Protestants in France — while Bullinger, in a more secure Zurich, envisions a universal spiritual kingdom. Strohm reports that in their comprehensive theological treatises Bullinger and Calvin established much common ground, but Bullinger did not espouse Calvin's stern teachings on double predestination.

Finally the two essays by Scholl break the pattern of contextualizing. He uses other writers and traditions as examples of error, thereby establishing the correctness of Calvin's views especially regarding law and political theory. Because they rejected Calvin's views about the church as active, indeed, militant in society, Scholl labels Anabaptists with derisive names. He says that their withdrawal from the political realm led them into a "garden of error" (105) and describes them as a "chronic disease" (103) within the church. Such insults were common coin among authors of earlier generations but more recent scholarship on the Anabaptists has led most historians to engage in respectful dialogue. Again, when Scholl discusses the Servetus affair, he accuses Calvin's critics in Basel — from the sixteenth century to the present — of living in an "ivory tower" (315) removed from the historical realities of the sixteenth century. The critics, the humanists in Basel, know that their city's experience in the decades before the Servetus debate did not create an ivory tower. Basel sent a contingent to join Zurich's army in the extreme example of the church militant, the war against the Catholic cantons, which led to Zwingli's death on the battlefield. Basel hosted communities of Protestant refugees from France and Italy, some of the latter having published harrowing tales of their escape from the Inquisition. Basel had executed recalcitrant Anabaptists but then reconsidered that policy. The Basel critics of Calvin formed their views in the crucible of that century's violence and their contemporary supporters do not deserve to...

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