Calvin / Helm The Secret Providence of God

1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2324-3
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

In 1558 John Calvin held a prominent position of leadership in the Reform movement. He had written prolifically and his works had been widely circulated-and critiqued. It was at this time that he penned an answer to a critique of his position on divine providence, as articulated in the 1546 edition of the Institutes. His polemical defense of his beliefs, The Secret Providence of God, reflects the boisterous, argumentative tone of the Reformation era and is Calvin's fullest treatment on this most important doctrine. Unfortunately, in recent decades this work has been largely forgotten. With this new English translation of Calvin's work, editor Paul Helm reintroduces The Secret Providence of God to students, pastors, and lay readers of Reformed theology. Translator Keith Goad has modernized the English while preserving a Latinized translation style as far as possible. Helm has provided a full introduction, discussing the work's background, content, style, and relation to Calvin's other writings on providence.

John Calvin (1509-1564) was one of the most influential theologians of the Reformation. Known best for his Institutes of the Christian Religion, he also wrote landmark expositions on most of the books in the Bible.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Calvin, John

Helm, Paul

Leseproben

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

Concerning the Secret Providence of God (1558) was Calvin’s third response to writings that he took to be those of a fellow Frenchman, Sebastian Castellio (1515– 1563). Calvin prefaces this defense of his view of God’s providence by providing the Castellio material, which is in the form of fourteen articles, ostensibly drawn from Calvin’s writings, together with commentaries on each.

The two antagonists had a rather mixed relationship. Castellio met Calvin during the Reformer’s time in Strasbourg, and he stayed with Calvin there for a time in 1540. Initially, Calvin seems to have formed a warm attachment to him. He was impressed by his facility with languages, and during 1543–1544, on Calvin’s return to Geneva, Castellio was initially employed as rector of the College of Geneva.1While in the process of seeking to become a minister he began to fall afoul of the authorities, among other things condemning the Song of Solomon as a lewd book and calling for its removal from the Canon. He also asked Calvin to be a “consultant” for his French translation of the Bible. Somewhat reluctantly Calvin agreed to help him. This led to quarrels over Castellio’s general approach to translating Holy Scripture as well as to wrangles over les mots justes, and the result was a developing mutual antipathy. Castellio resigned from the college in 1544 and later that year unsuccessfully sought work in Lausanne, taking with him a recommendation written by Calvin on behalf of the Genevan clergy. After returning to Geneva, he publicly rebuked the clergy for various alleged failings, and, as a result, he was forced to leave the city permanently. He resided in Basle, working for a time as a proofreader. There in 1551 he published his Latin Bible, dedicated to Edward VI of England, and in 1555 the French Bible (the one begun in Geneva), dedicated to Henry II of France. He was made professor of Greek at the University of Basle in 1553.

Following the execution of Michael Servetus in 1553 Castellio mounted a personal campaign against the Genevan authorities, writing De haereticis an sint persequendi in 1554 (under the pseudonym Martinus Bellius), which attacked the then-normal policy of persecuting heretics.2Theodore Beza replied to this treatise with De haereticis a civili magistratu (1554), which Castellio answered the following year with De haereticis non puniendis, this time using the pen-name Basilius Montfort. His attack on persecution has earned for him a reputation as an early modern defender of religious toleration. Castellio also replied to Calvin’s work against Servetus, Defensio orthodoxae fidei de sacra Trinitate, in his Contra libellum Calvini in quo ostendere conatur haereticos jure gladii coercendos esse (1554). He published various other writings, including annotations on the ninth chapter of Romans, of an anti-Augustinian and anti-Reformed flavor. According to Beza, in these annotations Castellio recognized “no decrees of God except concerning things that are good by nature, forging in God a permission contrary to his will, and falsely charging that we make God the author of sin.”3

About the same time, there began what became a series of exchanges with Calvin on predestination and providence, perhaps provoked not only by what Calvin had stated in his Institutes, but also by the publication in 1552 of his Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, written against Albertus Pighius and others. Due to the loss of original manuscripts or books, the exact history of the Calvin-Castellio exchanges is rather murky. It appears that Castellio began publicly objecting to Calvin’s views of providence and predestination by anonymously circulating (in French) a set of unpublished remarks, now lost.4Calvin’s first published (or at least circulated) reply to Castellio’s objections, amounting to less than five thousand words, was entitled Responses à certaines calumnies et blasphèmes, dont quelsques malins s’efforcent de rendre la doctrine de la prédestination de Dieu odieuse. According to Willem de Greef this is also lost,5but a Latin translation survives and was published, or republished, as an appendix to Treze sermons traitons de l’élection gratuite de Dieu en Jacob, et de la rejection en Esau in 1562.6 Calvin’s reply contains an explicit though rather guarded reference to Castellio; he refers to a “writing which was scattered about,” suggesting private circulation rather than publication, and he also mentions certain of its “Articles” and the fact that its author makes a reference to Melanchthon.

Castellio’s French work, the one now apparently lost, was then followed by a work in Latin, which he arranged to have privately printed in Paris and clandestinely circulated in the Reformed community, including, of course, Geneva. Perhaps there were various products of Castellio’s in circulation around this time. In a letter written to the church of Poitiers in February 1555, Calvin himself refers to “papers and books” of Castellio’s written against predestination and to Castellio’s bad habit of drawing attention to his own virtue and to the viciousness of those who adhered to the doctrine of grace.7This Latin work also appears to be lost. Calvin replied to it in 1557 with Brevis responsio ad diluendas nebulonis cuiusdam calumnias quibus doctrinam de aaeterna Dei praedestinatione foedare conatus est.8

In September 1557, during a visit to Basle, Beza was shown a manuscript of fourteen articles or “calumnies” on providence and predestination, together with a critical commentary, which was due to be published in Paris.9The document took the form of an open letter to Calvin. Basle was at this period antipathetic to Calvin’s Geneva on a number of issues. Calvin received a manuscript of the work in November and initially hesitated over whether he should offer a reply, but then in January of 1558 he published Calumiae nebulonis cuiusdam quibus odio et invidia gravare conatus est doctrinam Ioh. Calvini de occulta Dei providential: Johannis Calvini ad easdem responsio.10There are some signs of hasty preparation. As the title of Calvin’s response indicates, Castellio’s calumnies are reproduced together with Calvin’s replies. While Calvin does not mention Castellio by name, there are internal details which reveal clearly that he is confident that Castellio is the author.

As noted, the work is in the form of fourteen articles claiming to set out Calvin’s views, with a commentary on each article. The anonymous author wrote as if he were a third party, communicating the articles (as if prepared by others) and the accompanying commentary to Calvin in a “letter,” and inviting his response. It is this response of Calvin’s, prefaced by the fourteen articles and Castellio’s commentary on them, that is now freshly translated into English.

There have been two earlier English translations. In 1840 James Lillie published Calvin on Secret Providence (New York: Robert Carter), but this has, in general, been little noticed.11In the middle years of the nineteenth century Henry Cole translated three closely related works of Calvin’s: Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God written against Albert Pighius and others; A Brief Reply against Castellio; and A Defence of the Secret Providence of God, publishing them together as Calvin’s Calvinism. However, in his treatment of the first and third of these pieces, Cole silently rearranged Calvin’s mate10Calvini rial. The last section of Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God was dropped from his translation of that work, and instead it became the opening section of A Defence of the Secret Providence of God. So Calvin’s Defence is measurably shorter than the reader of Cole’s translation of the book of that name would appreciate, just as his translation of Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God lacks the last section.

The present translation of the work is of the Latin text with no additions or subtractions, and it attempts to avoid the florid paraphrasing and severe and rather excitable tone of Cole’s translation; though given the antagonists’ own language, harshness and rudeness cannot always be avoided.

The work provides us with a small window onto the boisterous, argumentative years of the Reformation, not in this case to the main conflicts but to the skirmishes initiated by some of its lesser characters, such as Pighius and Servetus and, of course, Castellio. One is also immediately reminded that this was a somewhat different world from ours, one of sharply edged though often subtle theological doctrines, frequently communicated equally sharply and also crudely.12This was a time in which there was little opportunity for the exercise of toleration; it was the age of the Inquisition, of the rack and the thumbscrew and of the persecution and execution of “heretics” by whoever had political power.

In this exchange between Castellio and Calvin one is also made aware not only of those who, children of their time (late medievalism),...