This volume consists of commissioned essays intended to provide a fresh account of John Calvin and the tradition of Calvinism. In many respects the handbook explores what it means to speak about a reformer and a legacy over which he had little control. We have focused in particular on new directions in research and engaged our authors to explore unfamiliar and underexamined aspects of the Reformer and the diverse individuals and movements who have claimed his inheritance. The essays follow a largely chronological trajectory, moving from Calvin to the contemporary world.
This project has been in gestation for far longer than anticipated, and we are extremely grateful for the Job-like patience of our contributors. Sadly, along the way we lost a few authors. Particularly regrettable was a chapter on South Africa. Nevertheless, after the delays the authors were ready and willing to update their contributions to take in recent research and new ideas, and for their generous efforts we offer our thanks.
We are extremely grateful to Karen Raith at Oxford, who has guided the project from the beginning and been wonderfully encouraging at every stage.
We have also benefited from the work of two talented assistants to whom we are most grateful. Eunjin Kim, doctoral candidate at Duke Divinity School, worked hard in the early stage of the project in contacting contributors and helped in dealing with the numerous queries and logistical issues which always arise as such a volume starts to take shape. Will Tarnasky at Yale Divinity School performed herculean efforts to bring together and format the final version of the handbook, and we are deeply in his debt. Rona Johnston shared her expert editorial skills and advice to guide our work and significantly enhanced the volume.
During the time this handbook was being written and prepared we lost one of the greatest students of Calvin and Calvinism, Irena Backus. As an extraordinary scholar and teacher, she generously shared her research and compendious knowledge, and was for many of us both a mentor and a model of humane scholarship.
We dedicate this handbook to her memory.
Contents
Introduction
Bruce Gordon and Carl R. Trueman
Calvin, Calvinism, and Medieval Thought
Ueli Zahnd
Divine and Human Agency in Calvins Institutes
Emily Theus
Calvin and the Covenant: The Reception of Zurich Theology
Pierrick Hildebrand
Calvin and Equity
Alexander Batson
Calvins Old Testament Theology and Beyond: Paradoxes, Problems, and Comparisons with the Approaches of Arnold van Ruler and Kornelis Heiko Miskotte
Arnold Huijgen
John Calvins Vision of Reform, Historical Thinking, and the Modern World
Barbara Pitkin
Calvins Geneva: An Imperfect School of Christ
Karen E. Spierling
Calvinism, Anti-Calvinism, and the Admonition Controversy in Elizabethan England
Robert Harkins
John Knox and John Calvin
Jane Dawson
John Calvin, Bernardino Ochino, and Italian Heretics: History and Historiography of a Controversial Exchange
Michele Camaioni
Calvin, Shakespeare, and Suspense
Claire McEachern
Calvin and Calvinism in Germany
Christopher Ocker
Cultures of Calvinism in Early Modern Scotland
Steven J. Reid
Reformed Exiles and International Calvinism in Reformation-Era Europe
Jesse Spohnholz
The First Calvinist Encounters with New World Religions
Mark Valeri
Calvinist Debates on History: Historia Sacra, Historia Humana
Costas Gaganakis
Theology and Visual Culture in Early Modern Calvinism: Hiding in Plain Sight
William A. Dyrness
The Effects of Confessional Strife on Religious Authority in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century
Henk Nellen
Calvinism among Seventeenth-Century English Puritans
Tim Cooper
Cromwellian Calvinism: Englands Church and the End of the Puritan Revolution
Hunter Powell
Protestantism as Liberalism: John Milton and the Struggle Against Implicit Faith
R. Bradley Holden
Seventeenth-Century Calvinism and Early Enlightenment Thought
Aza Goudriaan
If thou reckon right: Angels from John Calvin to Jonathan Edwards via John Milton
Kenneth P. Minkema
Religion and the Republic: An Eighteenth-Century Black Calvinist Perspective
Steven M. Harris
Eighteenth-Century Evangelical Calvinists
Jonathan Yeager
Friedrich Schleiermacher and the Reformed Tradition in the Modern Era
Randall C. Zachman
Old Princeton and European Scholarship
Annette G. Aubert
Classical Calvinism and the Problem of Development: William Cunninghams Critique of John Henry Newman
Carl R. Trueman
Writing the Nineteenth-Century Scottish Calvinist Self: Spiritual Autobiography and Reformed Identity
Bruce Gordon
Unity and Engagement in the Modern World: Abraham Kuypers Calvinist Renewal
John Halsey Wood, Jr.
Karl Barths Calvin: A Weimar Prophet
Ryan Glomsrud
Calvinism and Reformed Confessions in the Korean Presbyterian Church
Byunghoon Kim
Calvinism as a Chinese Contextual Theology
Alexander Chow
(Re)Discoveries of the Reformed Faith in Brazil
Heber Campos, Jr.
Enchanted Calvinism: Healing and Deliverance in the Presbyterian Church of Ghana
Adam Mohr
Reforming Calvinism
Shannon Craigo-Snell
No Other Gods: Calvinism and Secular Society
D. G. Hart
The New Calvinism
Flynn Cratty
Annette G. Aubert is Lecturer and Visiting Scholar in Church History and Historical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. She is the author of The German Roots of Nineteenth-Century American Theology