John Calvin Research Paper

What does it mean for God to be “sovereign?” This is the question that has perhaps caused more controversy than any other. For John Calvin, God was completely sovereign. Nothing outside the will of God could take place, because everything that has taken place, is taking place, or will take place has been divinely ordained before time began. God is the source of all good, and evil cannot take place without His permission. According to Calvin, all of humankind are lost in their sins, and so depraved that they are incapable of finding salvation without God performing an inner-miracle within them. This being said, God has elected to Himself a chosen people from the beginning of time, not off of merit, but sola gratia.

God gave men the free will to elect their own salvation. There is no sin until it is actually committed. Sin was now considered a voluntary act. It also consists of a change of heart, which revived the concept of limited atonement. Christ did not die for only a select few predestined elect, but for whosoever will accept God’s offer of salvation. Personal commitment also involved an active and useful Christian life in which individual action brings the kingdom closer.

God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, therefore a predetermined path of righteousness or condemnation is contradictory to the core values of Christianity, as it eliminates the need for the will to be saved by Christ. This shows that God does not control our actions, in hopes that we live in accordance to him.

Calvin answered these objections in two ways. First, he conserved that God’s will was the “highest rule of righteousness,” and therefore anything that God wills—such as predestination—“must be considered righteous,” or just, irrespective of how it appeared to us. For Calvin, God’s will had “its own equity. Here Calvin upheld the justice of God but asserted that it was simply “unknown” to us on some level. Thus, God’s justice was eventually hidden and mysterious. With Paul (Rom. 9.20), Calvin affirmed that it was simply not our place to question God. He rejected that God was lawless, and also rejected that God had must given us an account of his justice, or that we were fit to “pronounce judgment [on God]…according to our own understanding. It was absurd to accuse God because of our own lack of understanding. Since predestination yields the glory of God, it must be just: “whatever deserves praise must be just. Calvin’s second response was that since all people, including the sinner, are “vitiated by sin,” and so

Argued that God had already predestined the elect who were going to Heaven & thus individuals could not alter their fates

Predestination: A main concept in Calvinism that stated that everyone’s life was predestined, for better or for worse

Therefore the reformation started, and peasants’ rebellions were caused from all around the German. People called those reformers who resisted Roman Catholic Church, ‘Protestant’. One of the influential Protestants was Jean Calvin (French theologian), who developed Calvinism later. He also claimed that indulgence selling is wrong by saying that people don't have to follow the doctrine that hasn't mentioned in the Bible, and the only people who were selected by God can be saved (‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’).[5][6] Then think, even the people bought thousands of indulgences; they couldn't be saved if God did not select them.

This fundamental difference from the Catholic dogma that one could buy salvation to Luther’s new ideas as way to Heaven began to transform many people’s beliefs. Supporters of Luther adopted the concept of faith and knowledge of God as a way to repent their sins, and eventually, it reshaped the Christian culture. As Luther personally struggled to be a “perfect” monk, he discovered that faith in the gospel was the only way to be “made righteous by God”(roper 78). In response to his distress for his laity’s desire to buy indulgences, Luther wrote the “95 Theses on the Power of Indulgences.” He knew he was attacking the pope and the values of the church, but records show that he felt “...not fully in control of his actions, but handed over responsibility to a higher power”(84 roper). Cleary, Luther felt a spiritual connection with God and indulgences were in direct opposition to faith. His revolutionary claims in the “95 Theses on the Power of Indulgences” caused a conflict that would eventually be known as the Protestant Reformation.

He came across Romans 1:17, "... The just shall live by faith. " After much meditation, he understood that salvation was by faith, not by works. Meanwhile, the employment of John Tetzel, a Dominican monk, was approved by Pope Leo X to sell indulgence s not far from Luther's province. Indulgences were remissions of the punishment of sin through money.

He believes that God's act of creation did not stop after He created man, but continues all throughout the past, present and future. Calvin not only believes that God cares for all of man and animals, but directs the weather and excersises His power over inanimate objects. Calvin even goes so far as to argue that the movement of the sun, moon, stars, and planets is continued by God's power and not by some energy that was given to them at the beginning of creation, which "carnal sense" would tell us (Calvin 197). He does not believe that God sits back and watches or allows things in nature to happen, but actually causes them to happen. For example, if there was a drought one summer it was caused by God, possibly part of His vengeance or wrath. Or, if the crops flourished the next summer it was also His plan. Likewise, let us say per chance (no pun intended) a man is walking along a mountain pass and some rocks fall and kill him. For Calvin this was not an accident, but a determination and the Will of God. Calvin's ideology of God's Providence in nature is summed up in this quote:

When Martin Luther penned his 95 Theses in 1517, he began the Protestant Reformation, which emanated in waves across Europe for the following decades. Calvinism, a sect of Protestantism founded by the French reformer John Calvin, became the official religion of Geneva in 1536 (“CALVIN AND GENEVA”). In her Short Chronicle, Jeanne de Jussie wrote about the events that occurred in the few years preceding 1536 from the perspective of the sisters in the Convent of St. Clare, or the Poor Clares. As the secretary for the convent, Jeanne de Jussie wrote it in order to preserve the history of the Poor Clares and to recount the events that led up to the convent’s move from Geneva to Annecy. More importantly however, she likely thought that the Calvinist

John Calvin is a principal figure of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, as well as Henry VIII, detached Protestantism from the Roman Catholic Church. Calvin's doctrines and theology created philosophical changes within the Protestant churches. Calvin led Protestantism to supplement itself into state control. His ideas about salvation and whether it is predetermined by God or open to all, are still debated in current times.

Calvin's unique coherent belief system played an important role in not only his success in Geneva but all over Europe and this is mainly due

He marked the continuation of the Protestant Reformation abroad in Switzerland from Ulrich Zwingli. Without John Calvin, Roman Catholicism would still heavily influence Geneva today. Calvin was a remarkable theologian that has made a huge impact on Christianity by writing such an important work, Institutes of Christian Religion, and continuing the Protestant Reformation in

One last thing Calvin is known for is his theology. This is put together in a