The punch line is, what’s the difference? Badop bop.
Timothy George, dean of the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, has a number of articles in a recent issue of Christianity Today that is devoted to John Calvin. George is a very fine historian of the Reformation so the reason for his rendition of Calvin may owe more to his editors and readers at CT than to his training at Harvard University. Still, to make Calvin appealing to American evangelicals, in “John Calvin: Comeback Kid,†George lays on thick the French reformer’s globalizing transformational identity. He writes:
Calvin’s theology was meant for trekkers, not for settlers, as historian Heiko Oberman put it. In the 16th century, Calvinist trekkers fanned out across Europe initiating political change as well as church reform from Holland to Hungary, from the Palatinate to Poland, from Lithuania to Scotland, England, and eventually to New England. . . . Like the Franciscans and the Dominicans in the Middle Ages, Calvin’s followers forsook the religious ideal of stabilitas for an aggressive mobilitas. They poured into the cities, universities, and market squares of Europe as publishers, educators, entrepreneurs, and evangelists. Though he had his doubts about predestination, John Wesley once said that his theology came within a “hair’s breadth” of Calvinism. He was an heir to Calvin’s tradition when he exclaimed, “The world is my parish.”
For some neo-Calvinists the reference to Wesley may be off putting, but not so for evangelicals. But how about one to Walter Rauschenbusch, the father of the Social Gospel? George continues:
And so was the Baptist Walter Rauchenbusch [an heir to Calvin] in his concern for the social gospel, which (as Rauchenbusch used the term) did not mean another gospel separate from the one and only gospel of Jesus Christ. It simply meant that that gospel must not be sequestered into some religious ghetto but taken into the real ghettos and barrios of our world.
Despite disputes over links between Calvin and Wesley or Rauschenbusch, indisputable is George’s claim that swarms of Reformed Protestants went to a lot of places and changed them. Whether this is the genius of Calvinism or simply one part of the Great European Migration is another question. After all, the Lutherans who in the seventeenth century came to Germantown, Pennsylvania, also changed that section of modern-day Philadelphia, but they don’t get credit as transformationalists.
But migrating and establishing towns, villages, and counties is one thing. Teaching about how Christians should regard the present life is another. This is where some historians and neo-Calvinists always seem to stumble with Calvin. For he did not advocate trekking but just the opposite:
Let the aim of believers in judging mortal life, then, be that while they understand it to be of itself nothing but misery, they may with greater eagerness and dispatch betake themselves wholly to meditate upon that eternal life to come. When it comes to a comparison with the life to come, the present life can not only be safely neglected but, compared to the former, must be utterly despised and loathed. [Institutes, III.ix.4]
So much for Calvin the transformer of culture.
What then was Calvin’s advice to pilgrims in this weary world?
. . . lest through our stupidity and rashness everything be turned topsy-turvy, [God] has appointed duties for every man in his particular way of life. And that no one may thoughtlessly transgress his limits, [God] has named these various kinds of livings “callings.†Therefore, each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander about throughout life. [III.x.6]
Could it be that Reformed trekkies actually cease to be Reformed when they trek? Could it be that they need to reject Calvin to follow Methodists and Social Gospelers instead? It sure looks that way. In which case, Calvin’s comeback in this 500th anniversary of his birth will likely be thin and short-lived.
Old Life 
I’m curious to hear what Selderhuis has to say about this in his John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life.
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I prefer F. Bruce Gordon or Paul Helm on Calvin .
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Why do Evangelicals want Calvin to be a transformationalist? Do they think that if people hear this stuff enough, they will start a renewal or something? It baffles me…
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How do the last two quotations support your claim? After all, “despise this life” does not necessarily exclude being transformer of this culture more than being “against culture” or the other paradigms. The most literal way to understand this would be to commit suicide, which obviously he does not mean. Combined with the last quotation, it might be shown to be to support a calling of “trekking,” and what is to be despised is our suffering, which trekking usually include. In short, to make the last two quotations support the claim that Calvin does not support transformational christian life seems to be based on an interpretation of the passage that was not explained in this post.
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Paul, how exactly do these quotations support transformationalism if your first reading is “commit suicide”? So it can’t mean commit suicide, then it must mean transform. Huh?
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I should probably change the name of my blog to Redneck Christian. Anyway, this is off topic but when I saw Camden’s thumbnail the thought occurred to me that he sounds a lot younger on the Reformed Forum than he looks.
Keep up the good work, guys!
Charlie
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I’m not a big fan of Christianity Today. It seems to me that Christianity Today is moving further away from the theological commitments of neo-fundamentalism, which I would argue should be the center of any claim to being “Evangelical.” Was it not Carl F. H. Henry who founded the magazine???
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Henrie was in the mix, along with a cast of characters from Fuller Seminary, Billy Graham, and his father-in-law, L. Nelson Bell.
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I’m not a big fan of Why is there not more discussion of Gordon Clark and his influence on Carl F. He. Henry? I must say that though I have not read that much of Clark, I did read Carl F. H. Henry’s God, Authority and Revelation. That systematic theology did more to revolutionize my view of Reformed theology than anything I had read up to that time. Of course, Berkhof was a good introductory systematic theology but Henry is surpassed by none. Donald Bloesch practically despises Carl Henry’s work. I read all of Bloesch’s systematic theology as well and was unimpressed with Bloesch’s selling out to Barthian neo-orthodoxy and his rejection of propositional truth. Bloesch also advocated a second chance in hell.
Anyway, I would love to hear what you all think about Carl F. H. Henry versus Donald Bloesch’s impact on the Reformed world and evangelicalism at large. I much enjoyed your discussion on New Testament theology as I have read Ladd’s NT Theology. Ladd seems to be a product of Carl Henry’s legacy as well since Henry was an influence in the development of Fuller Seminary.
Also, just in passing, I tend to disagree with the Kuyper/Bavinck exposition of “common grace”, though I think the Protestant Reformed Church in America often goes to extremes in their exposition of Scripture because of their reaction to the three points of common grace. On the other hand, judging from the theological condition of Calvin College and Calvin Seminary, the implications of common grace are real.
Sincerely in Christ,
Charlie
Sincerely in Christ,
Charlie
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Oops. There was a typo there. I meant to say, “I’m not a big fan of Cornelius Van Til.”
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That should be God, Revelation, and Authority… Sorry…
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Greetings! I somehow found your site here and did a little reading up on it. This is interesting that you suggest the Neo-Calvinism will be short lived. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you. It seems that this neo-Calvinism has brought about quite a few church plants. Then again, I haven’t researched this fully.
In Christ,
—Jonathan
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