- “Calvin was virtually the founder of America.”
- ~ German historian Leopold von Ranke
- “He who will not honor the memory and respect the
influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of
American liberty.”
- ~ Harvard historian George Bancroft
- “Let not Geneva be forgotten or despised.
Religious liberty owes it much respect.”
- ~ John Adams, America’s second President
Calvin's
doctrine on divine sovereignty was not
a metaphysical conception but a
practical idea, such as the social and
political exigencies of his day
required.
The kingdom of God which
Christ came to establish, proclaiming
as He did the will of God, seeking to
bring men into conformity to it, was
nothing more than the theocracy which Calvin
and the Reformers advocated in
such a confident and courageous
manner.
CALVIN'S
INFLUENCE
ON CIVIC
AND SOCIAL
LIFE
An Address
before the Alumni Association, May 5,
1909, By
Rev.
J.
ROSS
Stevenson,
D. D.
Auburn
Seminary Record 1910. |
Three
basic ideas are crucial for the
success of any religious, social,
intellectual, and political movement.
• First, the doctrine of
predestination.
• Second, the doctrine of
law.
• Third,
the doctrine of inevitable victory.
The
fusion of these three ideas has led to
the victories of Marxism since 1848.
The Communists believe that historical
forces are on their side, that
Marxism-Leninism provides them with
access to the laws of historical
change, and that their movement must
succeed.
Islam has a similar faith.
In
the early modern Christian West,
Calvinists and Puritans had such faith.
Social
or religious philosophies which lack
any one of these elements are seldom
able to compete with a system which
possesses all three.
Eschatology
and The New Christian Right - Gary
North |
|
|
When many people hear "Calvinism" mentioned, they
think about "the five points of Calvinism," or perhaps
just "that odious doctrine" of
"Predestination." This Website supports Predestination.
It is a position held by very few people. If this were the only
measure of success, Calvin would be a failure. But Calvin had a
greater influence when it came to creating civil governments and
guaranteeing political liberties. And if the Calvinist ideas
which had the most impact on American political thinking were
consistently implemented, the result would be Calvinist
Anarcho-Capitalism. The New
Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, first
edited by Philip Schaff
(1819-1893), says "Calvinism"
Sometimes ... designates, more broadly still, the entire
body of conceptions, theological, ethical, philosophical,
social, political, which, under the influence of the master
mind of John Calvin, raised itself to dominance in the
Protestant lands of the post-Reformation age, and has left a
permanent mark not only upon the thought of mankind, but upon
the life-history of men, the social order of civilized
peoples, and even the political organization of States.
Most Americans could not even begin to explain how Calvin
affected "the political organization of States" or
"the social order of civilized peoples." Abraham
Kuyper, Prime Minister of the Netherlands, delivering the
Stone Lectures at Princeton University in 1898, said
And as a political name, Calvinism indicates that political
movement which has guaranteed the liberty of nations in
constitutional statesmanship; first in Holland, then in
England, and since the close of the last century in the United
States. In this scientific sense, the name of Calvinism is
especially current among German scholars. And the fact that
this not only is the opinion of those who are themselves of
Calvinistic sympathies, but that also scholars who have
abandoned every confessional standard of Christianity,
nevertheless assign this profound significance to Calvinism.
This appears from the testimony borne by three of our best men
of science, the first of whom, Dr. Robert Fruin, declares
that: “Calvinism came into the Netherlands consisting of a
logical system of divinity, of a democratic Church-order of
its own, impelled by a severely moral sense, and as
enthusiastic for the moral as for the religious reformation of
mankind.” Another historian, who was even more outspoken in
his rationalistic sympathies, writes: “Calvinism is the
highest form of development reached by the religious and
political principle in the 16th century.” And a third
authority acknowledges that Calvinism has liberated
Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England, and in the Pilgrim
Fathers has provided the impulse to the prosperity of the
United States. Similarly Bancroft, among you, acknowledged
that Calvinism “has a theory of ontology, of ethics, of
social happiness, and of human liberty, all derived from God.” MY
THIRD LECTURE leaves the sanctuary of religion and enters upon
the domain of the State–the first transition from the sacred
circle to the secular field of human life. Only now therefore
we proceed, summarily and in principle, to combat the
unhistorical suggestion that Calvinism represents an
exclusively ecclesiastical and dogmatic movement.
The religious momentum of Calvinism has placed also beneath
political Society a fundamental conception, all its own, just
because it not merely pruned the branches and cleaned the
stem, but reached down to the very root of our human life.
That this had to be so becomes evident at once to everyone who
is able to appreciate the fact that no political scheme has
ever become dominant which was not founded in a specific
religious or anti-religious conception. And that this has been
the fact, as regards Calvinism, may appear from the political
changes which it has effected in those three historic lands of
political freedom, the Netherlands, England and America.
Every competent historian will without exception confirm the
words of Bancroft: “The fanatic for Calvinism was a fanatic
for liberty, for in the moral warfare for freedom, his creed
was a part of his army, and his most faithful ally in the
battle.”1 And Groen van Prinsterer has
thus expressed it: “In Calvinism lies the origin and
guarantee of our constitutional liberties.” That Calvinism
has led public law into new paths, first in Western Europe,
then in two Continents, and today more and more among all
civilized nations, is admitted by all scientific students, if
not yet fully by public opinion. 1.
BANCROFT, History of the United States of America. Fifteenth
Edition; Boston 1853: I. 464; Ed. New York, 1891, I, 319
It would hardly be too much
to say that for the latter part of his lifetime and a
century after his death John Calvin was the most influential
man in the world, in the sense that his ideas were making
more history than those of anyone else during that period.
Calvin’s theology produced the Puritans in England, the
Huguenots in France, the ‘Beggars’ in Holland, the
Covenanters in Scotland, and the Pilgrim Fathers of New
England, and was more or less directly responsible for the
Scottish uprising, the revolt of the Netherlands, the French
wars of religion, and the English Civil War. Also, it was
Calvin’s doctrine of the state as a servant of God that
established the ideal of constitutional representative
government and led to the explicit acknowledgment of the
rights and liberties of subjects. . . . It is doubtful
whether any other theologian has ever played so significant
a part in world history.
—J.
I. Packer, Board of Governors' Professor of Theology at
Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia
Extremes
of Opinion
The Presbyterian Parson's Rebellion — The Forerunner Blog
Here is an exchange from a
Discussion Board on America On Line (link works only for AOL
subscribers). Subject:
Calvin's America
Date: 4/28/2001 10:55 PM Pacific Daylight
Time
From: KEVIN4VFT
Message-id:
<20010429015507.26539.00001469@ng-bk1.aol.com>
I
wrote: See
John Eidsmoe's biographical essay on Adams in Christianity
and the Constitution, pp. 257-96. In
message-id: <20010429004401.13099.00000940@ng-ci1.aol.com>
dated: 4/28/2001 9:44 PM Pacific Daylight Time, RJohnson64
writes:
Is
this the same John Eidsmoe who, in one of his words,
affirmatively quoted Ranke's statement that "John Calvin is
the virtual founder of America"? I
don't recall Eidsmoe quoting Ranke, I think he was quoting John
Adams.
You may be thinking of Lorraine Boettner: http://reformed-theology.org/html/issue06/calvin.htm http://www.ccel.org/b/boettner/predest/28.htm See
also Steve Wilkins: http://www.gbt.org/wilkins/causes_of_the_war_of_independenc4.htm Also: http://www.avision1.com/biblical_worldview/BWV_00/BWV06-2.html http://incolor.inebraska.com/stuart/ajc.htm http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a397351b419af.htm http://www.biblehistory.com/Presbyterian.html http://www.berea-baptist.org/historical.htm http://www.bighole.com/church/christianpatriots.htm http://nt.watauga.k12.nc.us/whs/id/chpt3.htm http://www.nacnet.org/baptist/arnjuly7.htm Also: http://www.flash.net/~jaybanks/books/reformed/history.htm
- The
fanatic for Calvinism was a fanatic for liberty; and, in the
moral warfare for freedom, his creed was his most faithful
counsellor and his never-failing support.
For
"New England was a religious plantation, not a
plantation for trade. The profession of the purity of
doctrine, worship, and discipline was written on her
forehead." "We all," says
the confederacy in one of the two oldest of American written
constitutions, "came into these parts of America to
enjoy the liberties of the gospel in purity and peace."
"He that made religion as twelve, and the world as
thirteen, had not the spirit of a true New England
man." Religion was the object of the emigrants, and it
was their consolation. With this the wounds of the outcast
were healed, and the tears of exile sweetened.
-
- The
influence of Calvin can be traced in every New England
village
- George
Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol.2,
p.138 - p.139
-
- Much
of this sentiment may be traced to the influence exerted by
the opinions of one man, John Calvin. "We boast of our
common schools, Calvin was the father of popular education,
the inventor of free schools. The Pilgrims of Plymouth were
Calvinists; the best influences of South Carolina came from
the Calvinists of France. William Penn was the disciple of
the Huguenots; the ships from Holland that first brought
colonists to Manhattan were filled with Calvinists. He
that will not honor the memory and respect the influence of
Calvin, knows but little of the origin of American liberty.
He bequeathed to the world a republican spirit in religion,
with the kindred principles of republican liberty."
- William
Jackman, History of the American Nation, Vol.2,
p.394
-
- Their
value today to the student of American civilization is found
chiefly in the light they throw on Puritanism and Calvinism
as influences in the making of New England culture from
which, some 200 years after Cotton's day, American
literature flowered in the American Renaissance
- A
Guide to the Study of the USA, Library of Congress
1960, p.5
Subject: Re:
Calvin's America
Date: 4/29/2001 3:56 PM Pacific Daylight
Time
From: KEVIN4VFT
Message-id:
<20010429185643.08372.00000094@ng-fa1.aol.com>
In
message-id:
<20010429091358.13344.00001413@ng-ci1.aol.com>
dated: 4/29/2001 6:13 AM
Pacific Daylight Time, RJohnson64
writes:
> Kevin posts: The
fanatic for Calvinism was a fanatic for liberty;
> and,
in the moral warfare for freedom, his creed was his most
>
faithful
counsellor and his never-failing support.
>
>
RJohnson: Interesting.
Of the list I posted regarding the religious affiliations
>
of
the founders, how many of them would you classify as Calvinist?
>
>
Kevin:
Politically,
virtually all of them were Calvinists.
>
> Calvinism
is a political philosophy??? Color me confused,
but
>
I
was under the impression that Calvinism was a theological
>
philosophy
that transcended politics. I'm curious what criteria
>
you
use to classify Calvinism as a political philosophy.
The
judgments of Calvinists, as well as non-Calvinist historians.
>
>
If
it is the predestination aspect, I might remind you that a good
>
number
of the founders wrote avidly against predestination,
>
Jefferson
being perhaps the most vocal of these.
>
>
However,
I am interested in your support for this, so I will hold
>
until
you provide more information.
I
hardly know where to begin. It's like meeting a primitive native
of a lost continent who, having heard bits and pieces of info
about a land far away, has the idea that being an
"American" means playing a game called
"baseball." Where do you begin telling this man that
the differences between his culture and "America" are
far greater than an occasional game of baseball? A
person who only believes in predestination is a very truncated
Calvinist. In fact, a person whose views on predestination do
not shape his politics doesn't believe in predestination at all. "Predestination"
is just the tip of the iceberg of a view of life which begins
with the absolute sovereignty of God. It affirms the
Creator-creature distinction as basic to metaphysics and ethics,
and "the Crown-rights of Christ the King" in every
area of life. I
guess I would direct you first to the
lectures delivered by the Prime Minister of the Netherlands at
Princeton University in 1898. These lectures are still in
print, so far as I know. http://www.kuyper.org/stone/preface.html That
site says:
Dr.
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch Calvinist theologian,
philosopher and politician. As leader of the
Anti-Revolutionary Party in the Netherlands he served as Prime
Minister of his country from 1901 to 1905. A man of immense
talents and indefatigable energy, he occupied himself with the
task of reconstructing the social structures of his native
land on the basis of its Calvinistic heritage in almost every
area of life. He was editor of two Christian newspapers for
over forty-five years, served his country as a member of
parliament for over thirty years; in 1880 he founded the Free
University of Amsterdam in which he occupied himself as
teacher and administrator, and still found time to publish
over 200 volumes of intellectually challenging material
including Encyclopaedia of Sacred Theology, The Work of the
Holy Spirit, and the classic devotional text To Be Near
Unto God. At his seventieth birthday celebrations in 1907
it was said of him that “The history of the Netherlands in
Church, in State, in Society, in Press, in School, and in the
Sciences of the last forty years, cannot be written without
the mention of his name on almost every page.”
His Lectures
on Calvinism uncover
the riches of Calvinism as not just a set of theological
dogmas but more importantly as the foundation of a whole view
of life.
- H.
Henry Meeter, The Basic Ideas of Calvinism, 1939,
writes:
- Calvinism
does not restrict itself to theology; but it is an
all-comprehensive system of thought, including within its
scope views on politics, society, science, and art as well
as theology. It presents a view of life and of the universe
as a whole -- a world- and life-view.
- http://www.gospelcom.net/thehighway/Calvinism_Meeter.html
Another
Dutch Calvinist on the Sovereignty of God and its relation to
all of human culture:
http://www.visi.com/~contra_m/ab/cc/CandC.pdf
Max
Weber and R.H. Tawney have explored the Calvinist roots of
American capitalism. Ernst Troeltsch can also be consulted here.
See the Journal published 50 years ago, Progressive Calvinism:
http://www.visi.com/~contra_m/pc/
"Federalism,"
"representative government," "social
contract" -- these are ideas which are nothing else than political
presbyterianism. The British called the American Revolution
"The Presbyterian Revolt."
- George
Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol.4,
Chapter
1: America Sustains the Town of Boston, May 1774, p.9
- New
York anticipated the prayer of Boston. Its people, who had
received the port act direly from England, felt the wrong to
that town as a wound to themselves, and even the lukewarm
kindled with resentment. From the epoch of the stamp act,
their Sons of Liberty, styled by the royalists "the
Presbyterian junto," had kept up a committee of
correspondence.
On
politics:
- Russell
Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p. 236
- Politically,
the tendency of Protestantism was toward democracy. Luther
preached obedience to legitimate princes; Calvin established
at Geneva a kind of aristocratic republic of virtue,
governed in effect by presbyters (ministers and elders of
the church). Yet the idea of the priesthood of all believers
gradually would be transferred from the realm of religion to
the realm of politics. The presbyterian form of Calvinism
especially would become a forerunner of democratic
institutions, even though in the beginning it had more
nearly resembled the ancient Hebrew concept of theocracy.
-
- Kirk,
The Roots of American Order, p.256
- The
relatively democratic form of church government in
Presbyterian Scotland passed over to Presbyterian churches
in America, and presently began to influence the pattern of
colonial politics. The idea of a Covenant, as declaration
and frame of a common national purpose, would form part of
the background of the Americans' Declaration of Independence
and of the federal Constitution.
No less important,
as influence upon the roots of American order, was the
character which Knox and his allies gave to the Scottish
people. The typical Presbyterian Scot was earnestly
religious, frugal, and enterprising: he drew strength from
his austere creed. He tended to be independent in judgment
and assertive of his rights. The doctrines of justification
by faith and of predestination made him God-fearing and
stern of purpose, often. These were people well framed for
civilizing a new land, and they began to settle in large
numbers in the American colonies even in the seventeenth
century. When the Act of Union, at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, united the Scottish and English crowns
and settled all parliamentary authority at Westminster,
Scots poured into the Thirteen Colonies; so did their
cousins, by race and religion, of Ulster.
Throughout
the empire that Britain created in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, Scots even more than Englishmen
prospered as administrators, soldiers, and merchants. In
America as elsewhere, Scottish settlers often had the
advantage of a sound schooling; only the Puritans of New
England exceeded them in emphasis upon learning. [p.257]
Popular education, nationally authorized, from elementary
schools through the four Scottish universities, was Knox's
aspiration, second only to his passion for establishing a
religious faith drawn directly from the Bible. Such
schooling was necessary, if the people were to be
sufficiently literate to understand the Scriptures well.
-
- Alain
Besançon, "The Church Embraces Democracy,"
Crisis
Magazine, Vol. 13, No. 8, September 1995, p. 34
- Madison's
point of view is doubtless connected with the idea of
tolerance as it had been developed by Locke and the
Anglo-French Enlightenment. But it also contains a trace of
biblical influence. American Calvinism retained, against the
optimism of the European Enlightenment, the consciousness of
original sin. Madison did not seek to render man good, nor
did he count on his goodness. He knew man's corruption and,
thus, deployed what I will call the strategy of Babel.
Following the Eternal, who had dispersed men so that they
could not unite in the project of a fatally bad goal,
Madison dispersed citizens into innumerable interest groups
and religious denominations, in order to render them
incapable of building the totalitarian city, of persecuting
and oppressing one another, which would happen if a
denomination became powerful enough to impose its will
politically. Since men, because of original sin, see their
most sublime enterprises (and especially those) turn to
disaster and to crime, let us divide them so that they will
only be capable of partial and localized evils.
- George
Bancroft points out that Locke's political ideas were not
"enlightenment" ideas, but were largely lifted
from Calvinists:
History of the United States,
Vol. 5, p. 229
- In
1688 England contracted to the Netherlands the highest debt
that one nation can owe to another. Herself not knowing how
to recover her liberties, they were restored by men of the
United Provinces; and Locke
brought back from his exile in that country the theory on
government which had been formed by the Calvinists of the
continent, and which made his chief political work the
text-book of the friends of free institutions for a century.
Dutch
Calvinism, of course, has its roots in the Reformation, and the
Calvin-Knox side more than the Lutheran. Secularists would like
us to believe that American political ideas sprang full-grown
out of the head of Jefferson. This is either ignorance or
secularist deception. http://www.visi.com/~contra_m/cm/features/cm10_fed.html http://vftonline.org/EndTheWall/romans13rev.htm http://www.visi.com/~contra_m/cm/features/cm10_samson.html Here
is an analysis of the impact of Dutch Calvinism in America: http://www.acton.org/publicat/m_and_m/1998_Mar/bolt.html http://www.visi.com/~contra_m/cm/features/cm10_jones.html
- Jean
Bethke Elshtain, "Protestant Communalism."
Crisis
Magazine, October 1995, p.41
- That
his basic thesis will surprise and disturb many in the
academy, perhaps tells us more about the academy than it
does about American politics and history. Political theorist
George Armstrong Kelly, in a brilliant and much ignored
book, Politics and Religious Consciousness in America,
published over twenty years ago, argued that it was
impossible to understand American history and life without
coming to grips with the "fragmenting" offshoots
of Calvinist orthodoxy that quite literally peopled and
defined the American republic.
Shain shows that the
doctrines of original sin and human depravity grounded much
of the political theory and practice of the day. But again,
he treats the doctrines as Calvinist or Reformed, although
his evidence shows that, within the limits here applicable,
the Reformed theologians shared this ground with other
Christians. Since he is right to stress the dominance of the
Reformed churches, the criticism might seem a pedantic
quibble.
-
- Paul
Gottfried, "Concepts of Government."
Modern
Age: A Quarterly Review, Vol. 37, No. 3, p.267
- To
me it seems remarkable that one can discuss European and
American republicanism without analyzing its Calvinist
roots. The one reference by Rahe to Calvin is to the
Protestant reformer's critical opinion of classical virtue.
More important from a political and theoretical standpoint,
how did the Calvinist ideas of Covenant and the right to
rebellion influence English Puritans, Scottish
Presbyterians, French Huguenots, and New England
Congregationalists? Such a question is still asked in
history classes, and for good reason.
- Kirk,
The Roots of American Order, p.212
- Because
the colonies were governed from London, sometimes Scottish
contributions to young America are neglected by historians.
But much of America's early energy, in politics, commerce,
and on the frontier, was that of Scots—who would become
more successful in America than any other ethnic group
except the New England Puritans. James Wilson, signer of the
Declaration of Independence, member of the Constitutional
Convention, a principal author of the Constitution, and
later an associate justice of the Supreme Court, was one of
the more ardent advocates of popular sovereignty; he had
been born and schooled at the Scottish university town of
St. Andrews. Scottish Presbyterianism worked intricately
upon American life and character.
-
- Kirk,
The Roots of American Order, p.230
- The
vast majority of people in the Thirteen Colonies professed
the Christian religion in one or another of its Protestant
aspects—chiefly in Anglicanism, in Puritanism (an offshoot
of Calvinism), or in Presbyterianism (another outgrowth of
Calvinism).
The
Calvinist who believes in a Sovereign God will not allow any
king or prince to claim a similar sovereignty. Predestination
was not so much the basis for Calvinist politics; God's
Law served that function. But predestination animated Calvin's
followers and gave them the drive to overthrow tyrants (cf. Heb.
11).
- What
Calvin placed in the center of his thinking was not
predestination, but the theocracy
after the manner of the Old Testament, and it was this that
gave Calvinism its tremendous fighting edge and its
political significance.
- Thomas
Cuming Hall, "Religion and American Capitalism," The
Religious Background of American Culture, Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1930, p. 211.
http://vftonline.org/EndTheWall/Kirk-Calvinism.htm
- George
Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol. 1, pp.
608-10
- The
political character of Calvinism, which, with one consent
and with instinctive judgment, the monarchs of that day,
except that of Prussia, feared as republicanism, and which
Charles II declared a religion unfit for a gentleman, is
expressed in a single word—predestination. Did a proud
aristocracy trace its lineage through generations of a
high-born ancestry, the republican reformer, with a loftier
pride, invaded the invisible world, and from the book of
life brought down the record of the noblest rank, decreed
from all eternity by the King of kings. His converts defied
the opposing world as a world of reprobates, whom God had
despised and rejected. To them the senses were a totally
depraved foundation, on which neither truth nor goodness
could rest.
They went forth in confidence that men who
were kindling with the same exalted instincts would listen
to their voice, and be effectually "called into the
brunt of the battle" by their side. And, standing
serenely amid the crumbling fabrics of centuries of
superstitions, they had faith in one another; and the
martyrdoms of Cambray, the fires of Smithfield, the
surrender of benefices by two thousand non-conforming
Presbyterians, attest their perseverance.
Such was
the system which, for a century and a half, assumed the
guardianship of liberty for the English world. "A
wicked tyrant is better than a wicked war," said
Luther, preaching non-resistance; and Cranmer echoed back:
"God's people are called to render obedience to
governors, although they be wicked or wrong-doers, and in no
case to resist." English Calvinism reserved the right
of resisting tyranny. To advance intellectual freedom,
Calvinism denied, absolutely denied, the sacrament of
ordination, thus breaking up the great monopoly of
priestcraft, and knowing no master, mediator, or teacher but
the eternal reason. "Kindle the fire before my
face," said Jerome, meekly, as he resigned himself to
his fate; to quench the fires of persecution forever,
Calvinism resisted with fire and blood, and, shouldering the
musket, proved, as a foot-soldier, that, on the field of
battle, the invention of gunpowder had levelled the plebeian
and the knight. To restrain absolute monarchy in France, in
Scotland, in England, it allied itself with the party of the
past, the decaying feudal aristocracy, which it was sure to
outlive; for protection against feudal aristocracy, it
infused itself into the mercantile class and the inferior
gentry; to secure a life in the public mind, in Geneva, in
Scotland, wherever it gained dominion, it invoked
intelligence for the people, and in every parish planted the
common school.
In an age of commerce, to stamp its
influence on the New World, it went on board the fleet of
Winthrop, and was wafted to the bay of Massachusetts. Is it
denied that events follow principles, that mind rules the
world? The institutions of Massachusetts were the exact
counterpart of its religious system. Calvinism claimed
heaven for the elect; Massachusetts gave franchises to the
members of the visible church, and inexorably disfranchised
churchmen, royalists, and all world's people. Calvinism
overthrew priestcraft; in Massachusetts, none but the
magistrate could marry; the brethren could ordain. Calvinism
saw in goodness infinite joy, in evil infinite woe, and,
recognising no other abiding distinctions, opposed secretly
but surely hereditary monarchy, aristocracy, and bondage;
Massachusetts owned no king but the king of heaven, no
aristocracy but of the redeemed, no bondage but the
hopeless, infinite, and eternal bondage of sin. Calvinism
invoked intelligence against satan, the great enemy of the
human race; and the farmers and seamen of Massachusetts
nourished its college with gifts of corn and strings of
wampum, and wherever there were families, built the free
school.
Bancroft,
the Unitarian, does not really understand Calvinism as a
political philosophy, part of a unified weltänschauüng.
But as a historian he was able to see the political effects of
Calvinism, and able (unlike modern historians) to report it. The
separation of churches and state (a completely different
doctrine than the modern myth of "separation of church and
state) is a Calvinist doctrine. See
also: J.
T. McNeil, The History and Character of Calvinism. http://www.reformed.org/ethics/Jordan_judicial_laws_Moses.html
- Calvinism
has had a greater influence on human history and
institutions than any other theology ever formulated . . . .
- C.
Gregg Singer, John Calvin: His Roots and Fruits
"Presbyterianism in America," by Singer
http://www.fpcjackson.org/resources/apologetics/story.htm (About
C. Gregg Singer) The
American Dream, Puritan Version. "Horace
Mann, the End of Free-Market Education, and the Rise of
Government Schools" notes that Mann was in rebellion
against his Calvinist upbringing:
http://www.mackinac.org/print.asp?ID=3256#_edn2 From
Reformation to Revolution: 1500-1650
http://capo.org/premise/96/mar/p960304.html Much
more could be given. Calvinism
has had more impact politically than theologically (when
"theologically" is defined merely in terms of
"predestination" and who goes where when they die.)
Kevin
C.
http://vftonline.org/EndTheWall/index.htm
---------------------------------------------
And
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and sit under
their Vine & Fig Tree.
Micah 4:1-7
Subject: Re: Calvin's
America
Date: 4/29/2001 8:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From:
KEVIN4VFT
Message-id:
<20010429230058.24934.00001035@ng-fj1.aol.com>
I
wrote:
A person who only believes in predestination is a
very truncated Calvinist. In fact, a person whose views on
predestination do not shape his politics doesn't believe in
predestination at all. In
message-id: <20010429211950.26794.00000138@ng-fw1.aol.com>
dated: 4/29/2001 6:19 PM Pacific Daylight Time, RJohnson64
writes:
But
of course, a person who denies the doctrine of predestination is
hardly considered a Calvinist, whatever else that person may
believe. Would you agree with that?
No,
at least politically speaking, which is what this Message Board
is all about. A person can be an atheist and have political
views which are staunchly Calvinist, especially if he was raised
a staunch Calvinist and moved toward deism only in theological
terms.
- Russell
Kirk, speaking of Fisher Ames, the author of the First
Amendment, in The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot,
p.84:
- Of
all the terrors of democracy, the worst is its destruction
of moral habits. "A democratick society will soon find
its morals the encumbrance of its race, the surly companion
of its licentious joys….In a word, there will not be
morals without justice; and though justice might possibly
support a democracy, yet a democracy cannot possibly support
justice." Here speaks the old Calvinism which finds
milder expression in John Adams.
-
- Russell
Kirk, The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot,
p.168
- That
zeal which flared like Greek fire in Randolph burned in
Calhoun, too; but it was contained in the Cast-Iron Man as
in a furnace, and Calhoun's passion glowed out only through
his eyes. No man was more stately, more reserved, more
regularly governed by an inflexible will. Calvinism moulded
John C. Calhoun's character as it shaped his speeches and
books; for though the dogma proper was dying in him as it
had decayed in the Adamses—so that Calhoun, like John
Adams, squinted toward Unitarianism—still there remained
that relentless acceptance of logic, that rigid morality,
that servitude to duty; and these things made the man
constant in purpose, prodigious in energy.
-
- Russell
Kirk, The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot,
p.225
- This
revolt of the masses against the social establishments,
property, and intellectual traditions of the West,
commencing in 1789, has continued with only uneasy
intermittent truces down to the middle of the twentieth
century. John Quincy Adams, judging from his prospect of
France, said it might mean the return of barbarism; for
popular detestation of the past, [p.226] once awakened, does
not limit itself to annihilation of governments and
economies: if the arts and sciences seem prerogatives of a
minority, or if they appear to impede gratification of
popular appetites, they are involved in the general
catastrophe. No possibility could have been better
calculated to rouse the mind of New England in opposition to
radical innovation. Severe, industrious, practical, and
Calvinistic, New England character also displayed a
reverence for learning; nowhere, not even in Scotland, were
schooling and reading more general; and an informed public
opinion began to stir against Gallic notions as soon as the
French Revolution commenced. "Resistance to something
was the law of New England nature," Henry Adams writes
in his Education; yet despite their reforming-itch, the New
Englanders were in their hearts deeply attached to their
ancestral institutions and alarmed at impersonal forces
which were sweeping their little civilization into the
rapids of nineteenth-century innovation.
-
- Russell
Kirk, The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot,
p.243
- "Experience
has ever shown, that education, as well as religion,
aristocracy, as well as democracy and monarchy, are, singly,
totally inadequate to the business of restraining the
passions of men, of preserving a steady government, and
protecting the lives, liberties, and properties of the
people." This admonition by John Adams meant nothing to
Emerson. Only the balancing of passion, interest, and power
against opposing passion, interest, and power can make a
state just and tranquil, said Adams. John Adams believed the
existence of sin to be an incontrovertible fact; while
Emerson, discarding with the forms of Calvinism the very
essence of its creed, never admitted the idea of sin into
his system. "But such inveterate and persistent
optimism," Charles Eliot Norton remarks of his friend
Emerson, "though it may show only its pleasant side in
such a character as Emerson's, is dangerous doctrine for a
people. It degenerates into fatalistic indifference to moral
considerations, and to personal responsibilities; it is at
the root of much of the irrational sentimentalism of our
American politics."
Recognition
of the abiding power of sin is a cardinal tenet in
conservatism. Quintin Hogg, in his vigorous little book The
Case for Conservatism, re-emphasizes the necessity for
this conviction. For conservative thinkers believe that man
is corrupt, that his appetites need restraint, and that the
forces of custom, authority, law, and government, as well as
moral discipline, are required to keep sin in check. One may
trace this conviction back through Adams [p.244] to the
Calvinists and Augustine, or through Burke to Hooker and the
Schoolmen and presently, in turn, to St. Augustine—and,
perhaps (as Henry Adams does) beyond Augustine to Marcus
Aurelius and his Stoic preceptors, as well as to St. Paul
and the Hebrews. - Russell
Kirk, The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot,
p.254
- Now
belief in the dogma of original sin has been prominent in
the system of every great conservative thinker—in the
lofty Christian resignation of Burke, in the hard-headed
pessimism of Adams, in the melancholy of Randolph, in the
"Calvinistic Catholicism" of Newman.
Kevin
C.
http://vftonline.org/EndTheWall/index.htm
---------------------------------------------
And
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and sit under
their Vine & Fig Tree.
Micah 4:1-7
- Subject:
Re: Calvin's America
Date: 4/30/2001 1:03 PM Pacific
Daylight Time
From: KEVIN4VFT
Message-id:
<20010430160321.19060.00000733@ng-ma1.aol.com>
In
message-id:
<20010429233723.05439.00000626@ng-ca1.aol.com> dated:
4/29/2001 8:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time, RJohnson64
writes:
Kevin
posted the following:
Russell
Kirk, The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot,
p.168
- That
zeal which flared like Greek fire in Randolph burned in
Calhoun, too; but it was contained in the Cast-Iron Man as
in a furnace, and Calhoun's passion glowed out only through
his eyes. No man was more stately, more reserved, more
regularly governed by an inflexible will. Calvinism moulded
John C. Calhoun's character as it shaped his speeches and
books; for though the dogma proper was dying in him as it
had decayed in the Adamses—so that Calhoun, like John
Adams, squinted toward Unitarianism—still there remained
that relentless acceptance of logic, that rigid morality,
that servitude to duty; and these things made the man
constant in purpose, prodigious in energy.
>
Calvinism
moulded Calhoun's character, yet he "squinted towards
>
Unitarianism"???
You do understand, don't you, that Calvin
>
oversaw
the death of a Unitarian, one Michael Servetus, who was
>
burned
at the stake for denying the Trinity and teaching Unitarianism? You
do understand, don't you, that "Calvinism" is a
political philosophy as well as a view about theology and
predestination? A person can reject predestination and
still hold a Calvinist political philosophy. >
How
then, can Kirk seriously make the claim that Calvinism shaped
>
the
character of a person who leaned towards Unitarianism? Because
Calhoun was still a political Calvinist.
I don't think you're
aware of how political Calvinism was back in the days of our
Founding Fathers. Get
a taste here.
"Calvinism" cannot be limited to
pure theology >
How
can someone who embraces, or even tends toward,
>
Unitarianism
hold to the doctrine of Calvinism which requires
>
acceptance
of the Triune nature of God? You
speak of "the" doctrine of Calvinism. That's a
mistake.
Calhoun rejected one doctrine of
Calvinism but held to many others.
He held to a doctrine of
Calvinism which holds that men are sinful and that a government
of checks and balances is required. This distinguishes him from
the French Revolutionaries of his day. "Calvinism"
does not consist in just one doctrine. There are many doctrines
in "Calvinism." There are many theological doctrines,
and many political doctrines. Did you look at any of the links I
posted? Just because a person rejects one aspect of Calvinist
theology does not mean he has also rejected the totality of
Calvinist political theory. >
Perhaps
the characteristics you are pointing to in our founders are
>
better
labeled something other than Calvinist, for as far as I can see
>
at
this time, by labelling them Calvinist you open your argument to
>
confusion.
Not
among the well-informed. Russell Kirk is very well informed. >
However,
I digress...you have made your argument, it must stand or
>
fall
on its own merits. >
Are
you familar with Robert Nordlander? He writes an
interesting
>
series
of articles which address the idea of Calvinism influencing
>
our
founders. Here is the link, for your convenience.
>
>
A
Critical Response to Bernard Katz On Our Founding Fathers
>
>
The words of Madison and Jefferson with reference to the nature
of
>
and
benefit of religion in the United States are well worth the
read. I've
seen much better articles. The facts are thin and the logic is
fallacious through and through. Just because someone
rejects predestination does not mean they believe in a purely
atheistic government. Adams violated the ACLU myth of
"separation" at every turn. This article contains some
very bad reasoning. In
fact, I'd be embarrassed to rely on this article if I were a
separationist. I've never seen an article that more clearly
commits this basic fallacy, and it makes obvious the point that
anti-Calvinists and Unitarians can be -- and were -- very
conservative and can use the government to endorse and promote
their brand of theism. I've
written A
Critical Response to "A Critical Response to Bernard Katz On
Our Founding Fathers" I
invite your comments.
Kevin
C.
http://vftonline.org/EndTheWall/index.htm
---------------------------------------------
And
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and sit under
their Vine & Fig Tree.
Micah 4:1-7
Subject: Re:
Calvin's America
Date: 4/30/2001 1:16 PM Pacific Daylight
Time
From: KEVIN4VFT
Message-id:
<20010430161607.19060.00000735@ng-ma1.aol.com>
Calvin
was a product of his times and believed many things which
everyone in that day believed, but which are rejected today.
America rejects many of those abuses because we were influenced
by the genius of Calvin, who made it plain that governments were
obligated to be Christian. Many things governments did in his
day were not Christian. Calvin changed the world for the better,
politically speaking, as most of the Founding Fathers would
agree. I can't think of a single Unitarian 200 years ago who
would not acknowledge a debt of freedom to Calvin. I
wrote: I
would undoubtedly have been executed for my anarchistic views in
any city in Europe in 1540. But secular governments are far more
lethal than Christian governments. Its no contest. You can
complain all you want about a nutcase like Servetus, but in a
now-secular America 4,000 mothers kill their own babies every
day, and atheistic civil governments have killed an average of
5,000 more innnocent people PER DAY every day in the 20th
century. http://vftonline.org/XianAnarch/pacifism/rummel.htm The
author of the page you have excerpted (whoever he or she is --
is this another triumph of Heather Anne Buettner?) is clearly
hostile to Christianity, but is spiritually blind to the
genocide of the messianic state. Overall,
Calvin's ideas brought the flowering of western civilization and
less-tyrannical republican governments. Anti-Calvinist
governments are best seen in Communist China and the gulags of
the "former" soviet union. I'll
take Calvin in a heartbeat. In
message -id:
<20010430093736.24903.00002964@ng-mq1.aol.com> dated:
4/30/2001 6:37 AM Pacific Daylight Time, RJohnson64
writes: Thank
you for this clear explanation of how you would implement your
version of anarchy on the rest of society. I appreciate
the discussion we have had, and leave you to promulgate your
theories and reconstruct your vision of history. When you
come into power and begin the purges, let me know...I'd rather
die on the stake than live in a society that conforms to your
vision of Christianity. Are
you saying you're quitting the discussion??
What a
disappointing, irrational, emotional response that would be.
My
vision of Christianity is a decentralized, non-violent society
described by the Old Testament prophet Micah as a world in which
men do not train for war and everyone owns their own "Vine
& Fig Tree." You would rather live in a society in
which people are executed on the stake?? Why??? What kind of
mindless reactionary nonsense is this?
Kevin
C.
http://vftonline.org/EndTheWall/index.htm
---------------------------------------------
And
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and sit under
their Vine & Fig Tree.
Micah 4:1-7
In
the sixteenth century the intimate association of Church and
state was assumed to be natural and desirable by all but a small
minority. The distinction was really not that of Church and
state as we understand these today, but between the
ecclesiastical and the secular government of the same community.
The word "theocracy" is often applied to the Geneva of
Calvin's time, but the word is now ambiguous to most minds. Many
confuse "theocracy," the rule of God, with
"hierocracy," the rule of the clergy. With reference
to Geneva, James Mackinnon, indeed, suggests the word "clerocracy."
"Bibliocracy" and "christocracy" have been
proposed by other writers. Certainly the system was a theocracy
in the sense that it assumed responsibility to God on the part
of secular and ecclesiastical authority alike, and proposed as
its end the effectual operation of the will of God in the life
of the people. In principle, at least, it was not hierocratic.
Calvin wished the magistrates, as agents of God, to have their
own due sphere of action. but so intense was his consciousness
of vocation, and so far did his mental energy outstrip that of
his political associates, that he ultimately gained ascendancy
to the point of mastery. To
say that he ruled as a dictator is, in our generation, to raise
to the imagination a figure in the similitude of Hitler,
Mussolini, or Stalin, living as chief actor in a drama of
lawless power. with secret police, armed guards, vainglorious
titles and insignia, massed demonstrations, and vociferous
public acclaim. Calvin used lawful means, went unarmed and
unguarded, lived modestly and without display, sought advice
from many, claimed no authority save as a commissioned minister
of the Word, assumed no title of distinction or political
office. It was not until Christmas Day, 1559, after he had been
instrumental in the admission of hundreds of refugees to
citizenship, that he himself, on invitation of the magistrates,
became a citizen. He had avoided seeking this privilege lest a
charge of political ambition be raised to add to his
difficulties. John
T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism,
Oxford Univ. Press, 1954, pp. 183ff.
Sandefur’s idea of a certain kind of Lockean founding also
encounters another obstacle: as Mark
David Hall recently demonstrated in a fine biography of
Connecticut Founder Roger Sherman, natural rights/natural law
talk was not purely, or perhaps even primarily, a Lockean argot
at the time of the Revolution. Far more Americans subscribed to
Calvinism than to any other creed in America in the late
eighteenth century, and Calvinism included the ideas of natural
right, the right of revolution, etc., just as Lockeanism did. In
fact, Hall speculates that Calvin influenced Locke, so that one
might nearly say that Locke was a Calvinist on this score. If,
then, we are to read the Constitution through a natural-law lens
because that is the way the people meant for it to be read when
they ratified it, there is reason to doubt that an
overwhelmingly Protestant, highly Calvinist population
understood natural right in the way that Sandefur wants today’s
officials to understand it.
“Shall
We Be Ruled By Libertarian Philosopher-Judges?” A Review of
Timothy Sandefur’s The Conscience of the Constitution
| Nomocracy In Politics
CALVINISM
AND REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT "Consent
of the Governed" vs. "Democracy"
next: America: A Protestant Nation
|