The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies In The Foundation Of A Theological Tradition

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 2000 by Richard A. Muller Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Muller, Richard A. (Richard Alfred), 1948The unaccommodated Calvin : studies in the foundation of a theological tradition / Richard A. Muller. p. cm.—(Oxford studies in historical theology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-511681-X; ISBN 0-19-515168-2 (pbk.) 1. Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564. I. Title. II. Series. BX9418.M79 1999 230'.42'092—dc21 98-18788 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper PREFACE There is truth in the saying that history is rewritten by each generation. Of course, few historians would claim to have entirely rewritten history—and those who have made the claim have usually been less than successful in convincing others of the validity of their conclusions. The task of rewriting or, more precisely, of reinterpreting history typically assumes the advances of the past, attempts to build on them, and, either through an increased precision or through the attainment of a different vantage point, moves on not to a new history but to a new perspective on a history already fairly well known. Recognition that the writing of history always involves a process of reinterpretation builds humility among historians. The young recruits of today are the old war horses of tomorrow. The latest reappraisal soon becomes grist for the mill of reevaluation. Once the historiographical task has been relativized and deprived of its finality, it nonetheless remains the case that the reexamination of sources with a view to greater precision in detail and with an altered sense of the legitimate context of investigation brings a certain kind of forward movement in study: if we never attain to finality, we at least can state with relative certainty that faulty or partial older perspectives have been set aside. In the last decade, we have clearly come to such a shift—or to a series of shifts—in the interpretation of Calvin and Calvinism. Without making any claim to finality, we can review the history of recent scholarship and note that an older model, typical of the heyday of Barthian studies of Calvin, has become outmoded, albeit not entirely set aside. Movement away from the Barthian or neo-orthodox approach has taken at least two directions, the one quite promising, the other (to borrow a phrase from Calvin and his contemporaries) pressing deeper into a labyrinth of twentieth-century theologizing. viii • PREFACE The positive, promising shift in Calvin historiography is a movement, evidenced among historians of ideas as well as among social and political historians, away from the dogmatica