Calvin Meets Voltaire
Calvin Meets Voltaire

Author: Jennifer Powell McNutt

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1317170113

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In 1754, Voltaire, one of the most famous and provocative writers of the period, moved to the city of Geneva. Little time passed before he instigated conflict with the clergy and city as he publicly maligned the memory of John Calvin, promoted the culture of the French theater, and incited political unrest within Genevan society. Conflict with the clergy reached a fever pitch in 1757 when Jean d’Alembert published the article ’Genève’ for the Encyclopédie. Much to the consternation of the clergy, his article both castigated Calvin and depicted his clerical legacy as Socinian. Since then, little has been resolved over the theological position of Calvin’s clerical legacy while much has been made of their declining significance in Genevan life during the Enlightenment era. Based upon a decade of research on the sources at Geneva’s Archives d'État and Bibliothèque de Genève, this book provides the first comprehensive monograph devoted to Geneva’s Enlightenment clergy. Examination of the social, political, theological, and cultural encounter of the Reformation with the Enlightenment in the figurative meeting of Calvin and Voltaire brings to light the life, work, and thought of Geneva’s eighteenth-century clergy. In addition to examination of the convergence with the philosophes, prosopographical research uncovers clerical demographics at work. Furthermore, the nature of clerical involvement in Genevan society and periods of political unrest are considered along with the discovery of a ’Reasonable Calvinism’ at work in the public preaching and liturgy of Genevan worship. This research moves Geneva’s narrative beyond a simplistic paradigm of ’decline’ and secularization, offers further evidence for a revisionist understanding of the Enlightenment’s engagement with religion, and locates Geneva’s clergy squarely in the newly emerging category of the ’Religious Enlightenment.’ Finally, the significance of French policy from the Revocat

Calvin Meets Voltaire
Calvin Meets Voltaire

Author: JENNIFER POWELL. MCNUTT

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-31

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 9781138379732

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In 1754, Voltaire, one of the most famous and provocative writers of the period, moved to the city of Geneva. Little time passed before he instigated conflict with the clergy and city as he publicly maligned the memory of John Calvin, promoted the culture of the French theater, and incited political unrest within Genevan society. Conflict with the clergy reached a fever pitch in 1757 when Jean d'Alembert published the article 'Genève' for the Encyclopédie. Much to the consternation of the clergy, his article both castigated Calvin and depicted his clerical legacy as Socinian. Since then, little has been resolved over the theological position of Calvin's clerical legacy while much has been made of their declining significance in Genevan life during the Enlightenment era. Based upon a decade of research on the sources at Geneva's Archives d'Ã0/00tat and Bibliothèque de Genève, this book provides the first comprehensive monograph devoted to Geneva's Enlightenment clergy. Examination of the social, political, theological, and cultural encounter of the Reformation with the Enlightenment in the figurative meeting of Calvin and Voltaire brings to light the life, work, and thought of Geneva's eighteenth-century clergy. In addition to examination of the convergence with the philosophes, prosopographical research uncovers clerical demographics at work. Furthermore, the nature of clerical involvement in Genevan society and periods of political unrest are considered along with the discovery of a 'Reasonable Calvinism' at work in the public preaching and liturgy of Genevan worship. This research moves Geneva's narrative beyond a simplistic paradigm of 'decline' and secularization, offers further evidence for a revisionist understanding of the Enlightenment's engagement with religion, and locates Geneva's clergy squarely in the newly emerging category of the 'Religious Enlightenment.' Finally, the significance of French policy from the Revocat

Predestination and Preaching in Genevan Theology from Calvin to Pictet
Predestination and Preaching in Genevan Theology from Calvin to Pictet

Author: Pieter L. Rouwendal

Publisher: Summum Academic

Published: 2017-10-31

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 9492701286

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Given the conclusions of recent research, that predestination was no central dogma to, and did not affect the method of reformed theology, this study investigates the question of if and how the doctrine of predestination affected the ideas and practice of preaching. The relation of predestination and covenant, congregation, atonement, faith etc. are researched in the theology and sermons of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, John Diodati, and Theodore Tronchin, Francis Turretin, and Benedict Pictet. This study shows that in Genevan Reformed Theology from Calvin to Pictet, predestination and the external call were inseparably connected, but that the doctrine of predestination neither dominated the content nor restricted the address of the external call.

John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion
John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion

Author: Bruce Gordon

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2016-05-17

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1400880505

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An essential biography of the most important book of the Protestant Reformation John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion is a defining book of the Reformation and a pillar of Protestant theology. First published in Latin in 1536 and in Calvin's native French in 1541, the Institutes argues for the majesty of God and for justification by faith alone. The book decisively shaped Calvinism as a major religious and intellectual force in Europe and throughout the world. Here, Bruce Gordon provides an essential biography of Calvin's influential and enduring theological masterpiece, tracing the diverse ways it has been read and interpreted from Calvin's time to today. Gordon explores the origins and character of the Institutes, looking closely at its theological and historical roots, and explaining how it evolved through numerous editions to become a complete summary of Reformation doctrine. He shows how the development of the book reflected the evolving thought of Calvin, who instilled in the work a restlessness that reflected his understanding of the Christian life as a journey to God. Following Calvin's death in 1564, the Institutes continued to be reprinted, reedited, and reworked through the centuries. Gordon describes how it has been used in radically different ways, such as in South Africa, where it was invoked both to defend and attack the horror of apartheid. He examines its vexed relationship with the historical Calvin—a figure both revered and despised—and charts its robust and contentious reception history, taking readers from the Puritans and Voltaire to YouTube, the novels of Marilynne Robinson, and to China and Africa, where the Institutes continues to find new audiences today.

The Enlightenment that Failed
The Enlightenment that Failed

Author: Jonathan I. Israel

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-11-28

Total Pages: 988

ISBN-13: 0191058254

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The Enlightenment that Failed explores the growing rift between those Enlightenment trends and initiatives that appealed exclusively to elites and those aspiring to enlighten all of society by raising mankind's awareness, freedoms, and educational level generally. Jonathan I. Israel explains why the democratic and radical secularizing tendency of the Western Enlightenment, after gaining some notable successes during the revolutionary era (1775-1820) in numerous countries, especially in Europe, North America, and Spanish America, ultimately failed. He argues that a populist, Robespierriste tendency, sharply at odds with democratic values and freedom of expression, gained an ideological advantage in France, and that the negative reaction this generally provoked caused a more general anti-Enlightenment reaction, a surging anti-intellectualism combined with forms of religious revival that largely undermined the longings of the deprived, underprivileged, and disadvantaged, and ended by helping, albeit often unwittingly, conservative anti-Enlightenment ideologies to dominate the scene. The Enlightenment that Failed relates both the American and the French revolutions to the Enlightenment in a markedly different fashion from how this is usually done, showing how both great revolutions were fundamentally split between bitterly opposed and utterly incompatible ideological tendencies. Radical Enlightenment, which had been an effective ideological challenge to the prevailing monarchical-aristocratic status quo, was weakened, then almost entirely derailed and displaced from the Western consciousness, in the 1830s and 1840s by the rise of Marxism and other forms of socialism.

The People's Book
The People's Book

Author: Jennifer Powell McNutt

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2017-04-11

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0830891773

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The Bible played a vital role in the lives, theology, and practice of the Protestant Reformers. These essays from the 2016 Wheaton Theology Conference bring together the reflections of church historians and theologians on the nature of the Bible as "the people's book," considering themes such as access to Scripture, the Bible's role in worship, and theological interpretation.

The Age of Voltaire
The Age of Voltaire

Author: Will Durant

Publisher: M J F Books

Published: 1993-03-01

Total Pages: 896

ISBN-13: 9781567310207

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A love story by murder and a comedy with horror. ". . . by turns hysterical, incoherent, and blasphemously original . . . loopy and outrageous".--"Washington Post" Starring Ryan O'Neal, Isabella Rossellini and Wings Hauser. Color, 110 minutes.

Calvin and the Book
Calvin and the Book

Author: Karen E. Spierling

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2015-08-19

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 3647550884

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The Protestant Reformation has long had the reputation as being a movement of "the Book", led by reformers like John Calvin who were "men of the Book". The essays in this volume reveal many of the underlying complexities of these terms. Building on research and scholarly discussions of recent decades, these authors delve into a variety of topics related to John Calvin and the printed word, ranging from the physical changes in printed texts in the first decades of the Reformation to Calvin's thinking about the relationship of two books – the Bible and his own Institutes – to Christian doctrine. Calvin remains a towering figure in the Protestant Reformation, whose theology and religious views are still often cast as rigid and unchanging. These essays emphasize, in contrast, the evolutions and transitions that were fundamental to Calvin's own participation in the Reformation and to the ways that his leadership influenced developments in Reformed Christianity in the following centuries. The contributors, international experts on the history of Calvin and Reformed Protestantantism and on Calvin's theology, bring a wide variety of historical and theological approaches to bear on the question of Calvin's relationship to the printed word. Taken all together, these essays will push specialists and general readers to rethink standard assumptions about Calvin's influence on Reformed Christianity and, in particular, about the interplay among theology, Reformed discipline, religious education efforts, and the printed word in early modern Europe.