John Calvin 1509 – 1564
John Calvin was a French Protestant theologian, pastor, and the principal architect of the Reformed branch of the Reformation. After legal training at Orleans and a sudden conversion in the early 1530s, he settled in Geneva, where, with one significant interruption, he shaped a distinctive ecclesiastical, civil, and intellectual order from 1541 until his death. The Institutes of the Christian Religion, expanded over five editions, gave Reformed theology its classic systematic form, and his commentaries on most books of the Bible shaped Protestant exegesis for generations. His teaching on divine sovereignty, predestination, and the Christian life left an enduring mark on European and Anglo-American thought.
Key facts
- Nationality
- French
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Christian, Renaissance
Selected quotes
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Attributed to John Calvin:
“True wisdom consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”
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Attributed to John Calvin:
“The human heart is a perpetual factory of idols.”
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Attributed to John Calvin:
“All the blessings we enjoy are divine deposits committed to our trust.”
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Attributed to John Calvin:
“Wherever we cast our eyes, all things on which they fall are works of God.”
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Attributed to John Calvin:
“There is no part of our life and no action so minute that it ought not to be directed to the glory of God.”