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Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition

Calvin, John

by Paul L. Redditt

Identification: Swiss theologian

Born: July 10, 1509, Noyon, Picardy, France

Died: May 27, 1564, Geneva, Switzerland

Type of ethics: Religious ethics

Significance: Calvin led the Swiss Reformed branch of the Protestant Reformation. His doctrine of the “elect” emphasized the sovereignty of God, seeing the ultimate fate of all humans as determined in advance.

John Calvin studied theology, law, and classics, and he wrote his Commentary on Lucius Anneas Seneca’s Two Books on Clemency (1532) by the age of twenty-three. His sympathies with emerging Protestant thinking caused him to flee Paris in 1534. He wrote the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536 in Basel, Switzerland. That same year, he settled in Geneva, where he acted as both its civil and its religious leader. His own conversion experience gave him a sense of God’s direct dealings with people. Calvin emphasized the sovereignty of God. He believed that knowledge of God came only through revealed scriptures, not through unaided human reason. Humans were created morally upright, but through Adam’s sin human nature became “totally depraved”; that is, all human faculties have been corrupted, and as a result humans are incapable of any act that God would deem good. Salvation is thus necessary but is wholly the act of God. Jesus died to effect the salvation of those God elects, and even the faith to accept salvation is God’s irresistible gift. God alone chooses who will and who will not receive the faith to accept forgiveness. Further, those whom God saves, God preserves. The responsibility of the Christian is to lead a moral, temperate life. The German sociologist Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism, 1904-1905) has argued that Calvinism has given rise to a work ethic and capitalism, although that conclusion is debated.

Calvin was originally interested in the priesthood, but he changed course to study law in Orléans and Bourges. Painting titled Portrait of Young John Calvin. (Library of Geneva)

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See also: Christian ethics; Determinism and freedom; Edwards, Jonathan; Fatalism; God; Work.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Redditt, Paul L. "Calvin, John." Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition, edited by George Lucas & John K. Roth, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Ethics_0774.
APA 7th
Redditt, P. L. (2019). Calvin, John. In G. Lucas & J. K. Roth (Eds.), Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Redditt, Paul L. "Calvin, John." Edited by George Lucas & John K. Roth. Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2019. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.