Introduction

The historical Calvirt is the living Calvin who, as he did say this or that, wanted to say something specific, one thing, and who, insofar as his works are preserved, still wants to say it, perhaps in a way that he could not do in his lifetime and to earlier readers of the works. Historically the French and Latin words that only the editors of the Corpus Reformatorum can assure us are really Calvin’s do not derive their force from the fact that they are in the Corpus but from the fact that their original didactic meaning leaps out from them with all the depth and breadth and vitality that Calvin did not just by chance put into them the moment he wrote them, but aimed to put into them with the full intention and intuition of his personality that these words are only one possible way of expressing; that he had indeed to put into them insofar as the whole Calvin himself with all his words is again only one possibility, one stage, in the march of the one eternal truth that, while we humans come and go, remains the same and yet is fresh each morning [Lam. 3:23]. Calvin’s theology is historical because, through every transparency and means of communication, it is teaching by the immortal Spirit of God.

Second, we do not have teaching by repeating Calvin’s words as our own or making his views ours. That would not be to make his words historical, that is, to give them life. Perhaps at times or to a large extent we do this. Why should we not adopt some of Calvin’s formulations as they stand and make them our own? We may, but that is not the aim in studying Calvin. Be they never so devout and faithful, those who simply echo Calvin are not good Calvinists, that is, they are not really taught by Calvin. Being taught by Calvin means entering into dialogue with him, with Calvin as the teacher and ourselves as the students, he speaking, we doing our best to follow him and then — this is the crux of the matter — making our own response to what he says. If that does not happen we might just as well be listening to Chinese; the historical Calvin is not present. For that Calvin wants to teach and not just to say something that we will repeat. The aim, then, is a dialogue that may end with the taught saying something very different from what Calvin said but that they learned from or, better, through him. Calvin’s doctrine is the teacher, and therefore history is when it kindles in us our own independent knowledge which basically makes that doctrine superfluous no matter how much or how little of the teacher’s words we can directly make our own. For if a teacher is able, and students do their duty, then by the year’s end they do not need the teacher. If they stay where they are, then that would be a terrible symptom that something is wrong. If as students they have really