Introduction

When we consider how uncannily different are the answers to these questions, we have the solution to the riddle why the results of historical research, especially into the Reformation, are so uncannily different. With astonishing justice we reap what we sow in this study of history [cf. Gal. 6:7]. Or rather, history with astonishing justice gives to each his own (suum cuique). It gives us what we are and therefore what we seek and find: anecdotes if we want anecdotes, dogmatics if we are dogmaticians, weapons if we are squabblers, a museum if we are antiquaries, beautiful lines of development if we are cultural philosophers, edification if we are devout, grounds for new skepticism if we are doubters. “If I know what I believe, I know what is in scripture, because scripture has in it no more than Christ and Christian faith” (Holl, Luther, I, 559).!4 It is also true, however, that those who are nothing and seek nothing will undoubtedly also find their own nothingness. To those who have will be given so that they are full, but from those who have not will be taken away even what they have [Matt. 13:12]. History confirms all of us in our openness or obduracy, in our honest seeking after truth or our erring and perhaps wanting to err, in our profound unrest or our illegitimate rest. We can only take our place in this regard and say to ourselves that this is how it must be. History will talk to us and we will then be shown who we are. To study history is to come under judgment. That carries with it a promise but also a threat, a threat but also a promise. For the verdict may be twofold. We do not have the possibility of approaching history without presuppositions, but we do have the possibility of reflecting on the presuppositions, on the final presupposition, of bowing under the judgment under which we stand, under the grace or lack of it, and of giving unremitting obedience to the command with which we are constantly released from that judgment. Perhaps a glance into this situation that is free from all illusions will best enable us to see and understand what has happened with relative calmness of vision and sureness of judgment. And perhaps this approach to our subject, the theology of Calvin, is particularly appropriate because it rests on the thought which describes his theology better than any other, that of the divine majesty and freedom before which we are nothing and which claims us totally.

I plan to begin my lectures with a chapter on the presuppositions of Calvin’s theology, the relation of the Reformation to the Middle Ages,

14. K. Holl, Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. 1, Luther (Tibingen, 2nd and 3rd ed. 1925), 559 n. 3, quoting WA 8, 236, 18-20.