John Calvin, the founder of Calvinism, formulates his beliefs firmly and strictly in his major work 'Institutions'. However, he contradicts himself on other points. According to literary scholar Ernst van den Hemel, Calvin wanted to use this to punish the believer who is too self-confident about his faith. The image of a fundamentalist that clings to Calvin is therefore not justified.
John Calvin is known as an iron theologian who firmly established his views on the faith. However, the rigid image of Calvin that prevails in the Netherlands is quite unique. Ernst van den Hemel (University of Amsterdam) noticed that Calvin, especially in his native France, is known for his colorful and imaginative texts.
In France it even earned him the characterization 'prince of the Renaissance'. For his PhD research, Van den Hemel investigated how these two identities of Calvin can be reconciled.
According to Van den Hemel, Calvin is wrongly seen in the Netherlands as a fundamentalist, strict man. One of the most important characteristics of fundamentalism – the strict adherence to certain principles – is not reflected in his work. Calvin constantly tried to mislead his readers. He himself always undermined the certainties in his texts, which makes his texts dynamic. He mainly wanted to encourage his audience to keep thinking for themselves.
An example of the dynamics in Calvin's work is his exposition about the existence of the innate knowledge of god:Calvin posits in his 'Institution' from 1559 first that the innate knowledge of God does exist, and then undermines it:“But as experience testifies that a seed of religion has been sown in all from God, so scarcely one in a hundred is found who conceived germ in his heart, but none in whom it ripens:let alone that fruit be seen in due time.”
Caricature
Mirjam van Veen, university lecturer in church history, who obtained his doctorate under Calvin, also thinks that too often a caricature of the church reformer is made. Calvin's texts must above all be placed in the context of the sixteenth century. Europe was at that time ravaged by the Wars of Religion. Calvin preached in refugee overrun Geneva.”
“His ideas of moderation were mainly intended to fairly distribute the few resources that were available,” says Van Veen. Also, according to her, Calvin was not a strict systems thinker. "Of course he wanted to convince people of his views about the Bible, but not in such a way that there was no room for discussion".
Van den Hemel would like to see researchers more often study early modern texts from a literary point of view in order to arrive at a new approach to historical texts. Van Veen also says that he finds the literary approach 'interesting'.