Calvinism - Historical Background

Historical Background

John Calvin's international influence on the eventual development of the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation began when Calvin published the first edition of Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536. He revised this work several times, and produced a French vernacular translation. The Institutes, together with Calvin's polemical and pastoral works, his contributions to confessional documents for use in churches, and his massive outpouring of commentary on the Bible, meant that Calvin had a direct personal influence on Protestantism. Along with Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Huldrych Zwingli, and others Calvin influenced the doctrines of the Reformed churches. He eventually became the most well known of those reformers.

The rising importance of the Reformed churches and of Calvin belongs to the second phase of the Protestant Reformation. Evangelical churches began to form after Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Calvin was a French exile in Geneva. He had signed the Lutheran Augsburg Confession as it was revised by Melanchthon in 1540. However, his influence was first felt in the Swiss Reformation whose leader was Huldrych Zwingli. It soon became evident that doctrine in the Reformed churches was developing in a direction independent of Martin Luther, under the influence of numerous writers and reformers among whom Calvin eventually became preeminent. Much later, when his fame was attached to the Reformed churches, their whole body of doctrine came to be called "Calvinism".