Abstract
After completing his series of weekday sermons on the book of Job, Calvin began preaching through the last book of the Pentateuch on Wednesday, March 20, 1555. By the time he delivered his final Deuteronomy sermon on July 15, 1556, he had preached exactly two hundred sermons on Deuteronomy over the course of some sixteen months.1 Calvin preached through Deuteronomy every weekday (including Saturday) on alternate weeks and on Wednesdays on intervening weeks—a pattern from which Calvin occasionally had to deviate for various reasons, such as ill health. On Sundays during this period Calvin was preaching through the epistles of Timothy and Titus, followed by the Corinthian epistles.2
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Footnotes
Calvin’s sermons on Deuteronomy were published under the title Sermons de M. Iean Caluin sur le v. liure de Moyse nommé Deuteronome: recveillis fidelement de mot à mot, selon qu’il les preschoit publiquement (Geneva: Thomas Courteau, 1567), and fill 1,178 folio pages, plus indices. They were translated by the skillful and prolific Arthur Golding: The Sermons of M. Iohn Calvin vpon the fifth booke of Moses called Deuteronomie... (London: Henry Middleton, 1583), cited as Sermons vpon Deuteronomie. I am responsible for all the translations, although I have consulted Golding’s translations throughout. For the meaning of some early modern French words and phrases, I have received particular profit from Randle Cotgrave’s A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London: Adam Islip, 1611), as well as Edmond Huguet, Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième siècle, 7 vols., (Paris: Didier, 1925–1973).
For the details of Calvin’s sermonic activity and for the dating of Calvin’s sermons, see Mülhaupt, Die Predigt Calvins, 11–16; Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, 163–171; de Greef, Writings of John Calvin, 110–117. For the transmission history of Calvin’s sermons, see Hanns Rückert’s introduction to SC 1: vii–xxxix.
Institutes (1536), I; OS 1: 42.
Comm. Sen. De Clem., 14/50–51. On Calvin’s use of the analogy of a mirror, cf. Anthony G. Baxter, “John Calvin’s Use and Hermeneutics of the Old Testament” (PhD diss., University of Sheffield, 1987): 20–65.
CO 25: 605–606. Cf. Sermon 4 on II Samuel, SC 1: 29. On ήϑοποιία a and notatio see Lanham, Handlist, 71.
Cf. Calvin’s comments on this passage in the Mosaic Harmony, CO 25: 117–118.
On the rhetorical device of vehemence, see Millet, Calvin et la dynamique de la parole, 321–349. Cf. Calvin’s comment that Moses himself had some rhetorical ability: Comm. on I Cor. 1:17, CO 49: 322: “...suam quoque esse spiritui Dei eloquentiam: sed quæ nativo magis et proprio, vel potius intrinseco (ut loquuntur) splendore, quam adscititiis ornamentis luceat. Talem habent prophetæ, præsertim Iesaias, David, et Solomon: tali etiam adspersus est Moses.”
“...God vouchsafed still, that in the end there should be an abridgement of the law...” Sermons vpon Deuteronomie, 2b10–13.
On
and adhortatio see Ianham, Handlist, 31–32, 124.Prothema in Deuteronomium, in Lyra, 1: fol. 328v: “Huius fasciculus est Deuteronomius, id est ramusculorum plurium in unum collectio.”
“...ideo in hoc libro descripta non est alia ab ea quæ in Exodo atque Levitico, Numerorumque libro digesta est. Hinc loquitur Glossa.” Denis, Enarrationes, fol. 352v–353r.
“Denique sanctus Moyses in hoc libro ita porcedit, quod obscura declarat, præhabita breviter replicat, supplet omissa, necessaria quoque addit & applicat.” Enarrationes, 353r.
Pellikan, Commentaria Bibliorum, 1: 206r.
Calvin will make precisely the same point almost a decade later in his Mosaic Harmony: “Præter fœdus initum in monte Horeb, non significat quidquam fuisse additum, nisi quatenus opportuit decem verba pluribus exponi, ne brevitas obscuritatem pareret in rudi et tardo populo.” CO 24: 260; cf. Commentaires sur les cinq liures de Moyse, 158; CTS Mosaic Harmony, 1: 416.
See, e.g. Münster, Hebraica Biblia (1546), 345: “pauca habens mandata, quæ in aliis non inveniuntur libris.”
“Neque enim tantum decem verba illic protulit Deus, sed quod breviter perstrinxerat, interpretatus est.” CO 24: 259; cf. Commentaires sur les cinq liures de Moyse, 158: “Car non seulement Dieu avoit prononcé les dix paroles, mais aussi avoit exposé plus au long ce qu’il avoit là brievement recueilli.” My trans.; cf. CTS Mosaic Harmony, 1: 416.
See Calvin’s comments on I Cor. 1:17, cited above, p. 82 and n. 99.
See above, p. 97.
At Deut. 4:44–49: “Cæterum ostendit Moses, quamvis pluribus verbis legem explicuerit, nihil tamen additum fuisse ad eam summam quæ initio promulgata fuerat: quin potius significat, quæcunque annis quadraginta docuit, non alio spectasse quam ut legem Dei probe exacteque tenerent.” CO 24: 260. Cf. French: ”Au reste, Moyse declare combien qu’il ait expliqué la Loy plus amplement, toutesfois qu’il n’a rien adiousté à la substance qu’il avoit publiee dés la premier iour: mais plustost que tout ce qu’il a enseigné par l’espace de quarante ans, n’a regardé à autre fin qu’à leur faire bien retenir le contenu de ce qui leur avoit este ia monstré.” Commentaires sur les cinq liures de Moyse, 158.
Commentaires sur les cinq liures de Moyse, 158.
CO 20: 121; cf. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 38 and n. 121.
See Parker’s comments above, p. 64 and n. 11; and cf. Institutes (1539), “Epistola ad lectorem,” fol. 1v; Institutes (1559) I.I.3, I.V.9 (“hanc esse rectissimam Dei quærendi viam”), and III.III.1; OS 3: 34, 53, 4: 55.
Dedicatory Letter to Grynæus, in Parker’s ed., 1–4.
Plato, Gorgias, ed. E.R. Dodds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 463a–b.
Plato, Gorgias, 455a.
On Calvin’s prophetic self-consciousness, see Max Engammare, “Calvin: A Prophet without a Prophecy.” Church History 67/4 (1998): 643–661.
Augustijn, “The Sixteenth-Century Reformers,” 64. In Sermon 38 on Deuteronomy Calvin alludes to Pericles’ remark on maintaining purity in the eyes as well as the hands (Plutarch, Lives, Per. 8.5) and Menander’s adage, quoted by Paul in I Cor. 15:33 (Thais, frag. 218). In both cases he refers obliquely to “un payan,” CO 26: 338, 341.
CO 15: 617–618; ET, Letters, 3: 181–182; cf. T.H.L. Parker, John Calvin: A Biography (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975), 124–126. On the final crisis with Bolsec, Servetus, and the Perrinists, see Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation, esp. 167–199. Naphy also refers to this sermon, p. 161.
See Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation, 156–162.
Calvin recounts this incident in a letter to Viret, CO 12: 546; ET, Letters, 2: 122–123. See Williston Walker, John Calvin. Organiser of Reformed Protestantism (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906), 306–307.
For the trial of Jérôme Bolsec, see Registres 1: 80–163; and the Actes du procès intenté par Calvin et les autres ministres de Genève à Jérome Bolsec de Paris (1551) in CO 8: 145–248.
See Walker, John Calvin, 299; William G. Naphy, “Baptisms, Church Riots and Social Unrest in Calvin’s Geneva,” Sixteenth Century Journal 26/1 (1995): 87–97; idem, Calvin and the Consolidation, 144–153; Karen Spierling, “Daring Insolence toward God? The Perpetuation of Catholic Baptismal Traditions in Sixteenth-Century Geneva,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 93 (2002): 97–125; see also her Infant Baptism in Reformation Geneva, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
See Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation, 144–162, on the tense relationship between the ministers of Geneva and that segment of the citizenry that vigorously opposed their program of reform, and particularly the prohibition of favored baptismal names. Naphy rightly recognizes the sermons as an essential political tool employed by the pastors.
On the refugee concept in Calvin, see Oberman, “The Reformation of the Refugees,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 83 (1992): 91–110; idem, The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications, 217–220; idem, “Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvin’s Reformation,” in Calvinus Sacræ Scripturæ Professor, 113–154; cf. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation, passim.
See George Hunston Williams, The Radical Reformation, 3rd ed. (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1992): 912–913.
See Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation, 161: “For their part, many native Genevans refused to accept any correction, especially in public, from foreigners. They seemed to have felt that the control of Genevan society was a role which belonged to the citizen-magistrates, not to their paid, imported ministers.”
Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation, 160.
and adhortatio see Ianham, Handlist, 31–32, 124.Rights and permissions
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(2006). Calvin’s Sermons on Deuteronomy. In: The School of God. Studies in Early Modern Religious Reforms, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3913-1_4
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