advantages, therefore, in having before us these sermons on Genesis precisely as they were delivered. They let us see and hear a man aflame with love for the lord and his Word, a preacher who spent himself utterly in the work of summoning his people to repentance, faith and holiness. The feature that has struck me most powerfully is the sermons' immediacy. As I have read them, it has quite often seemed to me almost as though I were sitting with the congregation in Geneva and listening to Calvin himself as he opened up the passage, and then carefully, deliberately, and sometimes with painful specificity applied its teaching to those who heard him. In his masterful translation Dr. McGregor has quite wonderfully brought the preacher back to life and allowed us the privilege of being able, with a little imagination, to take our places in St. Peter's Church on those cold autumn and winter days with the Reformer himself in the pulpit.
John Calvin (1509 - 1584)
Was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where he published the first edition of his seminal work The Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.Calvin's writing and preachings provided the seeds for the branch of theology that bears his name. The Reformed, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches, which look to Calvin as the chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world.
John Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where in 1536 he published the first edition of his seminal work Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Calvin's writing and preaching provided the seeds for the branch of theology that bears his name. The Presbyterian and other Reformed churches, which look to Calvin as a chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world. Calvin's thought exerted considerable influence over major religious figures and entire religious movements, such as Puritanism, and some have argued that his ideas have contributed to the rise of capitalism, individualism, and representative democracy in the West.
Founder of Calvinism. John Calvin, a French scholar who became a leading preacher and dominant force in the Reformation of the 16th Century, studied at the University of Paris and at the University of Orleans. He became dissatisfied with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and allied himself with the cause of the Protestant Reformation in 1532.
When the king of France decided to settle the religious question in his country in favor of the Catholics, Calvin fled to Geneva, Switzerland, where his writings and lectures made Geneva the Rome of Protestantism. His institutes of the Christian religion became the basis for the Presbyterian way of thought and church life. Calvinism is the main doctrine of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches.
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