Seventeenth-Century Calvinism and Early Enlightenment Thought

Abstract

Analysing a number of interactions between Calvinists and Early Enlightenment philosophers—and the receptions of John Calvin in these—this chapter shows a complex and persistent presence of Calvin and Calvinists in philosophical debates during the early Enlightenment period. Among Calvinists, Descartes found both opponents and followers. Reformed Cartesians have occasionally appealed to Calvin (e.g. on accommodation and the sensus divinitatis), praised the Reformer (Heidanus, Burman), or neglected him (van Til). The philosopher Arnold Geulincx has been protected (Heidanus.) and published (van Til) by Calvinists, before they began to associate him with Spinoza (Tuinman, Andala, Driessen). Thomas Hobbes quoted Calvin incidentally, but Calvinists usually opposed his philosophy. Thus, the jurist Ulrik Huber used Calvin’s teachings on the testimonium Spiritus sancti against Hobbes—an appeal to Calvin that Huber repeated against another philosopher’s claim that reason alone was able to demonstrate the divinity of scripture. In order to refute Spinozists, Reformed minister Carolus Tuinman translated Calvin’s treatise against the libertines (1545). Responding to Huguenot Pierre Bayle, the Lutheran philosopher G. W. Leibniz wrote favourably about Calvin’s teachings on predestination and providence, as he had done also about Calvin’s views on the Eucharist.