Calvin and Aquinas?
If you scan Twitter-level discourse on the relationship of Aquinas and Calvin, you may get the impression that the Roman Catholic Church resurrected Aquinas as some kind of Aristotelean vampire, but Calvin thrust a wooden steak through his pagan heart, saving the true church.
I am being hyperbolic, but a lesser version of the previous paragraph seems to exist in the common understanding of Calvin and the Reformation more generally.
In the current debate over the use, abuse, and misuse of Aquinas, certain generalizations have been touted so frequently that they are often accepted as fact. One of those generalizations is that our favorite Reformers, Luther and Calvin, uniformly rejected Aquinas. But does this claim hold water?
It may be true in some sense, but as the claim becomes more specific, it gets weaker.
For instance, can we say that John Calvin knowingly rejected Aquinas?
What Hath Calvin to do with Aquinas?
Most scholars agree that Calvin’s relationship with Aquinas is complicated at best. Muller remarks, “The name John Calvin and the term ‘scholasticism’ have seldom been stated positively in the same breath.”[1] So isn’t it obvious that Calvin would “reject” the most well-known scholastic?
Before we answer that question, we first have to ask, “Was Calvin even familiar with Aquinas?” You can’t really reject something you don’t know.
Acquainted with Aquinas?
Three factors have led many scholars to conclude that Calvin had little or no knowledge of Aquinas. First, there is virtually no chance that Calvin was introduced to Aquinas during his education. Sytsma states, “Calvin is among the second-generation Reformed theologians whose formal education does not indicate study of Thomas.”[2]
Bruce Gordon elaborates,
“It has been suggested that [Calvin] studied Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Gregory of Rimini and other luminaries of medieval theology, but again nothing can be established with certainty. It is not even known whether he studied theology at Paris at all. It appears most likely that during his years at Montaigu he followed a course of studies in arts in which he was instructed in the traditional curriculum of the trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy).”[3]
Second, Calvin’s use of Aquinas is sparse and sloppy. He references Aquinas only four times throughout all his written material.[4] But even these few references have serious problems. For instance, Calvin cites Aquinas as an opponent on a specific issue but doesn’t seem to grasp Aquinas’ actual position.[5] So Raith concludes, “the most likely scenario is that Calvin is drawing from a secondary source that contains a list of citations from various writers on the topic.”[6]
Elsewhere Calvin uses an errant citation to reference Aquinas.[7] Pardon the long quote, but again Raith summarizes,
“We should note the marginal citation that first appears in the 1539 version [of the Institutes]: ‘In pri. Senten. Tract. 25. Quest. 23.’ This citation remains through all versions of the Institutes. Anyone familiar with Thomas’s work firsthand immediately notices a two-fold problem with the citation. First, the Sentences commentary is divided into distinctions, questions, and articles; the form of the citation, however, better fits the Summa theologiae. Also, Thomas addresses predestination in the first book of the Sentences at distinctions 40 and 41 (which do not contain a ‘question 23’). In the first book of the Summa theologiae, however, predestination is indeed addressed at question 23. It thus seems that the proper citation should be to the first book of the Summa theologiae, question 23, and not the Sentences. One would expect that if Calvin had actually been reading either the Sentences of the Summa theologiae firsthand, he would have known this and this provided a correct citation…instead, this erroneous marginal citation remains throughout all versions of the Institutes.”[8]
Third, and finally, Steinmetz offers a comparative study of Calvin, Bucer, and Aquinas on Romans 9.[9] He notes some significant agreements between the three: “The list of agreements between Thomas, Bucer, and Calvin is impressive: all three reject predestination based on foreknowledge, insist that human salvation is dependent on God’s election alone, confess that there is no reason higher than God’s own will for the election of some over others, and affirm the justice of God in the punishment of the reprobate.”[10]
However, the differences between Calvin and Aquinas remain significant. So Steinmetz concludes, “The thesis that Calvin is the beneficiary of a Thomistic school tradition mediated to him by Martin Bucer finds no support in the admittedly limited context of the interpretation of Romans 9.”[11] For this reason, along with the other two, there is good reason to concluded that Calvin had no direct knowledge of Aquinas.
Calvin Rejected Aquinas?
Because of this evidence, it is spurious to say that Calvin’s rejection of Aquinas was an informed rejection. It may be said that Calvin “disagreed with” or “rejected” Aquinas if that simply means he came to contrary conclusions independent of any interaction with Aquinas. However, at least one modern writer seems to argue that Calvin knowingly rejected Aquinas.
Consider these statements from Jeffrey D. Johnson:
“Like Calvin, Bullinger rejected the natural philosophy of Aquinas.”[12]
“The problem, according to Bullinger and Calvin, is that the Schoolmen, such as Thomas Aquinas, did not limit their understanding of God to divine revelation.”[13]
“Calvin rejected Aquinas’s natural theology because of Aquinas’s reliance on speculative reasoning.”[14]
“John Calvin was also no friend of Aquinas.”[15]
It is only fair to give Johnson the benefit of the doubt with these quotations. It is entirely possible that he simply overstated his case. But he seems to paint a picture of a Calvin who was acquainted with Aquinas and knowingly rejected his theology. If that was his intention, he is simply mistaken.
Shockingly, even though Calvin apparently had no first-hand knowledge of Aquinas, he favorably appropriated another pillar of Medieval theology.
We’ll explore Calvin’s use of this famous scholastic in the next post.
References:
[1] Richard A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 39.
[2] David Sytsma, “Sixteenth-Century Reformed Reception of Aquinas” in The Oxford Handbook of The Reception of Aquinas, eds. Matthew Levering and Marcus Plested (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 127. See also 123.
[3] Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 8.
[4] A.N.S. Lane, John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 65.
[5] A.N.S. Lane, John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 65. See also, David Sytsma, “Sixteenth-Century Reformed Reception of Aquinas” in The Oxford Handbook of The Reception of Aquinas, eds. Matthew Levering and Marcus Plested (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 127.
[6] Charles Raith II, “Calvin and Aquinas Reconsidered” in Beyond Dort and De Auxiliis, eds. Jordan J. Ballor, Matthew T. Gaetano, and David S. Sytsma (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 23.
[7] Sytsma summarizes, “Finally, there is the curious case of Calvin erroneously citing Thomas’s work…throughout all editions of the Institutio between 1539 and 1559 he appears to confuse Aquinas’ commentary on the Sentences with the Summa.” David Sytsma, “Sixteenth-Century Reformed Reception of Aquinas” in The Oxford Handbook of The Reception of Aquinas, eds. Matthew Levering and Marcus Plested (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 127.
[8] Charles Raith II, “Calvin and Aquinas Reconsidered” in Beyond Dort and De Auxiliis, eds. Jordan J. Ballor, Matthew T. Gaetano, and David S. Sytsma (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 24–25. Emphasis added.
[9] David Steinmetz, Calvin in Context, 2nd ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 141–153. I have not yet read Charles Raith II’s Aquinas and Calvin on Romans: God’s Justification and Our Participation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), but it is certainly valuable in this conversation.
[10] David Steinmetz, Calvin in Context, 2nd ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 150.
[11] Ibid., 153.
[12] Jeffrey D. Johnson, The Failure of Natural Theology: A Critical Appraisal of the Philosophical Theology of Thomas Aquinas (pp. 40-41). Free Grace Press. Kindle Edition.
[13] Ibid., 41.
[14] Ibid., 211.
[15] Ibid., 211. Johnson cites Gordon here to support his claim. But Gordon does not necessarily teach that Calvin knowingly rejected Aquinas, especially since he wrote earlier that it is unlikely that Calvin was educated in Aquinas (page 9). Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 62.