Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics

Originally Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1989. With new pref.

This work reopens the question of the relation of the Protestant Reformation to the emergence of a distinctively modern view of political activity. Providing a highly original reading of John Calvin’s major work and an examination of some key interpretations of Calvinism, Ralph C. Hancock argues that Calvin should be considered a founder of modern civilization along with such “secular” thinkers as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Descartes.
     According to Hancock, however, leading interpretations assume a dichotomy between the “worldly” and the “religious” which a close reading of Calvin’s writings does not sustain. Hancock provides an illuminating commentary on Calvin’s four-volume Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), addressing both Calvin’s political and ethical argument and the theological foundations of this argument. In Hancock’s view, Calvin radically distinguishes between the religious and the secular in order to bind them together in a summons to worldly activity for the preservation of the species and the glory of God. The author thus uncovers the theological basis of Calvinism’s historical activism and demonstrates the complex unity of Calvin’s practical teaching and his theology. Hancock concludes by speculating on the implications of his findings for interpretations of the modern political theory of Strauss, Voegelin, and Blumenberg.