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The Native Tourist
reformed/biblical observations on Christianity and culture

Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Calvin the Neo-Calvinist
Did Jean Calvin believe the Bible taught the redemption and renewal of all creation - not just people?

By the way, on Andrew’s specific point that salvation is for the cosmos, I once checked how Calvin interpreted all of those cosmological passages about Christ saving the world — turns out Calvin only understood the cosmos to include beings with souls. God’s saving all things, then, was an assertion that he was saving men and angels. Not even Calvin was a neo-Calvinist. Could be because he was an Augustinian.

--Darryl Hart in a reponse to a post on De Regno Christi critiquing the Two-Kingdom View of Culture

But here is at least one place where Calvin talks this way:

But he means not that all creatures shall be partakers of the same glory with the sons of God; but that they, according to their nature, shall be participators of a better condition; for God will restore to a perfect state the world, now fallen, together with mankind. But what that perfection will be, as to beasts as well as plants and metals, it is not meet nor right in us to inquire more curiously; for the chief effect of corruption is decay. Some subtle men, but hardly sober-minded, inquire whether all kinds of animals will be immortal; but if reins be given to speculations where will they at length lead us? Let us then be content with this simple doctrine, — that such will be the constitution and the complete order of things, that nothing will be deformed or fading.

--Calvin's Commentary on Romans 8:21


It would appear that Calvin was a neo-Calvinist of sorts!