John Calvin
1509–1564 · Reformation · Prominent
Calvin was a French reformer who built Protestant theology into one complete system around the absolute sovereignty of God. He taught double predestination: God settled before the world began who would be saved and who would be damned, and nothing you do moves you between the two lists. He laid it out in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, and rebuilt Geneva as a model Reformed city on it.
Signature
The position Calvin is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Order
- strongly leans Vertical
- Agency
- Divine Providence
Positions on the 9 axes the sources answer
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- leans Describable (25 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (97 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- strongly leans Vertical (9 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Polity
- leans Illiberalism (19 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ethics
- leans Means (84 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Ignorance
- mildly leans Bondage (38 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Allegiance
- leans Local (16 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
11 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Calvin refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Confessional State
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Division of Good and Evil
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Conceptual Mediation
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Grounded in God / Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Divine Providence
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive / Eschatological
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Judgement
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Virtue to Cultivate
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Redeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine / Vocation
What is your primary bond and loyalty?