De visie van Johannes Calvijn op de mens vóór en na de zondeval, op basis van Genesis 1-3

Abstract

The oeuvre of the French – Swiss reformer, John Calvin (1509-1564), contains several books that deal with the subjects of creation and fall. He has thought a lot about the first chapters of the Bible. This Master thesis analyses Calvin’s view on human beings before and after the fall, based on Genesis 1-3 and places that against the background of medieval tradition. Three different literary genres have been compared, namely his sermons and commentary on Genesis, and the last edition of the Institutes. It can be concluded from this research that Calvin has a quite positive view of prelapsarian human beings, although he continuously stresses their origin from the dust of the earth. He believes that the initial situation of man was good, but not perfect, because man was not unchangeable. As a consequence of the fall, creation was deformed. Calvin even suggests that everything in man - hands and feet, eyes and ears – was depraved and corrupted, with the ultimate of all sentences: death.

Calvin’s view on pre- and postlapsarian human beings does not differ much between the different literary genres. It rather shows the same fundamental insights in all the different genres. However, the reformer does place different accents per genre, probably because of his different audiences and the aims of his works. He regularly seems to continue late medieval traditions. Only at some points he seems to break clearly with the period prior to the Reformation. For example, Calvin’s view on the capabilities of the image of God in postlapsarian human beings, is less positive than that of his scholastic predecessors. He has the intention to correct some insights which seem to be inappropriate to him from Scripture, such as the view that the image of God would be located in the body of human beings.