Karl Barth’s Calvin: A Weimar Prophet

2021 ◽  
pp. 527-543
Author(s):  
Ryan Glomsrud
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Hermann Hesse ◽  
Stefan Zweig

This chapter explores Karl Barth’s early reception of John Calvin at the time of his initial post-liberal engagement with classical Protestant authors. For Barth, the Genevan Reformer easily belonged in a pantheon of theologians that included Augustine, Thomas, Luther, and Schleiermacher. However, Barth’s Calvin was not antiquarian or historical but of thoroughly modern vintage, even romantic and modernist in certain respects. The chapter contends that Barth fashioned an image of Calvin in the tumultuous years of the Weimar Republic that was of thoroughly modern vintage. Although he immersed himself in primary sources, Barth’s presentation of the Reformer owed much to German romanticism as well as Weimar modernism, including such notable intellectuals as Hermann Hesse, Stefan Zweig, and Max Weber.

Calvin and Experience

1973 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Partee
Keyword(s):  
John Calvin ◽  
Precise Nature ◽  
Absolute Certainty ◽  
Stefan Zweig ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
The Absolute

The caricature of John Calvin as an iron theo-logician, sans cæur et sans entrailles, is endlessly repeated. According to Will Durant, Calvin's ‘genius lay not in conceiving new ideas but in developing the thought of his predecessors to ruinously logical conclusions’. Calvin's Institutes therefore are ‘the most eloquent, fervent, lucid, logical, influential, and terrible work in all the literature of religious revolution’. Calvin did not have the tolerance of those who can conceive the possibility that they might be wrong because ‘Calvin, with lethal precosity, had been certain almost from his twentieth year’ Likewise Stefan Zweig saw in Calvin an inexorable logic, a mathematically precise nature, a monomania, and a terrific and sinister self-assurance. H. Jackson Forstmann writes that ‘one of the most impressive facts about Calvin's writings is the absolute certainty reflected by the author at every point’. Again, ‘the most striking impression which comes with reading the work of Calvin is the unfailing certainty which pervades the whole corpus”. Forstmann also quotes Doumergue to the effect that Calvin ‘was tormented by an incomparable need for certainty’. However, Doumergue was talking about something more than logical certainty. Calvin was indeed ‘logical, going to the bottom of questions, practical, completely preoccupied with piety, tormented by an incomparable need of certainty; unifying in rare mixture the reasons and sentiments; preceding Pascal, by invoking the reasons that reason does not know, and preceding also the modern theologians of Christian experience.’

scholarly journals The economic ethics of Calvinism. The reconciliation of piety and wealth

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 77-89
Author(s):  
Lucyna Chmielewska
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Religious Ethics ◽  
Good Works ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Nature And Grace ◽  
The World ◽  
Secular Power ◽  
The Church

The doctrine of predestination in the Lutheran and Calvinist theology, along with the assumption of a radical separation of nature and grace as well as the material and spiritual realm, had a significant impact on social life. The salvation of the soul, the soteriological dimension of human destiny, remained dependent on the grace of God (predestination), undeserved and unfathomable. The earthly reality, the institution of the Church and good works could in no way contribute to the salvation of the soul. Martin Luther, especially at the initial stage of his reformation activities, focused on private spirituality, considering the earthly dimension of reality to be the domain of the secular power. John Calvin and his successors justified in their teachings a different attitude manifested in the interest in the earthly world based on religious ethics. The doctrine of predestination, therefore, did not result in, as one would expect, quietism but in activism. The Calvinists believed that predestination was not manifested in single good deeds but in a certain methodology of systematised life based on religious ethics. Religiousness was supposed to be expressed through activity in the world and was meant to show the glory of its Creator. Work, thrift and honesty were supposed to lead to the rebirth, i.e. “sanctification” of the world, and were the essence of what Max Weber called the spirit of capitalism. Calvinism led to changes in the approach to such economic issues as money lending at interest, work or enrichment.

Review: Austin Harrington, German Cosmopolitan Thought and the Idea of the West: Voices from Weimar

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 319-324
Author(s):  
Thomas Kemple
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
The West ◽  
Karl Jaspers

Austin Harrington’s monumental investigation into the ‘radical centrists’ of the Weimar Republic is discussed in terms of key themes such as universalism, cosmopolitanism, and the critique of Eurocentrism that still resonate with recent debates. Contrasting the voices of lesser known critical intellectuals from this period such as Karl Jaspers and Kark Mannheim with the political writings of Max Weber and Georg Simmel, as well as with the reactionary positions of Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger, Harrington’s book affords a useful critical perspective on ‘protesting the West’, yesterday and today.

Indeterminate States in Transcultural Histories

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-108
Author(s):  
Sulagna Sengupta
Keyword(s):  
Primary Sources ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Race And Culture ◽  
Cultural Interactions

Abstract This paper explores the Jung-India continuum which encapsulates many centuries of transcultural history. At the centre is Germany’s role in advancing Sanskrit scholarship, the Sacred Books of the East being one of Jung’s primary sources of readings on India. Jung’s notions about India were guided by German romanticism and enclosed many layers of cultural interactions between the two countries. They reflect historical moments of how notions about race and culture were formed through various interconnected movements. Jung’s long engagement with and his journey through India, at many points held indeterminate ideas about culture and feelings of otherness about India, its people, knowledge, religious goals etc. This paper elaborates on Jung’s notion of ‘cultural other’ with reference to India. India was also the ground for his discovery of his own psychological standpoint different from the East and the dream of the Grail. Jung had many divergences with Indian philosophers and spiritualists which made these transcultural exchanges complex. For example, the concept of unconscious psyche is absent in Indian philosophical knowledge. This paper examines these issues in understanding the notion of ‘cultural other’ in Jung, and the various ways by which he carried and expressed his differences, that facilitated a relational pathway between Jung and India, critical for future inquiry and dialogue.

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