Calvin, John(orig. Jean Chauvin)

1509 - Born on the 10th day of July in Noyon, Picardie, France. He was a French Protestant theologian.

1523 - He was sent by his father, an attorney to the University of Paris to study humanities and law.

1532 - Finished the Doctor of Law degree at Orleans.

1534 - His first theological work, the Psychopannychia, attempted to refute the doctrine of soul sleep as promulgated by Christians whom he called "Anabaptists." He finished it this year, but on the advice of friends, did not publish it.

1536 - He settled in Geneva, Switzerland.

1538-1541 - After being expelled from the city, he served as a pastor in Strasbourg.

1539 - Married Idelette de Bure, a widow, who had a son and daughter from her previous marriage to an Anabaptist in Strasbourg.

1540 - He was invited back to the city in this year, and having negotiated concessions such as the formation of the Consistory.

1541 - Upon his return, armed with the authority to construct the institutional form of the church, Calvin began his program of reform.

1542 - Published his theological book "Psychopannychia."

1559 - He founded the Academy of Geneva, which was a model for other academies around the world and which would eventually become the University of Geneva. He also founded a hospital for the indigent.

1564 - He died in Geneva on the 27th of May, at the age of 55 and was buried in the Cimetière des Rois.

• ". . . I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels."
• "For Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit, in which, as nothing is omitted that is both necessary and useful to know, so nothing is taught but what is expedient to know. Therefore we must guard against depriving believers of anything disclosed about predestination in Scripture, lest we seem either wickedly to defraud them of the blessing of their God or to accuse and scoff at the Holy Spirit for having published what it is in any way profitable to suppress."
• "The sum is, that the worship of God must be spiritual, in order that it may correspond with His nature. For although Moses only speaks of idolatry, yet there is no doubt but that by synecdoche, as in all the rest of the law, he condemns all fictitious services which men in their ingenuity have invented."
• "Christ is the most perfect image of God, into which we are so renewed as to bear the image of God, in knowledge, purity, righteousness, and true holiness."
• "Without Christ, sciences in every department are vain....The man who knows not God is vain, though he should be conversant with every branch of learning. Nay more, we may affirm this too with truth, that these choice gifts of God -- expertness of mind, acuteness of judgment, liberal sciences, and acquaintance with languages, are in a manner profaned in every instance in which they fall to the lot of wicked men."