Calvin and Missions - World Evangelical Alliance

94 Calvin and World Mission
ment had its origin are to be found in Calvin’s theology. 94 The ablest exegete
of Calvin’s missionary concepts, in recent years, has been Johannes
van den Berg. He maintains that Calvin’s aversion to the claim of apostolic
succession on the part of the Roman Catholic clergy “darkened” Calvin’s
understanding of the apostolic function of the church. 95 However, this
alone was not sufficient to explain his lack of missionary fervor. “The main
cause of the alleged lack of missionary zeal with Calvin … lies in the outward
circumstances” in which he lived. 96
Calvin’s thoughts on this subject will be re-examined in this paper.
The second aim in this study is to attempt to discover what particular
doctrines of Calvin provided the missionary dynamic in the thought and
practice of his spiritual descendants who were in the forefront of the rise of
the Protestant world mission. It cannot be denied that men, classified theologically
as Calvinists, have been in the vanguard of this movement. From
the ill-fated missionary attempt of the French Calvinists in the Brazilian
colony of Villeganon, in 1557, 97 to the popularization of the society
method at the turn of the nineteenth century, men in the theological lineage
of Calvin have been particularly prominent.
It is true that other factors have played an important part in the Protestant
missionary awakening. However, Calvinism has provided not only much of
the muscle and sinew of the movement, but it has also contributed much in
basic motivation and fundamental principles. J. van den Berg has said:
The Moravian Zinzendorf, the Methodist Wesley, the Calvinist Edwards –
they all stand at the cradle of the great missionary awakening. But that their
stimuli found such an eager response on Calvinistic soil proves once again
that missionary zeal was present in Calvinism. 98
The questions of this paper are: Did the seed of missionary zeal and concern
find fertile soil in Calvinism because of Calvin’s own thought or did it
take root there because of the milieu of a different age? and, If Calvin’s
94
Samuel M. Zwemer, “Calvinism and the Missionary Enterprise,” Theology Today,
v. VIII (1950), pp. 206-216.
95
Johannes van den Berg, “Calvin’s Missionary Message,” The Evangelical Quarterly,
XXII (1950), p. 179.
96
Ibid., p. 180.
97
The most recent account of this first Protestant missionary endeavor is G. Baez-
Camargo, “The Earliest Missionary Venture in Latin America.” Church History, v.
XXI (1952), pp. 135-144.
98
J. van den Berg, op. cit., p. 185.