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of the law. Living fully, willingly according to the revealed will of
God was essential and nothing short of a display of the believer‘s
union with Christ, who was obedient even to death on the cross.
Trust and obedience were the core of what Calvin taught.
Calvin‘s heirs inherited an enormous and a complex
theological legacy. Simply to read, let alone to apprehend and to
embrace the body of his writings was a daunting task. Problems of
language and translation affected Reformed leaders and believers
in Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, and England.
Life in the second half of the sixteenth century was demanding, in
many of these places preoccupied with the Counter-reformation,
persecution, political instability and change, and economic
hardship. The leisure of reading, study, reflection, and extended
discussion was often impossible. Other theological emphasis
contended with the Reformed faith in many arenas. Sometimes
political expedience or toleration foisted on Reformed churches a
civic order and social patterns not always congenial to obedience
as Calvin understood and articulated it. New scientific theories and
discoveries posed new issues and questions. Global commercial
enterprise became a preoccupation in Protestant, northern Europe
during the seventeenth century. Wealth and the flowering of
culture ensued. Philosophical reflection forced theological
reconsideration and adjustment in places like Saumur, Leiden,
Utrecht, Edinburgh, Debrecen—even Geneva. Calvin‘s influenced
faded.
Examining how the legacy of Calvin‘s understanding of trust
and obedience fared in any of a dozen settings would be
instructive. In this essay we shall venture a comparison of his
views on faith and obedience with those of Jean Taffin, sometimes
regarded as a father of the Dutch Second Reformation, in his book
The Distinguishing Marks of God‘s Children. This project seems
applicable to the Indonesian scene in the early twenty-first century,
since the Dutch Reformed influence on so much Indonesian church
life and theology was seasoned by Calvin and the Second
Reformation. It is also appropriate since Taffin‘s work was