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The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism
John Calvin developed arresting new teachings on rights and liberties, church and state, and religion and politics that shaped the law of Protestant lands. Calvin's original teachings were periodically challenged by major crises - the French Wars of Religion, Dutch Revolt, the English Civil War, American colonization, and American Revolution. In each such crisis moment, a major Calvinist figure emerged - Theodore Beza, Johannes Althusius, John Milton, John Winthrop, John Adams, and others - who modernized Calvin's teachings and translated them into dramatic new legal and political reforms. This rendered early modern Calvinism one of the driving engines of Western constitutionalism. A number of basic Western laws on religious and political rights, social and confessional pluralism, federalism and constitutionalism, and more owe a great deal to this religious movement. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of history, law, religion, politics, ethics, human rights, and the Protestant Reformation.
406 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 10, 2025
If you enjoy your freedoms, thank a Calvinist.
December 15, 2021
3.5 Stars
A s the title implies, this dense, academic work explores the conception of law, human rights, and religion in Calvinism from the 1500s to the 1700s. It does so by focusing on four major sequential historical figures (Calvin, Beza, Althusius, Milton) and one survey chapter (New England). The main argument Witte advances is that the Reformed tradition made significant contributions to the development of human rights theory and application, legal thought and implementation, and religious organization in the west.
The work is extremely well researched, and quotes extensively from these and dozens of other figures, giving a credence to the thoroughness of the work. The author appears to have done a good job distilling from massive bodies of work core principles and the most valuable aspects of each thinker.
However, the work has weaknesses. The writing is erudite, which I increasingly see as a detriment: for instance, using the latin phrase "inter alia" correctly is impressive, but doesn't add to reader enlightenment than the much simpler English "among others." This type of show-off writing serves as a barrier rather than an aid to the reader. Witte also engages in mildly annoying hero-worship, referring to various people as "esteemed," "distinguished," "brilliant" etc., which adds nothing to the argument.
The chapters are also written as essentially independent sketches of the particular thinker's views on the various topics, which resulted in a lot of repetition where the thinkers' views didn't change significantly from the previous chapter's. As a method fo tackling a major project, it makes sense to ask a series of questions and see how each thinker answers them, but as this book is a survey of topics, not people, it would have been a tighter, better book to simply focus on the groundwork laid by Calvin (the first thinker), and then discuss only areas where Beza (the second) altered in some what what Calvin proposed, and then only areas where Althusius (the third) edited, amended, or expanded -- etc. Instead, we have a repetition chapter after chapter that the Decalogue was considered the core rights and duties for Calvin, for Beza, for Althusius -- etc. The silver lining is that if you want to just read one chapter, there isn't really any downside, as they are essentially independent works.
I was hoping that the concluding chapter might provide a sum up -- how far did we come from Calvin to the New World? What did we add or remove from our theory of human rights, law, and religion? This recap for the reader (especially one who slogged through the book over several months) would have been immensely helpful. Instead, the summary is fairly abstract, repeating the specific areas of contribution (freedom of religion and its attendant rights; separation of powers and democratic elections).
I also hoped for more discussion of the interplay of reformed and other thought. By focusing almost exclusively on what the Reformed thinkers wrote, it's hard to understand how much what they thought was the same as non-Reformed contemporaries wrote. Zooming out a little would have given some helpful perspective on the broader context of these writers, perhaps in a way much more valuable than listing out the various rights they did or didn't espouse, as was often done.
The reason I picked up this book is because I work in international relations, and I wanted to gai na better understanding of Reformed views on human rights and government. While the book has proven helpful, it was less helpful than I hoped in distilling a coherent, and comprehensive modern theory of human rights from a Reformed perspective. Instead, the treatment felt fractured, perhaps a result of the project being overly ambitious for a single work.
All in all, however, it provided food for thought, and for those interested in particular in the views of the four major thinkers covered in the book, it is worth reading.
A s the title implies, this dense, academic work explores the conception of law, human rights, and religion in Calvinism from the 1500s to the 1700s. It does so by focusing on four major sequential historical figures (Calvin, Beza, Althusius, Milton) and one survey chapter (New England). The main argument Witte advances is that the Reformed tradition made significant contributions to the development of human rights theory and application, legal thought and implementation, and religious organization in the west.
The work is extremely well researched, and quotes extensively from these and dozens of other figures, giving a credence to the thoroughness of the work. The author appears to have done a good job distilling from massive bodies of work core principles and the most valuable aspects of each thinker.
However, the work has weaknesses. The writing is erudite, which I increasingly see as a detriment: for instance, using the latin phrase "inter alia" correctly is impressive, but doesn't add to reader enlightenment than the much simpler English "among others." This type of show-off writing serves as a barrier rather than an aid to the reader. Witte also engages in mildly annoying hero-worship, referring to various people as "esteemed," "distinguished," "brilliant" etc., which adds nothing to the argument.
The chapters are also written as essentially independent sketches of the particular thinker's views on the various topics, which resulted in a lot of repetition where the thinkers' views didn't change significantly from the previous chapter's. As a method fo tackling a major project, it makes sense to ask a series of questions and see how each thinker answers them, but as this book is a survey of topics, not people, it would have been a tighter, better book to simply focus on the groundwork laid by Calvin (the first thinker), and then discuss only areas where Beza (the second) altered in some what what Calvin proposed, and then only areas where Althusius (the third) edited, amended, or expanded -- etc. Instead, we have a repetition chapter after chapter that the Decalogue was considered the core rights and duties for Calvin, for Beza, for Althusius -- etc. The silver lining is that if you want to just read one chapter, there isn't really any downside, as they are essentially independent works.
I was hoping that the concluding chapter might provide a sum up -- how far did we come from Calvin to the New World? What did we add or remove from our theory of human rights, law, and religion? This recap for the reader (especially one who slogged through the book over several months) would have been immensely helpful. Instead, the summary is fairly abstract, repeating the specific areas of contribution (freedom of religion and its attendant rights; separation of powers and democratic elections).
I also hoped for more discussion of the interplay of reformed and other thought. By focusing almost exclusively on what the Reformed thinkers wrote, it's hard to understand how much what they thought was the same as non-Reformed contemporaries wrote. Zooming out a little would have given some helpful perspective on the broader context of these writers, perhaps in a way much more valuable than listing out the various rights they did or didn't espouse, as was often done.
The reason I picked up this book is because I work in international relations, and I wanted to gai na better understanding of Reformed views on human rights and government. While the book has proven helpful, it was less helpful than I hoped in distilling a coherent, and comprehensive modern theory of human rights from a Reformed perspective. Instead, the treatment felt fractured, perhaps a result of the project being overly ambitious for a single work.
All in all, however, it provided food for thought, and for those interested in particular in the views of the four major thinkers covered in the book, it is worth reading.
January 2, 2023
Still getting my head around this topic, so I am pretty noob when it comes to evaluating the ideas/history presented. I picked this up at random in a legal library, since the author is a legal historian. The book is dense but extremely readable, I wish more academics could write like this. I've been referring to Witte's work ever since, many of his articles are available for free on his website. I really recommend them if you're looking for articles on the development of law regarding marriage, family, and human rights/religious freedom. See here: https://www.johnwittejr.com/articles-...
June 14, 2020
If you love freedom and are a Christian you have to read this. Basically argues that the Reformation was the origin of western ideas of liberty and rights.
September 29, 2011
I finally went ahead and read the rest of this book, after plundering the first couple chapters last winter for material on Calvin's two-kingdoms doctrine. Although I can't say I'm in all that much sympathy with the overall project, I recognise exemplary historical work when I see it. Witte's definitely one of the best guys in the business of the history of Protestant legal and political thought, and his immense erudition and solid writing abilities are well displayed here. He presents us with wonderfully thorough summaries of Calvin, Beza, Althusius, Milton and the New England Puritans (although on Calvin, the only one with whom I can pretend any kind of extensive familiarity, I felt like I detected some subtle distortions)--not only of their specific contribution to the development of rights discourse, but of their political theologies as a whole.
On the other hand, as I said, I'm not really in sympathy with the overall project, which is to affirm the tradition of human-rights discourse that is fundamental to modern liberal politics, and to insist that Calvinism is one of its progenitors. I do not necessarily deny the historical connections that Witte draws--I will trust his scholarship that he is not manufacturing stuff in the sources that isn't there (particularly as he quotes from them so liberally, and I have read several of them myself)--although I do believe he gives us a decidedly one-sided portrait of the sources, and tells something of a Whig narrative--starting from a very modern conception of rights and then isolating it in the sources, instead of recognising the rather different function of the concept for them. The bigger problem, of course, is that, where he finds subjective-rights concepts in these thinkers and cheers, I find it and boo. This is most strikingly so of Milton--I felt revulsion growing in me the whole time Witte was describing Milton, and yet it became clear that Witte viewed him as something of a hero.
Nonetheless, this is essentially a disagreement of presuppositions extrinsic to this text; within the paradigm that Witte brings to these texts, he does some solid historical work, well-presented and well-written. And given so much else of the rubbish that I have to read, that's good enough for four stars.
On the other hand, as I said, I'm not really in sympathy with the overall project, which is to affirm the tradition of human-rights discourse that is fundamental to modern liberal politics, and to insist that Calvinism is one of its progenitors. I do not necessarily deny the historical connections that Witte draws--I will trust his scholarship that he is not manufacturing stuff in the sources that isn't there (particularly as he quotes from them so liberally, and I have read several of them myself)--although I do believe he gives us a decidedly one-sided portrait of the sources, and tells something of a Whig narrative--starting from a very modern conception of rights and then isolating it in the sources, instead of recognising the rather different function of the concept for them. The bigger problem, of course, is that, where he finds subjective-rights concepts in these thinkers and cheers, I find it and boo. This is most strikingly so of Milton--I felt revulsion growing in me the whole time Witte was describing Milton, and yet it became clear that Witte viewed him as something of a hero.
Nonetheless, this is essentially a disagreement of presuppositions extrinsic to this text; within the paradigm that Witte brings to these texts, he does some solid historical work, well-presented and well-written. And given so much else of the rubbish that I have to read, that's good enough for four stars.
May 14, 2009
Yet another challenge to the conservative folk who believe that human rights originated with Catholic nominalism and the American and French Revolutions. Traces the roots in the reformed tradition.
March 20, 2010
This book was fantastic and played a huge part in the research I did for my thesis. Witte is a first notch scholar and an excellent writer.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews