108 Ch. 3 • The Two ReformationsThroughout his life, Calvin was overwhelmed by anxiety and self-doubt,
compounded by his virtual abandonment by his father and his forced exile.
He was also terror-struck by the power of nature and, in particular, by
storms as manifestations of God’s power—rather like Luther. Humanity
seemed to Calvin to be poised before an abyss, a metaphor he frequently
used. He feared that oceans might rise and sweep humankind away.
Around him Calvin saw only the absence of order.
Like other thinkers of the early sixteenth century, Calvin believed that he
lived in a time of extraordinary moral crisis: “Luxury increases daily, lawless
passions are inflamed, and human beings continue in their crimes and
profligacy more shameless than ever.” It seemed to Calvin that the sense of
religious community that ought to bind people together was dissolving.
Calvin argued that the Catholic Church had made the faithful anxious by
emphasizing the necessity of good works in achieving salvation. The anxiety
of never knowing how many good works were enough had, Calvin insisted,
turned Catholics to seek the intercession of saints. He attacked the sacra
ment of penance with particular vehemence: “The souls of those who have
been affected with some awareness of God are most cruelly torn by this
butchery... the sky and sea were on every side, there was no port of
anchorage.” Calvin also rejected the increasingly human-like images given
God and Christ over the previous century. Unlike Luther, Calvin empha
sized not reconciliation with God through faith, but rather obedience to his
will. He sought to provide a doctrine that would reassure the faithful of
God’s grace and of their own salvation. There was hope in Calvin’s thought,
faith that the labyrinth—another of his frequent images—of life could
be successfully navigated. The imposition of order, based upon the mo