“Calvin’s Genius” as seen by Hilaire Belloc and Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Abstract

At the beginning of the paper, a structuralist theoretical-methodological model of “conjuncture” and “long-term structure” is used to clarify the changes introduced by Calvin’s teaching to the mentality of the Christian West, contextualizing them in the general sense through relevant foreign historiographic studies of various authors (Pierre Chaunu, Jean Delumeau, Steven Ozment, etc.). The central part of the article depicts Calvinism as a possible starting point i.e., the crucial cause of the later emergence of the socio-economic system of industrial capitalism, primarily by relying on authors such as Hilaire Belloc and Gilbert Keith Chesterton, and other bearers of related views, such as Jacques Maritain, Clive Staples Lewis, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Viktor Emil Frankl and Ernst Friedrich Schumacher. Furthermore, the paper also considers the possibility of pre-reformation in the attitude of the Christian West towards capital, trade, banking, and the individual acquisition of property, as mentioned in the works of Jacques Le Goff. Finally, based on the used literature, the paper discusses the important changes and consequences on the social and cultural agenda, which were brought into the framework of Western civilization by Jean Calvin’s teaching.

Keywords

• Calvinism
• industrial capitalism
• Hilaire Belloc
• Gilbert Keith Chesterton