The purpose of this essay is to bring another candle to an understanding of John Calvin as a theologian, by way of a look at some rhetorical traits in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. That Calvin was an eminent theologian or that the Institutes is a classic of theological literature is not examined, for neither is generally disputed. Our specific concern is with the question of what happens to theological subject matter when it is put in rhetorical form. Accordingly, this essay is divided into three parts: I—The proper marks of a style suitable to theology, and how the humanists, including Calvin, felt about this; II—A look at some rhetorical traits in the Institutes; and III—Some conclusions.

Nationalism in the Orient came into being as a reaction to Western and Japanese political, military, economic, and cultural imperialism. It still has this character in countries remaining under colonial rule. This nationalism is a phenomenon of the twentieth century, although arising somewhat earlier in certain countries. Anti-western movements before this time were manifestations of cultural resistance to European penetration rather than truly nationalistic expressions. The Boxer Uprising of 1900 in China is the last major example of such a cultural reaction. Thereafter love and pride of ancient culture became increasingly only one ingredient in patriotic loyalty and devotion. Intensified during World War I, this earlier type of nationalism reached its climax in Asia in the period of World War II, and came to fruition in the independence of eight nations in East and Southern Asia. Since then this earlier type of nationalism has been replaced by a religious statism, to which many Western nations had already succumbed and which had led Japan to disaster. The entire Orient is far too vast an area for treatment in a brief paper, and this survey is limited to a mere outline of the relation of nationalism to the Christian mission as illustrated by events in some countries of East Asia, where along with India the issues were most sharply raised.

“… non estimemus fabulam illam quasi veram, quam quidam dicunt, quod instabit seculum bonum, in quo nullus erit malorum, et quod nihil paciantur, sed gaudio ineffabili sint prediti.” (From a Taborite commentary on Apocalypse, c. 1425.)

In the years following John Hus' martyrdom the movement he had led developed from a Prague University reform movement into a national reformation. Ideas that had formerly existed as topics for discussion among university intellectuals were established as actual religious practice among large groups of people, of all estates and with widely varying interests and viewpoints. As each such group entered the national movement it necessarily contributed its own viewpoint, with the result that every extension of the reform involved almost as many difficulties for the Hussites as for the Catholics. Of course there had always been differences among the university masters themselves, the inevitable conservative-radical dichotomy based ultimately on differences of spiritual temperament that exist within any group. But far more significant was the social polarization that took form as the concept of reform held by the upper estates was opposed by programs deriving from the point of view of artisans, peasants, and “the poor.”