Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics

In this penetrating volume, based on a close reading of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Ralph Hancock argues that the Whig historians, Hegel, the Progressives, and Max Weber were more correct than they knew in suggesting an affinity between the Reformation and the modern project. If he is correct - and he may well be - modern Enlightenment rationalism cannot give a full and fully rational account of itself, its this-worldly orientation can only be defended from a standpoint out…