When John Calvin wrote the Orléans draft of his first book, Psychopannychia, in 1534, one wonders how much direct exposure he had, if any, with the radical reformation wing of the Anabaptists.1 Calvin says that “pious persons invited and even urged” him to pick up his pen to refute “that absurd dogma” that he dearly hoped would remain confined to “a party whose camp and weapons and stratagems I [he] was scarcely acquainted with”.
Maybe Calvin was concerned with a particular strain of Huguenots in France when he wrote “they are circulating follies in a kind of tracts, which I have never happened to see. I have only received some notes from a friend, who had taken down what he had cursorily heard from their lips, or collected by some other means”. Or maybe Calvin was fighting a less than visible group scattered over time by mentioning that this “cancer… originated with some Arabs, who maintain that the soul dies with the body and that both rise at the Day of Judgement”.
Both seem likely, seeing as Calvin noticed ancient sparks that had “lay smouldering for some ages… being stirred up by some dregs of Anabaptists, spread abroad far and wide, have kindled their torches” and Calvin viewed his work as the rain of the Lord which would extinguish these fires.2
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Author: Lerman D’Eon
Keywords: Psychopannychia, psychopannychism, soul sleep, sleep of the soul, John Calvin, Calvin, Anabaptists, Anabaptism, Radical Reformation, Reformation, Protestant Reformation, Thomas More, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, Luther, Tyndale, Servetus, Michael Servetus, Conditionalism, Zwingli, Ulrich Zwingli, Michael Sattler, Sattler, immortal soul, immortal soulism, immortality of the soul, life after death, afterlife, after life, intermediate state, hell, Cast to hell, Cast down to hell, Chains of darkness, Damned go to hell, Death, Death state, Departing soul, Departing spirit, Soul in hell, Soul punished in hell, Soulsleep, Spirit in hell, State of the dead
Bible reference(s): Genesis 3:19, Genesis 37:35, Genesis 42:38, Genesis 44:29, Genesis 44:31, Numbers 16:30, Numbers 16:33, Deuteronomy 32:22, 1 Samuel 2:6, 2 Samuel 22:6, 1 Kings 2:6, 1 Kings 2:9, Job 7:9, Job 11:8, Job 14:13, Job 17:13, Job 17:16, Job 21:13, Job 24:19, Job 26:6, Psalms 6:5, Psalms 9:17, Psalms 16:10, Psalms 18:5, Psalms 30:3, Psalms 31:17, Psalms 49:14, Psalms 49:15, Psalms 55:15, Psalms 86:13, Psalms 88:3, Psalms 89:48, Psalms 116:3, Psalms 139:8, Psalms 141:7, Proverbs 1:12, Proverbs 5:5, Proverbs 7:27, Proverbs 9:18, Proverbs 15:11, Proverbs 15:24, Proverbs 23:14, Proverbs 27:20, Proverbs 30:16, Ecclesiastes 9:10, Isaiah 5:14, Isaiah 7:11, Isaiah 14:9, Isaiah 14:11, Isaiah 14:15, Isaiah 28:15, Isaiah 28:18, Isaiah 38:10, Isaiah 38:18, Isaiah 57:9, Ezekiel 31:15, Ezekiel 31:16, Ezekiel 31:17, Ezekiel 32:21, Ezekiel 32:27, Hosea 13:14, Amos 9:2, Jonah 2:2, Habakkuk 2:5, Matthew 5:22, Matthew 5:29, Matthew 5:30, Matthew 10:28, Matthew 11:23, Matthew 18:9, Matthew 23:15, Matthew 23:33, Mark 9:43, Mark 9:45, Mark 9:47, Luke 10:15, Luke 12:5, Luke 16:23, Acts 2:27, Acts 2:31, James 3:6, 2 Peter 2:4, Revelation 1:18, Revelation 6:8, Revelation 20:13, Revelation 20:14, Baruch 2:17, Baruch 3:11, Baruch 3:19, 2 Maccabees 6:23, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 14:12, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 14:16, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 17:27, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 21:10, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 28:21, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 41:4, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 48:5, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 51:5, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 51:6, Tobit 13:2, Wisdom of Solomon 1:14, Wisdom of Solomon 2:1, Wisdom of Solomon 16:13, Wisdom of Solomon 17:14, 2 Esdras 2:29, 2 Esdras 4:7, 2 Esdras 4:8, 2 Esdras 4:41, 2 Esdras 7:36, 2 Esdras 8:53
Source: “A Brief Tour of Reformation Conditionalism,” afterlife.co.nz
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