ABSTRACT
The Protestant Reformer John Calvin was a creative theological mind whose work has led him to be a foundational influence in the Reformed tradition in Christian theology. Evil is not the result of the dominance of the physical flesh over the soul. Nevertheless, Calvin routinely refers to the body as the 'prison house' of the soul, using the language of Plato to characterize the New Testament language of the body as a 'tent', and perhaps sometimes to give expression to his own chronic ill-health, a seeming endless succession of migraines and fevers. Evil has two expressions. One has the character of civic vice, familiar to students of Aristotle's ethics. The corrupt machinations of this world. The other, in a direct line from Augustine of Hippo, is the unrighteousness of the human heart.
