Introduction

This introduction explains the historiography of Calvinism and warfare. Calvinists, or the Reformed, have often been depicted by twentieth-century Anglo-American historians both as secularizing proto-liberals and as holy warriors. Much of this account is inaccurate. Analysis of the teachings of those Reformed intellectuals who mattered most, those who taught in Reformed academies and universities, reveals rather a conception of politics as a duty imposed on humanity by God, and also a commitment to the basic elements of the Christian just war tradition. For this reason, those Reformed intellectuals who were institutionally important cannot accurately be said to be secular, and they did not generally teach their students to wage holy wars. Nevertheless, while a majority of the intellectual leadership of the Reformed read the struggle against Antichrist described in the last book of the New Testament as a purely spiritual struggle, a minority drifted towards reading it as a physical struggle, and in this way used Scripture to legitimate warfare.