ABSTRACT
After a productive spell in Strassburg between 1538 and 1541, Calvin returned to Geneva in 1541 to take up a busy and active life of ministry and administration, with increasing political involvement in the city's affairs. The new text was also a reiteration of one of the features of Calvin's first Genevan ministry, the Instruction et Confession de foy dont on use en I'Eglise de Geneve, the 'Catechism and Confession of Faith Used in the Church of Geneva'. The new Genevan Catechism offered a digest of Calvinian thought. As an educational text, Calvin's 1542 Catechism bears some of the imprint of humanist educational norms. As Calvin wrote, the ideal instructor 'should treat his pupils in such a way as always to encourage rather than discourage them'. The doctrinal slant of the Catechism can be particularly associated with Calvin. Arguably, this interpretation threatened to divorce temporarily the two natures, human and divine, that Calvin also strongly insisted characterised Christ the God-man.
