the continent, Calvin deploys the verb addīcere to designate godly devotion, writing “se totos addicunt” of these dedicated readers.23 These Latin commentaries appeared in multiple editions and translations in England and dominated university libraries to the degree that, as Philip Benedict notes, “by the last decades of the century, Calvin’s works had eclipsed those of all other theologians in the library inventories of Oxford and Cambridge students.”24 Further, the importance of the English translations of Calvin, in addition to the French and Latin editions also published in England, can hardly be overstated. Between 1570 and 1590, forty-three editions appeared: “No author would be as frequently printed in England over the course of the second half of the sixteenth century as Calvin,” Benedict continues.25 Bibliotheca Calviniana, the table of editions of Calvin by language, reveals the prominence of English editions within a European frame: they are second only to Latin and French (Calvin’s original languages) and far exceed German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, and other European-language translations.26
To study Calvin’s invocation of addiction in these publications is to find comfort in addictive surrender: being singularly focused, at the expense of other beliefs and relationships, brings the potential for redemption. Calvin writes, “GOD in his mercie dealt so lovingly with his people, when he redeemed them, that is, that they being redeemed, should addict and vow them selues wholy to worship the aucthour of their salvation.”27 Ministers of the word “may addict & give themselves wholly to the Church, whereto they are appoynted.”28 This reflexive construction—Christ’s followers “addict themselves” or “give themselves” (se totos addicant & deuoueant) to him and his church—might seem to indicate will and agency on the part of the believer in choosing the addiction. And Calvin does encourage his readers and audiences to foster the complete devotion encapsulated in addiction: his sermons and biblical commentaries repeatedly admonish listeners and readers to pursue utter devotion. But ultimately, he argues, addiction speaks not to individual will but to God’s favor. Only those who are “disciples of God” can “addict themselves”; those who are “unapt to be taught” reject Christ: “It cannot be but that they shal addict themselves unto Christ, whosoeuer are the disciples of God, and that they are vnapt to bee taught of God who do reject Christ.”29 The appearance of a reflexive construction in his Latin and its English translation (“addict himself,” “addict themselves”) seems, on the one hand, to counsel the believer to prepare him or herself for grace: “he must doe his diligence.” On the other hand, to modern readers the reflexive nature of the construction may be misleading in implying the believer’s role in his own addiction, since the agency of addiction does not lie with the addicted believer but in God’s grace. In this chicken-and-egg construction, those who are unapt to be taught cannot be taught; those who reject Christ have been rejected.
Calvin’s language is subtle. His rhetoric suggests, at moments, a form of free will in which the believer might stray from addiction to Christ toward another, less laudable attachment: “They do corrupt the power of Christ, who are addicted to their belly and earthly thinges: hee sheweth what we ought to seeke in hym and for what cause we ought to seeke him.”30 We “are ofte withdrawn” into lusts, being “addicted to [our] belly and earthly things.”31 But, at the same time, he makes it clear that only God can “correct that disease” before one can act: “Because by reason of the grossenes of nature, we are always addicted unto earthly thinges, therefore he doth first correct that disease which is ingendered in us, before he sheweth what we must doe.”32 Once God cures, he “sheweth what we must do” and “sheweth what we aught to seeke in hym.” In other words, one cannot even see the right path until God cleanses the natural depravity evident in one’s misguided addictions. The dedicated mind, with its resolution, is an illusion. Addictions are signs of grace or reprobation that one does not control.
Calvin establishes, then, a complex relationship between the compulsion to follow Christ and the lure of material life. On one level, these desires are clearly opposed to one another since one’s addiction, be it to Christ or to worldly pleasure, indicates elect or reprobate status. But on another, more fundamental, level, Calvin acknowledges that everyone struggles with pure addiction. Even the most faithful wrestle with competing desires. He claims, “It is true that the faythfull them selues are never so wholly addicted to obey God, but that they are ofte withdrawne with sinfull lustes of the flesh.”33 One might aspire to be “wholly addicted” but might err. In other words, addiction to God and addiction to the belly are at once opposed and yet connected as two sites for devotion that might both hold the believer. The tension between these two opposed forms of addiction can be reconciled only by acknowledging the inevitability of one’s dependence on God’s will. Humans, Calvin implies, struggle with some form of addiction. It is just a question of whether abandonment to addiction leads one to or away from God. Through grace, one might be able to embrace as firmly as possible servitude and obedience to God. This form of service and addiction is uplifting. The strength of one’s embrace of this addiction, however, depends on God’s grace. Without such a gift, one struggles with the earthly appetites and compulsions shackling the human body to its baser nature. The resulting addictions represent debasing tyranny.
This dangerous aspect of addiction appears in the English translations of Calvin’s French sermons. In his Latin writings Calvin deploys the term addīcere routinely, and the English translation faithfully tracks the term, rendering it as “addiction,” as noted in the citations above. By contrast, sixteenth-century French lacks modern French’s addiction and dépendence. When Calvin attempts to describe the phenomenon of addiction, he turns to potential cognates in terms ranging from adonner to attacher to dedier. Yet his English translators reintroduce the term “addiction,” illuminating the absent presence of the concept in the French sermons. Translating adonner, a term that designates a willful giving over of oneself, Arthur Golding turns to the term “addiction”—but only in special circumstances. Calvin, for example, uses versions of the word adonner 206 times in his Sermons de M. Jean Calvin sur le livre de Job. In Golding’s sizeable English folio translation (produced in six discrete impressions between 1574 and 1584 and amounting to what Stam calls a “bestseller,” which “achieved a popularity beyond that of any other Calvin commentaries”), he translates adonner as “addiction” in only three cases, each describing a special instance of attachment.34 When Calvin writes, “Or nous ayant acquis si cherement, il ne faut pas que nous soyons plus adonnez à nous mesmes, mais que nous soyons du tout dediez à son service,” Golding translates it as “Hee hath purchased vs so dearly, we must no more be addicted to our selues, but be wholly dedicated to his service.”35 Further, Calvin writes, “Et pourtant ce n’est pas raison que doresenavant nous soyons plus adonnez à nous mesmes: mais qu’un chacun soit prest de se dedier pleinement au service de Dieu,” and the translation reads, “It is not meete that henceforth we shoulde be any more addicted to our selues, but every man should bee readie wholly to dedicate himselfe too the service of God.”36 If active, dedicated devotion to God is the praiseworthy goal, Calvin here also describes an improper form of donation or giving over, a form deemed addiction in English, as in Latin. In this English version, “addiction” and “dedication” appear as synonyms, used interchangeably—one should not be “addicted” to the wrong path but “dedicated” to the proper course—and at the same time indicate addiction as a potentially dangerous form of attachment. Addīcere, adonner, and “addiction” signal mistaken attachment to oneself and the world, even as this attachment might mirror a more desirable form of addiction to God.
Calvin warns of the dangers of this improper addiction because he experienced them, at least according to his personal account of conversion. In the address to the reader prefacing his commentaries on the Psalms (first translated into English by Golding in 1571, following the Latin original published in Geneva in 1557 and French editions in 1558 and 1561), Calvin offers one of his few explicitly autobiographical statements about his conversion. He claims that he had been groomed for the ministry from a young age, but his father directed him to study law instead. While he endeavored to satisfy his father’s wishes, “God with the secret bridle of
