Time Off: Calvin and the Rise of the Modern Order
By Sun Shuai
Drawing Away: Calvin and the Rise of Modern Order focuses on Protestant rebellion against traditional theology and metaphysics, summarizing Calvin's path of thought as "the evacuation of introspection," a path of evacuation that implies a double departure from Augustine's "path of the self" and Aquinas's "path of analogy."
Luther destroyed the reality of the world and life with God's "hiding," while Calvin tried to use God's "manifestation" to confront Luther's deconstructive theology, only to empty the world and life of reality in a deeper sense. Starting from the "evacuation" problem, this book aims to explore how Calvin re-understood the relationship between the self, God and the world, how to reconstruct the divine order into a will order without a natural foundation, and how to use the concepts of faith, justification, sanctification, calling, predestination, etc. to tell the nihilism and salvation of modern anxious individuals.
In Calvin's writings, the free and empty individuals liberated from "ritualism" are eventually thrown into an uncontrollable destiny and world, and it is precisely this situation that inspires them to seek certainty of salvation and actively plan the meaning of life.
Sun Shuai, a native of Taihe, Anhui, was born in 1982. Doctor of Philosophy of Peking University (2012), Bachelor of Philosophy of Fudan University (2006), Full-time Researcher of the Institute of Buddhist and Religious Theory of Chinese Min University, Lecturer of the Department of Religious Studies of the Faculty of Philosophy, with research areas of Western Philosophy and Religion. He is the author of Nature and Fellowship: A Study of Augustine's Theory of Marriage and Family (Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 2014), and has published more than 20 papers in journals such as Philosophical Studies, World Philosophy, Philosophical Dynamics, Dao Feng, and Sociological Research.
