Calvin contra Caterpillars
"Many things which are now seen in the world are rather
corruptions of it than any part of its proper furniture. For ever since man
declined from his high original, it became necessary that the world should
gradually degenerate from its nature." So wrote Calvin in his commentary on
Genesis 2, with reference to the contrast between the world as it was
originally created and the world as it became in consequence of man's rebellion
against his Creator.
Rather curiously, Calvin seems to suggest, immediately on
the heels of this comment, that certain features of post-fall reality are not
so much corruptions of some original
good, but post-Fall creatures per se.
Calvin suggests, in other words, that certain entities originated after the
fall to serve the solitary end of aggravating man for his sinful rebellion. "Truly
these things were made by God, but by God as an avenger." Included in this
category are "fleas, caterpillars, and other noxious insects." Calvin doesn't
really develop the point, but perhaps his inclination to view certain creatures
as purely post-fall divine productions stemmed from uncertainty on his part about
what positive role such pests might
have performed in the pre-fallen, perfect world of Eden.
I'm always reluctant to disagree with Calvin, but I do
question how theologically responsible it is to give evil the power, as it
were, to introduce new animal species into the world. More pressing, however,
is the question of why Calvin would have included "caterpillars" in the dubious
category of "noxious" creatures of a post-fall origin serving the solitary
purpose of inflicting misery on man for his defection. Caterpillars? Really? Granted
that caterpillars can inflict some agricultural damage (or so Wikipedia tells
me), surely they have enough redeeming features to merit their inclusion in
that original creation which received God's stamp of approval as "very good"
(Gen. 1.31). Caterpillars -- or at least certain kinds of caterpillars -- give us
silk, right? Silk is good. And, regardless of their productivity, they're so
clearly fantastic in the truest sense
of the word. Five pair of legs. Three pair of eyes. A variety of rather
marvelous color schemes and appearances. And, best of all, they tuck themselves
away into mid-life cocoons and become moths or butterflies. I have trouble
imagining an Eden without creatures
as cool as that.
So why Calvin's distaste for caterpillars -- to the point of
relegating them to post-creation creaturely status? Several possibilities
present themselves. One is that Calvin really was the hater of beauty he's so often
depicted as. Perhaps his cold, calculating heart -- a heart two sizes too small, by
all spurious accounts -- simply had no room in it for creatures as magical as
caterpillars/butterflies. The problem with this theory is that Calvin, in his
writings, expressed considerable appreciation for beauty -- both as discovered in
the natural world and as produced by human art -- and the pleasure which beauty
properly affords human beings.
Maybe Calvin's sentiment towards caterpillars is a
reflection of some disturbing childhood or adolescent event that he endured. An
image of Calvin as an awkward fifteen year old student at the Collège de Montaigu springs to mind, the
future Reformer lying with arms pinned to the ground while senior students take
turns placing caterpillars on his pimple-covered face, in his ears, up his nose, etc. Surely
there's fertile ground for the psycho-historians here.
Or maybe Calvin's point was a more subtle, theological one.
Maybe he protested the presence of caterpillars pre-Fall because he recognized
the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly as a naturally occurring type
of human death and resurrection/glorification. Maybe Calvin's real objection, then,
was to the existence of prophetic pictures of death and resurrection prior to
the Fall, that event which introduced death as such into human experience. Why
speak prophetically, even in typological form, about death's ultimate defeat in
resurrection before death itself, the fruit of sin, exists?
Or maybe Calvin never actually said a negative word about
caterpillars at all.
Rather anticlimactically, this last option turns out to be the
most likely. The Latin term translated as 'caterpillar' in Calvin's commentary
is actually bruchus, which in early
modern times indicated a kind of wingless locust -- something which today might be
classified as a weevil or beetle. The Reformer, it turns out, never spoke
critically or spitefully -- at least to our knowledge -- about actual campae (caterpillars).
I'm still not convinced that any species of creature --
wingless locust, weevil, beetle, or otherwise -- came into existence subsequent
to creation per se, but I am considerably relieved to know that Calvin didn't
despise caterpillars. Calvin has always struck me as the kind of man that, upon
seeing a caterpillar or its butter-flying counterpart, would have paused to appreciate
the same, and to have praised God for his profound wisdom and creativity in
conceiving such a creature. I'm happy for that image of Calvin to prevail, at
least in my own mind.
Aaron Clay Denlinger is professor of church history and historical theology at Reformation Bible College in Sanford, Florida.