07057.1 - Calvin's Work - 1

§57.1. Calvin’s Work -Part 1. Of Calvin it may be said, without exaggeration, that he ’labored more’ than all the other Reformers.

He raised the little town of Geneva to the dignity and importance of the Protestant Rome. [SeeNote #848] From this radiating centre he controlled, directly or indirectly, through his writings and his living disciples, the Reformed, yea, we may say, the whole Protestant movement; for, wherever it had not already taken root, as in Germany and Scandinavia, Protestantism assumed a Calvinistic or semi-Calvinistic character. [SeeNote #849] His heart continued, indeed, to beat warmly for his native land, which he reluctantly left to share the fortunes of truth exiled, and he raised the cry which is to this day the motto of his faithful disciples: ’France must be evangelized to be saved.’ But his true home was the Church of God. He broke through all national limitations. There was scarcely a monarch or statesman or scholar of his age with whom he did not come in contact. Every people of Europe was represented among his disciples. He helped to shape the religious character of churches and nations yet unborn. The Huguenots of France, the Protestants of Holland and Belgium, the Puritans and Independents of England and New England, the Presbyterians of Scotland and throughout the world, yea, we may say, the whole Anglo-Saxon race, in its prevailing religious character and institutions, bear the impress of his genius, and show the power and tenacity of his doctrines and principles of government. [SeeNote #850] From him proceeded the first Protestant missionary colony in the newly discovered American Continent. [SeeNote #851]

He conceived the idea of a general Evangelical Alliance which, though impracticable in his age, found an echo in Melanchthon and Cranmer, and was revived in the nineteenth century (1846) to be realized at no distant future. [SeeNote #852] His work and influence were twofold, theological and ecclesiastical. With him theory and practice, theology and piety, were inseparably united. Even when, soaring beyond the limits of time, he dared to lift the veil of the eternal decrees of the omniscient Jehovah, he aimed at a strong motive for holiness, and a firm foundation of hope and comfort. On the other hand, his moral reforms are all based upon principles and ideas. He was thoroughly consistent in his views and actions. HIS THEOLOGY. As a scientific theologian, Calvin stands foremost among the Reformers, and is the peer of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. He has been styled the Aristotle of Protestantism. Melanchthon, ’the Teacher of Germany,’ first called him ’the Theologian,’ in the emphatic sense in which this title was given to Gregory of Nazianzen in the Nicene age, and to the inspired Apostle John. The verdict of history has confirmed this judgment. Even Rationalists and Roman Catholics must admit his pre-eminence among the systematic divines and exegetes of all ages. [SeeNote #853] The appearance of his Institutes of the Christian Religion [SeeNote #854] (first in Latin, then in French) marks an epoch in the history of theology, and has all the significance of an event. This book belongs to those few uninspired compositions which never lose their interest and power. It has not only a literary, but an institutional character. Considering the youth of the author, it is a marvel of intellectual precocity. The first edition even contained, in brief outline, all the essential elements of his system; and the subsequent enlargements to five times the original size were not mechanical additions to a building or changes of conviction, [SeeNote #855] but the natural growth of a living organism from within. [SeeNote #856] The ’Institutes’ are by far the clearest and ablest systematic and scientific exposition and vindication of the ideas of the Reformation in their vernal freshness and pentecostal fire. The book is inspired by a heroic faith ready for the stake, and a glowing enthusiasm for the saving truth of the gospel, raised to a new life from beneath the rubbish of human additions. Though freely using reason and the fathers, especially Augustine, it always appeals to the supreme tribunal of the Word of God, to which all human wisdom must bow in reverent obedience. It abounds in Scripture-learning thoroughly digested, and wrought up into a consecutive chain of exposition and argument. It is severely logical, but perfectly free from the dryness and pedantry of a scholastic treatise, and flows on, like a Swiss river, through green meadows and sublime mountain scenery. It overshadowed all previous attempts at a systematic treatment of Protestant doctrines, not only those of Zwingli and Farel, but even Melanchthon’s Loci theologici, although Calvin generously edited them twice in a French translation with a complimentary preface (1546). [SeeNote #857] No wonder that the ’Institutes’ were greeted with enthusiastic praises by Protestants, which are not exhausted to this day. [SeeNote #858] They created dismay among Romanists, were burned at Paris by order of the Sorbonne, and hated and feared as the very ’Talmud’ and ’Koran of heresy.’ [SeeNote #859] In spite of severe prohibition, they were translated into all the languages of Europe, and passed through innumerable editions. Among the Protestants of France they acquired almost as much authority as Luther’s Bible in Germany, and comforted the martyrs in prison. In England, after the accession of Elizabeth, they were long used as the text-book of theology; and even the moderate and ’judicious’ Hooker prized them highly, and pronounced Calvin ’incomparably the wisest man that ever the French Church did enjoy.’ This remarkable work was originally a defense of the evangelical doctrines against ignorant or willful misrepresentation, and a plea for toleration in behalf of his scattered fellow-Protestants in France, who were then violently persecuted as a set of revolutionary fanatics and heretics. Hence the dedicatory Preface to Francis 1. As the early Apologists addressed the Roman emperors to convince them that the Christians were innocent of the foul charges of atheism, immorality, and hostility to Caesar, so Calvin appealed to the French monarch in defense of his equally innocent countrymen, with a manly dignity, frankness, force, and pathos never surpassed before or since. It is a sad reflection that such a voice of warning should have had so little effect, and that the noble French nation even this day would rather listen to the revolutionary ’Marseillaise’ of Voltaire and Rousseau than to the reformatory trumpet of Calvin. The ’Institutes,’ to which this dedication to the French monarch forms the magnificent portal, consist of four books (each divided into a number of chapters), and treat, after the natural and historical order of the Apostles’ Creed, first of the knowledge of God the Creator (theology); secondly, of the knowledge of God the Redeemer (christology); thirdly, of the Holy Spirit and the application of the saving work of Christ (soteriology); fourthly, of the external means of salvation, viz., the Church and the Sacraments. [SeeNote #860] The most prominent and original features of Calvin’s theological system, which have left their impress upon the Reformed Creed, are the doctrine of Predestination and the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. By the first he widened the breach between the Reformed and the Lutheran Church; by the second he furnished a basis for reconciliation. THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION.

All the Reformers of the sixteenth century, including even the gentle Melanchthon and the compromising Bucer, under a controlling sense of human depravity and saving grace, in extreme antagonism to Pelagianism and self-righteousness, and, as they sincerely believed, in full harmony not only with the greatest of the fathers, but also with the inspired St. Paul, came to the same doctrine of a double predestination which decides the eternal destiny of all men. Nor is it possible to evade this conclusion on the two acknowledged premises of Protestant orthodoxy-namely, the wholesale condemnation of men in Adam, and the limitation of saving grace to the present world. If the Lutheran theology, after the Formula of Concord (1577), rejected Synergism and Calvinism alike, and yet continued to teach the total depravity of all men and the unconditional election of some, it could only be done at the expense of logical consistency. [SeeNote #861]

Yet there were some characteristic differences among the Reformers. Luther started from the servum arbitrium, Zwingli from the idea of an all-ruling providentia, Calvin from the timeless or eternal decretum absolution. Calvin elaborated the doctrine of predestination with greater care and precision, and avoided ’the paradoxes’ of his predecessors. He made it, moreover, the corner-stone of his system, and gave it undue proportion. He set the absolute sovereignty of God over against the mock sovereignty of the Pope. It was for him the ’article of the standing or falling Church;’ while Luther always assigned this position to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In this estimate, both were mistaken, for the central place in the Christian system belongs only to the person and work of Christ-the incarnation and the atonement. Finally, the Augustinian and Lutheran predestinarianism is moderated by the sacramentarian principle of baptismal regeneration; while the Calvinistic predestinarianism confines the sacramental efficacy to the elect, and turns the baptism of the non-elect into an empty form.

Predestination, according to Calvin, is the eternal and unchangeable decree of God by which he foreordained, for his own glory and the display of his attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation. The decree is, therefore, twofold-a decree of election to holiness and salvation, and a decree of reprobation on account of sin and guilt. [SeeNote #862] The latter is the negative counterpart, which strict logic seems to demand, but against which our better feelings revolt, especially if it is made to include multitudes of innocent children, for their unconscious connection with Adam’s fall. Calvin himself felt this, and characteristically called the decree of reprobation a ’decree horrible, though nevertheless true.’ [SeeNote #863] All he could say was that God’s will is inscrutable, but always holy and unblamable. It is the ultimate ground of all things, and the highest rule of justice. Foreordination and foreknowledge are inseparable, and the former is not conditioned by the latter, but God foresees what he foreordains. If election were dependent on man’s faith and good works, grace would not be free, and in fact would cease to be grace. Man’s holiness is not the cause or condition, but the effect of God’s election. The unequal distribution of gospel privileges can be traced only to the secret will of God. All men are alike corrupt and lost in Adam; some are saved by free grace, others, who are no worse by nature, reject the gospel. These are undeniable every-day facts, and admit of no other explanation within the limits of the present life; and as to the future world, we know nothing but what God has revealed to us in the Scriptures.

Calvin carried the doctrine of the divine decrees beyond the Augustinian infralapsarianism, which makes the fall of Adam the object of a permissive or passive decree, and teaches the preterition rather than the reprobation of the wicked, to the very verge of supralapsarianism, which traces even the first sin to an efficient or positive decree, analogous to that of election. But while his inexorable logic pointed to this abyss, his moral and religious sense shrunk from the last inference of making God the author of sin, which would be blasphemous, and involve the absurdity that God abhors and justly punishes what he himself decreed. Hence his phrase, which vacillates between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism: ’Adam fell, God’ providence having so ordained it; yet he fell by his own guilt.’ [SeeNote #864]

Calvin defended this doctrine against all objections with consummate skill, and may be said to have exhausted the subject on his side of the question. His arguments were chiefly drawn from the Scriptures, especially the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans; but he unduly stretched passages which refer to the historical destiny of individuals and nations in this world, into declarations of their eternal fate in the other world; and he escaped the proper force of opposite passages (such as John 1:29;John 3:16;1 John 2:2;1 John 4:14;1 Timothy 2:4;2 Peter 3:9) by a distinction between the secret and revealed or declared will of God (voluntas arcaniandvoluntas beneplaciti), which carries an intolerable dualism into the divine will. The motive and aim of this doctrine was not speculative, but practical. It served as a bulwark of free grace, an antidote to Pelagianism and human pride, a stimulus to humility and gratitude, a source of comfort and peace in trial and despondency. The charge of favoring license and carnal security was always indignantly repelled by the Pauline ’God forbid!’ It is moreover refuted by history, which connects the strictest Calvinism with the strictest morality. The doctrine of predestination, in its milder, infralapsarian form, was incorporated into the Geneva Consensus, the Second Helvetic, the French, Belgic, and Scotch Confessions, the Lambeth Articles, the Irish Articles, the Canons of Dort, and the Westminster Standards; while the Thirty-nine Articles, [SeeNote #865] the Heidelberg Catechism, and other German Reformed Confessions, indorse merely the positive part of the free election of believers, and are wisely silent concerning the decree of reprobation, leaving it to theological science and private opinion.

Supralapsarianism, which makes unfallen man, or man before his creation (i.e., a non ens, a mere abstraction of thought), the object of God’s double foreordination for the manifestation of his mercy in the elect, and his justice in the reprobate, was ably advocated by Beza in Geneva, Gomarus in Holland, Twisse (the Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly) in England, Nathaniel Emmons (1745-1840) in New England, but it never received symbolical authority, and was virtually or expressly excluded (though not exactly condemned) by the Synod of Dort, the Westminster Assembly, and even the ’Formula Consensus Helvetica’ (1675). [SeeNote #866] All Calvinistic Confessions, without exception, trace the fall to a permissive decree, make man responsible and justly punishable for sin, and reject, as a blasphemous slander, the charge that God is the author of sin. And this is the case with all the Calvinistic divines of the present day. [SeeNote #867] CALVIN’S DOCTRINE OF THE LORD’S SUPPER.

Calvin’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, on which he spent much deep and earnest thought, is an ingenious compromise between the realism and mysticism of the Lutheran, and the idealism and spiritualism of the Zwinglian theory. It aims to satisfy both the heart and the reason.

He retained the figurative interpretation of the words of institution, and rejected all carnal and materialistic conceptions of the eucharistic mystery; but he very strongly asserted, at the same time, a spiritual real presence and fruition of Christ’s body and blood for the nourishment of the soul. He taught that believers, while they receive with their mouths the visible elements, receive also by faith the spiritual realities signified and sealed thereby, namely, the benefit of the atoning sacrifice on the cross, and the life-giving virtue of Christ’s glorified humanity in heaven, which the Holy Ghost conveys to the soul in a supernatural manner; while unbelieving or unworthy communicants, having no inward connection with Christ, receive only bread and wine to their own judgment. He thus sought to avoid alike the positive error of Luther and the negative error of Zwingli (whose view of the Eucharist he even characterized as ’profane’), and to unite the elements of truth advocated by both in a one-sided and antagonistic way. Luther and Zwingli always had in mind a corporeal or dimensional presence of the material substance of body and blood, and an oral manducation of the same by all communicants-which the one affirmed, the other denied; Calvin substituted for this the idea of a virtual or dynamic presence of the psychic life-power and efficacy of Christ’s humanity, and a spiritual reception and assimilation of the same by the organ of faith, and therefore on the part of believing communicants only, through the secret mediation of the Holy Spirit. [SeeNote #868]

Calvin’s doctrine of the Eucharist was substantially approved by Melanchthon in his later period, although from fear of Luther and the ultra-Lutherans he never fully committed himself. It passed into all the leading Reformed Confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and must be regarded as the orthodox Reformed doctrine. Zwingli’s theory, which is more simple and intelligible, has considerable popular currency, but no symbolical authority. [SeeNote #869]

Calvin thus combined his high predestinarianism with a high view of the Church and the Sacraments. Augustine and Luther did the same to a still greater extent, with more prominence given to the sacramental idea. It is the prerogative of great minds to maintain apparently opposite truths and principles which hold each other in check; while with minds less strong and comprehensive, the one principle is apt to rule out the other. In the Catholic and Lutheran Churches the sacramental principle gradually overruled the doctrine of absolute predestination; in the more rigid Calvinistic school, the sacramental principle yielded to the doctrine of predestination. But the authoritative standards are committed to both.

CALVIN AS AN EXEGETE.

Among the works which have more or less influenced the Reformed Confessions we can not ignore Calvin’s commentaries. To expound the Scriptures in books, from the chair, and from the pulpit, was his favorite occupation. His whole theology is scriptural rather than scholastic, and distinguished for the skillful and comprehensive working up of the teaching of the Bible, as the only pure fountain of revealed truth and the infallible rule of the Christian faith. As it is systematically comprehended in his ’Institutes,’ and defended in his various polemical tracts against Sadolet, Pighius, the Council of Trent, Caroli, Bolsec, Castallio, Westphal, Heshusius, so it is scattered through his Commentaries on the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, and the principal books of the Old Testament, especially the Psalms and the Prophets. He opened this important series of works, during his sojourn at Strasburg, by an exposition of the Epistle to the Romans (1539), on which his theological system is chiefly based.

He could assert with truth on his death-bed that he never knowingly twisted or misinterpreted a single passage of the Scriptures, that he always aimed at simplicity, and restrained the temptation to show acuteness and ingenuity. He regarded it as the chief object of a commentator to adhere closely to the text, and to bring out clearly and briefly the meaning of the writer. He detested irrelevant talk and diffuseness, and avoided allegorical fancies, which substitute pious imposition for honest exposition. He combined in a very rare degree all the necessary hermeneutical qualifications, a fair knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, sound grammatical tact, thorough sympathy with the spirit and aim of the Bible, and aptitude for fruitful practical application. He could easily enter into the peculiar situation of the Prophets and Apostles, as though he had been with them in their trials, and shared their varied experience. He is free from pedantry, and his exposition is an easy, continuous flow of reproduction. He never evades difficulties, but frankly meets and tries to solve them. With all his profound reverence for the Word of God, to which his reason bows in cheerful obedience, he is not swayed by a peculiar theory of inspiration or dogmatic prejudice, but shows often remarkable freedom and sagacity in discovering the direct historical import of prophecies, in distinction from their ulterior Messianic bearing. [SeeNote #870] He notices the difference of style and argument in the Second Epistle of Peter as compared with the first, and in the Epistle to the Hebrews as compared with the undisputed Pauline Epistles. He never ventured to explain the mysteries of the Apocalypse. Luther, with an equally profound reverence and enthusiasm for the Word of God, was even much bolder, and passed sweeping judgments on whole books of the canon (as the Epistle of James, the book of Esther, and the book of Revelation), because he could not find enough of Christ in them. Calvin and his followers retained the Canon in full, but excluded more rigidly the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. The scholastic Calvinism and Lutheranism of the seventeenth century departed from the more liberal view of the Reformers on the mode and degree of inspiration, and substituted for it a rigid mechanical theory which ignored the human and historical aspect of the Scriptures, and reduced the sacred writers to mere penmen of the Holy Ghost. This theory found symbolical expression in the ’Formula Consensus Helvetica’ (1675), which advocates even the inspiration of the Hebrew-vowel points, and cuts off all textual criticism.

Upon the whole, Calvin is ’ beyond all question the greatest exegete of the sixteenth century,’ [SeeNote #871] which of all centuries was the most fruitful in this department of sacred learning. Luther was the prince of translators; Calvin, the prince of commentators. Augustine and Luther had occasionally a deeper intuition into the meaning of difficult passages, and seized on the main idea with the instinct of genius; but Calvin was more accurate and precise, and more uniformly excellent. Modern commentators have made great progress in textual criticism and grammatical and historical exegesis, but do not attain to his religious depth and fervor. His commentaries have stood the test of time, and will always be consulted with profit. Scaliger, who was displeased with all men, said that no scholar had penetrated so deeply into the meaning of the Prophets as Calvin; the Roman Catholic critic Richard Simon admitted that his commentaries would be ’useful to the whole world,’ if they were free from declamations against popery; and of all older expounders none is more frequently quoted by the best modern critical scholars than John Calvin. [SeeNote #872] CALVIN’S CHURCH POLITY. The practical and ecclesiastical part of Calvin’s work is in some respects even more important than his theology, and must be briefly considered in those features which have affected the Calvinistic Confessions. These are the duty of discipline, the principle of lay-representation, and the autonomy of the Church in its relation to the State. In these points Calvinism differs from Lutheranism, and also from Zwinglianism and Anglicanism. Calvin aimed at a moral and social as well as a doctrinal and religious reformation, and succeeded in establishing a model Church, which excited the admiration not only of sympathizing contemporaries, like Farel and Knox, [SeeNote #873] but even of visitors of other creeds long after his death. [SeeNote #874] During the eighteenth century his severe system of theology and discipline gave way to the prevailing spirit of Socinianism and the revolutionary spirit of Jean Jacques Rousseau-the counterpart of Calvin; but revived in the nineteenth century, though in a modified form, so that Geneva has become a second time the centre of evangelistic labors in the French-speaking world. [SeeNote #875]

1. Discipline.-Calvin’s zeal for discipline, especially for the honor of the Lord’s table, in excluding unworthy communicants, was the cause of his expulsion from Geneva, the cause of his recall from Strasburg, the condition of his acceptance, the struggle and triumph of his life. He had a long and fierce conflict with the ferocious politico-religious party of the Libertines, or ’Spirituals,’ as they called themselves, who combined a pantheistic creed with licentiousness and free-lovism, and anticipated the worst forms of modern infidelity to the extent of declaring the gospel a tissue of lies of less value than Æsop’s Fables. [SeeNote #876] He regarded them as worse enemies of God and the truth than the Pope. They resorted to personal indignities and every device of intimidation; they named the very dogs of the street after him; they one night fired fifty shots before his bedchamber; they threatened him in the pulpit; they approached the communion table as if to seize the sacred elements, when he cried out, ’You may break these limbs and shed my blood, I would rather die than dishonor the table of my God,’ whereupon they left the church. On another occasion he walked into the midst of an excited mob and offered his breast to their daggers. It seems incredible that a man constitutionally ’unwarlike and timorous’ should have completely overcome at last such a powerful and determined opposition, which reached its height in 1553. The system of discipline which he established saved Geneva from anarchy, into which the Libertines would have plunged it, and was a training-school of self-government for other Reformed Churches; but it was carried to unwarrantable excesses in the punishment of religious and civil offenses, and even innocent amusements, and entered too much into details of private and domestic life.

2. Presbyterian and Synodical Church Polity.-It rests on the principle of ministerial equality, and the principle of lay-representation by elders or seniors in the government of the Church. This polity, founded by Calvin, was consistently carried out in the Presbyterian Churches of France, Holland, Scotland, England, and the United States; but in German Switzerland and Germany it succeeded only partially, while the Church of England retained the Episcopal hierarchy. Calvin himself, however, was not an exclusive Presbyterian. He allowed modifications of the form of government in different countries. He did not object to Episcopacy or the liturgical worship in England; he only protested against the ecclesiastical supremacy of Henry VIII. and a number of abuses.

3. The Autonomy of the Church.-The German Reformers, including Zwingli, yielded too much authority to the civil rulers in matters of religion. Calvin theoretically made the Church independent in her own sphere, and claimed for her the right of self-government. This leads consistently to a separation of Church and State, where the latter is hostile to the former, as was the case in France and to some extent in Scotland. In recent times the Calvinistic Churches, without changing their creed, tend naturally towards complete freedom, from State control. Yet in practice he had no idea of such a separation. He regarded the civil and the spiritual power as the two arms of God’s government in the world, which should co-operate together for the same end-the glory of God and the good of society: the Church by infusing a religious spirit into the State, the State by protecting and promoting the interests of the Church. He established, after the model of the Old Testament, a theocracy at Geneva, and governed it by tacit consent as long as he lived, presiding over the ’Venerable Company’ of Pastors, and exerting a molding influence upon the civil legislation of the little republic of about 20,000 inhabitants. [SeeNote #877]

Bossuet, Möhler, and other Roman Catholic divines saw in this a return to the hierarchy, with Calvin as its pope. He has sometimes been compared to Hildebrand; and Kampschulte remarks that the dominion of the spiritual sovereignty was more thoroughly carried out in Geneva than by the Gregories and Innocenses in the Middle Ages. But Calvin’s theocracy differed essentially from the Roman Catholic by its popular (though by no means democratic) basis: it was not priestcraft ruling over statecraft, but a self-governing Christian commonwealth. Geneva was an aristocratic republic, ruled by the clergy and the people in orderly representation and friendly co-operation. The highest civil and executive power was lodged in the ’Little Council’ of twenty-four syndics, the highest ecclesiastical power in the ’Consistory,’ composed (at first) of six pastors and double that number of lay-elders. [SeeNote #878]