Reflecting on John Calvin on the

Reflecting on John Calvin
on the 500^th anniversary of his birth

The Legacy of John Calvin
for a World He Could Never Have Imagined

by the Rev. Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick, President, World Alliance of Reformed Churches [posted here 4-16-09]

July 10, 2009, will be John Calvin’s 500th birthday. For many it is not a very big thing. For others it brings up connections that we would just as soon forget – such as the (erroneous) connection between Calvinism and modern capitalism and the sad chapter of Calvin and Servetus in Geneva. But for Reformed Christians it has a much deeper significance – and a great promise for the renewal of our church and our witness in the 21st century.

John Calvin, a native of France, a Reformer of Geneva, is truly a son of the world. This movement of Reformation that started among the French and the Swiss has literally spread to the four corners of the earth! As we enter this year of jubilee, we do not celebrate or seek to replicate everything that Calvin did, but rather we seek to make come alive his vision and legacy:

	A vision of the priesthood of all believers, where everybody counts and where mutual respect and shared leadership should be the norm in churches and societies,
	A vision of the sovereignty of God over all the world, which calls all of us to work for a world filled with justice, compassion and peace,
	A vision of the creation as God’s gift, which needs to be respected and nurtured for future generations,
	A vision of the grace of God available through faith in Jesus Christ to every human being on the face of the earth.

Calvin’s Geneva was a very different world from that of the 21st century. However, he too came on the stage of human history at a time of deep turmoil and change, and the wisdom he shared is remarkably contemporary in our time.

At a time when the law was being used to convict of sin or control one another, Calvin offered a vision of “the third use of law” in which the law would serve not as a weapon for one group against another but as a moral compass and a gift for the redeemed to live a more holy and righteous life.

At a time of both clergy dominance and anti-clericalism, Calvin offered a pattern of church order that broke down the barriers between clergy and lay with multiple offices in the church (pastors, doctors, elders, deacons) and where some might be clergy and some lay but where all are called of God and share in the ordering of church life.

At a time of theocratic states and of states wanting to privatize religion, Calvin developed a political order where church and state are separate but are to respect one another and each be obedient to the will of God.

At a time when religion and privilege went hand in hand, Calvin upheld the sovereignty of God and the dignity of the creation and of each person created in God’s image. Justice and respect for all was a hallmark of Calvin’s revolution.

At a time of biblical fundamentalism and biblical despisers, Calvin took seriously the bible as a light to our path and an instrument to lead us to Jesus Christ as Word of God.

At a time of ethnic conflict and ethnic cleansing, Calvin led Geneva to become a haven for refugees and immigrants, many of whom would later take this vision of a church and community as one that is “reformed and always being reformed by the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit” to the whole world.

A different time, but a vision that reflects the heart of God’s will for our time – and for all time.

This vision – these dreams – are what we celebrate in the Calvin Jubilee.

There are a number of resources and events to aid us in reclaiming Calvin’s legacy for our time. The World Alliance of Reformed Churches has put out a special study book, The Legacy of John Calvin: Some Actions for Churches in the 21st Century, which is a very helpful resource for local congregations. It focuses on three aspects of Calvin’s legacy, the gift of communion, the passion for social justice and respect for God’s creation, and his warning to stand against violence and destruction.

The Alliance, along with the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches, has set up a special Calvin Jubilee website, www.calvin09.org that is filled with materials and notices of events to make Calvin come alive in our time. The Alliance is also inviting Reformed Christians from around the world to join together in a special Calvin Celebration in Geneva on Pentecost weekend, and the PCUSA has a Calvin Jubilee conference at Montreat from July 8-11, 2009.

Through all these ways – and many more in local congregations – 2009 needs to be a year, not when we try to replicate Calvin and 16th century Geneva, but when we claim the best of Calvin’s legacy to live faithfully in our time. A couple of years ago I was in Mexico City meeting with the presidents of the seminaries related to the National Presbyterian Church in Mexico, and I was amazed at the enthusiasm they had for the Calvin Jubilee. Given that 21st century Mexico is so different from Calvin’s time and reality, I ask them why this enthusiasm. Their response was quick and to the point when they said, “We have no intention of replicating Calvin’s world, but what we desperately need is a Calvinist revolution for Mexico in the 21st century.” Friends, so do we! I encourage all of you to reclaim the best of Calvin’s legacy to live faithfully and justly in our 21st century reality.

Clifton Kirkpatrick
President, World Alliance of Reformed Churches
February 27, 2009

NOTE: Dr. Cliff Kirkpatrick will be leading a seminar co-sponsored by the Witherspoon Society as part of the Peace and Justice at Ghost Ranch, July 27 - August 2, 2009. For more information >>

Commemorating John Calvin —
Halo, Warts, and All

Gene TeSelle, Witherspoon Issues Analyst [posted here 4-16-09]

This year is the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth. There hasn’t been a lot of preparation, or a lot of celebration, but the event is well worth noticing.

The date reminds us that Calvin was a second-generation Protestant, still a child when Luther announced his 95 Theses. That does not mean that he had an easy time of it. In France there were the competing attractions of Renaissance humanism (which was honored) and religious reform (which was opposed), and Bouwsma finds in Calvin an ongoing tension between leisurely exploring the “labyrinth” of nature and culture and countering the “abyss” of sin and disorder through rigid doctrine and authoritarian control.

If Calvin is an ambivalent figure, so are we Presbyterians at the beginning of the third millennium, caught between love and justice, freedom and authority, comprehensiveness and desire for order. Brian Gerrish has always taken pains to remind us that the Reformed tradition is much more than Calvin and Barth. Barth himself noted that the Reformed tradition does not elevate Calvin in the way that the Lutheran tradition elevates Luther to a distinctive status. H. Richard Niebuhr loved to quote Barth’s dictum that “we cannot do with only one church father.” Not even Barth. Not even Calvin.

So let’s take an “on the one hand” and “on the other hand” look at Calvin.

Calvin was an articulate spokesperson for the Reformation, starting soon after his mysterious conversion, probably late in 1533. (He may have thought of himself as specially called, for there is no evidence that he was ordained by anyone else to the ministry, unless his minor orders as a Catholic are to be counted.) By 1536 he had published the first edition of his Institutes as a defense or apologia for the persecuted Protestants in France. It had only six chapters, but they furnished a reliable foundation for the other three editions, and the work has generally been admired for its coherence and comprehensiveness.

He was a loyal ecumenist, who early in his career had cordial contacts with Luther and Melanchthon. Along with Bucer and Melanchthon he took part in dialogues with Catholic reformers in Regensburg (1540-41), looking toward a reforming council. (No one yet thought in terms of permanently divided churches. That would come two decades later.) They knew that it could be a reforming council only if it were within the German Empire, and the Pope undermined their efforts by convening his own Council of Trent in 1545, south of the Alps.

He was an effective (if often acerbic) controversialist, not only defending his own views but challenging others and, when necessary, exacerbating tensions (he usually found it necessary, although he was tolerant of diverse modes of governance among the Reformed churches). When Charles V put forward the “interim” solution of keeping the Mass and bishops while discussion continued, he urged Melanchthon to “spill less ink and more blood.” When some of the French Reformed advocated attending Mass without communing, he condemned them as Nicodemites, improperly trying to keep their relationship with Jesus a secret.

He quickly became a scapegoat or a stumbling block, targeted by both Catholic and Lutheran controversialists (it was a rough-and-tumble age, when every tradition thought that it was the only correct one). They called the Reformed “Calvinists,” and it is a designation that has stuck, not only in popular usage but among historians, since many people find this more understandable than the mysterious label “Reformed.”

Himself an outsider in Geneva, he welcomed exiles from the Interim in Germany (1547-48), from Bloody Mary in England (1553-58), and from other persecutions around Europe. As a result he and Beza helped to shape theology everywhere in the Reformed world, although it should be noted that Bullinger in Zurich was more widely read in some regions and Calvin was not regarded as the authoritative figure that he later became.

Calvin was concerned about the whole gospel. He agreed with the Lutherans that the marks of the true church are the proclamation of the gospel and the right administration of the sacraments, but he (following others before him) added a third mark, discipline in accordance with New Testament principles. And he made much of the “third use of the law” - law not as external command, not as driving sinners to despair, but as guidance to those who are justified and have the freedom of the children of God. (That’s why, in the Heidelberg Catechism, the “law” in the first part is the twin commandment of love for God and neighbor, and the Decalog is placed at the end, as part of thanksgiving.)

Geneva became in many respects a model city, though Calvin had serious conflicts with the “libertine” party. Rousseau, who grew up in Geneva, always had a soft spot in his heart for his native city and regarded it as the ideal community, even defending its prohibition of theatrical entertainment. His contemporary Voltaire, who found refuge there, ungratefully called it a city that knew how to calculate, like money changers, but could not laugh, and where nothing could be sung except the songs of David, under the impression that God liked bad verses.

It was also the city that burned Servetus in 1553. Calvin himself had no political power, and, tempering justice with mercy, he asked the council to change the penalty to decapitation. But he still had a role. Servetus and Calvin had corresponded concerning the Trinity for several decades, and Calvin vowed that if Servetus came to Geneva he would not get out alive. Calvin detected his identity as the author of some heretical writings, and information from Calvin reached the Inquisition in Lyons. (Intelligence networks, then as now, did not always observe the official rules.) Servetus headed toward Italy but, perhaps guided by destiny or a mischievous unconscious, went through Geneva, attended church, and was recognized. Calvin was an expert witness for the prosecution. The other Swiss cities confirmed the condemnation, to maintain the glory of God. Castellio soon published his polemic against Calvin, with the famous observation that “To burn a heretic is not to defend a doctrine but to kill a human being.” Geneva, quicker than some other persecuting powers, erected an expiatory monument in 1903.

We in the Reformed tradition take pride in our system of representative government. In part it comes from Calvin, who found a role for both ruling and teaching elders and did make Geneva an exception to the Swiss pattern of control of the church by city councils, the “Erastian” theory that was the first Reformed approach to church governance and still continues in other Swiss cities (the council in Basel still decides who will be Karl Barth’s successor). He was quite willing to support episcopal governance as it developed in the Reformed churches of England, Poland, and Hungary.

The full presbyterian system was developed by the persecuted or exiled churches of the Netherlands and France. They were the ones who enunciated the principle “no church above any other church, no minister above any other minister,” and the full pyramidal system of “ascending courts,” with all officers elected for fixed terms, was first adopted by the French Reformed in 1559 when they founded an underground church on a national scale. They had probably learned it from the Dominicans, for they and other religious orders had been a vigorous laboratory of self-government during the middle ages.

We in the Reformed tradition also take pride in our tradition of resistance to tyrants, and we like to contrast ourselves with the Lutherans and their tradition of subservience. But it turns out that the Lutherans have priority here. As Quentin Skinner has pointed out, the Lutherans needed to defend their legitimacy within the German Empire, and so they developed both the “constitutionalist” theory that looked to the lower magistrates and the “private right” theory that one may defend oneself against unjust encroachments. In political matters you can’t just act; you have to find good reasons, reasons that might be acknowledged by others.

Then in 1555 Lutheranism came to be tolerated within the Empire. About this time the Marian Exiles in Geneva — John Ponet, Christopher Goodman, John Knox — were motivated to develop the same ideas even further, and more raucously, since they were outside their native lands. Two decades later in France the persecution of Protestants and the rise of royal absolutism led a number of thinkers to develop impressive theories of the mutual responsibilities of ruler and people, buttressed by medieval traditions about rights that limited the power of the ruler.

And so the Reformed tradition came to be the one that encouraged political resistance in Scotland, the Netherlands, and England, not in the form of unlimited revolution but with careful attention to legal arguments. When they overstepped (and they often did), they were corrected by opponents like Grotius and Locke, and thus our modern theories of natural rights and democratic government evolved, sometimes because of, sometimes against, Reformed zealots.

If we today find ourselves puzzled or conflicted, we can find solace in remembering that Calvin and his contemporaries, and the whole Reformed tradition, faced similar puzzlements and conflicts. The answers are to be found not by looking to a single authority but by working through those conflicts — perhaps in debate with others, perhaps in the hurly-burly of political life, and perhaps (most difficult, but also most constructive) in internal conflict with ourselves.