Caritas in VeritateGeneva had been under the rule of the House of Savoy, but the Genevans successfully overthrew the Savoys and the local bishop-prince of Geneva in the waning years of the 1520's. The Genevans, however, unlike the citizens of Zurich, Bern, Basel, and other cities that became Protestant in the 1520's, were not German-speakers but primarily French-speakers. As such, they did not have close cultural ties with the reformed churches in Germany and Switzerland. The Protestant canton of Bern, however, was determined to see Protestantism spread throughout Switzerland. In 1533, Bern sent Protestant reformers to convert Geneva into a Protestant city; after considerable conflict, Geneva officially became Protestant in 1535.
Calvin, by now a successful lawyer, was invited to Geneva to build the new Reformed church. Calvin's efforts radically changed the face of Protestantism, for he directly addressed issues that early Reformers didn't know how or didn't want to answer.
His most important work involved the organization of church governance and the social organization of the church and the city. He was, in fact, the first major political thinker to model social organization entirely on biblical principles. At first his reforms did not go over well. He addressed the issue of church governance by creating leaders within the new church; he himself developed a catechism designed to impose doctrine on all the members of the church. He and Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) imposed a strict moral code on the citizens of Geneva; this moral code was derived from a literal reading of Christian scriptures. Naturally, the people of Geneva believed that they had thrown away one church only to see it replaced by an identical twin; in particular, they saw Calvin's reforms as imposing a new form of papacy on the people, only with different names and different people.
So the Genevans tossed him out. In early 1538, Calvin and the Protestant reformers were exiled from Geneva...
In 1540 a new crop of city officials in Geneva invited Calvin back to the city. As soon as he arrived he set about revolutionizing Genevan society. His most important innovation was the incorporation of the church into city government; he immediately helped to restructure municipal government so that clergy would be involved in municipal decisions, particularly in disciplining the populace. He imposed a hierarchy on the Genevan church and began a series of statute reforms to impose a strict and uncompromising moral code on the city.
According to Calvin, the church has a role to play with regard to the state. The church is responsible, Calvin believed, to set forth the biblical teaching concerning the state and its function. Yet, and this is basic to Calvin’s thought, the church is not to rule the state. Calvin believed in a theocracy, not an ecclesiocracy. Both the rulers of the church and the civil magistrates are directly responsible to God for their actions, but they do not rule over each other. The church may admonish the magistrate as to what God’s law says, but cannot determine how that law is to be applied in matters of civil jurisdiction. The magistrate may advise the church concerning matters relating to civil affairs, but cannot force the church to conform to civil rules in its teachings, worship, or government. In this, Calvin laid down very clearly the principle of the separation of the functions of church and state. They are related and mutually supportive, but also independent of each other. This means, if the state attempts to interfere in the operation of the church or seeks to restrict its spiritual work, the church has the right and duty to disobey, although it will have to suffer the consequences of such disobedience.
At the same time, Calvin believed that the church’s form of government was to be fundamentally democratic. In this way it served as a pattern for the state to imitate. He did not believe that ministers and other church officials should be imposed on the church by the civil government or by a small group of wealthy or aristocratic individuals. Instead, he believed that ministers, elders, and deacons should be appointed by the people of the church as a whole.
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Reid regards John Calvin as one of influential founders of modern democracy.
What do you think?
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George Tyrrell and Catholic ModernismThe strong points of Reformed Theology are at the same time her weaknesses. In order to become fit for the 21st century in the common house of ecumenical theology and in the universal house of humankind and the earth, it seems necessary to reformulate the strength of the Reformed Tradition. This cannot mean adapting our tradition to the others or integrating our originality into what is common to all, but to find our own profile in new communities of Christianity and humankind. “If two are saying the same, one is superfluous,” says an old Russian proverb. It is not the intention of ecumenical community and interreligious dialogue to make each other superfluous. The difference is interesting.
Since John Calvin and Theodore of Beza, the founder of the reformed orthodoxy in the 17th century, “Calvinism” is famous on the one hand and notoriously accused on the other hand for the doctrine of double predestination: Humanity is divided into the elected here and the rejected there. God is totally free to choose whomever he wants and to reject whomever he doesn’t want. Both serve the glorification of his majesty, and who can argue with the sublimity of the infinite God?
The belief in divine election was and is indeed the strength of Reformed faith. It gave believers an invincible certainty in their faith to know that one is not only loved by God, and not only justified by the grace of Christ and sanctified by the inspiration of the holy Spirit of God, but also elected by the will of God. From this belief in the divine election follows the trust in the divine perseverance through the ups and downs of personal life until the final redemption: I shall not fall and nobody and nothing can tear me out of the hands of God. God is faithful to his election, Christ has prayed for me “that my faith shall not fail" (Luke 22:32), the divine seed of the Holy Spirit in my heart will not die. This belief was the power of resistance in persecutions, i.e. of the Huguenots in France and Reformed Christians in the Netherlands. Marie Durand was incarcerated in the Tour de la Constance in Aigues-Mortes in Southern France for thirty-eight years, sustaining and exhorting her companions in captivity for the sake of their faith, and here she made her famous inscription in the stone “Register.”
But does this strength of belief in one's divine election mean that the rest of humankind is lost and damned to eternity as the crowd of corruption, the massa perditionis as Augustine called them? Must we tell the rest of the world: “According to the Bible and our belief those who do not believe in Christ will perish?” as the president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches Choan-Seng Sonq from Taiwan asked? There are always two different explanations of the simple fact that one and the same Gospel provokes belief in one, and disbelief in others. It is either due to the will of God or of human beings. Because believers confess that they owe their faith to the grace of God, they see in unbelief the disgrace of God. Since they feel in their faith “elected,” they can see in unbelievers only “rejected” people. The other explanation refers to the free choice of human will: Those who decided for Christ see heaven as their eternal future, and for those who decide against Christ they see only hell as their future—or more recently “total nonbeing.” The result of the view believers have of unbelievers is the same, whether one follows Augustine and Calvin in their doctrine of double predestination, or Pelagius and Erasmus in their doctrine of the double end of human free choice.
I think it is not characteristic of the Christian Gospel to confront people with the statement, “You belong to the crowd of the condemned and your future is hell.” It was terrible to see in the movie “Breaking the Waves” a Calvinistic pastor burying a person having lost faith with the words, “We now hand you over to hell.” It is certainly not in the Spirit of God the creator of everything to condemn 95 percent of the people he has created in his image, and it is not in accordance with Christ to limit salvation to 144,000 elected only, for whom he died. We need no theological explanation for the existence of unbelievers or people of another faith. Our only answer to the rejection of the Gospel is preaching and explaining the Gospel to unbelievers and people of other faiths.
Faith is not only human trust in God, but also and in the first place God's faithfulness. It is in this sense that I take every unbeliever as a person in whom God is trusting, in whom God is present and for whom God is waiting. God believes in every human person. This can be called “objective faith” (Christoph Blumhardt).
It was Karl Barth who—following Blumhardt—gave us an ingenious christological reformulation of the Reformed doctrine of double predestination (Church Dogmatics II/2). The sequence of his argument is this: 1. Before God elects or rejects anybody, God determines himself to be the God of the people: “I shall be your God and you shall be my people,” is the covenant-formula of Israel. This can be called the self-election of God. 2. In the passion and Crucifixion of Christ, God has put his righteous condemnation of sin, evil and death on his own Son. Between Gethsemene and Golgatha Jesus suffered hell and eternal death for all of us, when he cried out: “My God, why have you forsaken me?” 3. With Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead, hell and eternal death are therefore overcome. The election of grace is revealed: “Hell, where is your victory!” (1 Cor. 15:55). Grace flowing out of the resurrected Christ is pure grace and as such unconditional and also universal, all-embracing and excluding no one. This is the content of the Gospel and there is no terror in the doctrine of double predestination anymore.
“The doctrine of election is the sum of the Gospel because of all words that can be said or heard it is the best: that God elects man; that God is for man too the One who loves in freedom,” said Karl Barth in § 32 of his Church Dogmatics (trans. is from Bromiley ed.). Why is this so? Because “God took upon himself the condemnation of sinful men with all consequences, and elected man to participate in his eternal glory (§ 33).” Is Barth teaching “double predestination?” Yes! But in a new dialectical form: God took the condemnation upon himself in order to embrace all in his election of grace. This is the new dialectical form of the old doctrine of “double predestination.”
Of course, this new formulation is not an explanation of the fact that some believe in the Gospel and others not. But do we really need a theological explanation of this fact, or can we best answer the fact that there are unbelievers with a new and better witness to the Gospel that God loves them with grace and is carrying all their sins and sufferings for them? Another question is whether universalism is the result of this reformulation. The answer is “No,” because we are witnesses of the Gospel not judges in the final judgment of God. Whether God will in the end embrace all with his transforming grace is His sake, ours is the witness of the Gospel to everybody. But if somebody dies in unbelief, is he then out, or is there hope also for him? The answer is: Our means of preaching and praying come to an end with death, but not Christ's power, because he was resurrected and has his possibilities with the dead, preaching the Gospel in the world of the dead. There is, therefore, no reason and no right for us to condemn and exclude anyone, living or dead. We are not the judges of faith, but the servants of joy.
PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, SPRING/SUMMER 2001, VOL. 2, #2.
Calvin’s understanding of God is fundamentally social and socializing. Within the trinity, the Spirit is the relational bond that unites the Father and Son. It is also the ordering and vivifying power within the creation. Chung writes, “The Spirit, which Calvin stressed in trinitarian context, is the fountain and source of all creature’s lives. God poured life into creatures and sustains their lives through divine power. All living things are in the power of the Spirit” (18). The same relationality that the Spirit manifests within the Godhead overflows into the Spirit’s role in the creation.
In human beings, the Spirit is not only the source of life, but also the communicator of new life. The Spirit engrafts Christians into Christ. According to Dr. Chung, Calvin understands “union with Christ pneumatologically” (44). Without the work of the Spirit, Christ’s benefits would not be available to human beings. The spirit effectuates both justification and sanctification, pressing humanity back toward the order and vitality of the creation they had abandoned and betrayed.
The relational and dynamic nature of Calvin’s theology is most apparent in Chung’s discussion of the relationship of the Spirit to the law and the church. The law provides the basic structure of the cosmos. It communicates the natural law, setting out our obligations toward both God and our fellow creatures. Yet, as scripture is barren without the inspiration of the Spirit, so the law is powerless without it. The Spirit illumines the dynamic purpose and provides the inner meaning of the law, which may be summarized simply as love. Revealing the connection between Calvin’s understanding of law and Spirit, Chung shows that, for Calvin, the law is dynamic and relational rather than static and legalistic.
The church, also, exists only by power of the Spirit. According to Calvin, it is the Spirit that knits the church into the body of Christ, and in the Lord’s Supper it is the Spirit that brings Christians into the presence of Christ. Moreover, connecting the work of the Spirit in creation with the role of the Spirit in the church, Chung argues that, for Calvin, “the church has the task to constitute a new society, i.e., to regenerate society” (106). Therefore, in the chapter on the church, Chung also examines economic and political ethics. In each case, he presents Calvin as an advocate of solidarity and community. Economic and political life are spiritually significant in the sense that they move us toward or away from proper relationship with God and one another.
In the end, this volume not only presents a sympathetic and enlightening view of Calvin’s thought seen through the lens of pneumatology, it also recovers an understanding of spirituality that is prone to neither individualism nor sentimentality. Chung notes that, when dealing with Calvin’s thought, “it is necessary to recognize and to investigate spiritual experience, not only in terms of the individual, religious dimension, i.e., the so-called interior life, but also in terms of its integration with the historical, social, and political realms of human life, i.e., outward life” (3). From this perspective, spirituality and social ethics cannot be divorced because the Spirit is the dynamic, ordering force at the heart of the creation and the transformative, humanizing power in the heart of the believer.
Dr. Chung offers a timely book that contributes to our understanding of the relationship between spirituality and social ethics through a close reading of Calvin’s theology. The book is difficult to read, partly because English is the author’s second language. It is probably not accessible to the average undergraduate or even seminarian. The effort, however, will reward the persistent reader.
Timothy Beach-Verhey
Adjunct Professor of Religion, Davidson College
Davidson, NC
PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, SPRING/SUMMER 2003, VOL. 3, #2.
Born July 10, 1509 in Noyon, France, Jean Calvin was raised in a staunch Roman Catholic family. The local bishop employed Calvin's father as an administrator in the town's cathedral. The father, in turn, wanted John to become a priest. Because of close ties with the bishop and his noble family, John's playmates and classmates in Noyon (and later in Paris) were aristocratic and culturally influential in his early life.
At the age of 14 Calvin went to Paris to study at the College de Marche in preparation for university study. His studies consisted of seven subjects: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Toward the end of 1523 Calvin transferred to the more famous College Montaigu. While in Paris he changed his name to its Latin form, Ioannis Calvinus, which in French became Jean Calvin. During this time, Calvin's education was paid for in part by income from a couple of small parishes. So although the new theological teachings of individuals like Luther and Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples were spreading throughout Paris, Calvin was closely tied to the Roman Church. However, by 1527 Calvin had developed friendships with individuals who were reform-minded. These contacts set the stage for Calvin's eventual switch to the Reformed faith. Also, at this time Calvin's father advised him to study law rather than theology.
By 1528 Calvin moved to Orleans to study civil law. The following years found Calvin studying in various places and under various scholars, as he received a humanist education. By 1532 Calvin finished his law studies and also published his first book, a commentary on De Clementia by the Roman philosopher, Seneca. The following year Calvin fled Paris because of contacts with individuals who through lectures and writings opposed the Roman Catholic Church. It is thought that in 1533 Calvin experienced the sudden and unexpected conversion that he writes about in his foreword to his commentary on the Psalms.
For the next three years, Calvin lived in various places outside of France under various names. He studied on his own, preached, and began work on his first edition of the Institutes—an instant best seller. By 1536 Calvin had disengaged himself from the Roman Catholic Church and made plans to permanently leave France and go to Strasbourg. However, war had broken out between Francis I and Charles V, so Calvin decided to make a one-night detour to Geneva.
But Calvin's fame in Geneva preceded him. Farel, a local reformer, invited him to stay in Geneva and threatened him with God's anger if he did not. Thus began a long, difficult, yet ultimately fruitful relationship with that city. He began as a lecturer and preacher, but by 1538 was asked to leave because of theological conflicts. He went to Strasbourg until 1541. His stay there as a pastor to French refugees was so peaceful and happy that when in 1541 the Council of Geneva requested that he return to Geneva, he was emotionally torn. He wanted to stay in Strasbourg but felt a responsibility to return to Geneva. He did so and remained in Geneva until his death May 27, 1564. Those years were filled with lecturing, preaching, and the writing of commentaries, treatises, and various editions of the Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Additional reading
The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition
By Richard A. Muller.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000Calvin: an Introduction to His Thought
By T.H.L. Parker
Louisville, KY: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1995The Writings of John Calvin — an Introductory Guide
By W. de Greef
Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994Calvin: Origins and Development of His Religious Thought
By Francois Wendel
Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997, c1963John Calvin — a Biography
By T.H.L. Parker
Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975. [out-of-print]
The occasion of John Calvin's 500th birthday has spawned several books on the much discussed, less understood pillar of the Protestant Reformation. Interest in the Genevan pastor and theologian has surged of late, yet even many of his devoted followers are more familiar with caricatures than history. Westminster Seminary California president and professor of church history W. Robert Godfrey seeks to counter this problem with a new popular-level biography, John Calvin: Pilgrim and Pastor. He was interviewed by CT editor at large Collin Hansen.
Why did you organize your biography around the themes of "pilgrim" and "pastor"?
Many approach Calvin first of all as a theologian, and he certainly was a great theologian. But his theology emerged out of his own spiritual journey and struggles. In the first part of the book I focus on that spiritual pilgrimage of Calvin, because his experience and his reading of the Bible are critical to understanding his vision of Christianity. In the second part of the book, I follow his pastoral career because he regarded his calling as primarily that of pastor. His work as theologian and biblical commentator really served his work as pastor. Organizing the book as I did also allowed me to try to integrate Calvin's life with his thought more than most books do. We have biographies of Calvin that contain little theology and we have introductions to his theology that have little of his life. I have tried to provide an introduction to both and to show how interrelated they are.
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In “Clash of the Manuscripts: Goliath and the Hebrew text of the Old Testament,” which appeared on pages 33–35 of the May–June issue of Bible Study Magazine, Dr. Michael Heiser discusses two textual problems that have bearing on the height and death of Goliath. Looking at all of the data, Dr. Heiser shows how to reconcile the conflicting sources. To read article click below
At the height of the swine flu pandemic this spring, when the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was recommending that schools with cases of H1N1 be closed for 14 days and Mexico was still on lockdown, the epidemiology community already suspected the world wasn't ending. Why? The numbers came in: case fatality rate (how many infected people are dying) and replication rate (how many others an infected person will transmit the illness to — "R-zero," in disease-speak). H1N1 had an RØ of about 1.3, high enough to spread the virus but low enough that a strong isolation program could break its back. Its case fatality rate was a wussy 1.9 percent in Mexico and 0.1 percent worldwide. By comparison, the 1918 Spanish flu had an RØ of 2.7 and a case fatality rate of up to 5 percent, making it far more deadly. A real apocalypse, like the killer flu in The Stand — Stephen King's opus of epidemiologic eschatology — would be off the chart, with an RØ of 5 to 6 and a case fatality rate of 99 percent. So, don't panic ... unless H1N1 surges this fall. Where did we leave that hand sanitizer, again?
The military historian Barry Strauss has taught for many years at Cornell University, where he directs the Program on Freedom and Free Societies. Among his recent books are The Trojan War: A New History and The Battle of Salamis. (He's also written a memoir, Rowing Against the Current: Learning to Scull at Forty.) Don Yerxa talked with Strauss about his new book, The Spartacus War, published in March by Simon & Schuster.
Ring. Pause. Ring. Pause. Ring. Pause. During a retreat at Thich Nhat Hahn’s Plum Village in France, I learned how to use everyday sounds to practice returning my attention to the present moment. When the telephone would ring during a community meal, everyone on retreat stopped whatever we were doing – we held our forks in mid-bite and ended conversation mid-sentence. The dining hall became silent while the telephone rang three times. On the fourth ring, a Vietnamese Buddhist nun on staff would pick up the telephone, “Bonjour,” and then everyone would start chatting and eating again. The telephone rang frequently, and randomly, so we had plenty of opportunity to learn the rhythm of being in silence together for short, sweet moments of rest.
The simple spiritual practice of using a sound to gently return focus to God’s presence in our lives has more than spiritual advantages. Our minds benefit from a discipline of taking regular breaks from thinking. My shoulders and neck relax when I intentionally practice resting for a minute before resuming whatever tasks compete for my next action.
I recently installed a FREE meditation timer for the computer that also serves as a reminder to return to restful, centered silence. The ability to set the meditation timer with a random chime allows me to spiritually, mentally, and bodily practice resting during the many hours I spend online. The random chime announces it’s time to stop typing, breathe, relax my shoulders, readjust my posture, and thank God for the present moment.
To download the meditation timer, visit the FREE Download page of the Web site in the Resource section. Follow the installation instructions based on whether you have a PC or Mac.
Of the 12 million people living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries who will die within 3 years without immediate access to affordable antiretroviral medicines, only 4 million were receiving treatment at the end of 2008. Access to a much broader list of essential medicines (those defined as essential for health by national governments or the World Health Organization, or WHO) is equally dismal. Recent WHO studies found that public pharmacies in developing countries had only one-third of essential medicines available onsite, and the private pharmacies had only two-thirds of medicines available. End prices were 2.5 and 6.5 times international reference prices at public and private pharmacies, respectively
Many factors contribute to a lack of access to existing medicines in developing countries: tattered health systems, insufficient numbers of health workers, weak regulatory regimes, and poor procurement and distribution systems. Other conditions—import duties and taxes, mark-ups throughout the distribution chain, and even corruption and product diversion—coalesce to produce high drug prices. Weak research and development (R&D) capacity and limited investment in R&D combine to restrict research on neglected diseases in developing countries. But clearly one of the factors most implicated in unavailability (and unaffordability) of medicines in developing countries is the current intellectual property regime—a regime that allows proprietary drug companies with intellectual property monopolies to charge high prices and maximize profit by the sale of medicines that only rich and well-insured people can afford while simultaneously deprioritizing R&D into products that poor people need.
