John Calvin studied law in France before he became famous as a Reformation theologian. He loved the Old Testament, especially the first five books, the Torah, which are often called “the Law” or “the Law of Moses”. Calvin thought that the whole story of God’s plan to redeem the world through Christ could be found in those Books of the Law. Calvin’s training as a lawyer also influenced the name he chose to give to his most famous book. The introduction to Roman law read by law students was called the Institutes of Justinian. Calvin called his introduction to theology the Institutes of Christian Religion.[1] Like Aquinas, however, Calvin was a careful commentator on Scripture. He intended the Institutes of Christian Religion to be read alongside and not instead of his biblical commentaries. If you do pick up one of Calvin’s commentaries, you will be surprised how readable they are even today.

Calvin reflected carefully on what the Law of Moses teaches about God’s purposes and God’s grace. He saw the Law of Moses as setting out God’s design for a people who were both a religious community and a political entity. He thought that the Law of Moses was therefore an important source for discerning the attitudes and standards of behaviour God wanted from the Church and the standards of behaviour God wanted enforced in society. As to the latter, there are several important points to make.

First, as we saw in the last blog post, the tendency of Lutheran thought was to leave it up to rulers to decide how to police society. Calvin, by contrast, believed that the Church had an important role in advising secular rulers what standards of behaviour should be enforced. He addressed his Institutes of Christian Religion to the French king, Francis I, in the hope that the king would understand the teachings of the Reformers but also including advice about how to run his kingdom.

Second, precisely because the Law of Moses was given to a people who had not experienced the filling of the Holy Spirit, Calvin thought that the Law of Moses was the main biblical source for how far God’s standards could be imposed on society at large. For example, if the Law of Moses permitted divorce (albeit in certain limited circumstances), secular law must also do so in order to avoid imposing unrealistic standards.

Third, although Calvin, in common with the consensus among Catholic and Protestant theologians, placed the Ten Commandments at the heart of the Law of Moses, he saw that the Law of Moses as a whole was not just about the “Thou shalt nots” of the Commandments but also about the social justice of the rules making provision for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. As he wrote in his Commentary on Psalm 82:3–4, “A just and well-regulated government will be distinguished for maintaining the rights of the poor and afflicted.” For Calvin, this meant not only protecting the poor against violence and exploitation but also about government building schools, hospitals, and poorhouses.

Calvin saw the duties of secular rulers as including upholding the common peace and safety by protecting innocence, modesty, honour and tranquillity, and by providing for the poor and the needy.  Calvin understood all these duties as expressions of love. Therefore rulers had the scope to design rules which were most beneficial, when judged by the criterion of love. It is in Calvin’s thought that the Christian origins of the welfare state are to be found.

Fourth, despite Calvin’s very high regard for the Law of Moses, he did not see it as a blueprint to be copied but as a paradigm to be adapted to local circumstances. He concluded that although the Law of Moses was a helpful guide to God’s desires for the role of law in social life, it was not to be applied rigidly. Instead, Christian rulers should draw inspiration from the natural law, Law of Moses and in particular from the Ten Commandments, which illustrate what it means to love God with our all our heart and to love our neighbours as ourselves. How this is worked out in practice will vary according to time, place, and circumstances (Institutes of Christian Religion (1559) IV.20.15-16).

Calvin envisaged significant overlap in the responsibilities of Church and Government, or to use his terminology the Ministers and the Magistrates. The Church was called not only to preach the gospel and to administer the sacraments but also exercise church discipline and to care for the poor. Calvin did not see a distinction between public morality and social welfare. Morality was to be taught by the Churches and enforced by the government.  However, government’s role was restricted to interpersonal justice and external morality.  Some sins lay beyond the jurisdiction of even the godly magistrate. 

The Church was responsible for its own doctrine and internal affairs but, what Calvin did permit, however, was that secular government should have a large role in protecting the true Church.  Thus, it was the responsibility of secular government “to foster and maintain the external worship of God, to defend sound doctrine and the condition of the church” as well as “to form our manners to civil justice, to conciliate us to each other, to cherish common peace and tranquillity.” (Institutes of Christian Religion (1559) III.19.2). This meant that governments should take action against Sabbath-breaking, heresy, and blasphemy.

So sure was Calvin that secular rulers had a commission from God to enforce both tables of the Ten Commandments that he wrote: “That [the duty of magistrates] extends to both tables of the law, did Scripture not teach, we might learn from profane writers; for no man has discoursed of the duty of magistrates, the enacting of laws, and the common weal, without beginning with religion and divine worship” (Institutes of Christian Religion (1559) IV.20.9).

Calvin’s vision was for a unitary state, subject to two authorities: the authority of the magistrates and the authority of the Church. In Geneva, the magistrates and the Church coordinated their power through the Consistory. The Consistory was a body of 24 men, twelve of whom were pastors and twelve of whom were elected laymen. It decided cases brought to it, the majority of which related to sexual, marital, and family matters.

As well as sitting as one of the twelve pastors, and as their moderator, Calvin also had a tremendous influence over Geneva both as a law-drafter and as a judge. He drafted over 100 laws on marriage, children, social welfare, public morality and education among other topics, he sat as a judge deciding cases, and he issued formal legal opinions (consilia) to those who sought his advice on specific legal questions. Nonetheless, Calvin was not the sole actor in Geneva. Those who accuse him of acting in ways comparable to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran usually point to the execution of Michael Servetus for heresy. In fact, Servetus had originally been arrested by Catholic authorities in Vienne. Once he escaped, he was condemned to death by those authorities, who relied on letters Servetus had written to Calvin as part of the evidence in their case. When Servetus was discovered in Geneva, he was arrested and tried by the authorities there, who sentenced him to death by burning. Calvin’s principal involvement in the case was to attempt, unsuccessfully, to have the death sentence carried out by decapitation (which would have been quicker and far less painful).[2]

Although Calvin agreed with Luther that the Church and the secular rulers had distinct callings and roles, he placed greater emphasis on the responsibility of secular rulers for social justice. Calvin’s immersion in the Law and the Prophets led him to highlight the extent to which God desires to see justice done in society. In his lectures on chapter 18 of the book of Ezekiel, Calvin said: “To do judgment and justice is nothing else than to abstain from all injury by cultivating good faith and equity with our neighbours: then to defend all good causes, and to take the innocent under our patronage when we see them unjustly injured and oppressed”.

In the long run, Luther and Calvin’s ideas led in various different directions in terms of the relationship between Church and State. Although Calvin himself urged obedience even to bad kings (Institutes of Christian Religion (1559) IV.20.26-30), this was subject to two caveats. First, lesser magistrates could take action to prevent kings acting tyrannously (the situation which played in France). Second, although it was the duty of rulers to enforce true Christian religion, subjects’ duties to God meant that they must resist any attempt by rulers to enforce false religion (Institutes of Christian Religion (1559) IV.20.3; Lecture Daniel 6:22). Individual responsibility for serving God faithfully therefore trumped the duty of obedience to rulers. In this way, Calvin’s theology opened the door to freedom of religion.

Later Calvinists (dealing with the consequences of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in France and the revolt of the Dutch Provinces against Spanish rule) developed a theology which led to drastic action being taken if the secular rulers failed in or stepped outside their God-given tasks, not only in respect of the First Table but also the Second Table of the Ten Commandments. We saw in our last blog how Lutheran Denmark declared an absolute monarchy in 1662. In England and Scotland, Calvinists formed significant parts of the armies which rebelled against King Charles I in 1642, defeated him, and executed him in 1649. Calvin’s ideas not only emphasised the responsibility of government to care for the poor, he also inspired a new conception of rights and duties which would provides the basic framework for the development of democracy.

[1] Calvin issued several editions of his Institutes of Christian Religion during his lifetime: 1536 (in Latin), 1541 (in French), 1559 (in Latin), 1560 (in French).

[2] For more detail, see John Witte, The Reformation of Rights : Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 67-70, 89-102.