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Calvin and the Reformation: The Political Education of Protestantism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Sheldon S. Wolin
Sheldon S. Wolin
Affiliation:
University of California (Berkeley)
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Extract

The purpose of this essay is to draw attention to two aspects of the political ideas of the sixteenth century Reformation which were important to the development of the Western tradition of political theory. First, like all great transformations, the Reformation stimulated the rethinking of much that had been taken for granted. In terms of political ideas, this centered around a developing crisis in the concept of order and in the Western traditions of civility. The criticism of the papacy by the early reformers had really amounted to a demand for the liberation of the individual believer from a mass of institutional controls and traditional restraints which hitherto had governed his behavior. The medieval church had been many things, and among them, a system of governance. It had sought, not always successfully, to control the conduct of its members through a definite code of discipline, to bind them to unity through emotional as well as material commitments, and to direct the whole religious endeavor through an institutionalized power structure as impressive as any the world had seen. In essence, the Church had provided a rationalized set of restraints designed to mould human behavior to accord with a certain image. To condemn it as the agent of the Antichrist was to work towards the release of human behavior from the order which had formed it. This liberating tendency was encouraged by one of the great ideas of the early reformers, the conception of the church as a fellowship bound together by the ties of faith and united in a common quest for salvation. But the Genossenschaft-idea lacked the complementary notion of the church as a corpus regens, a corporate society welded together by a viable structure of power. The inference remaining was that men could be fashioned to live in an orderly community without the serious and consistent application of force.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1957 , pp. 428 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1957

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References

1 Works of Martin Luther, ed. Jacobs, Charles M., 6 vols. (Philadelphia, 1915–1932), Vol. 5, p. 81Google Scholar, hereafter cited as Works.

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5 “For unless we are united with all the other members under Christ our Head, we can have no hope of the future inheritance …. But all the elect of God are so connected with each other in Christ, that as they depend upon one head, so they grow up together as into one body, compacted together like members of the same body; being made truly one, as living by one faith, hope, and charity, through the same Divine Spirit, being called not only to the same inheritance of eternal life, but also to a participation of one God and Christ … the saints are united in the fellowship of Christ on this condition, that whatever benefits God confers upon them, they should mutually communicate to each other.” Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 271–72 (IV, i, 2–3).

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21 Inst., IV, x, 27Google Scholar. Here I have followed the translation of Henry Beveridge in his edition, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1953), Vol. 2, p. 434.

22 Inst., Vol. 2, p. 439Google Scholar (IV, xi, 1), Beveridge translation. Calvin consciously sought to widen the power of jurisdiction by tracing it back to the Jewish Sanhedrin and thereby capitalizing on the extensive authority of that body.

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26 De Civitate Dei, Lib. XVIII, cap. 51.

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29 In Doumergue's magisterial work on Calvin there is a spirited defense of the thesis that Calvin's theory of the church embodied a strong “representative” element. Yet Doumergue's argument is weakened by his failure to ask: what and whom do the officers of the church represent? He is content, instead, to indicate the several passages where Calvin provided for congregational approval of certain church officers. The difficulty here is that election is not the same as representation, especially when it is not accompanied by a power of recall. Hence even though Calvin declared that the ministers constituted a corpus ecclesiae repraesentans (Opera, Vol. 14, p. 681Google Scholar), his meaning was that the ministers represented the purposes of the church as defined by Scripture. He did not mean that the ministers represented the wills or separate interests of the members of the congregation, hence Doumergue's attempt to relate the Calvinist theory of the church to modern representative government is not convincing. See his discussion, Vol. 5, pp. 158–62.

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44 Inst., Vol. 2, p. 772Google Scholar (IV, xx, 2). I have slightly changed the translation; see the text in Opera, Vol. 2, p. 1094Google Scholar. In connection with this point it is interesting to note how Calvin reversed the usual argument and asserted that obedience to human superiors helped to habituate men to obedience to God. Inst., Vol. 2, p. 433Google Scholar (II, viii, 35).

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53 Inst., Vol. 1, p. 306Google Scholar (II, ii, 13). The translation has been slightly changed; see the text in Opera, Vol. 2, p. 197Google Scholar.

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55 Inst., Vol. 2, p. 789Google Scholar (IV, xx. 16).

56 Inst., Vol. 2, p. 787Google Scholar (IV, xx, 14). The phrase is derived from Cicero, , De Legibus, IIIGoogle Scholar, 1.2 and is related to the classical tradition of the ruler as lex animata; see Goodenough, Erwin R., “The Political Philosophy of Hellenistic Kingship,” Yale Classical Studies, Vol. 1 (1928), p. 55 ff.Google Scholar

57 See Mesnard, op. cit., pp. 285–89; Chenevière, op. cit., p. 298.

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60 Ibid., p. 480.

61 Commentary on the Book of Psalms, trans. Anderson, James, 5 vols. (Edinburgh, 1845–1849), Vol. 3, p. 106Google Scholar; Inst., Vol. 2, pp. 801–2Google Scholar (IV, xx, 27).

62 Given the lofty ends served by allegiance—“God had not intended men to live pêle-mêle” (Opera, Vol. 51, p. 800Google Scholar)—it is not surprising to find Calvin hostile to contract theory. This was not owing to any desire on his part to release rulers from their obligations, but rather to his belief that social duties ought not to be the subject of a crude bartering arrangement. Inst., Vol. 2, pp. 801–802Google Scholar (IV, xx, 27).

63 Inst., Vol. 2, p. 805Google Scholar (IV, xx, 32).

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67 Inst., Vol. 2, p. 804Google Scholar (IV, xx, 31); Opera, Vol. 4, p. 1160Google Scholar.

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73 Commentaries on Romans, p. 459.

74 Inst., Vol. 2, p. 272Google Scholar (IV, i, 3).

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