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Oil and Vinegar: Calvin on Church Discipline

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Robert White
Robert White
Affiliation:
Department of French Studies, University of Sydney, N.S.W. 2006, Australia
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Extract

Despite the excessive claims sometimes made for the unity and consistency of Calvin's thought, there is no evidence to suggest that he ever varied his views on the distinctive marks of the church. From the first edition of the Institute to the last, the formula remains unchanged: ‘Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists.’ It has long been recognized that the notion of the two marks of the church is not original to Calvin, but derives from the Augsburg Confession of 1530, in which the faithful teaching of the gospel and the proper administration of the sacraments are said to designate the assembly of all believers (art. 7). Like Luther and Melanchthon, but unlike the framers of the Scots and Belgic Confessions, the French Reformer does not make discipline an explicit mark of the church. Nevertheless, so central an element is it in his ecclesiology that it is always found in the closest relationship with Word and sacraments. The Word is not only to be preached but ‘reverently heard’; it is a ‘royal sceptre’ to which all hearts and minds are to be brought in willing submission. Similarly the sacraments are, through the Spirit, manifest signs of God's work within us, ‘softening the stubbornness of our heart, and composing it to that obedience which it owes the Word of the Lord’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , February 1985 , pp. 25 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1985

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References

1 Institutes of the Christian Religion IV. 1.9, ed. McNeill, J. T., tr. F. L. Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960, 2 vols.)Google Scholar.

2 Inst. III.20.42; IV.1.10. Caswell, R. N. aptly defines discipline as ‘that activity which mediates between the ecclesia docens and the ecclesia discens’ (‘Calvin's View of Ecclesiastical Discipline’, in John Calvin, ed. Duffield, G. E., Appleford, Berks.: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1966, pp. 210–226)Google Scholar.

3 Inst. IV.14.10.

4 Short Treatise against the Anabaptists, in J. Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia (= CO), ed. Baum, Cunitz and Reuss, (Brunswick/Berlin, 1863–1900) 7, 68Google Scholar.

5 Inst. IV.10.27.

6 Institution of the Christian Religion (text of 1536), ed. and tr. Battles, F. L. (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975), p. 83Google Scholar. Cf. Inst. IV. 12.5.

7 ibid., pp. 197–8. Cf. Inst. IV. 11.2.

8 ibid. Compare Calvin's exegesis of Matt. 16.19 in the 1536 Institute (pp. 195–7; Inst. IV. 11.1).

9 ibid., pp. 83–4. As we shall see, from 1541 onwards excommunication was invoked against heretics in the Genevan church, and the Communion liturgy of 1542 contained a special formula to this effect. See further Harkness, Georgia, John Calvin: the Man and his Ethics (N.Y.: H. Holt & Co., 1931), pp. 105–112Google Scholar.

10 ibid., pp. 81–2, 84. As Emile Doumergue observes, without this ‘judgment of love’ (in respect of both morals and doctrine), the church as a visible institution could not exist (Jean Calvin: les hommes et les choses de son temps, Lausanne: G. Bridel, 1899–1927, Vol. 5, p. 41).

11 ibid., p. 84.

12 ibid., pp. 78, 82. Compare Ganoczy, Alexandre, Calvin, théologien de l'Eglise et du ministère (Paris: Ed. du Cerf, , 1964), pp. 190–191Google Scholar. On the relationship between the church visible and invisible, see Lecerf, Auguste, ‘La Doctrine de l'Eglise dans Calvin’, in Etudes calvinistes (Neuchâtel: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1949), pp. 55–68Google Scholar.

13 ‘Articles concerning the Organization of the Church’, in Calvin, , Theological Treatises, tr. Reid, J. K. S. (London: S. C. M., 1954), p. 51Google Scholar. The catalogue is not exhaustive. Compare the list of offences in the ‘Confession of Faith’, ibid., pp. 31–2, and in the Instruction in Faith, tr. P. T. Fuhrmann (London: Lutterworth Press, 1949), p. 75.

14 Articles, pp. 52–3.

15 ibid.

16 Instruction in Faith, pp. 72–3, 76; ‘Confession of Faith’, p. 32.

17 Articles, p. 52. The need to keep the Lord's Supper from being profaned is justified by reference to 1 Cor. 11.27–29 (ibid., p. 50). It is in keeping with Calvin's high view of the sacrament, which is given to believers that they might become ‘members of Christ's flesh’, ‘one body with him’ (Comm. 1 Cor. 11.24; Inst. IV.17.11). See, on this question, Wallace, R. S., Calvin's Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1953). PP. 142–166Google Scholar.

18 Inst. IV. 12.5 (text of 1539). Cf. Instruction in Faith, p. 75 (‘As the church is the body of Christ, she must not be polluted and contaminated by such stinking and rotten members’), and Articles, p. 51.

19 Inst. IV.12.10.

20 Inst. IV.20.4; Comm. Rom. 12.8 (1540), in Calvin's Commentaries, ed. D. W., & Torrance, T. F. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1959–1972): Romans, p. 270Google Scholar.

21 Inst. IV. 1.13–17, 20–21, 23–29. On the Anabaptist doctrine of moral perfection, see Davis, K. R., Anabaptism and Asceticism (Scottdale, Penna.: Herald Press, 1974), pp. 135–196Google Scholar. Calvin's reaction is discussed by Balke, W., Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans, 1981), pp. 115–121, 165–8, 192–3, 223–8Google Scholar.

22 Inst. IV.1.13.

23 Inst. IV. 12.10 (text of 1539; the definitive Latin text of 1559 is shorter and less warm in tone).

24 Colladon, N., Vie de Calvin, CO 21, 64Google Scholar.

25 ‘Draft Ecclesiastical Ordinances’, in Calvin, , Theological Treatises, pp. 63–64, 69–70Google Scholar. The Ordinances as finally adopted by the councils differ in several respects from the draft.

26 ibid., pp. 60–1. The Ordinances further prescribe a weekly meeting of pastors where mutual exhortation and, if necessary, admonition were to be practised.

27 ibid., pp. 70–1.

28 Details in Doumergue, op. cit., Vol. 5, pp. 172–84, and in François Wendel, Calvin (London: Collins, 1963), pp. 72–4, 98–100, 106.

29 Inst. IV.12.1.

30 Inst. IV.12.3. Cf. Comm. Matt. 18.15 (A Harmony of the Gospels, 1555), and the curious argument in the Geneva Catechism of 1545 (Theological Treatises, p. 139), where Judas' admission to the Last Supper is justified on the grounds that ‘his impiety was still secret…. For though it was not concealed from Christ, yet it had not come to light and to the knowledge of men.’

31 Inst. IV.12.4.

32 Inst. IV.12.8, 11. Cf. Augustine, Against the Letter of Parmenianus II. 1.3. It is instructive to compare such a text with the image of Calvin as an unbending legalist.

33 Comm. Matt. 18.16 (1555). Cf. Inst. IV.8.15; IV.11.1 (texts of 1559), and the remarks of Maruyama, Tadataka, The Ecclesiology of Theodore Beza (Geneva: Droz, 1978), p. 100, note 108Google Scholar.

34 Inst. IV.12.7. The two orders of elders are described in Inst. IV.4.1 and IV.11.6, and again in Comm. 1 Cor. 12.28 (1546), 1 Tim. 5.1 (1548).

35 The distinction between power and authority goes back at least to Bucer (T. Maruyama, op. cit., pp. 29–30, 95–6).

36 Doumergue, op. cit., Vol. 5, pp. 203–15.

37 See Monter, E. W., ‘The Consistory of Geneva, 1559–1569’, Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 38 (1976), pp. 467–484Google Scholar. A contrasting view is offered by Kingdon, R. M., ‘The Control of Morals in Calvin's Geneva’, in The Social History of the Reformation, ed. Buck, L. P. and Zophy, J. W. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1972), pp. 3–16Google Scholar.

38 On the question of influences, see Strohl, Henry, La Pensée de la Réforme (Neuchâtel: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1951), pp. 173–224Google Scholar; Courvoisier, Jaques, La Notion d'église chez Bucer (Paris: Alcan, 1933), pp. 25–32, 97–115Google Scholar; Rupp, Gordon, ‘Oecolampadius’ in Patterns of Reformation (London: Epworth Press, 1969), pp. 37–46Google Scholar; Davis, K. R., ‘No Discipline, no Church: an Anabaptist Contribution to the Reformed Tradition’, Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982), pp. 43–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Sermon on 2 Tim. 2.16–18 (CO 54, 158).

40 Sermon on 2 Tim. 3.16–17 (CO 54, 291–2).

41 Comm. Acts 8.22 (Calvin's Commentaries: Acts 1–13, p. 240.

42 Short Treatise against the Anabaptists (CO 7, 74). Calvin's criticism appears to be aimed at the strict avoidance (‘shunning’ or Meidung) practised by the Dutch Anabaptists, rather than at the more lenient methods of the Swiss and South German brethren.

43 The Necessity of Reforming the Church (1544), in Tracts and Treatises, tr. Beveridge, H. (repr. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1958), Vol. 1, pp. 205–206Google Scholar.

44 Caswell (art. cit., p. 217) wrongly supposes that Calvin's practice in Strasbourg of interviewing intending communicants was continued in Geneva. Nor does the sermon on 1 Cor. 11.26–29 which he cites as evidence (CO 49, 808–11) speak of clerical as well as self-examination. The ‘double examination’ referred to in the text is the believer's own scrutiny of his faith and his works.

45 Short Treatise on the Lord's Supper (1541), in Theological Treatises, p. 154.

46 Inst. IV. 12.10 (text of 1539).

47 Sermon on Gal. 6.1–2 (CO 51, 62). The image recurs in Coram. Gal. 6.1, where Calvin affirms that rebuke may be pressed to the point of discourtesy, ‘but the vinegar must be tempered with oil’.

48 Inst. IV. 12.10; similarly IV.11.2 (text of 1536).