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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2022
In this paper, I argue that John Calvin's problematic grant of magisterial authority to enforce proper religious worship contradicts much of his own political theology and in fact depends upon an ambiguity in his natural law theory. I demonstrate this ambiguity by examining the differing claims in the Institutes regarding which of the tables of the Decalogue are accessible through natural law reasoning. I also consider the significance of this ambiguity for Calvin's political theology. I then suggest a partial retrieval of Calvin's political theology which is both more compelling to many contemporary Christians and in a better alignment with much of Calvin's own political theory.
1 For an overview of the contours of the debate, see Klempa, William, ‘John Calvin and Natural Law’, in George, Timothy (ed.), John Calvin and the Church: A Prism of Reform (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), pp. 72–95Google Scholar. Susan Shreiner also provides a similarly helpful map of the conceptual landscape in ‘Calvin's Use of Natural Law’, in Michael Cromartie (ed.), A Preserving Grace (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1997), pp. 51–76. For an analysis of Calvin's natural law theory placed in the context of his medieval and Roman predecessors, see Backus, Irene, ‘Calvin's Concept of Natural and Roman Law’, Calvin Journal of Theology 38 (2003), pp. 7–26Google Scholar. For more recent analysis see, Herdt, Jennifer A., ‘Calvin's Legacy for Contemporary Reformed Natural Law’, Scottish Journal of Theology 67/4 (Nov. 2014), pp. 414–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; VanDrunen, David, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 67–119Google Scholar; Lee, Constance Y., ‘The Spark that Still Shines’, Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 8/3 (2019), pp. 615–40Google Scholar.
2 See e.g. Hesselink, John, ‘Calvin on the Kingdom of Christ’, in Van der Borght, E. A. J. G. (ed.), Religion without Ulterior Motive (Amsterdam: Brill, 2006), pp. 139–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hudson, Winthrop, ‘Democratic Freedom and Religious Faith in the Reformed Tradition’, Church History 15/3 (Sept. 1946), pp. 177–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walzer, Michael, The Revolution of the Saints (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 31–45Google Scholar; Turchetti, Mario, ‘The Contribution of Calvin and Calvinism to the Birth of Modern Democracy’, in Hirzell, Martin Ernst and Sallmann, Martin (eds), John Calvin's Impact on Church and Society: 1509–2009 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 192–217Google Scholar; Beach-Verhey, Timothy A., ‘Calvinist Resources for Contemporary American Political Life: A Critique of Michael Walzer's Revolution of the Saints’, Journal of Religious Ethics 37/3 (Sept. 2009), pp. 473–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pellerin, Daniel, ‘Calvin: Militant or Man of Peace?’, Review of Politics 65/1 (Winter 2003), pp. 35–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stevenson, William R. Jr., Sovereign Grace: The Place and Significance of Christian Freedom in John Calvin's Political Thought (Oxford: OUP, 1999)Google Scholar; Tuininga, Matthew J., ‘The Latent Pluralism of Calvin's Political Theology’, Political Theology 19/4 (2018), pp. 300–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, vol. 2, trans. Olive Wyon (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1949), p. 613.
4 Ibid., p. 615.
5 Allen Verhey, God and the Good, ed. Clifton Orlebeke (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1979), p. 91.
6 John McNeil, ‘The Democratic Element in Calvin's Thought’, Church History 18/3 (Sept. 1949), pp. 153–71; see esp. p. 157, where McNeill, putting Calvin's opus in historical context, writes ‘Whereas in his ecclesiology, he opposes medievalism, in his political theory the first enemy is Anabaptism.’ For a further discussion on Calvin's development away from religious tolerance as he grew older due to his fear that the Protestant Reformation itself was in danger from Anabaptist rejection of civil authority, see e.g. Christoph Strohm, ‘Calvin and Religious Tolerance’, in Hirzell and Sallmann, Calvin's Impact, pp. 175–91.
7 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), IV.xx.3.
8 Ibid., IV.xx.10.
9 Ibid., IV.xx.3.
10 For a careful working out of Calvin's two kingdom theology and an explanation of its relationship to natural law, see VanDrunen, Natural Law, pp. 67–119.
11 Calvin, Institutes, IV.xx.16. For further discussion of Calvin's inclusion of pagan rulers in having this authority, see McNeil, ‘Democratic Element’, p. 157.
12 Calvin, Institutes, IV.xx.16.
13 Ibid., IV.xx.9.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 David Little, ‘Calvin and the Prospects for a Christian Theory of Natural Law’, in Gene Outka and Paul Ramsey (eds), Norm and Context in Christian Ethics (Canterbury: SCM-Canterbury Press, 1969), p. 181.
17 Calvin, Institutes, II.viii.1. For secondary literature identifying Calvin's view of the natural law with both tables of the Decalogue, see Little, ‘Calvin and Prospects’, p. 181; Beach-Verhey, ‘Calvinist Resources’, p. 482; Klempa, ‘John Calvin and Natural Law’, pp. 79–80. Steinmetz traces this claim that natural law permits access to both tables of the commandments from Luther. David Steinmetz, Calvin in Context (Oxford: OUP, 1995), p. 61.
18 Calvin, II.viii.1. McNeil writes that the Decalogue is, for Calvin, the ‘authoritative witness to the natural law’. John T. McNeil, ‘Natural Law in the Teaching of the Reformers’, Journal of Religion 26/3 (July 1946), p. 182.
19 Calvin, Institutes, IV.xx.16.
20 Ibid., II.viii.1.
21 Ibid., IV.xx.2.
22 Ibid., IV.xx.4.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., IV.xx.2.
25 Ibid., IV.xx.3.
26 Ibid., IV.xx.2.
27 Ibid.
28 Shreiner, ‘Calvin's Use of Natural Law’, p. 69.
29 Calvin, Institutes, IV.xx.2.
30 Calvin, Institutes, II.viii.11.
31 For examples of secondary literature which present this understanding, see e.g. Herdt, ‘Calvin's Legacy’, pp. 419–20; Backus, ‘Calvin's Concept’, p. 14; Shreiner, ‘Calvin's Use of Natural Law’, p. 60.
32 Calvin, Institutes, II.ii.12, IIII.iii.12.
33 Steinmetz identifies a distinction between ‘what is offered’ to humans by God – natural knowledge – and ‘what is received’: some sort of knowledge of God's existence, which he believes informs much of Calvin's natural theology. Steinmetz, Calvin in Context, p. 32.
34 Calvin, Institutes, III.iii.12.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid., II.ii.12.
38 Ibid.
39 Paul Helm, John Calvin's Ideas (Oxford: OUP, 2004), p. 371.
40 Calvin, Institutes, II.ii.13.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., II.ii.12.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid., II.ii.13.
46 For a more general overview of the place of the Decalogue in Calvin's thought, especially as it applies to Christians, see Susan S. Shreiner, ‘John Calvin’, in Jeffrey P. Greenman and Timothy Larsen (eds), The Decalogue through the Centuries: From Hebrew Scripture through Benedict XVI (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2012), pp. 119–34.
47 In the Institutes, Calvin exegetes the Exodus version of the Decalogue. He identifies Exodus 20:2 as the Preface and Exodus 20:3 as the First Commandment. Calvin, Institutes, II.viii.16.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid., II.viii.15.
50 Ibid., II.ii.23.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid., II.ii.24.
54 Ibid., II.ii.20.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 John Calvin, The Four Last Books of Moses: A Harmony, with Commentaries, vol. 3 of Calvin's Commentaries, 22 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), p. 19.
58 Calvin, Institutes, IV.xx.1.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid., IV.xx.9.
61 Ibid.
62 Shreiner, ‘Calvin's Use of Natural Law’, p. 95.
63 Ibid.
64 Calvin, Institutes, I.vi.2.
65 Ibid., II.ii.22.
66 Ibid., II.ii.23.
67 Ibid., II.ii.24. For a further discussion of Calvin's understanding of the disparate effects of sin on the knowledge of the first and second tables see François Wendell, Calvin: The Origin and Development of his Religious Thought, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Harper & Row, 1950), pp. 206–7.
68 John Calvin, The Four Last Books of Moses: A Harmony, with Commentaries, p. 7.
69 Calvin, Institutes, II.ii.13.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 Calvin, Institutes, II.ii.13; Calvin's argument in his Romans commentary is similar. Here he does point out that the Gentiles knew that God should be worshipped, just as they knew that justice was owed to other people. However, simply knowing that God should be worshipped does not provide the concrete knowledge to ensure that God is worshipped properly. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, trans. John Owen (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), pp. 97–8.
73 Calvin, Institutes, II.ii.13.
74 Ibid., II.ii.14.
75 Ibid., II.ii.13.
76 Ibid., II.ii.15.
77 Ibid., I.iii.2.
78 Ibid., I.iv.3.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid., I.iv.3.
81 Paul Helm, ‘John Calvin, the Sensus Divinitatis, and the Noetic Effects of Sin’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43 (1998), p. 88.
82 Calvin, Institutes, I.iii.1.
83 Ibid., I.v.4.
84 Ibid., I.iii.2.
85 Helm, ‘John Calvin and Noetic Effects’, p. 93.
86 Calvin, Institutes, I.iii.1.
87 Ibid., I.iv.4.
88 Ibid., I.vii.6.
89 See Calvin's discussion of this passage in ibid., II.viii.52.
90 Ibid., II.ii.22.
91 Ibid., I.iii.1.
92 Helm, ‘John Calvin and Noetic Effects’, p. 97.
93 Calvin, Institutes, IV.xx.10. Calvin believes that this neglect of the care for the oppressed is the inevitable results of the unrealistic Anabaptist assumptions regarding the possibility of moral perfection in this life.
94 Tuiningia makes a similar argument for Calvin's potential political pluralism drawing upon his commentaries on Genesis and Daniel. Tuiningia, ‘Latent Pluralism’, p. 304. See also Wendell, Calvin: Origin and Development, p. 193. ‘After having depicted the spiritual misery of fallen man in the most somber colors, Calvin now proceeds to paint a much less pessimistic picture of man dealing with his earthly interests. The humanist who was still sleeping within him suddenly awakens, to our surprise especially when it comes to lauding the achievement of pagan political philosophers.’
95 John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses called Genesis, vol. 2, trans. John King (Edinburgh: Calvinist Translation Society, 1801), p. 318.
96 Ibid., p. 321.
97 Ibid., p. 323.
98 Ibid.
99 Ibid., p. 326.
100 Ibid., p. 327.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid.
104 Ibid., p. 328.
105 I am grateful to Gerald McKenny for his assistance in both the inspiration and subsequent revisions of this paper, as well as his consistent encouragement and mentorship. I would also like to thank Richard Entingh for his work as a research assistant and skilled editor, as well as the helpful anonymous reviewers for the Scottish Journal of Theology.