Calvinism (idea)

Through the doctrine of double predestination Calvin denies Martin Luther's doctrine of justification by faith. If you are saved or damned regardless of your life no matter how much you have faith you will not be saved by having greater faith.

However while faith does not lead to salvation, salvation leads to faith. This sort of logic is key to understanding why those who are saved, the elect, lead good lives. With all good deeds or moral choices it can be said that the elect will always make the right choice since they are elect, it is in their nature to do so.

Unfortunately this leads to some problems with free will. This argument would seemingly negate free will as if you are elect you will only make good moral choices. However Calvin contested this. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1537 he states:

Now when I assert that the will, being deprived of its liberty, is necessarily drawn or led into evil, I should wonder if anyone considered it as a harsh expression, since it has nothing in it absurd, nor is it unsanctioned by the custom of good men. It offends those who know not how to distinguish between necessity and compulsion. But if anyone should ask them whether God is not necessarily good, and whether the devil is not necessarily evil, what answer will they make? For there is such a close connection between the goodness of God and His divinity that His deity is not more necessary than His goodness. But the devil is by his fall so alienated from communion with all that is good that he can do nothing but what is evil. But if anyone should sacrilegiously object that little praise is due to God for His goodness, which He is constrained (forced) to preserve, shall we not readily reply that His inability to do evil arises from His infinite goodness and not from the impulse of violence? Therefore if a necessity of doing well impairs not the liberty of the divine will in doing well if the devil, who cannot but do evil, nevertheless sins voluntarily; who then will assert that man sins less voluntarily, because he is under a necessity of sinning? This necessity Augustine everywhere maintains, and even when he was pressed . . . he confidently expressed himself in these terms: "By means of liberty it came to pass that man fell into sin; but now the penal depravity consequent on it, instead of liberty, has introduced necessity." And whenever the mention of this subject occurs, he hesitates not to speak in this manner of the necessary servitude of sin. We must therefore observe this grand point of distinction, that man, having been corrupted by his fall, sins voluntarily, not with reluctance or constraint; with the strongest propensity of disposition, not with violent coercion; with the bias of his own passions, and not with external compulsion: yet such is the pravity (depravity) of his nature that he cannot be excited and biased to anything but what is evil. . . .

Another feature of election leading to good deeds enable Calvin to lay out some guide lines as to whether a person was elect based on their deeds and words. This is much more closely to related to the Catholic doctrine of good deeds and faith being needed for salvation rather than the sola fide approach of many protestant reformers.

It is this lead to some historians, such as Ozment, arguing that Calvin re-Catholicised the reformation. The physical idea of good deeds made Calvinism more tangible than other protestant faiths.

Calvin's position on the Eucharist was that there was a spiritual presence only. However by the second generation of reform this was no longer such a contentious issue among protestant theologians. The key issue in this second generation of reform was the structure of the church.

Calvin's background as a lawyer meant that his knowledge base and skills were naturally suited to drawing up a clear organisational model for church structure. In his Ecclesiastical Ordinances, 1541, Calvin laid out a clear structure for the Genevan Church.

A key feature of the structure was the consistory. The consistories met weekly to supervise ecclesiastical discipline and the moral life of their part of the city. They could issue a wide range of punishments varying from a friendly warning to excommunication. The powers of the consistory were to become a contentious issue between Calvin and the Town Council.

The consistory encourage informing on any member of society. It was an extremely strict society in which there was little or no definition between religious and criminal misdemeanours, they were considered one and the same. Comparisons have been made between Calvin's consistory and the system on informing on Nazi Germany.

The church and state would be organised into four orders in a horizontal, cellular structure. This was a revolutionary social structure. It also makes clear Calvin's intention to combine as much as possible to powers of church and state.

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Order          | Pastors                   | Elders                | Doctors or Teachers       | Deacons                 |
|               | ('Venerable Company')     |                       |                           |                         |
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|               |                           |                       |                           |                         |
|Main Function  | Preach and administer     | Provide discipline    | Teach the faithful and    | Care for sick and needy |
|               | sacraments.               |                       | remove doctrinal errors   |                         |
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|               |                           |                       |                           |                         |
|Appointment    | Elected by pastors and    | 12 laymen chosen from | Chosen by pastors and     | Elected by councils.    |
|               | confirmed by council.     | councils.  Served for | confirmed by council.     |                         |
|               |                           | one year or more.     |                           |                         |
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|               |                           |                       |                           |                         |
|Duties         | Daily and Sunday services.| Discipline of church  | Professors of New and Old | Charity commissioners.  |
|               | Weekly meeting to study   |                       | testaments.               | Dispense relief to the  |
|               | the bible.                |                       | Schoolmasters for boys and| needy and hospital sick.|
|               | Weekly children's         |                       | girls schools.            |                         |
|               | catechism class.          |                       | Primary school in each    |                         |
|               | Oversee discipline in     |                       | parish.                   |                         |
|               | the community through     |                       |                           |                         |
|               | consistory.               |                       |                           |                         |
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Calvin's time in Geneva can been seen in two distinct periods. His early influence during 1536-38 and his struggle for control 1541-1555.

When Calvin arrived in Geneva in 1536 he immediately began to preach and publicise his plans for reform. He presented his ideas to the town council and won support for his ideas. However the citizens of Geneva had recently won their freedom from their religious overlord, the Bishop of Geneva, and were not keen to gain a new set of religious obligations. There was extensive and well organised opposition to Calvin which came to a head in 1538 when he was forced into exile.

When Calvin was invited to return to Geneva in 1541 he was able to achieve more success. His Ecclesiastical Ordinances were made law only a few months after his return. For the next fourteen years numerous political battles ensued as Calvin attempted to gain control of Geneva. Originally the council made it clear that Calvin had no actual power in Geneva, especially as a foreigner who did have the vote. However they recognised Calvin's influence over the Venerable company of Pastors and the Consistory. He was allowed some freedom on the basis that he didn't interfere with the civil administration of the city.

The prominent political families of Geneva resented the great influence that Calvin, a French refugee, held over their city. They attempted to ensure that the consistories powers were limited and the main battle was over the consistory's right to excommunicate. However Calvin's skilful political manoeuvrings gained the consistory this right and helped him to avoid being pulled down.

Calvin also managed to dispose of a number of individual opponents:

1544 - Sebastian Castellio was forced out of Geneva for denying the divine inspiration of the song of songs.

1547 - Jacque Gruet accused of writing threats against Calvin. He was sentenced to death by the civil authorities.

1553 - Michael Servetus was arrested and prosecuted in the civil courts on four counts of heresy. He was found guilty and burnt, Calvin is alleged to have pled for leniency - beheading!

A more serious opposition movement was that of the Libertine group headed by Ami Perrin, leader of the city militia. In 1553 Perrin became a syndic, as he had done in 1538 when Calvin had been ejected. The faction deliberately committed acts to offend the consistory. Perrin was worried that the large number of refugees in the city would attract attention to Geneva, particularly from the Holy Roman Empire, and result in a loss of independence.

However in 1555 the council were aware of a growing financial crisis. They decided to explore new ways of raising capital. A large number of French merchants and aristocrats had sought refuge in Geneva and had been granted the status of habitant (the status with the least rights, they could not vote and most refugees were given this status). The council decided to raise money by charging these nobles a fee to become bourgeois. This would give them a higher status but the council appear to have overlooked that it would also give them the right to vote. The majority of these new bourgeois had fled to Geneva to be able to be at the centre of Calvinism and to practise their Calvinist faith.

When the next election took place the new synod was completely pro-Calvin and so Ami Perrin was forced out. With the election of the new synod Calvin had complete control over Geneva and could then concentrate on exporting his faith to his homeland, France.

Calvin began setting up schools to train French missionaries to sneak back into France and spread Calvinism or support already established congregations. His efforts were astonishingly successful and sewed the seeds for the French Wars of Religion. Eventually France was divided into separate Calvinist and Catholic areas. However in this settlement lay the eventual of Calvinism, no country could tolerate such a division for long and the larger Catholic areas won out.

In Switzerland other cantons were initially unwilling accept Calvinism for political reasons. However Calvin reached an agreement with Bullinger, Zwingli's successor in Zurich, and the result was the Zurich consensus, 1549. This showed how flexible Calvinism could be when God's cause required it. By the end of the 16th Century much of Switzerland had accepted the Consensus.

In Germany Calvinism failed to shake the supremacy of Lutheranism. However it did achieve one major success in 1541 when Frederick III elector Palatine adopted Calvinist principles. His city of Hiedelberg became a major centre of missionary work in Germany. Xenophobia played a key part in explaining the lack of enthusiasm for Calvinism in Germany.

In the Southern Netherlands much of the population spoke French and had been heavily influenced by German Protestantism. There had been persistent persecution of Protestantism since the 1520s with a Dutch Inquisition and anti-heresy laws (the Edict of Blood). Come nobility convert to Calvinism and the Spanish reaction threatens their freedoms. They revolt as a result.

Calvinism is still active today in the form the Christian Reformed Church, Reformed Church of America, Church of Scotland, Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, Baptism. Although these faiths no dot adhere exactly to 16th Century Calvinism they are largely based on his doctrines.