Sovereign Grace: The Place and Significance of Christian Freedom in John Calvin's Political Thought

SOVEREIGN GRACE

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SOVEREIGN GRACE The Place and Significance of Christian Freedom in John Calvin's Political Thought

William R. Stevenson, Jr.

New York Oxford Oxford University Press 1999

Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan

Copyright © 1999 by William R. Stevenson, Jr. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stevenson, William R. Sovereign grace : the place and significance of Christian freedom in John Calvin's political thought / William R. Stevenson, Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-512 506-1

1. Freedom (Theology)—History of doctrines—1i6th century. 2. Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564—Political and social views. I. Tide. BT809.S74 1999 233'. 7'092 -dc21 98-24152

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

[U]nless this freedom be comprehended, neither Christ nor gospel truth, nor inner peace of soul, can be rightly known. Institutes 3.19.1

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PREFACE

y interest in John Calvin's political ideas began to develop in earnest only

M after I came to teach courses in the history of political thought at Calvin

College in fall 1989. Before that time I had not been drawn to study Calvin's writings and as a result knew little about them. That ignorance quickly began to dissipate as I sought to learn more about the Reformed tradition reflected in the educational mission of the college. I began to study John Calvin, that is, to learn more about Calvin College. This book is the best evidence that for me, Calvin's writings have been difficult to put down. Just before the spring semester, 1990, I decided to include in my course in the history of modern political thought the compact John McNeill collection of Calvin's political writings, On God and Political Duty (New York: Macmillan, 1950). As I was reading through that collection, preparing to compose a syllabus, the thought occurred to me that Calvin's essay "On Christian Freedom" might serve as a kind of organizing framework for the course. Thinking about his three "parts" of freedom caused me to consider a categorization of the key modern thinkers according to their views on the sources, content, and goals of human freedom. Somewhat tentatively, I decided to try out this framework on my Calvin undergraduates. They were supportive enough that I determined to solicit from the college some release time to put together for presentation at the 1991 American Political Science Association (APSA) meeting a paper detailing the ways which Calvin's idea of Christian freedom both anticipates and serves as an "antidote" for the primary modern ideas of freedom. At every stage I was encouraged and supported by colleagues, both near and far, and the college administration. Seven years later, that paper has now become a book.

viii PREFACE

Several items regarding my presentation of this argument need early mention. First, I have tried to document my understanding and interpretation of Calvin's political thought with some care. While I have held fast to Calvin's "Christian Freedom," I have concentrated my overall efforts on a close reading of Calvin's entire Institutes, a number of his relevant Commentaries, Letters, and Sermons, and several of his more significant tracts. I have as well tried to read carefully through the relevant secondary literature on Calvin, including the primary biographies and studies of both his political thought and his theology. To gain some historical perspective, I have tried to read broadly in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European history. My goal has thus been to picture Calvin's view of Christian freedom both in its own light and in the light of its wider philosophical and historical context. I do not expect that my goal has been fully accomplished, however. Readers attuned to the scholarly community about which I write are therefore encouraged to examine my findings with a wary eye and to respond as seems appropriate with their own evocations of Calvin's "Christian Freedom." The great reward of my experience so far in struggling with Calvin's ideas has been the hospitality and good graces extended to me by other Calvin scholars. I expect that I will continue to grow in my knowledge of Calvin and Calvinism as such colleagues confront me with the many things I should have taken into account! To invite such scholarly comment will not, I hope, unduly distance my argument from more general readers. Such readers should know that the scholarly apparatus included in the endnotes and bibliography may be safely ignored if they wish only a broad introduction to Calvin's political thinking. Indeed, I have tried to present my argument as much as possible in nontechnical language and without unnecessary scholarly sidetrips. At a number of places it has seemed important to give readers a sense of the particular scholarly controversy at hand, but I have attempted to do this without trying their patience. As a result, readers not drawn to particular scholarly disagreements should feel free to overlook the notes and citations that I have included to support my reading of Calvin. Experienced Calvin scholars will find immediately that my presentation of Calvin's thinking assumes continuity in his various intellectual positions over the period of his mature writing. Although a number would disagree, I believe that such continuity is largely present. No doubt Calvin found himself on many occasions hedging here and elaborating there, but I have found no convincing evidence that—after his conversion to evangelicalism and his first statement of the Reformed perspective in the 1536 Institutes of the Christian Religion—the substance of his theological or political stances changed significantly. This is an arguable point, of course, but I have chosen not to argue it fully here. One last point: After thinking through the matter of gendered pronouns, I have chosen to adopt a posture I believe to be in keeping with Calvin's own understanding. Clearly Calvin does not intend to exclude women from significant places in the community of believers. (One might look specifically at either Institutes 2.13.3 or his commentary on 1 Corinthians 11:7, not to mention Jane Dempsey Douglass's fine work, for evidence of such inclinations.) Yet at the same time, so far as women's places in the political, institutional structures of his day were con-

PREFACE ix

cerned, Calvin patently resembled what Glenn Tinder has labeled a "patriarchal conservative." (Calvin's commentary on Genesis 2:18 and a number of his letters seem to support this conclusion.) My procedure on this matter has therefore been to use gender-neutral language where Calvin clearly intends it, unless I am quoting directly from his work or unless gender-neutral expression competes unfavorably with stylistic flow. In these exceptional cases, I believe the context will make plain Calvin's intent. My debts to others during the time I have worked on this project are huge. Calvin College and its administrative officers have been mainstays of support and encouragement throughout the process. Presidents Anthony Diekema and now Galen Byker; Provosts Gordon Van Harn and now Joel Carpenter; Dean Frank Roberts; and Department Chairs Corwin Smidt and James Penning have trusted my instincts, spoken up on my behalf, and supported at every turn my applications for research aid. I am deeply grateful to them all. The college supported this research with two Summer Research Fellowships (1991 and 1995) and a sabbatical leave (fall 1995). The H. H. Meeter Center for Calvin Studies and the Calvin College Library have made available to me such a wealth of resources that I could find no need to travel abroad to conduct my research. The college is and has been truly blessed by the foresight to assemble its magnificent Calvinism collection and by the diligent efforts of a number of staff members to keep this collection current. For adept and cheerful guidance through this collection, I am grateful to the Meeter Center's former director, Richard C. Gamble; its former administrative aide, Dianne Eves; its current administrative aide, Susan E. Schmurr; its current librarian, Paul Fields; and its ever-present neighbor and well-wisher, Rev. Benjamin Boerkoel. For a critical research leave and designation as a Meeter Center Fellow during the spring semester, 1992, and for an invitation to deliver the spring 1997 Meeter Center lecture, I am grateful as well to the Meeter Center Governing Board. For all those who heard early versions of this argument and responded with detailed and constructive criticisms, I am grateful, too. These include the primary respondent to my paper at the 1991 APSA meeting, James W. Skillen; my former departmental colleague, Luis Lugo; Reformation theologian and former Meeter Center Fellow Ralph Keen; fellow Meeter Center researcher Danny G. Wells; longtime friend Alberto R. Coll; fellow political theorist Paul Marshall; the students in my history of political thought courses over the last several years, especially David Polet and Randall Smit, who helped me through my first attempt at organizing Political Science 306; and the students and faculty in Politics at the Catholic University of America who graciously heard my defense of Calvin's ideas during spring 1992 and responded with helpful criticism and in great good humor. Later versions of the argument also had help. Calvin student and friend Kelly Van Andel carefully copyedited the second full draft of the book, saving me from needless repetition and confusion in the argument's presentation. My colleague John E. Hare of the Calvin Philosophy Department was kind enough to read the penultimate draft, thereby steering my argument away from a number of pitfalls in logic and in clarity. The outside readers consulted by Oxford University Press evaluated the manuscript with care and grace, affording me hope in its value, but

X PREFACE

taking pains to keep me from overstating the import of Calvin's political ideas for our contemporary world. Finally, editors Cynthia Read and Will Moore oversaw with uncommon diligence and sensitivity the study's journey from manuscript to published book. Five people saw me through the entire project, each generously offering his time, his attentiveness to my subject matter, his critical skills, and his indispensable encouragement and goodwill. Without their collective help this project would be in a pitiable state indeed. They are my former teacher and longtime mentor and friend Glenn Tinder, now retired from the University of Massachusetts at Boston; my coworker and instructor in the intricacies of religious language in early modern thought, Joshua Mitchell of Georgetown University; my friend, intellectual clarifier, and cheerful encourager, Jay Budziszewski of the University of Texas at Austin; my student and fellow traveler (who also prepared the index) Michael Wassenaar; and my former dean and current colleague, Reformation historian Frank Roberts. I wish to dedicate this book to the members of my family, Rosemary, Rachael, and Clark, blessed gifts every one; and to Marion Davis Battles—widow of Ford Lewis Battles and accomplished Calvin scholar in her own right—who died suddenly during the preparation of this work but not before she had opened her mind and heart to my quest and made me feel that I was at last right where I belonged. Praise God, from whom all these blessings flow! Grand Rapids, Michigan February 1999

W.R.S.

A NOTE ON SOURCES AND TRANSLATIONS

Calvin's writings, I have relied primarily on the two volume John I T.n examining McNeill edition of the 1559 Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960); the 45 volume Calvin Translation Society edition of Calvin's biblical commentaries (reprinted in 22 vols., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993); the four volume Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet collection of Calvin's letters (reprinted as vols. 4-7 in Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters, 7 vols. [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983]); the Leroy Nixon selections of Calvin's sermons (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950 and 1952); and the Henry Beveridge (reprinted, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958) and Benjamin Farley (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1982) editions of Calvin's tracts and treatises. As necessary, I have checked each of these English translations with Calvin's original Latin or French in the 59 volume loannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia (Brunswick and Berlin, 1863-1900). In checking Ford Lewis Battles's English translation of the 1559 Institutes (ed. McNeill), though, I have relied instead on Richard Wevers's computer search program for the Peter Barth and Wilhelm Niesel edition (Munich: C. Kaiser, 1926—62) of Calvin's last Latin version of his magnum opus. I have listed Wevers's program in the bibliography as John Calvin's Institutes, 1559: Search Routines (Grand Rapids: Digamma, 1993). Endnote 1 of part 1 of the text describes my specific method for citing Calvin's 1559 Institutes as well as that for citing his biblical commentaries, his letters, and his sermons. The most common abbreviations I have used in citing Calvin's works are listed below. For Calvin's commentary on a specific book in the Bible, I have used the form Comm. Gen. 1:1 to, in this case, refer the reader to Calvin's remarks on chapter 1, verse 1 of the Book of Genesis.

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A N O T E ON S O U R C E S AND T R A N S L A T I O N S

Comm. Harm. Evang. Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 3 vols., in Calvin's Commentaries, 45 vols., trans. Calvin Translation Society (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1843—59; reprinted as vols. 16-17, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993). Comm. Harm. Moses Commentaries on the Last Four Books of Moses arranged in the Form of a Harmony, 4 vols., in Calvin's Commentaries, 45 vols., trans. Calvin Translation Society (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1843—59; reprinted as vols. 2-3, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993). Conc. Etern. Predest. Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, trans. J. K. S. Reid (London: James Clarke, 1961). CO Ioannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, 59 vols., ed. Wilhelm Baum, Eduard Cunitz, and Eduard Reuss (Brunswick and Berlin, 1863-1900). Haroutunian Calvin: Commentaries, trans. and ed. Joseph Haroutunian (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1958). Serm. Deut. The Sermons of John Calvin upon the Fifth Booke of Moses Called Deuteronomy, trans. Arthur Golding (London: Henry Middleton, 1583; reprinted, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1965). Serm. job Sermons from Job, sel. and trans. Leroy Nixon (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952). Serm. 2 Sam. Sermons on 2 Samuel, trans. Douglas Kelly (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1992). Suppl. Calv. Supplementa Calviniana; Sermons Inedit, 8 vols., ed. Edwin Milhaupt (Neukirchen Kreis Moers: Neukirchener Verlag der Buchandlung des Erziehungsvereins, 1961- ).

CONTENTS

A Note on Sources and Translations

xi

Introduction: Why Calvin? Why Now? 3 P A R T I:

The Irreducible, yet Partial, Individual 1. The Irreducible Individual 15 2. The Individual as Part of the Whole

P A R T II:

II 37

Corporate Action, but under Judgment 59 3. Action in the World 63 4. Action under Judgment 81

PART III:

Cultural Dissociation and the Tutelage of History 105 5. 6.

Progress and Revolution 109 Historical Pedagogy 131

Conclusion: Freedom as a Woven Cord, Sheathed in Sovereign Grace 149 Notes

153

Bibliography Index

197

183

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SOVEREIGN GRACE

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INTRODUCTION Why Calvin? Why Now?

ach set of readers likely to come across this book on John Calvin's "political" E thought will no doubt look at it by the light of distinct but pressing questions. Readers interested in political thinking but unfamiliar with the full range of Calvin's work will ask whether Calvin really addressed political questions in a deliberate or systematic way such that the body of his answers constitute a novel or at least unusual perspective on politics. Was not Calvin merely a religious figure, concerned only with theological and pastoral issues? At the same time, readers already at home within the field of Calvin studies—and knowing of the close connection for all the Reformation figures between religious and political matters—will accept the topic's legitimacy but may very well question the need for one more book on Calvin's thinking, given the storehouse of scholarly findings already available. Have not the fine studies of Calvin's political ideas by J. W. Allen, John T. McNeill, Sheldon Wolin, Michael Walzer, Harro Hopfl, W. Fred Graham, William J. Bouwsma, and more recently Ralph Hancock, among many others, satisfactorily covered this territory?1 My intent in this study is to address both these questions and by doing so to address both sets of readers. Yes, Calvin had significant and unusual things to say about life in public encounter, things which both anticipate much modern political thinking and serve as important foils to some of modern thinking's broader pretensions. His political ideas, therefore, deserve a wider audience than they have traditionally gotten, especially now that Ralph Hancock—in Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics—has so eloquently appealed to that wider audience in charging that Calvin's ideas are behind modernity's broader pretensions. And no, Calvin's political ideas have yet to be exhaustively mined. Even among Calvin 3

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scholars the temptation has been to categorize Calvin somewhat narrowly, to see him, for example, as either a protoliberal democrat (McNeill), a reckless revolutionary (Walzer), a "constructive" revolutionary (Graham), an unforgiving authoritarian (Allen, Hancock, and, to some extent, Hopfl), an intransigent traditionalist (Wolin), or, interestingly, all of these in separate psychic compartments (Bouwsma). Each characterization is entirely plausible, of course; yet, given the existence of the others, each is also problematic. What are needed, therefore, are not fewer but more attempts at comprehensive and nuanced treatment of Calvin's political ideas. Can Hancock's picture be reconciled with Bouwsrna's, Wolin's with McNeill's, or Walzer's with Hopfl's? If so, how so? This study attempts one such reconciliation by following the stream which flows from Calvin's fascinating short essay, "On Christian Freedom," an essay which constitutes one coherent chapter in book 3 of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, I argue that a full examination of this essay on Christian freedom yields not only a more thorough explication of Calvin's political ideas proper but also a more complete and coherent picture of their theological underpinnings. Treating this short but close-textured essay as a key link between Calvin's theology and his politics opens the door to the possibility that Calvin had a more deliberate, broader, and more extensive view of politics than he is often given credit for having. At the same time, working through the various "parts" to Christian freedom which Calvin identifies in his essay presents to attentive readers not only the various dimensions of his strongly biblical theology but also the biblically inspired notion of God's sovereign grace which weaves them all together. For it is in this essay that readers find not only the "parts" of Calvin's political theology but the whole behind those parts. Between and among the parts, there is tension, even paradox, in Calvin's thinking, but it is the authentic, constructive tension of living the Christian life in the face of a sovereign yet loving divine Creator, Ruler, and Redeemer. To deny or degrade any of the parts is therefore both to miscalculate—even evacuate—their creative tension and to gloss over the larger whole. Starting the analysis in the essay on Christian freedom makes sense on a number of pragmatic counts as well. First, Calvin used this essay to introduce the explicitly political final chapter in his first edition of the Institutes (1536). Yet in later editions he moved it wholesale to conclude his section on the explicitly theological question of faith justification. Calvin's particular transfer of this essay, then, suggests that in his mind the idea of Christian freedom constituted an important link between his theological and political understandings. Moreover, the fact of his wholesale removal of the essay would certainly imply that for Calvin, Christian freedom remained a fully coherent concept, one with its own. distinct contours and bodily integrity. Finally, the essay is one of the few substantial portions of the Institutes that remained undisturbed throughout Calvin's fourteen editions, and many revisions, of his magnum opus. This latter fact surely demonstrates that Calvin's initial expression of the idea of Christian freedom satisfied him to the end, and thus that, in his mind, Christian freedom had a clear and abiding scope, bearing, color, and substance.

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Perhaps the primary reason for concentrating this study on Calvin's idea of Christian freedom concerns the potential this idea has for establishing Calvin as a significant political thinker in his own right. In addition to showing that Christian freedom holds together Calvin's theology and his politics, I argue that his fuller, more nuanced vision of human freedom exposes by comparison the shallow and seemingly truncated ideas found in the major modern thinkers. In this way Calvin's vision might serve as a strong antidote to the more narrow and thus more hollow conceptions we moderns tend to confront. There is an obvious danger in so presenting Calvin's ideas, for the temptation to anachronism is strong. Indeed, historians of the Reformation period are right to remind us that the particular institutional arrangements of that period provide the necessary context even for comprehending Calvin's ideas, much less for comparing those ideas with later thinkers. Any political idea, some would assert, grows out of a particular historical context. Thus it can be understood and evaluated only by acknowledging the boundaries of that context. I am happy to concur with this historian's truth and as a result try to demonstrate in this study not only a sensitivity to Calvin's place and time but as well a realistic awareness of the eccentricities of our own place and time. Without question, there is an important sense in which Calvin's development of a political theory out of his understanding of Christian freedom depends on the language and assumptions of his time. At the same time, however, we are not—because of our chronological bias and perhaps even historical disability—prevented from entering into a "conversation" with Calvin about his fundamental ideas. Our handicap is not as debilitating as that. Calvin assumes throughout his writing and public speaking what no doubt we do as well, that human beings must ever wrestle with certain fundamental questions and problems about their own makeup and about their existential condition. Historical periods may come and go, that is, but the perennial questions remain. We may have to work a bit harder to engage Calvin and other historical figures in conversation about these questions, of course; we may need to peel off the husk of strange assumptions these figures first present to our glance. Yet it is possible to enter into dialogue with these historical aliens in the same way it is possible to enter into communion with geographical and cultural aliens. Would not the results of such conversations be to the advantage of both parties? Certain of the assumptions Calvin makes, for example, may very well enlighten our own search for social and political health. Although we ought not casually accept Calvin's entire political framework, then, we can perhaps learn something by seeing our own starting point reflected in the mirror of his assumptions. To lay out Calvin's vision of freedom is therefore no piddling affair, because for modern political thinkers freedom looks like the quintessential, even foundational, concept. It is this concept, after all, around which thinkers as historically and politically diverse as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, and even Marx organize their thoughts on governmental roles and responsibilities.2 Surely the idea of freedom deserves our full attention. No doubt the modern thinkers who assert freedom do so out of their own particular historical experience, but the fact that they all assert it should cause our collective conceptual antennae to

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quiver. Apparently all these thinkers understand human beings either to be free or to need freedom. In spite of its obvious centrality to modern political understandings, however, there appears to be little agreement on what freedom actually means. Machiavelli, for example, finds freedom to be largely a matter of national self-determination. Hobbes, by contrast, defines it as the mere absence, for "atomistic" individuals, of physical restraint. For Locke, freedom resides in the self-determinative character of "rational" individuals. Rousseau departs from the individualist view to find freedom resulting directly from one's alignment with the unfortunately often provincial "general will." Attempting to transcend Rousseau, but still failing to see the legitimacy of human individuality, Hegel pictures freedom as arising from the selfconscious identification with customs and traditions that have developed historically through the suprahistorical Spirit of Universal Mind. For Marx, Engels, and Lenin, the dominant ideologues of the twentieth century, freedom means a posthistorical liberation from the "false consciousness" imbued through exploitative economic structures and enforced by social and political superstructures. Freedom for these revolutionaries arrives only when the coercive apparatus of government has "withered away."3 The communist Utopia, says Marx in The German Ideology, will then emancipate the human being to "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic" (Tucker, 160). The sheer number of conceptions of freedom even in this short list testifies to the need for deeper analysis. For even if we boil this diversity down to a few primary ideas, and there appear to be at least three, we still see the incompatibility of these primary notions with each other and thereby question the sufficiency of each in the face of ongoing human experience. If, for example, we envision freedom as a matter of individual fulfillment in individual identity and distinctiveness (such as is apparently offered by Hobbes and Locke), we wonder if freedom's communal and historical dimensions ought not to figure in. At the same time, the confining of freedom to the realm of individual choice may ignore our experience of the shallowness of such choice when disconnected from any kind of transcendent pattern. Furthermore, if we envision freedom as perhaps both individual and communal fulfillment, but only within the context of communal identity and sacrifice (such as is apparently offered by Machiavelli and Rousseau), we wonder about the human need to distinguish ourselves as particular persons with particular gifts and talents. We may also bury the possibility of the transhistorical judgment of particular communal norms. Finally, if we invoke the notion of freedom as historical development and thus dialectical fulfillment, within the context of changing sets of political and economic institutions and relationships, but culminating in a particular posthistorical epoch (such as Hegel and Marx apparently offer), we may discard the timeless quality of human experiences of freedom, not to mention arrogantly attribute to ourselves a transhistorical comprehension of which we are no doubt incapable. Interestingly, for the bulk of the twentieth century the battle between the century's two great ideological movements, communism and liberal democracy (both, it seems, claiming residence in the territory of "freedom"), appears to have

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exhibited just the sort of superficiality and insufficiency of understanding I am describing and has thereby demonstrated the need for more subtle and thorough analysis of human freedom. Not only were these twentieth-century antagonists intransigent vis-a-vis each other, they were each also, rather obviously in hindsight, only partially right and as a result—in their presumption, we might say— profoundly wrong. As testified by the eloquent witness of an Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the enforced "community" of Soviet communism did suffocate individuals. At the same time, as testified by the widespread alienation and social breakdown of contemporary American cities, the shallow individualism of much liberal thinking does undermine community. We have all watched as "liberation movements" have sought systematically to coerce individual consciences into lock-step uniformity, and as disciples of "liberty" have praised personal privacy to the point of communal disintegration and near moral anarchy. Do we not look back on a century marked less by liberation than by progressive ideological enslavement, and less by liberty than by growing spiritual despair, even terror? It is therefore my contention that a concentrated study of Calvin's conception of Christian freedom can help us to see what is most problematic about the various modern notions of freedom, namely, their fragmented and thus superficial, even illusionary, character. Diverse and partial notions of human freedom, it seems, vie for supremacy as comprehensive and complete. Simplistic understandings selfrighteously assert moral and political autonomy. In our day, we appear to confront a public sphere within which, to borrow Alasdair Maclntyre's description of our moral predicament, "the language and the appearances of [freedom] persist even though the integral substance of [freedom] has to a large degree been fragmented and then in part destroyed" (After Virtue, 5). My study of Calvin's writing thus attempts to introduce students of modern politics to what I believe to be a much more intricate and comprehensive conception of human freedom. In fact, it turns out that in his anticipation of a number of modern ideas Calvin warns against just the sort of superficiality and fragmentation of freedom the modern age appears to have bequeathed us. He systematically describes three parts of freedom, which correspond quite well to the three primary modern ideas of freedom I described earlier. Significantly, though, Calvin not only indicates, and critiques, the shallow understanding that each particular part might engender, he also demonstrates the interdependence, even coherence, of the parts within the larger context of Christ as God's incarnate Word. One might say, then, that Calvin's conception both anticipates and serves as a needed foil to each of the primary modern ideas of freedom. His portrait aims to account for all three dimensions of human political experience, the individual, the communal, and the historical. My primary goal then is to elucidate for contemporary readers what seems a more satisfactory understanding of freedom than we are otherwise accustomed to behold. My second, but equally important, goal is to indicate to students of Calvin proper that his understanding of Christian freedom is both more significant and more integral to his writing as a whole than is generally appreciated. For example, there is a sense in which the idea of Christian freedom holds coherently together the "two Calvins" which William Bouwsma in his John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century

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Portrait has so exhaustively tried to distinguish. There was indeed both a libertarian and an authoritarian element in Calvin's thinking, but Calvin was no schizophrenic. The larger cohering of these two elements in the sovereign love of God was to Calvin a plain fact of life.4 Indeed, Calvin's idea of Christian freedom works to fill out and explain each of the conflicting portraits of his political thinking to which I have already alluded, as I hope to show. In showcasing the subtlety and creative tension of Calvin's thinking, I realize that I may be risking its practical irrelevance. For as stimulating as Calvin's idea may be to us intellectually, politically it may only work to clog our institutional arteries. Indeed, the problem with any explicit injection of creative tension or paradox into the public realm is the apparent unsuitability of such tension to ordinary policymaking. At some deep level human beings may acknowledge the reality of spiritual paradox, but the Socrates or the Jesus who points it out to them will likely get trampled in the stampede to systematic certainty. It is a rare statesman who can maintain anything like spiritual equilibrium. Yet should the difficulty of the enterprise win the day? Calvin thought not. Again and again he found himself reminding his listeners and his readers that Christian freedom revealed a kind of existential hesitation. The grounding of such freedom in the sovereign love of God in Christ pointed both to the assurance of his love and to the recognition of his sovereign judgment; it recalled to the believer both the potency of grace and the impotency of sin. As a public and prophetic voice, Calvin often found himself in the position described later by the Irishman Edmund Burke. At the end of his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke sought to assure his readers that his opinions "come from one who wishes to preserve consistency, but who would preserve consistency by varying his means to secure the unity of his end, and, when the equipoise of the vessel in which he sails may be endangered by overloading it upon one side, is desirous of carrying the small weight of his reasons to that which may preserve its equipoise" (218). A quick overview of the basic tenets of Calvin's theology would no doubt be in order here, so that his analysis of Christian freedom can be put in philosophical context. For Calvin, the primary reality for human beings is the reality of a sovereign and loving God, one who reveals himself in the patterns and substance of the natural order, in the scriptural accounts as inspired by his Spirit, in the person and earthly ministry of his only begotten son Jesus Christ, and in the spiritual promptings of human conscience. This God is the Creator of all time and space; of all life; of all the beings, both living and nonliving, which function within time and space; of all the mechanisms and patterns of their functioning; and therefore of all humankind and of all moral law. He is as well Ruler and Governor of his creatures and the created order in which he has placed them; he thus sustains and directs his creatures in accordance with his design and plan. As Ruler and Governor of his creation, God is no puppeteer: Human beings have the gift of human will, though due to their own willful pride and its resulting self-imprisonment, one could hardly describe that will as free. Finally, therefore, God determines to serve as the Redeemer of all that his human creatures have perverted by following their

INTRODUCTION 9

own designs rather than his. In and beyond historical time, therefore, and in and through his three Persons, he works by way of both natural and supernatural means to save and restore what he has made, what he clearly loves, indeed treasures. As sovereign, God is his own authority: He is accountable to no person or no principle other than his own will. Yet his will is the will of a righteous but loving, gracious, and long-suffering parent. In nature, in Scripture, and in the person and historical destiny of Jesus Christ he shows both the precision and ferocity of his judgments and the boundlessness of his love. In taking the punishment of human perversion upon his own shoulders Christ simultaneously satisfies God's judgment and personifies his love. It is on account of Christ's atoning sacrifice and the Holy Spirit's redemptive inspiration, then, that Christians live lives that move from heedful guilt to heady gratitude. This rhythmic interplay of guilt and gratitude, growing from recognition of the meritless grace that has issued from a sovereign God, thereby defines the Christian stance, according to Calvin.5 In more practical and immediate terms, living a grateful life in the face of a sovereign God implies recognition and experience of the three-dimensional liberation, even emancipation, from the ordinary institutional structures and expectations that Calvin describes in his pointed essay. Yet at the same time it implies the newly and intimately felt sense of even closer attachment to God and to the very same institutional order he in his providence has ordained for their good. By way of the first dimension of Christian freedom, then, believers are freed as individuals from the curse of punishment aimed at violators of God's moral law. Because they have, individually and as humankind, locked themselves into cages of prideful rebellion against the full majesty of that law, God comes in Christ to pay the price of their imprisonment and to reintegrate them into his sainted community. Their liberation as individuals, then, composes this first dimension of freedom in Christ. For God comes to them in the immediacy of personal faith and subsequent repentance. They now stand as though fully righteous in God's sight. Yet at precisely the same time, they now recognize how beholden they are to the institutional workings of God's persistent love. They experience both a newfound independence in the face of humanly constructed barriers to God and a newly felt dependence on the God who reaches out to them through and around those barriers. Their independence from institutions joins with their dependence on them. Because they are freed individually from the "curse" of God's law, Christians are freed, second, for willful and grateful obedience to the commands of God's law. As a body, they are now spiritually and emotionally equipped to perform what Calvin calls "all the duties of love." They are freed for full service to the loving and ruling God they adore. In political terms, they are freed for world-transforming action as this body of believers. Their freedom blossoms in their losing themselves in the bonds of corporate institutional life. In this way they are electrified, in God's name and through his power, to address the needy and reform the perverse. At the same time, however, they now understand even more poignantly that their actions remain under the omniscient eye of God's righteous judgment. Their energizing gratitude melds with their muzzling recognition of the insidious spell of pride and the terrifying judgment of sovereign God.

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Christians are freed, third, from those culturally idiosyncratic "outward" or "indifferent things" for which Calvin uses the Greek term adiaphora. Because such things as particular ceremony, ritual, or custom are in themselves inessential to salvation, Christians may take or leave them alone. Politically, this third dimension emancipates believers from their particular historical setting, thereby opening their eyes to see God's transhistorical progress in ushering in his final kingdom. Seen narrowly, this third dimension may thus constitute Calvin's most revolutionary teaching. Yet while God's providential tending of his creation points believers to look ahead in time, it points them to look back as well. That God is slowly, deliberately, inexorably restoring his creation is as true as that he is doing so by means of particular historical constraints. What this means is that at the same time Christian believers discover their freedom to move progressively toward the culmination of God's restoration history, they discern anew the grace of their current historical setting: God works progressively through what he has in tradition and ceremony provided. Christian freedom once again means feeling one's way along the delicate interplay between, progressive renewal and attentive inveteracy, in full reliance on God's explicit, though for believers often mysterious, revelation. The strong thread that weaves all of freedom's dimensional strands together is Calvin's biblically grounded notion of sovereign grace. Human confrontation with an all-powerful, all-authoritative, yet all-loving and all-forgiving God yields both a new humility and an energizing gratitude. The God who rules, by inspiration and loving example, quite logically finds followers both willing to judge and willing to withhold judgment, both willing to act and willing to wait, both willing to transform and willing to conserve. In all things they determine to acknowledge both God's perogative and their own crying need. The elements of sovereignty and of grace are both essential to this equation. How could believers follow a God who is not truly Lord of their lives? At the same time, how could believers sacrificially serve a God who is not ultimately about love? Right away, then, Calvin denies the two great truths of modernity: that human beings are their own masters and that the exercise of power is superior to all other motivations. Right away, indeed, Calvin asserts that the myths of power and human mastership are exactly what stand in the way of authentic human living.

Parti

The Irreducible, yet Partial, Individual

hristian freedom's first part, says Calvin, invites "the consciences of believers" to "rise C above and advance beyond the law" (3.19.2, 834).' Thus, on first inspection, Calvin's language seems to have him imparting to Christian individuals an almost radical independence, even autonomy, as to decisions of conscience. Given the early influence of Luther on Calvin's thinking, and Calvin's own personal decision to join the Lutheran reformers, such language ought not to surprise. At least for the Roman church, Calvin does seem to put an uncomfortably strong emphasis on the capabilities and legitimacy of individual conscience. But does Calvin's emphasis on such conscience provide either spiritual or political nourishment to the subsequent rise of classical liberalism? In chapter i, I try to show how the first part of Christian freedom might indeed anticipate liberal individualist notions of political freedom. For Calvin, Christian freedom issues in a new appreciation of human individuality. Through Christ's liberating presence, the individual believer becomes the specific contact point with divine reality. Not surprisingly, then, the moral and political status of the individual believer grows apace. To begin, Calvin understands each human being to be created in the "image and likeness" of God. Even though humankind falls away from God through the sin of Adam and thereby loses close connection with divine reality, it remains linked to God by means of individual conscience. The spark of recognition which conscience provides thus elevates even the sinful human being above all other parts of God's good creation. Yet the real power of individual conscience arises as a result of the restorative power of Christ. Thanks to the mystery of God in Christ "electing" some human beings from among the entire lot, the redeemed and restored Christian believer manifests an even more refined human individuality. Ironically, for Calvin, it is precisely by way of the mystery of God's election that the individual attracts notice. Because of God's secrecy in electing, his elect are not iden-

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INDIVIDUAL

tifiable by means of the ordinary indicators. They could be literally anyone, of any social status or political rank. What identifying marks they have concern spiritual progress more than worldly power. It would therefore not be difficult to cull from Calvin's description of the mature believer an individual human being fully sufficient, through God's gracious interposition, to judge the institutions surrounding him or her and to rate them on the divine scale. Calvin speaks, for example, of a limited right on the part of the believer to interpret Scripture and to judge Roman church councils. The political implications of giving such place to individuals in Calvin's time would be plain. Christian freedom as the health and strength of individual conscience would point to the characteristic developments of seventeenth-century liberalism. And, indeed, Calvin does appear to subscribe to a number of liberalism's tenets. The idea of human institutions resting on an explicit "contract," the so-called privatization of religious concerns, the idea of political equality, the capacity of ordinary individuals to distinguish legitimate from tyrannical governments—all these liberal principles can be found, in at least a superficial way, in Calvin's writings. However, although Calvin does see the individual believer as, in an important sense, irreducible—in the sense of basic, integral, unshrinkable—he insists on holding that irreducibility of individual conscience in continuous tension with human partiality and finitudc. Calvin's individual, in other words, while potentially independent of human social structures, is far from autonomous. Although freedom measures itself against individuals, individuals do not wholly contain freedom. Calvin thus manages to hold in creative tension an elemental individual, as the primary building block in the world's moral order, with a partial and incomplete individual, dependent for the very working of his conscience on a moral order reflected in but transcending the world. In chapter 2, then, I uncover the obverse of Christian freedom's first part. Although human beings, even in a state of sin, are God's image bearers and thereby attuned to his law by means of conscience, their self-capture in sin imprisons them more extensively and more exhaustively than their now feeble reason and will can fully comprehend. As a result, the liberating work of Christ and the Spirit presents Christian believers as much with a picture of their pitiful dependence on that work as with one of their footloose sufficiency in the face of it. After all, the regenerating work which God through Christ carries on in the believer can progress only in the full recognition by the believer of his radical insufficiency. Christian freedom may liberate from guilt but not from spiritual and emotional need. Indeed, for the consciously needy individual it does not fully liberate from guilt. Journeying through the stages of mortification, vivification, and sanctification, believers grow even more deeply in the awareness of their personal inadequacy and their consequent need for divine guidance and support. The major part of faith, after all, is the recognition of one's need for something or someone outside oneself, and the Christian faith begins with an acute and aching sense of one's own sin. Following Augustine, Calvin finds human sin to be the most palpable and painful personal rebellion against God and his law for humankind. Sin is both deeply seated and universally engrained. Worse, it is manifest self' enslavement. Freedom in Christ opens the believer's eyes to the breadth, depth, and persistence of his own sin, and by so doing it plants in that believer an even more wide-ranging cognizance of his need for specific and continuous guidance from God's holy Word. Thus when Calvin discusses the "life of the Christian man" in one long section of his Institutes, he concentrates on virtues such as humility, gratitude, self-renunciation, prudence,

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and recognition of one's status as only one member of the larger body of Christ. In this way, Christian freedom does not restore the prelapsarian—or "pre-Fall"—capacity for envisioning God's law directly through reason, and acting on its tenets promptly through a sound will. Rather it links human beings even more tightly to the specific detail of God's now revealed law. For Calvin, law is as much a help as a warning and a barrier. His socalled third use of the law thereby places him in a new category of Reformer and drives his emphasis on the close connection between living the Christian life and acknowledging the legitimacy of the institutional reflections of God's law. Church, family, polity: All are ordained institutional manifestations of the law by which God desires sinful human beings to live and thrive. Even Christian conscience requires the aid of sound and supportive human institutions. Hence the legitimacy of those institutions and their superiority to individual conscience should in the vast majority of cases be plain. One is obliged to honor their place and obey their prerogatives. In fine, the attempt to see Calvin's individual in simple and logically consistent fashion, risks missing one or perhaps both of these two key dimensions. The individual Christian believer, Calvin insists paradoxically, is both a whole and a part, both sufficient and insufficient, both complete and incomplete, and both adequate and inadequate. One can easily turn Calvin's Christian individual into a caricature of what Calvin understood him to be.2 No doubt Calvin found himself tempted, either as an Aristotelian scholar or as a defiant Reformer, to oversimplify the Christian individual's character and makeup. What appears to have driven him to hold to the truth of human tension, however, was his determination to be faithful to Scripture, to God's revealed Word, and to the one God in whom all things cohere. Calvin's exegetical skills are of course well documented, but what appears plain throughout his scholarly writings (especially his biblical commentaries) is a marked determination to listen, attentively and responsibly, to what God intends to say through his prophets, his apostles, and his Son.3 And what God intends to say, Calvin repeatedly stated, was that the truth about human beings cannot be confined to humanly contrived logical formulae. Drawing out the political implications of Calvin's first part of Christian freedom will thus always be a dangerous business, for Calvin's determination to be faithful trumped his desire to be philosophically coherent or systematic. In other words, the mysteries of human experience, and God's secret providence in relation to those mysteries, will forever defy human attempts to contain them in either logic or language. What matters is that the holding together of all things in God's loving sovereignty remains a firm and unshakable truth.

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I

THE IRREDUCIBLE INDIVIDUAL

W tance easily surmounting his classical and medieval counterparts. Now the

ithout question, Calvin's individual believer takes on an order of impor-

direct repository of God's will and of God's grace, he embodies the pivotal human contact point with divine reality. The individual conscience becomes, as it were, the Archimedean fulcrum by which the triune God discloses his will in the midst of historical circumstance. Indeed, Calvin understands conscience to be the key operating component of each human being, and so the principal source of political maturity.

The Created, and Fallen, Individual Endowed in creation with both "natural" and "supernatural" gifts, human beings as originally conceived frame a wondrous whole, "among all God's works,.. . the noblest and most remarkable example of his justice, wisdom and goodness" (1.15.1, 183). Not only are they endowed with both body and immortal soul but also with intact and functioning parts of the soul, namely, "understanding" and "will" (1.15.7, J94~95)- Moreover, they are fully equipped for communion with their Creator and their fellow human beings; they are equipped with the "supernatural gifts" of spiritual discernment, of "faith, love of God, charity toward neighbor, [andjzeal for holiness and for righteousness" (2.2.12, 270). As originally created Adam (i.e., humankind) is fully "the image of God" (imago Dei). From each part of him, but particularly from within his soul, "God's glory shines forth" (1.15.3, 186). Adam is the best reflection of God in all created nature 15

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for by means of his imaging himself in Adam, God "introduces" mankind as "a tacit antithesis" (tacitam subesse antithesin), one that "raises [extollat] [him] above all other creatures, [so that he] towers over [emmet] them." Adam has direct and uninhibited contact with his divine Creator; he has "full possession of right understanding," "all his senses [are] tempered in right order," and thus he "truly refers his excellence [back to] his Maker" (1.15.3, 188). Indeed, Adam issues forth as a kind of "microcosm" of God's created order, a created order which, in its entirety, reflects God (1.5.3, 54-55)- Calvin thus denies the hermeneutical distinction between "image" (imago) and "likeness" (similitudo). Between the two "there is no ambiguity: simply man is called God's image because he is like God" (1.15.3, 187-88).' We should note that in this original condition, human understanding and human will work together in a wonderful conjoining of purpose, namely, to know and love God. As theologian Richard Muller has pointed out so effectively, Calvin's sense of the intertwining of faith (fides) and knowledge (cognitio) grows inexorably out of his "non-speculative soteriological voluntarism." In other words, Calvin sees human beings as motivated by the working out of their salvation. Their knowledge grows ultimately out of their will to know, that is, their faith ("Fides and Cognitio," 217, 223, and passim). In his perfect simplicity, then, Adam both knows and loves God (1.15.8, 195-96). Once Adam falls, however, once he rebels against his Creator (motivated now by a self-deceptive urge to self-salvation), he poisons the well from which he nourishes himself. Postlapsarian human beings, Calvin proposes, find themselves completely devoid of "supernatural gifts." Hence, the human being's spiritual discernment, his "faith, love of God, charity toward neighbor, [and] zeal for holiness and for righteousness" were all "stripped from him" as a result of the Fall. Human beings remain "rational beings," endowed still with "understanding" (intelligentia) and "will" (voluntas). In their "perverted and degenerate nature, some sparks still gleam." Nevertheless, these "natural gifts" of reason (ratio) and will, both "partly weakened and partly corrupted," now appear in "misshapen ruins" (2.2.12, 270— 71). The human frame, once a "well-knit structure," now more resembles the "scattered fragments" of a ruin than an integrated "building" (1.15.8, i96). 2 While these "parts of the soul" (understanding and will) remain at least minimally functional (1.15.7, I94~95; 2.2.12, 271), then, they remain distressingly empty of any positive, constructive, content. Indeed, they militate against each other. Surely, understanding "possesses some power of perception" (2.2.12, 271), and can perceive the minimal requirements of "earthly" life, of, for example, "certain civic fair dealings and order": "Hence no man is to be found who does not understand that every sort of human organization must be regulated by laws, and who does not comprehend the principles of those laws" (2.2.13, 271-72). Likewise, "the power of human acuteness also appears in learning," so that "hardly anyone is to be found who does not manifest talent in some art" (2.2.14, 2 73)Rather pathetically, however, this gift of God's "general grace" (2.2.17, 276), this "longing \ap[xtenlia] for truth," such as it is, "languishes before it enters upon its race because it soon falls into vanity." For Calvin "natural reason never will direct men to Christ." Even though human beings are "endued with prudence for

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regulating their lives," or are "bom to cultivate the liberal arts and sciences, all this passes away without yielding any advantage" (Comm. Jo/in 1:5 [1:34]). The human mind, "because of its dullness, cannot hold to the right path." By examining "empty and worthless things [supen/acuis ac nihili rebus], it torments itself in its absurd curiosity," thinking itself on the road to wisdom when it is in fact aiming only at the "vain and trifling [mania . . . et frivola]" (2.2.12, 271). For example, Calvin notes in his commentary on the Psalms, It is not merely from the intrinsic insufficiency of wealth, honors, or pleasures to confer true happiness that the Psalmist proves the misery of worldly men, but from their manifest and total incapacity of forming a correct judgment of such possessions. Happiness is connected with the state of mind of that man who enjoys it, and none would call those happy who are sunk in stupidity and security, and are destitute of [genuine] understanding.3 (Comm. Ps. 49:6 [2:241])

Calvin's point here is that in the fallen human being, understanding is now at odds with a perverted will, and in such a contest, as we might expect, the perverted will wins.4 "The evil desires that gently tickle the mind," the "diseases of [human] lusts" (2.2.24, 2cH) lead the sinner "to evade his innate power to judge between good and evil": "Man is so indulgent toward himself that when he commits evil he readily averts his mind . . . from the feeling of sin." While "every man will affirm that murder is evil," the one "who is plotting the death of an enemy contemplates murder as something good." Likewise, "the adulterer will condemn adultery in general, but will privately flatter himself in his own adultery" (2.2.23, 282). Whereas in the healthy human being the understanding was "the leader and governor of the soul," in the fallen human being the perverse will has abandoned its rightful place and effectively usurped the power of right understanding (1.15.7, 194; 2.3.2, 290-91; 2.3.4, 293-94)-5 Yet in spite of these, for Calvin, all too obvious failings of the human understanding, God's "general grace" leaves intact a small "spark" (scintilla) of conscience (conscientia) (4.10.5, n83).6 Conscience is thus distinct from both understanding and will but inevitably colors them both, affecting each even if in relatively modest ways. For example, Calvin explains, in its etymological source in the Latin words for "knowledge" and "together with" (3.19.15, 848; 4.10.3, 1181), conscience represents a kind of knowing. In effect, then, conscience acts as some small reflection of divine reality, a reed-like connection to transcendence, an ability to "discern between good and evil." Indeed, the existence of conscience is for Calvin the primary evidence of the soul's immortality, not to mention the soul's essence (1.15.2, 184). Conscience, an "inner witness and monitor" (2.8.1, 368), both enlightens the understanding and informs the will. Without conscience, understanding stands directionless and the will blind to its own slavery. Conscience is thus "a certain mean between God and man" (3.19.15, 848).7 Of itself, of course, conscience for Calvin is not a "supernatural" gift. Quite unlike the "incitement" to good, developed and trained by reason, of Thomas Aquinas,8 Calvin's conscience remains only a kind of link, or channel, to the reality of God's transcendent order. Without this channel, reason is both useless and enslaved to perverse will. Hence, in no way could Calvin accept the premises

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of Aristotelian/Thomistic natural law, for Calvinistic reason is radically dependent on conscience, rather than the reverse.9 Indeed, for Calvin conscience appears to have only a negative function. It can only challenge the understanding and torment the will. It cannot incite toward the good. It thus serves to convict the individual human being of the vast chasm between his own perverted soul and God's pure goodness (4.10.3, 1181) but can of its own do little else. As David Foxgrover has put the matter, "conscience is alive when it comes to rendering man without excuse, but dead with regard to the source of salvation." ("Calvin's Understanding," 13).'° Yet it is just Calvin's view of the existence and workings of conscience—of both God's placement of this link and its own helplessness—which points to Calvin's individualism. For the existence of conscience depends neither on a certain capacity for reason, a capacity perhaps confined only to a few unusual human beings, nor on a tradition of enlightened teaching. Individual conscience is rather the direct repository in every individual of God's primary revelation of himself. Conscience carries the possibility of a kind of direct divine illumination for each individual human being; it is prerational, precultural, and precommunal. As David Bosco has put it, conscience "functions as the delivery service for [divine] judgment." It both judges the understanding and chastens the will, acting as both "court" and "worm" (336 and passim). Even before the restorative powers of Christ are applied, Calvin proposes an individual human being having reason and will (perverted but real), and connected to God—in spite of his perversion—by means of his own particular, individual conscience.

The Redeemed (Restored?) Individual The real power of human individuality, though, arises with the full restorative powers of Christ, who works in the individual believer at the behest of God the Father and through the instrumentalities of God the Holy Spirit and the great body of believers (3.1.1, 537)." Because such restorative power arrives without deservedness (or "merit") on the part of the believer, and without any worldly pattern of application, it is clear to Calvin that God could choose and restore literally any individual.12 Following Luther and Paul, Calvin insists on the doctrine of "faith righteousness" (3.11.16, 746): Believers are "justified" before God (i.e., reconciled to him and reunited with him) not by anything they have done or thought (or could have done or thought—not, that is, by "works") prior to their justification but only by God's having mercy on their "miserable condition" as sinners, and thus by his "free gift" of the "inheritance" of faith (3.11.16 & 18, 746 6k 747-48). The key point about Calvin's doctrine of election (for our purposes here, at least) therefore concerns its mystery, a clear result of its undeservedness. Calvin makes consistent and continual reference throughout his works to the "secret providence of God."n By this language he means to disabuse his readers of any pretense they may be tempted to employ that they can know with security the pattern of God's providential ruling and choosing. Indeed, with regard to the

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more precise term "predestination" (praedestinatio), he appears even more insistent to apply the adjectives "secret" or "hidden."14 As a result, he insistently points out the human impossibility of knowing, not to mention the danger of seeking to know, which particular individuals God has elected and why (3.21.1, 922-23).15 Denying the possibility of meriting God's favor, Calvin wants both to showcase the reality of God's sovereignty (imperium)16 and freedom over the world and human history (3.21.5, 926; 3.21.6, 929), and to bridle the universal human temptation to "gather occasion [materiam elicere] for [one's] own glory" (1.15.8, 196). "In choosing little children rather than the wise," Calvin asserts, God "has a regard to his glory [in eo gloriae suae mtionem habet].. . [For] in no other way can [his] mercy be so fully known" (Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 11:25 [2:36)] [emphasis added]).17 In demonstrating his mercy, God demonstrates his power in the face of established social institutions. Not only are no human measuring tools sufficient to gauge the grounds of election—even presuming the capacity to mold a particular understanding of virtue—but God's free choosing of individual believers plainly establishes a transinstitutional, transhistorical link between an otherwise miserable and insignificant sinner and the Creator and Ruler of all that is. Hence it is clear to Calvin that no particular human values or orders can stand up to the explosive presence of a single, redeemed human person. No inherited community, no genetic traits, no acquired skills, no sequence of behaviors, and no community traditions or customs can measure up to the mysteriously chosen Christian believer whose conscience functions as a direct pipeline to the creator and redeemer of all humankind.18 "For our consciences," Calvin asserts, "do not have to do with men but with God alone." Hence, a "good conscience," that "inward uprightness of heart," remains "higher than all human judgments" (4.10.4—5, 1182—83). Yet if ordinary social and cultural institutions are incapable of predictably identifying the elect, then how are the elect to be known? Are there empirically verifiable indicators of election? How does one know that another's conscience— or one's own, for that matter—is indeed healthy, that one's soul is indeed redeemed and restored? For Calvin there do exist signs of election. These include a firm and unshakable faith in God's mercy through Christ (3.2.15, 560; 3.24.6, 971), the sure call to serve God in a particular way (3.11.6, 724-25), the justification and repentance that follow the gift of true faith (3.11.2, 726-27; 3.3.16, 609-10); and thus, ultimately, the sanctification process that follows on the assurance of justification (3.14.9, 776; 3.14.19, 785-86).19 God's election, in other words, implies ultimately the full restoration of human beings through Christ. "By rendering us partakers, by the Gospel, of a favor so ineffably great, he has made us his sons and [proper] servants" (Comm. Malachi i: 5 [470]). The Gospel "brings with it the grace of regeneration," it "penetrates into the heart and reforms all the inward faculties, so that obedience is rendered to the righteousness of God" (Comm. Jer. 31:33 [4:130]).20 Election therefore brings with it the convictions and certainties of genuine "faith," says Calvin. And for Calvin faith does indeed imply a high level of certainty. As R. T. Kendall (19) has so exhaustively pointed out, Calvin's various synonyms for faith are illuminating on this score. He describes faith as, among

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other things, "recognition" (agnitio), "knowledge" (scientia and cognitio), "illumination" (illuminatio), "certainty" (certitudino), "firm conviction" (solida persuasio), "assurance" (securitas), "firm assurance" (solida securitas), and "full assurance" (plena securitas)." Of course, no faith is perfect, and all faith needs the encouragement and reinforcement of fellow believers. Nevertheless, what the Christian believer gets by faith through grace is "a heart to know [God]," "a heart to understand" (Comm. Jer. 24:7 [3:228-29]).22 Hence a "right definition of faith" would be as follows: "a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon out hearts through the Holy Spirit" (3.2.7, 551). One can only imagine the power latent in this concept of faith. Even Luther's powerful notion of sola fide seems to pale in comparison. For Luther apparently came nowhere close to envisioning as faith the kind of certitude manifest in Calvin's doctrine.23 For Calvin, the elected believer enters into otherwise degenerate earthly life with the sure confidence that, even in spite of himself, he carries the truth of God's sovereign will. He understands that God has implanted in him the firm assurance that "though the whole fabric of the world were overthrown," he has been "joined to the steadfastness of Christ" and thus as a member of the "invisible church" cannot ultimately "waiver or fail" (4.1.3, ioi5) 2 4 Such confidence liberates the believer in dramatic and radical fashion. Fie now stands as a coherent "person," playing a crucial role in God's unfolding historical drama (Chappuis, 6-8).25 Indeed, one is tempted to proclaim with Ralph Hancock that "since believers are one with Christ, they depend on nothing else for assurance and support" (Flancock, Foundations, 45 [citing 4.1.3, 1015].26 Some of Calvin's language in his essay on Christian freedom does reinforce Hancock's conclusion. "[I] those matters in which the Lord has willed [believers' consciences] to be free," Calvin asserts at one point, "we conclude that they are released [exemptas] from the power \potestas] of all men" (3.19.14, 846). Commenting on i Corinthians 10: 29, Calvin appears even more intransigent: "[T]he soul of a pious man looks exclusively to the tribunal of God, has no regard to men, is satisfied with the blessing of liberty procured for it by Christ, and is bound to no individuals, and to no circumstances of time or place" (1:346).27 Although statements such as Hancock's rather seriously oversimplify Calvin's position, as we shall see, one can certainly understand how and why they arise. Hence, although it may be stretching the point even to contemplate Calvin fully subscribing to Luther's conception of the "priesthood of all believers," one can see here Calvin's insistence, at least in theory, on the moral legitimacy of individual conscience.28 In his commentary on 2 Peter 1:20, for example, Calvin castigates the papists for concluding that no "private interpretation" of Scripture "by an individual" can be valid. He charges such men with "abusing Peter's testimony, in order to give their councils alone the right to interpret Scripture." "But this is childish," Calvin asserts. For when Peter speaks of "private individuals," he does not refer to individuals per se, nor does he "forbid [such individuals] to interpret Scripture." On the contrary, he only means "that it is not godly for them to come out with something out of their own heads." Indeed, "even if all men in the world were to agree and be of one mind, the outcome would still be private,"

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that is, "of their own" and not of God's "revelation." But "the believers, illumined inwardly by the Holy Spirit, know as truth only what God says by his Word" (from Haroutunian, 88 [emphasis added]).29 In stark contrast to the councils of the Roman church, Calvin counterposes individual believers in whom "faith and understanding" are "united" and who indeed are not so "stupid and void of understanding" as to profess whatever "their holy mother church" tells them to profess (Comm. Is. 40:10 [3:332]). Resisting the "enslavement" of conscience advanced by the Roman church, Calvin insists that individual believers ought to weigh for themselves the legitimacy of concilliar decisions in light of God's holy Word (4.10.1-2, 1179-81; 4.9.6-8, H7o-72).30 Indeed, Calvin sees such calibrating work not only firmly within the prophetic tradition but also a primary responsibility of individual believers.31 Whereas believers may on occasion be called on to bear "an unjust burden," some burdens "may be borne" and some not. "If men . . . endeavor to bind our consciences," says Calvin, "we must resist valiantly, even to death." To permit another to "bring our consciences into bondage" would not only "deprive" believers of "an invaluable lesson," it would also serve as "an insult. .. offered to Christ, the author of our freedom" (Comm. Gal. 5:2 [147]). If Calvin sees individual believers as fully capable of questioning conciliar decisions, one can imagine the energy this insight would give to a notion of individual legitimacy vis a vis established political structures and institutions. And, indeed, Calvin does not hesitate to draw out these implications. His commentary on Jeremiah 15:17 most explicitly asserts such legitimacy. Even today, he says, "we are under the necessity directly to expose those naked rulers, who are inflated with their own power and fascinate the people." For even "buffoons in tippling-houses and taverns" do not so "wantonly mock God as those courtiers." As a lone individual, Jeremiah necessarily departed from popular opinion, "but he did so, because he could not have otherwise obeyed God" (2:287—88). Given the believer's justification "at so great a price as our redemption cost" (i.e., Christ's crucifixion), Calvin thus says in another place, "we should not enslave ourselves to the wicked desires of men—much less be subject to their impiety" (4.20.32, 1521).32

Anticipations of Liberal Individualism: Contract and Privatization? Some important political ramifications can follow from such individualistic emphasis, ramifications that either offer manifest nourishment to "humanistic" individualism, which some say was then ascendant as a result of Renaissance figures such as Marsilio of Padua and William of Occam, or that provide their own special formula for the rise of Lockean liberalism.33 One of these liberal individualist implications would of course be the notion of political community as a species of "contract." Another would the privatization of religious concerns, leading to the rise of the secular state. A third implication would therefore be the notion of universal political equality and consequently of modern liberal democracy, with its spheres of "privacy." And a final implication would point to the possibility of

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justified resistance to tyrannical government, either by popular judgment or by private conscience. Of these, the notions of political community as a species of contract and of the privatization of religious concerns are in many ways the most tenously connected to Calvin's thought, largely because Calvin never subscribed, in his understanding of freedom, to anything like individual autonomy. For example, where liberal contract theory assumes the contracted public community to grow out of the conscious choices of mature individuals, Calvin questions these assumptions. Likewise, where liberal "privatization" assumes sensible and sober individuals capable of directing their own spiritual—not to mention political—progress, Calvin assumes neither. Before developing these points more fully, though, we should consider how one might draw from Calvin a pre-Lockean theory of social contract and religious privatization. In Calvin's doctrine of church order, he proposes that "the call of a minister is lawful according to the Word of God" only when "those who seemed fit are created by the consent and approval of the people" (4.3.15, 1066). Admittedly, this appeal to consent does sound very much like a "contract" theory for church polity. We also note that Calvin raises an "elective aristocracy" to the top of his preferred list of temporal governmental forms (4.20.8, 1493). Furthermore, Calvin insisted—when accepting his first call to Geneva in 1536—that each member of his congregation consent to a written constitution establishing the new church (Graham, Constructive, 35~36).34 Finally, shortly after Calvin returned to Geneva in September 1541, he wrote to Farel, his former fellow pastor in Geneva, as follows: "Immediately after I had offered my services to the Senate, I declared that a church could not be held together unless a settled government should be agreed on, such as is prescribed to us in the word of God, and such as was in use in the ancient church" (Letter LXXVI [4:284]). Yet whereas Troeltsch and Doumergue, among others, see Calvin's apparent contractarian notions as implying the later Protestant covenants and ultimately the modern state contracts, this conclusion seems rather far-fetched (Troeltsch, Protestantism, 114-15; Doumergue, Jean Calvin, V:6u). For, as J. W. Allen has noted (and as Calvin's just quoted letter to Farel clearly indicates), Calvin "conceived of the state as constituted by a grant of authority from God." It was "not a product of man's reason and will" (Allen, 53). Indeed, the important distinction between "covenant" and "contract" appears lost to those who would proclaim them synonyms. "Contract," at least as used by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, implies an assertive act of human design and will.35 "Covenant" (pactum or foedus, for Calvin), on the other hand, implies a responsive act to God's explicit call. In his loving rulcrship God makes with his people, says Calvin, "a covenant of eternal life [vitae aeternae pactum}," whereby he "calls [them] to himself [ad se invitat]" (3.21.7, 930). God "embraces" his children "with fatherly affection" in a "covenant of grace" (foedus gratiae) (3.17.15, 820); he thereby offers them "covenants of his mercy" (misericordiae suae pacta) (3.17.5, 8o8).36 Thus if the fundamental covenant human beings experience is one initiated, justified, and sustained by God alone, the place of governing institutions will, for Calvin, fit neatly into this framework. A ruler is then primarily a "minister of God," and his true accountability is to God alone.

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"[T]hat king who in ruling over his realm does not serve God's glory exercises not kingly rule but brigandage" (Pref., 12). In the same way, a subject's accountability is ultimately to God alone, recognizing of course that governmental officials work as primary instruments of God's imperium (e.g., 4.20.23, 1510; 4.20.32, 1520). Calvin's public covenant is a far cry from the modern social contract. According to contract theory, human beings bring to the table intact judgment and moral integrity, as well as creative—almost open-ended—goals and strategies. The ends of the contract are ends they devise. According to the older covenant tradition, however, human beings fit into a prearranged and purposefully designed pattern. J. Budziszewski (113) has put the distinction concisely in regard to the marriage "contract": According to the traditional view, the marriage contract is the agreement by which the parties enter the state of matrimony, but this state is a union which they did not invent and which transcends the contract by which it was entered. According to some modern people, by contrast, the marriage contract defines the state of matrimony; consequently there is nothing transcendent about it and the parties may arrange its terms to suit themselves.

Says Budziszewski in summary, "Lockean politics is like modernist matrimony." Though Budziszewski is not concerned with Calvin's ideas in his study, we might properly follow his lead and say that "Calvinist politics is like traditional matrimony." The furtherance of a "private sphere" of religious beliefs by Calvin seems farfetched as well. For if the real basis for political organization is God's command and will rather than humankind's creative, and self-generated, response to a certain natural or social environment, one can hardly find grounds to keep the "public realm" religiously empty.37 Human responsibility to speak God's public voice, on Calvin's terms, would seem logically necessary. Nevertheless, perhaps there is some justification for labeling Calvin a conttibutor to modern trends toward political secularization. Ralph Hancock is the most obvious recent proponent of this view. According to Hancock, while Calvin explicitly points to the high status and large significance of civil government, the materialist implications of his "antitheology" lead human beings to experience civil government as only a material manisfestation of God's transcendent power. Because, for Calvin, God's ultimate purposes are hidden from human reason, civil government cannot reflect God's authentic intent for humankind but only his power. As a result, says Hancock, Calvin appears to elevate the spiritual authority of civil government, but in reality his deflation of its spiritual purpose only diminishes and dissolves such authority. The real ground of political authority thus defaults into the realm of physical security, leaving spiritual issues to other institutional jurisdictions. On the one hand, Calvin writes that civil governments' "function among men is no less than that of bread, water, sun, and air" (4.20.3, 1488), and that civil authority "is a calling, not only holy and lawful before God, but also the most sacred and by far the most honorable of all callings in the whole life of mortal men" (4.20.5, 1490). Yet on the other hand, "the duty of rightly establishing

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religion" remains "outside of human decision." Indeed, no government of men is in a position to "make laws according to their own decision concerning religion and the worship of God" (4.20.3, 1488). As a result, says Hancock, men not competent to make decisions concerning human beings' supernatural ends are clearly unable to carry both temporal and spiritual authority. Human beings can only experience the coexistence, in Calvin's words, of "spiritual freedom" and "civil bondage" (4.20.1, 1486) if the realm of politics has no genuine spiritual purpose, only if, says Hancock, "human choice [i.e., in public community] cannot: affect the salvation of the soul" (Foundations, 31). The upshot of Calvin's emphasis on spiritual transcendence, then, says Hancock, is the emptying of the public square of any genuinely spiritual content. Indeed, "Calvin seems to imply that the purpose of this 'outward worship' [which Calvin charges government with maintaining] is not religious but secular." The "natural end of politics," for Calvin, "seems to be not the perfection of the human soul but simply the maintenance of peace" (30-31; see also passim). Hence, although Hancock finds the secularization of modernity thesis somewhat problematic (as failing to appreciate modernity's "religious" impetus and undertone—Foundations, 186-87), ne docs place Calvin at the core of a developing "materialism," one growing out of Calvin's emphasis on God's hidden tranceridence. Says Hancock, "God is pushed so far beyond the human world that divinity can provide no intelligible reference point above the common, material interests of humanity." Instead, God can provide "only a spiritual sanction for the universalization of these interests." As a result, argues Hancock, "divinity is reduced to beneficent power in the service of humanity, and the soul is reduced to the locus of consciousness of this power. God becomes a vanishing point of transcendence from which the material world is itself infused with spiritual purpose" ("Religion . . . ," 693—94). And, thus, if public, political endeavor can aim only at material aid and comfort, spiritual concerns remain a largely private, and even a hidden affair. Hancock is not alone in finding Calvin a pivotal force behind something like religious privatization. Jean-Marc Chappuis, for example, in a significant article, "The Reformation and the Formation of the Person," finds that "the Christian person as re-formed by Calvinism," now inducted into the new liturgical practice of collective confession, "has to assume responsibility for the direct confession of sins to God." The immediacy of this encounter and the calling of each person now "to acknowledge his or her direct responsibility to God" ultimately "downgraded" the significance of "external ecclesiastical discipline," and proportionately "upgraded . . . the inner discipline of the individual Christian." "The final outcome of this process," says Chappuis, "consists of something which contemporary sociologists have identified and defined as the privatization of religion." This "privatization of religion," he concludes, "signifies the depletion and even the gradual disappearance of its external manifestations, and its condensation and concentration in the private sphere, in the individual conscience" (Chappuis, 7-8). Such privatization is, in a Calvinist environment, "no longer a retreat or even a flight into inwardness but rather a positive manifestation of the transcendence of the human, person vis-a-vis the society in which one is immersed" (8). If one answers

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only to God, then neither society nor one's "enlightened" self but only Christ must be one's intermediary.38 Although scholars such as J. W. Allen (88, and passim) find it inconceivable that Calvin could have provided the impetus for either secularization, privatization or religious liberty, a more balanced approach suggests at least some connection. As Fred Graham puts the matter, whether secularization "was inevitable or not is not the question. The point is that it happened and it happened in precisely those areas of the globe where rational Western man, with Calvinism as midwife, gave birth amid terrible and bloody travail to men both confident and free" (Constructive, 202).39 Interestingly, David Little finds a kind of flat contradiction. In Calvin, he asserts, there exist "two essentially incompatible images of the relation of church and state." One of these is "uniformist," wherein the state "coerces true piety and worship," whereas the other, more pluralist, image "differentiates true piety and worship .. . from social behavior and civic virtue" ("Reformed Faith," 9). Ultimately, Little implies, only one image can prevail. Calvin sheds some light on this issue—and thus helps to clear away Little's confusion—when he speaks of "impiety" in reference to Deuteronomy i3:5-40 He notes that Moses "does not condemn" to earthly punishment those who "may have spread false doctrine" but who only did so because of some "particular or trifling error." Rather, Moses condemns those "who are the authors of apostasy, and so who pluck up religion by the roots." As a result, "the crime of impiety," Calvin says, "would not otherwise merit punishment." Only if the sacrilege "had not only been received by public consent and the suffrages of the people, but, being supported also by sure and indisputable proofs, should place its truth above the reach of doubt," should it be forcibly addressed (Comm. Harm. Moses on Deut. 13:5 [2:75])Calvin's contrasting here of a mere assertion of false doctrine with a full-scale apostatic assault on public order reveals much. One could say that in his apparent determination to keep doctrinal discussion open and free, Calvin does call up the public respect of individual conscience presupposed by liberal societies. One would be hard-pressed to draw from this stance, however, anything like a "privatization" thesis. To respect another's opinion and being is hardly synonomous with understanding the other to have no desire of, or need for, public encounter on spiritual issues. Indeed, it is precisely because of one's prizing of another's spiritual worth that public encounter has meaning and purpose. Calvin makes this point with poignancy in a letter dated November 18, 1539, to fellow biblical scholar Simon Grynaeus: But we ought always to remind ourselves that even those who have not been wanting in zeal for piety, and have handled the mysteries of God with conscience and sobriety, have not always agreed among themselves. God has in no instance honored his servants with such blessing as to endow them with full and perfect knowledge of every subject; and doubtless his reason for this has been to keep them humble and desirous to keep in communication with their brothers, (in Haroutunian, 76)

Calvin clearly sees, as did most of his Christian medieval forbears, an indissoluble link between religious faith and public order. And this connection arises out

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of the humility imposed on humankind and their ordinary social relations by sound Christian doctrine. The baseline Christian teaching, after all, spotlights both human dignity and human inadequacy in the face of God's explicit call. Precisely for this reason, as I investigate further in chapter 2 (in this volume), healthy public order (rather than oppressive tyrannical rule) rests on a people's spiritual wellness. Human beings must be both respected and upheld as God's special creatures and restrained and redirected as the recalcitrant rebels they tend to become. The humility arising out of sound doctrine thus shows that one can find instrinsic to Calvin's theology a vigorous defense against the presumptions of modern ideological thinking—presumptions that human beings can in fact be redesigned by human initiative alone. Certainly Calvin gives no nourishment to such "dogmatic" closed-mindedness. In this way Calvin does display a "liberal"—in the sense of an "antitotalitarian"—bent. Yet such a defense draws its power only from its openness to a certain kind of public stance. Government's role, in Calvin's mind, concerns more than simply the libertarian protection of the physical security of its people, though it does concern such security. It also includes a responsibility to prevent "idolatry, sacrilege against God's name, blasphemies against his truth, and other public offenses against religion from arising and spreading among the people" (4.20.3, 1488 [emphasis added]). Claims for ideological redesign, not to mention those for radical self-sufficiency, and all other "offenses against religion" do concern public order, certainly when they are themselves "public," are, subsequently, "spreading among the people," and, finally, are attempting to "place [their] truth above the reach of doubt" (Comm. Harm. Moses on Deut. 13:5 [2:75]).41

Anticipations of Liberal Individualism: Political Equality? Calvin's vision of human beings as individuals can therefore also be read as implying human political equality and thus both the equality of political responsibility and the need for democratic political institutions. Human individuality grows both from the individualized mark of conscience and the individualized tendency to self-destruction, after all. These deeper marks transcend the more superficial signifiers of worth, such as social standing, political place, or intellectual power. Indeed, Calvin's continual point in discussing the "elect" concerns their unfitness for classification by the ordinary political measures. As a result, healthy politics will make no large assumptions about the particular destiny of particular people. It must make way for spiritual growth but by assuming the continual and universal presence of spiritual rebellion. Whether the elect are a minority or not will be no significant factor in the political calculus. One aspect of experience which would be such a factor, and which would reinforce political equality, is the particular—and fitting—"call" God issues to each person. In undertaking to explain bis doctrine of calling, Calvin emphasizes that God "has appointed duties for every man in his particular way of life." In other words, "each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander about through

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life." The point, of course, is that because all genuine callings are directly from God, through the grace of Christ and the mediation of the Holy Spirit, all such are equally valuable, and the human beings to whom they are addressed are equally valuable in their faithful responses. Having this assurance, "no one, impelled by his own rashness, will attempt more than his calling will permit, because he will know that it is not lawful to exceed its bounds." As a result, each can be assured that "provided you obey your calling in i t , . . . no task will be so sordid and base . . . , that it will not shine and be reckoned very precious in God's sight" (3.10.6, 724-25)^ The equal measure of callings does not necessarily translate into political, institutional equality. As Hancock points out, Calvin's "equality" need not have "egalitarian practical implications." Instead, although equality under God's will "binds men to their respective callings," it does not necessarily "liberate them as political actors" (Foundations, 70). Ronald Wallace, too, makes the point. Rather than personal equality, Calvin's emphasis in detailing the value of individuals "was to insure that the whole community was closely knit, each one being personally given as close a tie as possible with someone in the neighborhood who had immediate contact with the source of real authority and power" (125). Even though Calvin "stressed the need for the cultivation of a sense of brotherhood and solidarity," therefore, "he did not say that all men are equal." Indeed, says Wallace, for Calvin "all our equalities and inequalities belonged . . . only to what was superficial in life. Even slavery, Calvin believed, belonged to this merely external order of affairs." Thus, there must be "mutual regard and love between master and slave": If "the slave is obligated to the master, the master is also obligated to the slave" (i27). 43 In spite of these, and other, pointed objections to seeing Calvin's stress on individuals implying institutionalized political equality, it is hard to deny the justification and impetus for such developments which Calvin's ideas provided, and which perhaps they should provide. And, in fact, a number of scholars have been quick to point out these tendencies. Fred Graham, for example, notes that although "Calvin did not mean that Christian brotherhood implied the end of all the inequalities in society," he "did insist" that in Christ there can be no "authority without oppression" and no "subordination without shame" (Constructive, 57). Indeed, as Graham puts it "the legitimate strata of society . . . are never absolute." Rather, such distinctions make up "a provisory arrangement," one that has "fundamentally been set aside by the new human community re-established by Jesus Christ" (58-59). What Sheldon Wolin (191) calls the "equalizing conception" in Genevan practice, then, arose quite naturally from Calvin's foundational ideas. Although Wolin's description of the "short step from Geneva to the English levellers at Putney" may be exaggerated, it is true that Calvin's view of humankind had to feed the egalitarian impulse. Not only are all human beings equal in their sin, each is "offered" the grace of Christ "without distinction." Such grace does not "extend to all," says Calvin, because "not all receive him," yet "it is offered to all" (Comm. Rom. 5:18 [1:117-18]). And of course, among those inspired to seek "God's lovingkindness," it "is set forth to all ... without exception" (2.3.10, 304).

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As E. William Montcr has pointed out in his fine study of Calvin's Geneva, Calvin worked unhesitatingly to put this sense of essential equality into institutional practice. Upon his return to Geneva in 1541, Calvin's first public act was to ask the Genevan Small Council to name a committee to prepare a written constitution for the Genevan church. The adopted structure, with Calvin's full assent, worked to broaden considerably the measure of lay supervision within the church (Monter, 71). Perhaps even more noteworthy, throughout Calvin's long career as a pastor mediating ecclesiastical and pastoral disputes, he held to an equality of disciplinary treatment for all Genevans, rich or poor, celebrated or inglorious. Of the prestigious Favre clan, Calvin once asked sardonically, "Is the Favre family sacred and absolved from obedience to the laws?" Perhaps, he continued, "they should build a city where they can live as they want, since they don't want to live here under the yoke of Christ" (Monter, 75). 44 Equality in the face of God's grace would thus seem inevitably to imply at least the foundation for political, insitutional equality. For such fundamental equality calls into question all institutional inequalities. God's creation of all human beings from one, for example, reveals his will "that we should proceed from one fountain, in order that our desire of mutual concord might be the greater, and that each might the more freely embrace the other as his own flesh." Moreover, in providing a world "which would suffice for the reception of men and would prove a suitable abode for them," God provided an environment within which each would be equally fulfilled. And "any inequality which is contrary to this arrangement is nothing else than a corruption of nature which proceeds from sin" (Comm. Gen. 1:28 [1:97-98]). Writing to Melanchthon in June 1545, Calvin registers his concern for Luther's celebrity by noting that church structures are seriously imperiled "when a single individual, be he whosoever you please, has more authority than all the rest" (Letter CXXXVI [4:467]).45 It is indeed the pride of separation and superiority that Calvin sees the Lord consistently condemning (Comm. Is. 2:12 [1:112]; Comm. Ps. 41:1 [2:113]). Considering Job's description, of "equity" in Job 31:9-15, Calvin points to "the great and very useful doctrine" manifest in Job's words. One might find oneself in the position, institutionally speaking, of "superior" or "inferior," but one ought to remember first one's accountability to God for one's treatment of others, be it equitable or inequitable. To begin, "those who are raised into some dignity" need to know that God has not placed them there to "release the bridle to molest others, and to hold a foot on their throat." At the same time, however, "if a servant [should] rebel against his master," or "if a son stands against his father, or a subject against his superior," it is clear, says Calvin, "that this is [even] less bearable." Whether in high or low places, says Calvin, one ought to "serve and be little [que celuy qui servira et sera petit]," "[L]et not kings and princes flatter themselves that it seems that the world is created for them," rather "they are created for the multitude." Indeed, "if a man raises himself when he ought to recognize the equality of those who accompany him, so that he comes to charge like a bull . . . , will it not: be necessary that such pride should be subdued?" And when a man with "nothing but sudden boldness will wish to usurp such an authority over his neighbors, that he will only deign to look askance at them," that

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in fact "it seems to him that all the world ought to tremble at his look," then "will it not be necessary that God should put his hand upon such bravado?" (Serm. job 13 on Job 31:9-15 [i9i-92]).46 The transition from an acceptance of rank, though ultimately meaningless, to an assertion of the complete meaningless of rank here and now would then seem a short one. It is not one Calvin made in full, but it is one he may inadvertently have helped to incite.47 As numerous commentators have pointed out, and as I have just noted, Calvin consistently asserted both in words and in institutional practice that as J. Alton Templin (169) puts it, "[I]n the sight of God there are no distinctions [in rank] between individuals on earth." Regarding church discipline in Geneva, Philip Schaff (VIII:49i) reminds us, "no respect was paid to person, rank, or sex." Indeed, says Harro Hopfl (188), "[W]hat was distinctive about Geneva and about Calvin's conception of the laws of a godly commonwealth is neither the content of these laws nor their theocratic orientation, but the rigour and impartiality with which these laws were enforced at Geneva."48 Calvinist equality thus frames the legitimacy of broader participation in the public life of Calvinist communities. As Graham (Constructive, 172) points out, "[r]ising nations and tribes everywhere today are claiming precisely this right to participate politically which Calvinist concern for the total community taught Genevans in the middle of the sixteenth century."49 For another example, it is well-known that Calvin (in his Institutes and elsewhere) encourages Christians of all social ranks to make use, as needed, of civil courts of law, and even, if appropriate, to act to instigate judicial proceedings. If we understand, Calvin says, the civil magistrate to be "a minister of God for our good," if "he has been given by the Lord for our defense," then the Lord's "purpose" cannot be borne out "unless we are allowed to enjoy such benefit," unless we may "without impiety . . . call upon and . . . appeal to" such magistrates (4.20.18, 1505-6). Christian believers, as all citizens, are entitled to respectful treatment.50 Perhaps even more to the point, here, Calvin appears to exhibit a rather consistent disdain for hereditary monarchy and the established hierarchy it implies. John T. McNeill in particular has exhaustively documented this apparent disdain in his important piece on "The Democratic Element in Calvin's Thought." Pointing to Calvin's statement in his commentary on Micah 5:5 (3:310) that "when men become kings by hereditary right, it seems not consistent with liberty," McNeill summarizes as follows: "This passage is characteristic of Calvin in that it indicates how, with a complete absence of embarrassment, he associates theocratic with democratic concepts and blends the patterns of church and state" (165). McNeill argues that Calvin's dislike of kingship appears to rest more on practical than on theoretical grounds. Yet there seems little doubt, and McNeill appreciates this point, that the practical drawbacks of monarchy arise from Calvin's principial objection to unchecked human institutional power. This conviction regarding the fertile ground which unchecked human power provides for ordinary human sin appears explicitly in his thoughts on church polity 51 but also reveals itself openly in his discussions both of kingship and of governments generally. In his explicit discussion of governmental forms, for example, Calvin states his general

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conclusion that elective aristocracy "or a system compounded of aristocracy and democracy... far excels all others." The excellence of a nonmonarchical form, however, arises not "of itself, but because it is very rare for kings so to control themselves that their will never disagrees with what is just and right." As a result, "men's fault or failing [vitium vel defectus] causes it to be safer and more bearable [tutius . . . ac magis tolerabile] for a number to hold governmental power [tenere gubernacula]." This number, then, will be in position to "help one another, teach and admonish one another," and, if one's personal ambition improperly asserts itself, "there may be a number of censors and masters to restrain his willfulness [libidem]" (4.20.8, 1493-94). The practical and principial objections now appear to merge.52 In his various sermons and biblical commentaries, as McNeill carefully points out, Calvin details just how perverse and destructive kingly behavior can be. In his sermon on Job 19:26-29, for example, Calvin notes that the apparently unchecked "ambition" of kings "inflames" them, "under the title of war . . . to sack . . . burn . . . destroy . . . steal, ravish, pillage, and ruin" (133). Likewise in his sermon on Deuteronomy 17:16—20, Calvin calls attention to the tyranny of Rehoboam, Solomon's son and heir, whose response to Jeroboam's righteous resistance to Solomon's creeping infidelity was to crush Jeroboam and his people in even more tangible ways. "My father scourged you with whips," Rehoboam ranted, "I will scourge you with scorpions" (i Kings 12:11). In contemplating kingly corruption, Calvin is here thinking specifically of the "great masses of gold and silver" which "God hath not for naught forbidden kings to gather." But his concern, which he sees as explicitly biblical, is that "great treasures" tend to "incline [their holders] to pride, vainglory . . . covetousness, and . . . tyranny over their subjects." Because of their special status, kings—perhaps especially kings by birth—"think themselves to be, as it were, cut off from the company of men," and not "anymore to be counted in the common array" (Serm. Deut. 17:16-20 [654-55])." Hancock has no trouble finding a principial basis to Calvin's apparent scorn for monarchy. For him, Calvin "was opposed to monarchy because the rule of one is closely associated with the hierarchic idea: the idea that human affairs can be ruled according to a single, comprehensive idea of what is good for man" (Foundations, 69). And, as we have seen, Hancock finds Calvin to be far removed from such "hierarchical" thinking.54 Indeed, echoes Sheldon Wolin (176), "Hierarchy, in [Calvin's] definition, was equivalent to arbitrariness." Clearly, Calvin does rebel against the more hierarchical thinking of the Medieval rationalists, the "schoolmen" (scholastid) as he calls them.55 And he does seem a promoter of ordinary political freedom for subjects under government, which McNeill shows in some detail, pointing in particular to Calvin's sermon on Deuteronomy 17:14—18. "It is much more endurable to have rulers who are chosen and elected . . . and who acknowledge themselves subject to the laws," Calvin says there, "than to have a prince who gives them utterance without reason." Moreover, "Let those to whom God has given liberty and freedom use i t . . . as a singular benefit and treasure that cannot be prized enough" (quoted by McNeill, "Democratic Element," i6o). 56 In fine, whereas McNeill wants to agree with Hopfl (161) that Calvin "tended to condemn monarchs rather than monarchy," he does think Marc Cheneviere

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(Pensee Politique, 226) goes too far when he asserts that Calvin was, principially speaking, completely neutral as to "form" of government.57 Disputing Cheneviere's conclusion that Calvin was thus not principially opposed to monarchy, McNeill responds as follows: "[A] writer who habitually and emotionally harps on the abuses of an institution while rarely calling attention to its excellences, cannot be regarded as either a partisan of the institution or quite neutral toward it." And in Calvin's case, "one who persistently represents kings as abusers of their power, even though for scriptural reasons he opposes acts of rebellion against them, can hardly be regarded as indifferent to kingship itself" ("Democratic Element," 161). McNeilPs point is well taken, as Calvin does, rather predictably, speak in affirmation of the cause of equal political freedom for individual citizens, as long as such freedom is "limited by law and duty, and is never interpreted in revolutionary terms" ("Democratic Element," 167). McNeill points to the sermons on i Samuel where Calvin twice refers to political freedom as "an inestimable good" (inaestimabile bonum) (Serm. i Sam. 17:1-11 [CO 30:185]; and i Sam. 8:1-6 [CO, 29:544]), as well as to the sermon on Deuteronomy 24:7 (CO 24:627-28), where Calvin speaks of political freedom as "more than the half of life" (plus quam dimidium vitae fuit libertas). McNeil's conclusion seems well supported by Calvin's other biblical commentaries, as well as by his explicit words in the Institutes, where he "freely admitfs] that no kind of government is more happy than one where freedom is regulated with becoming moderation and is properly established on a durable basis." And if public officials "stoutly and constantly labor to preserve and retain it," not only are they "doing nothing alien to [their] office," but indeed they "ought to apply themselves with the highest diligence to prevent the freedom [whose guardians they have been appointed] from being in any respect diminished, far less violated" (4.20.8, 1494).58 And it is indeed these affirmations of political freedom that lead not only McNeill but other scholars to find Calvin's ideas contributing to the rise of European liberal democracy. As McNeill ("Democratic Element," 162) ends up stating the point, "[A]t heart [Calvin] is a political republican. If we have the opportunity to elect our own rulers, God has favored us, and we must preserve our heritage. If God has not thus favored us, we must bear with what rulers we have."59 To Cheneviere's credit, however, he has behind his argument—that Calvin "remains completely foreign to the dogmas of modern democracy" (Pensee politique, 190)—Calvin's explicit statements that "forms" of government are ultimately irrelevant for leading a full human life: "[Djivine providence has wisely arranged that various countries should be ruled by various kinds of government.... However .. . these things are needlessly spoken to those for whom the will of the Lord is enough. For if it has seemed good to him to set kings over kingdoms, senates or decuriones over free cities, it is our duty to show ourselves compliant and obedient to whomever he sets over the places where we live" (4.20.8, 1494-95). Indeed, regarding kingship, Calvin notes in his commentary on i Timothy 2:2 that the "depravity" of rulers "is not a reason why God's ordinance should not be loved." In other words, "seeing that God appointed magistrates and princes for the preservation of mankind, however much they fall short of the divine appointment, still we must not on that account cease to love what belongs to God, and

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to desire that it remain in force" (Comm. i Tim. 2:2 [51]). With monarchy, concludes Hopfl (161), "the fault is not in the form but in the personnel." The support Calvin appears to give to the possibility of democratic resistance to tyranny must be seen in this light. Although, according to some, Calvin appears to suggest, even to encourage, such resistance, we must he careful not to take Calvin's words out of the larger context of his writings.

Democratic Resistance to Tyrannical Regimes? Clearly Calvin does work to distinguish legitimate government from tyranny. In his commentary on Genesis, for example, he marks the distinction by attributing to "lawful government" a place for "counselors," who, with the ruler "should administer public affairs rightly and in good order" (Comm. Gen. 49:10 [2:458]). A rightful government, then, is one that knows its true ends,60 opens itself to outside criticism as to how it might best pursue them, and then pursues them with diligence and determination. Tyranny, on the other hand, consists of rulership by those who "give the reins to their lust, and think all things lawful to themselves" (Comm. Dan. 2:5 [1:126]).61 As to resistance to tyrannical rule—a resistance that would seem to grow naturally out of his democratic impulses—Calvin's language does appear at times benedictory. For example, in his Dedicatory Epistle to the commentaries on Daniel, addressed, in 1561, "to all the pious worshippers of God who desire the kingdom of Christ to be rightly constituted in France," Calvin makes clear his judgment of the then current French regime, a place "from which the truth of God, pure religion, and the doctrine of eternal salvation are banished, and the very kingdom of Christ laid prostrate" (i:lxiv). Further, he calls on his fellow believers "as far as lies in your power, and your calling demands it," to exercise their "duty . . . to use your hearty endeavors, that true religion may recover its perfect state" (i:lxx). 62 Yet Calvin goes on to make plain his determination that victims of tyranny follow the example of Daniel, that is, disclaim, dissent from, and even disobey the government in question, but without provoking, or participating in, outright rebellion. In the case of Daniel's experience, Calvin points out, "The stone by which those kingdoms, which had made war on God, were destroyed . . . was not formed by the hand of man." Indeed, although Calvin is well aware of the "very great indignities" the French Protestants have endured over the thirty years prior to 1561, but especially during "the last six months," and although "more atrocious things should be yet at hand," nevertheless, he says, "[Y]ou must use every effort, that no madness of the impious who act. . . intemperately, should deprive you of that moderation by which alone [French officialdom has] thus far been conquered and broken down" (i:lxx-lxxi). 63 In spite of Calvin's explicit pleas for moderation, a number of commentators have argued that a theory of resistance to tyrannical government flows quite logically from Calvin's position. Mentioned frequently in. support of this interpretation, in addition to the Dedicatory Letter to the Daniel commentary, is the ad-

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dition Calvin made to the last section of his Institutes in 1559 when the persecution of Protestants in France was at its height. Here Calvin loudly condemns an overeagerness to practice the "pretence of modesty" in obeying "kings" who "lift up [their] horns against God," thereby "abrogating] [their] power. Pointing to Hosea's prophetic denunciations of the Israelites' "readiness" to "comply with the decrees of their kings," Calvin asks rhetorically how subjects under tyranny could complacently "deny that it is lawful for them to refuse anything imposed by their kings." With such complacence, they thus acted "[a]s if God had made over his right to mortal men, giving them the rule over mankind" (4.20.32, 1520 [emphasis added]). Noting this apparent change of emphasis, Quentin Skinner comments as follows: "There is no doubt that, in the definitive Latin edition of the Institutes in 1559, Calvin begins to change his mind." Although this reconsideration "never prompts him to state a clear and unequivocal theory of revolution . . . it certainly results in a tendency . . . for Calvin to 'look asquint' at the possibility of justifying active resistance to lawful magistrates" (Skinner, Modern Political Thought, 2:192). Skinner goes on to note that the "theory of popular revolution developed by the radical Calvinists in the i55o's" was foreordained to enter "the mainstream of modern constitutionalist thought." If one looks forward to John Locke's Two Treatises, for example, which Skinner calls "the classic text of radical Calvinist politics," then, "we find the same set of conclusions being defended, and to a remarkable extent by the same set of arguments" (2:239).64 And in his commentary on Daniel 6:22 (1:382), Calvin does seem especially impatient: "[E]arthly princes lay aside all their power when they rise up against God, and are unworthy of being reckoned in the number of mankind. We ought rather utterly to defy than to obey them whenever they are so restive and wish to spoil God of his rights, and, as it were, to seize upon his throne and draw him down from heaven."65 Indeed, Calvin's convictions regarding both the power and place of individual conscience and the role and place of government in God's providential order would appear to steer one logically to the appearance of Christian individuals publicly defying ungodly magistrates. In saying that "God always retain[s] the highest authority," Calvin asserted in his Commentary on the Harmony of the Gospels (1555), Christ means that "those who destroy political order are rebellious against God." Therefore, "obedience to princes and magistrates is always joined to the worship and fear of God." If, on the contrary, "princes claim any part of the authority of God, we ought not to obey them any farther than can be done without offending God" (on Matt. 22:21; Mark 12:17; and Luke 20:25 b:45])-66 What Calvin says explicitly about the importance of civil obedience is apparently, as Bouwsma (John Calvin, 208) puts it, "belied by [his] detestation of tyrants." Moreover, Calvin does appear to open the door rather widely to spontaneous resistance of public authority when he invites the resistance of "popular magistrates [populares magistratus]" (4.20.31, 1519). He thus distinguishes "private individuals [de privatis haminibus]," who are bound to obey even wicked tyrants, from those lesser magistrates who have been "appointed to restrain the willfulness of kings." These latter (and Calvin mentions in particular the Spartan ephors, the Roman tribunes, and the Athenian demarchs) are imbued with public authority and

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therefore should rein in the temptation to "wink at kings who violently fall upon and assault the lowly common folk," a temptation which involves them only in "nefarious perfidy." Instead, they should "withstand" (intercedere) such behavior. If they fail to carry out their duties, they "dishonestly betray the freedom of the people, of which they know that they have been appointed protectors by God's ordinance" (4.20.31, 1519). Intercedere (literally, "to go between") can imply a range of actions, of course, from verbal objection to physical resistance.67 As a result, perhaps only one aspect of Calvin's point is clear: Any public official is answerable to God for the performance of his public duty to shepherd his charges. But given that no government can function without a multitude of "lesser magistrates" (whether explicitly "popular," as Calvin's examples demonstrate, or not), Calvin's point seems open to some rather liberal interpretation. Indeed, as Hopfl (211, 216) puts it, the later Calvinist revolts, in France, Scotland, and elsewhere can easily be defended "in Calvinian terms." At the same time, Calvin's doctrine of civil obedience was no doubt more suited, practically speaking, to Geneva than to other, more trying, places such as France. David Willis-Watkins (129) lays out the issue with some care: In the Sermons on 2 Samuel, preached May 1562—February 1563, "[a]ll the material" for the development of a full-scale theory of political resistance "is in place in Calvin's thought." According to Willis-Watkins, Calvin's discussion of the inferior magistrates in the 1559 edition of the Institutes, although an "apparently slight concession," represented "a large step in legitimating—in extremis—taking up arms against a tyrant" (117). Calvin's later preaching on David thus acts as the genesis of "a full-fledged theory of resistance." What we "see at work [during this time] is a critical build-up, a certain reaching of a critical mass, of hope which is grounded in exactly this kind of prophetic office or reuttering the Word in its freedom and power." In the end, though, Willis-Watkins wants his readers to understand that whereas in Calvin's later years he gives "new proportions... to themes which were already present in his earlier work," there is in this later writing "no hint of a call to anything like active rebellion on the part of ordinary citizens" (128). As Cheneviere (Pensee Politique, 335-36) also reminds us, Calvin's mention of lesser magistrates remains appropriately modest and "enveloped with precautions." One example of Calvin's "reuttering the Word in its freedom and power" (his commentary on Psalms 82:1-8 [3:328-36]) goes far toward affirming the conclusions of Cheneviere and of Willis-Watkins. Here Calvin speaks often about God's judgment against tyrannical rulers, but never as though those subjected to such tyranny were to be the obvious agents of God's wrathful judgment. Rather, Calvin speaks only to remind such rulers "that they themselves . . . must one day appear at the judgment-seat of heaven to render up an account." They ought to remember that the "dignity . . . with which they are clothed" is "only temporary, and will pass away with the fashion of the world" (3:334-35). God may very well call particular inferior magistrates to their duty, but such call will be as much personal as professional, as much instrumental (of God's judgment) as principial (of the magistrate's own). As to those whom Calvin calls "open avengers" (manifestos vindices), those "private" individuals whom God on occasion "raises up ... from among his ser-

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vants," and "arms . .. with his command to punish the wicked government and deliver his people . .. from miserable calamity," such persons seem not to constitute a difference in kind. For they are commissioned and "armed from heaven," personally authorized by God to "subdue the lesser power with the greater, just as it is lawful for kings to punish their subordinates." At the moment of God's commissioning, when such avengers have been "sent by God's lawful calling t o . . . tak[e] up arms against kings," they clearly do "not at all violate that majesty which is implanted in kings by God's ordination" (4.20.30, 1517)The distinction between private person and public person thus seems a thin one here, as Hopfl (171) points out, "[I]f anyone had somehow got his hands on potentia [he] became ipso facto a public man and entitled to obedience, for all is in the hands of God." Calvin appears to make the point explicitly when commenting on Isaiah 61:1: When, as was Isaiah, one is "endued with the Spirit of God," then one "discharges a public office [and] may not be regarded as a private individual" (4:303). Of course by using Moses and other Old Testament "kings and judges" as his primary examples in the passage from the Institutes, Calvin is plainly trying to contain this "exception" to scriptural figures only. Yet in the end he does clearly wish to reserve to God alone full discretion to deal with tyrants. Perhaps more to the point then, Calvin is quick to state that God may very well use those who "plan in their minds to do nothing but an evil act" as a means to punish other evil doers. Thus God "tamed the pride of Tyre by the Egyptians, the insolence of the Egyptians by the Assyrians, the fierceness of the Assyrians by the Chaldeans, ... and the arrogance of Babylon by the Medes and Persians." He even "crushed and afflicted . . . the ungratefulness . .. and impious obstinacy . . . of the kings of Judah and Israel. . . sometimes by the Assyrians, sometimes by the Babylonians" (4.20.30, 1517). The point to remember in thinking about Calvin's possible justification or encouragement of democratic resistance, therefore, is that the grounds and impetus for justified "resistance" can come only from God's explicitly revealed will. WillisWatkins (129) is no doubt correct in suggesting that "[t]aking up arms in obedience to the magistrate immediately over one" was one avenue by which "the ordinary believer's conscience" might be "freed for resistance to a tyrant." Moreover, one might "thereby shar[e] in Christ's providential rule." Such "sharing" does not come to the resister willy-nilly, however: His motives are likely to be far from clean. He may very well be God's instrument of wrath, but he is by no necessary connection God's emissary of faith and hope. What Calvin seeks to assert, it seems, is less an "authorization" to subjects seeking to revolt and more a warning to tyrants that both God and the affected subjects are watching. Perhaps the most startling demonstration of the power of Calvin's "democratic" ideas, then, arises in the way the so-called Calvinist countries have continued to manifest a special sensitivity to tyrannical government. Graham (Constructive, 172) properly appeals to just this history: Franklin II. Littell, whose sympathies in the Reformation period lie with the radicals, not the Calvinists, argues that in Germany under Hitler the active resistance to Nazism was largely Calvinist because the Reformed tradition of lay initiative was better equipped to cope with persecution than the 'pyramidal church structures' of

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German Lutheranism. Here again is evident a responsibility for society fostered by the Calvinist insistence that the will of God must extend to the total community.

Summary Without doubt, then, Calvin's understanding of Christian freedom's first part can be construed as encouraging, or as least anticipating, liberal individualist notions of freedom. The distinctiveness and equality of Calvinist individuals is apparent in Calvin's thinking and in the practical effects of his teaching. Yet what is also clear is an obverse side to Christian freedom's first part. Complementing the liberation of the Christian individual from the curse of blood guilt is the newfound recognition by this same individual of the spiritually intimate link now forged with the God who relieves him of his guilt. Liberation from guilt, in other words, does not mean for the believer emancipation from God's creatioiial and redemptive structures. God's loving and sovereign wholeness simultaneously differentiates and absorbs him. Hence, the institutional helps that God provides can chart for him a journey into that same wholeness. This said, the Christian believer's political stance starts to look less radical and more moderate, less like smug contrariety and more like prudent accommodation.

2

THE I N D I V I D U A L AS PART OF THE WHOLE The equality of sovereign individuals is not the equality of children of God. Philippe Beneton, "The Languages of the Rights of Man"

of Calvin's teaching that spotlights only his apparent tendencies A ton account nourish liberal individualism would remain seriously incomplete. For these tendencies compose only a part of Calvin's vision for political community. To appreciate Calvin's more subtle and distinct contributions to early modern thought, we must take note of his immediate sense of ambiguity and paradox in the face of God's love and rule; we must see the creative tension in which he placed individual believers under the interposing eye of God's sovereign grace.1 Although Calvin may have inadvertently nourished the emphasis on individual freedom we associate with liberalism, he was no liberal.2 In fact, in his essay Calvin warns his readers explicitly about the dangers of narrowly interpreting Christian freedom. The believer ought not to think that Christian freedom means to "shake off all obedience" or to "break out into unbridled license." Christian freedom emphatically does not "take away all moderation, order and choice of things" (3.19.1, 834)^ Indeed, the cornerstone of a solid understanding of Christian freedom lies in Calvin's concise statement: "Christian freedom is, in all its parts, a spiritual thing. Its whole force," he goes on, "consists in quieting frightened consciences before God" (3.19.9, 840). No autonomous concept, Christian freedom reveals itself as "an appendage of justification" (3.19.1, 833)-4 Because believers receive their justification before God only by means of Christ's mediation and not from any self-deservedness, their freedom manifests itself as liberation from the "curse" of sin according to which they would otherwise be judged. The question is not, says Calvin, "how we may become righteous" but, rather, "how, being unrighteous and unworthy, we may be reckoned righteous" (3.19.2, 834). As the obverse of the irreducible individual, then, Calvin reveals to us the individual as partial and incomplete, as part of a larger whole beyond his "puny capacity" (3.6.5, 689) to understand. Here conscience plays its role less as independent vision and more as a link to larger duty.

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Restoration as Awakening to Dependence Calvin's foundational point is that Christ's restorative powers do not perform some kind of single-occasion innoculation as the "Anabaptists" were prone to assert. Believers are not "restored to the state of innocence" so that they "need not take care to bridle the lust of the flesh," or so that "they can never go astray" (3.3.14, 606). Rather, Christ's redemption yields both lifelong "repentance" and lifelong "sanctiftcation" (3.3.18, 612; 3.6.5, 688-89). The fact that believers are reconciled to God "by free grace," Calvin asserts in commenting on Isaiah 53:5, does not confine the extent of such grace to original sin, "as if after baptism there were no more place for free reconciliation." No, Calvin declares, "the prophet does not here treat of a single species of pardon;" rather, he "extends this blessing to the whole course of life." To "limit" God's free grace "to a particular time" would be to commit the "most heinous sacrilege" (Comm. Is. 53:5 [4:116] [emphasis added]). God's free grace amounts to a "pardon which we daily receive" (Comm. Ps. 65:4 [2:456]).5 Believers come first to realize not only the strength and certainty they have in God but also their now total dependence on him. "We are not our own," Calvin reiterates, "we are God's" (3.7.1, 690). Hence, "we know that our hearts will always be wandering after fruitless pleasures, and harassed with care, until God knits them [penitus devinciat] to himself" (Comm. Ps. 116:1 [4:360]).6 Quoting Romans 12, Calvin confirms that "the duty of believers is 'to present their bodies to God as a living sacrifice' " (3.7.1, 689). The obverse side of Christian freedom for individual believers is thus Christian duty. Indeed, perhaps the first realization of the believer on receiving the gift of faith is of his own inadequacy in the face of this gift. Regeneration begins with a joining of "the boldness of faith that rests upon God's mercy" with "reverent f e a r . . . in the presence of God's majesty." In the face of "God's splendor" believers come to understand "how great is our own filthiness" (3.2.23, 569). Absent God's "curing" of "our maladies," believers are "dead" and "adjudged to the grave" (Comm. Ps. 103:4 [4:127]). In "Christ alone" believers find "life and salvation." Within themselves "nothing can be found but destruction and death" (Comm. Is. 53:5 [4:117]). The agonizing plea of Christ upon the cross ("My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?") itself shows, Calvin declares, the cosmic chasm which sin opens up between each human being and his Maker, a chasm which only Christ can bridge (Comm. Ps. 22:1 [1:361]). Calvin thus accepts here the orthodox partitioning of repentance into the stages of mortification and vivification. Mortification, or contrition, consists of "sorrow of soul and dread conceived from the recognition of sin and the awareness of divine judgment." At the stage of mortification the believer "confesses himself miserable and lost and wishes to be another man." Upon being "laid low by the consciousness of sin and stricken by the fear of God," though, the believer falls not into despair but rather, in the next stage of vivification, "looks to the goodness of God," "takes heart," "recovers courage," and "returns from death to life" (3.3.3, 595). The latter stage must follow the former, of course, because, as the word "mortification" loudly connotes, "unless we are [i.e., our sin is] violently slain by the sword of the spirit and brought to

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nought," believers cannot be "restored . . . into the righteousness of God," that is, the "inheritance of life" (3.3.8, 600; 3.3.9, 6oi).7 What God restores in the elect, though, is not full independence but, rather, a recognition of full dependence. Regeneration means, first and foremost, the renewal of the experience of partiality and incompletion. Calvin's Prefatory Address to Francis I in his Institutes presents perhaps his most concise and eloquent statement of this point: "For what is more consonant with faith than to recognize that we are naked of all virtue, in order to be clothed by God? That we are empty of all good, to be filled by him? That we are slaves to sin, to be freed by him? Blind, to be illumined by him? Lame, to be made straight by him? Weak, to be sustained by him?" (Pref., i3).8 Rather than releasing the believer to wholeness and integrity, Calvin asserts here, Christian freedom binds him even more tightly to the source of his strength and salvation. For example, in his preface to Pierre Olivetan's New Testament, Calvin pronounces the believer's full dependence on the written Gospel. Without Scripture, "We do not know what God has commanded or forbidden us; we cannot tell good from evil, light from darkness, the commandments of God from the ordinances [constitutions] of men. Without the Gospel everything is useless and vain; without the Gospel we are not Christians; without the Gospel all riches is poverty, all wisdom, folly before God. . ." (from Haroutunian, 66). Indeed, the believer comes to understand that as long as he resides "in the course of the present life," his "godly heart feels itself a division." This division or "conflict" arises because his heart "is partly imbued with sweetness from its recognition of the divine goodness, partly grieves in bitterness from an awareness of its calamity; partly rests upon the promise of the gospel, partly trembles at the evidence of its own iniquity; partly rejoices at the expectation of life, partly shudders at death" (3.2.18, 564). Hence, says Calvin, all faith is "tinged with doubts," all believers "are in perpetual conflict with their own unbelief" (3.2.17, 562).' Calvin is not suggesting here, of course, that authentic faith never comes to light but only that in the midst of his foundational assurance that God loves and cares for him the believer continues to live in a reality, as Susan Schreiner aptly puts it, "dominated by self-deception, delusion, and blindness" (Wisdom, 100). Essentially, then, this perpetual conflict demonstrates to the believer the full ramifications of his own sin. Although, as noted previously, Calvin understands Christ's redemption fully to have conquered sin, this victory will not become apparent (i.e., complete) until believers truly behold him "face to face" at the end of time. Believers are very much "still sinners" (3.3.10, 602-3), and, as sinners, very much in need of constant and continuing reclamation. "[N]o perfection can come to us," says Calvin, "so long as we are clothed in this flesh." On the contrary, believers have need of "continual forgiveness of sins," resting always on "God's mercy" (3.14.10, 777).

Sin as Prideful and Persistent Rebellion Having alluded to Calvin's understanding of sin at several places already, we should focus on this concept more narrowly. For Calvin's doctrine of sin is the primary

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link to his understanding of the critical "third use" of the law, that is, to seeing the law as a positive and constructive guide to Christian living. Moreover, this doctrine thereby goes on to link the third use of the law with Calvin's understanding of the primary role of the visible church and the visible state, understandings that distinguish him sharply both from later liberals and from Luther and the other reformers. The primary source and content of sin for Calvin, following rather deliberately in the Augustinian tradition, 10 is conscious rebellion, or "pride." Such pride springs from unfaithfulness not to mention ungratefulness. Seeking "equality with God," the human being "insolently shakes off" his creaturely status, thereby "shamefully spurn[ing] God's great bounty" (2.1.4, 2 45)- Adam's revolt displays its "boldness" most clearly when he "begins openly to contend" with God by belittling God's specific instructions for his health and life, and when he then "triumphs as one who has broken through all barriers." Through Adam, then, the human being becomes such a "refractory and indominable creature" that he willfully refuses to accept either his deriviative status or his Father's lavish gifts (Comm. Gen. 3:12 [1:163—64] [emphasis in the original]).11 Consequently, Adam "as far as he was able extinguished the whole glory of God" (2.1.4, 246). By squandering God's good graces, by falling prey to the siren song that he could be "like God," by thus scratching the itch of prideful self-delusion, Adam infected all his offspring with a debilitating presumption. Original sin thus means a conscious, and willful, "turning away" from God at the origins of human experience (1.4.2, 48). I2 Adam's sin is an "inherited corruption," one by which Adam "consigned his race to ruin," and by which he "perverted the whole order of nature in heaven and on earth" (2.1.5, 246).° Hence, all human beings are "infected with the disease of sin" (2.1.6, 248). H In the way "rotten branches come forth from a rotten root," so were children "corrupted in the parent, so that they brought disease upon their children's children." Indeed, "whether a man is a guilty unbeliever or an innocent believer, he begets not innocent but guilty children, for he begets them from a corrupted nature" (2.1.7, 2 5 0). 1 5

Moreover, not only is sin an "inherited corruption," it is a "total" corruption. As Calvin asserts, "all parts of the soul were possessed by sin after Adam deserted the fountain of righteousness." Indeed, "unspeakable impiety occupied the very citadel of his mind, and pride penetrated to the depths of his heart." Among Adam's progeny, then, "the whole man is overwhelmed—as by a deluge—from head to foot" so that "no part is immune from sin" and "all that proceeds from him is to be imputed to sin" (2.1.9, 252~53 [emphasis added]).16 Hence, the human being can attribute nothing he does to his own righteousness (3.14.6, 772-74). "Merit" (merhum), says Calvin, is a term "foreign to Scripture" (3.15.2, 789). Commenting on Psalm 103:10 (4:135), he asks some rhetorical questions. "Let each of us ... examine his own life: . . . in how many ways have we provoked the wrath of God?" Indeed, "do we not continually provoke it?"17 The permanence and pervasiveness of sin do not, of course, alter the "voluntary" character of sin. Here again, Calvin follows closely on the path of Luther,

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Augustine, and Paul. The human being does sin "of necessity," but not "by compulsion"; he sins "by the most eager inclination of his h e a r t . . . by the prompting of his own lust," but "not by compulsion from without" (2.3.5, 294-96).18 Clearly, for Calvin, sin is not part of human nature but rather of such nature's "derangement": "Man is corrupted through natural vitiation, but a vitiation that does not flow from nature" (2.1.11, 254).19 As do Luther and Augustine before him, Calvin seeks to steer between the twin dangers ("precipices") of complacency in the face of an enslaved will, on the one hand, and self-righteousness in the face of a free will, on the other (2.2.1, 255). He therefore posits, with Augustine, the sinful will as, one might say, "self-enslaved," indeed "willfully enslaved" (2.2.7 &• 8, 264-66).20 The human being locks himself into the cell of pride he has himself fashioned. Given such self-enslavement, one can see clearly both the indispensability of grace, God's free gift in Christ of forgiveness and restoration, and the inevitability of persistent sin (2.2.6, 262-63; 2.3.12, 306-307). God's grace in Christ, coming wholly outside human beings by means of God's free election and his Spirit's curative nourishment, brings with it the only workable key to unlock the selfconstructed, and self-locked, "yoke" of human sin (2.4.14, 308-9; 2.6.1, 340-42; 2.12.4, 467—68).21 "If we are judged by our own worth," Calvin says on more than one occasion, "we still deserve death and destruction" (3.14.10, 777). Christian believers must understand without ambiguity or confusion that God's grace is "efficacious of itself," that is, God does all the work of salvation (2.3.10, 303—4). Hence, the "freedom" Christ gives sets out grounds for both ecstatic joy and profound embarrassment, for both spontaneous gratitude and a renewed sense of reponsibility and duty.22 Such freedom, by way of genuine repentance, begets in the believer this acute insight into the persistence of his own sin. For the recovery process proceeds in the midst of a diseased world, and by addressing a still handicapped "addict." Indeed, says Calvin, believers recognize that "this perversity never ceases in us, but continually bears new fruits.. . . Q]ust as a burning furnace gives forth flame and sparks, or water ceaselessly bubbles up from a spring," sin continues to make its presence felt (2.1.8, 251). In other words, although the "guilt [reatwm] of sin" has lost its "dominion" (regnum) in individual believers, the "substance [materiam] of sin," in the way of ongoing temptations, remains very much a living presence. "[S]in ceases only to reign [regnare]; it does not cease to dwell in [believers] [nan habitare desinit]" (3.3.11, 603).23 It is for these reasons—of sin's permanence, pervasiveness, and persistence, and the partiality and inadequacy of individual human beings that these qualities imply—that Calvin works to propound with some diligence and determination the various "helps" to living the Christian life, helps which he understands God to have specifically afforded believers for their rescue and reanimation. For the same reasons, he asserts not only the liberation of individual conscience but also its link, in gratitude for Christ's restorative work, to larger duty. The believer's conscience develops as "an inner witness and monitor of what we owe God." It "holds before us the difference between good and evil," and thereby "accuses us when we fail in our duty" (2.8.1, 368 [emphasis added]). 24

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Conscience, Duty, and Prudence Conscience therefore continually reminds the believer of his undeservedness, his partiality, and his duty. Conscience testifies to the believer as an individual, to be sure, but what it testifies confirms the individual's place in a larger order of creation, judgment, and redemption (Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 22:21 [3:45]). Calvin cries out in this way in his commentary on Isaiah 53:6: "As soon as we know that we are ruined"—that is, that we are fully conscious of our sin—"then, aware of our wretchedness we eagerly run to avail ourselves of the remedy," a remedy, enfoldmertt in Christ, "which otherwise would be held by us in no estimation" (4:117). Faith, in other words, engenders mortification, which engenders the beginning of vivification and sanctification. More important, genuine faith, according to Calvin, engenders grateful response.25 Calvin's short treatise "The Life of the Christian Man" (Inst. 3.6-10) provides his strongest statement of this point, thus beginning both to set him forcefully apart from Luther and to align him more closely with the medieval scholastics.26 Unless faith engenders Christian behavior, it can hardly be called genuine faith. And Christian behavior can only arise from the ingrained understanding that one is a part of "the body of Christ." The believer thus understands the futility, yea the perversion, of independent action, and the full responsibilities of Christian virtue. "Accordingly," says Calvin, "unless we give and devote ourselves to righteousness, we not only revolt from our Creator with wicked perfidy but we abjure our Savior himself." Indeed, "ever since he engrafted us into his body, we must take especial care not to disfigure ourselves, who are his members" (3.6.3, 687).21 The primary constructive virtue of the Christian life is thus humility as selfdenial. Because "we are not our own, [then] insofar as we can, let u s . . . forget ourselves and all that is ours." Because "we are God's . . . let us ... live for him and die for him." The "first step" of living the Christian life consists of thus: "that a man may depart from himself in order that he may apply the whole force of his ability in the service of the Lord" (3.7.1, 690).28 Only self-renunciation leads to "proper helpfulness toward our neighbor" (3.7.5, 695). Because God images himself in each human being, believers must look first to him to attend adequately to their fellows. "[I]f we rightly direct our love, we must first turn our eyes not to man.. . but to God, who bids us extend to all men the love we bear to him." Believers love their neighbor "because we love God" (2.8.5, 419). But of course we can only see God's reflection in another when we direct our attention away from ourselves and toward the God who implants the divine image. It is exactly the sense of common nature—as mutual image bearers—with all humankind that Christ liberates the members of his body to discern. In Christ, we can see fully that "all men are our brethren, because they are related to us by a common nature." As a result, whenever we confront a fellow human being, we must of necessity, "behold ourselves as in a mirror" (Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 5:43 [1:304]). One's neighbor, says Calvin, is one's "own flesh" (3.7.6, 696). And this recognition of common identity must issue in mutual subjection and mutual service. "God has bound us so strongly to each other, that no man ought

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to endeavor to avoid subjection; and where love reigns, mutual services will be rendered" (Comm. Eph. 5:21 [317]). Proper Christian freedom, then, means careful attention to Paul's words in i Corinthians 10:23 (341-42): " 'Everything is permissible'—but not everything is beneficial. 'Everything is permissible'—but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others." Indeed, "liberty . . . remains unimpaired, when you accommodate yourself to your neighbors."29 The first part of Christian freedom thereby implies confession and selfdenunciation as much as self-proclamation and self-confidence; prudence (prudentia) as much as presumption.30 Indeed, Calvin's emphasis on caution and prudential considerations is an integral part of his conception of human freedom (Hopfl, 18687). One cannot simply consult Scripture and then know exactly what to do in a given set of circumstances.31 Calvin does not understand prudence wholly in its Aristotelian/Thomistic sense, but he does appear to go a long way in defending something like it. As do Aristotle and Thomas, Calvin finds prudence necessary to fit the more abstract rules of living to the particular circumstances one faces, to fit, one might say, the doctrine to the details. As he puts it in one place, prudence concerns knowing "how much is enough" (4.20.8, 1493). Prudence can thus accomplish a great deal in carrying out God's purposes in the world. "For he who has set the limits to our life has at the same time entrusted to us its care." And "if the Lord has committed to us the protection of our [common] life, our duty is to protect it." If he "offers helps," believers should use them. If he "forewarns us of dangers," believers ought "not to plunge headlong." If he "makes remedies available," believers ought "not to neglect them." Prudence remains a key virtue, then, because by way of prudence "the Lord has inspired in men the arts of taking counsel and caution." After all, says Calvin, "God's providence does not always meet us in its naked form." Due prudence "clothes" that providence by fitting it into the context of the believer's experience (1.17.4, 216). Even with this brief sketch, though, one can begin to see that what Calvin has in mind when he speaks of prudence differs significantly from the classical conception. The primary inadequacy of classical prudence (Aristotle's phronesis), for Calvin, and the real point of distinction with his own understanding, arises with its dependence on a healthy natural reason. For as Calvin states both emphatically and repeatedly, human reason is derivative of human will, and as long as will is diseased, reason remains a pathetic cripple. Calvin's commentary on John 1:5 provides a concise insight into his thinking on this score: The chief parts of the light which remain in our corrupt natures are two: first, everyone has a certain seed of religion implanted in him; and secondly, every man's conscience is capable of distinguishing good from evil. But then, what happens except that religion degenerates into a thousand chimeras of superstition; and consciences pervert every act of judgment, so that one cannot tell vice from virtue? In short, natural reason can never guide men to Christ. Even though prudence teaches men to regulate their lives, and though they are born capable of the arts and sciences, the whole thing vanishes and leaves nothing behind, (from Haroutunian, 132)

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Once tapped by Christ for membership in his body, believers only come to realize at a more profound level their willful inability to maintain kinship with this body and thus their complete dependence on God's continuing light and his Spirit's continuing motivation and insight.32 At base, prudence arises from divine, not human, initiative. Through his Spirit, God inspires in believers the "arts of taking counsel and caution" (1.17.4, 216). From the human perspective, prudence can mean only cautious attentiveness to the Spirit's leading and never confident assertiveness of one's own experience in judgment. Thus, even when one does, through the arts of counsel and caution, display a measure of virtue and even does accomplish a neighborly task, one cannot presume to take credit for either the insight or the deed; one can only praise and thank God for his good gifts. Of course a recognition of dependence on divine initiative does not imply a posture of inert passivity. It simply means an openness to what Calvin calls "the secret energy of the Spirit" (3.1.1, 537). And such energy, not to mention, the insight to harnass it, arises amidst the recognition and the doing of one's duty. Even though what the believer might do is, as Hancock puts it, "devoid of intrinsic merit" (Foundations, 53), he is nonetheless obliged to seek his neighbor's good in what deeds he does. The believer, says Calvin, should in fact "aspire to a good of which he is empty, to a freedom of which he has been deprived" (2.2.1, 255). His freedom, then, consists not in his willingness to do good but, rather, in his being forgiven the perversity buried in himself because of which his deeds are pathetically incomplete. His freedom, one might say, consists in just this recognition of his inadequacy and incompleteness. Isaiah's injunction to "wait on the Lord," Calvin holds, points not to passivity but to preparation. Only when the believer is "fully convinced of [his] weakness," will he stand ready to "yield to the power of God" (Comm. Is. 40:30 [3:239])." Prudence thus depends not on reason but on will. It has less to do with what is the right thing to do than with the believer's intention, in what he does (3-7.7, 697). Does he see himself primarily as an "earthen vessel" carrying God's precious love and mercy to the accomplishment of his task, or does he instead see himself as a wise and competent judge dependent only on his own intellectual prowess and practical experience (Comm. 2 Cor. 4:7 [2:201-2])? Freedom does not then imply free will, at least in the sense of emancipated will, as Calvin insists repeatedly.34 Rather, freedom implies liberation only from the guilt of will's perversity: not freedom as assertive independence but freedom as grateful dependence. It is thus an error to attribute to Calvin anything like the "natural law" thinking of the medieval rationalists. Calvin does of course use the term "natural law," but he quite explicitly separates it from its scholastic baggage. Indeed, Hancock goes so far as to say that for Calvin, "divine law, moral law, the rule of law, natural law, conscience and equity are all equivalent terms" (Foundations, 86).i5 We should quibble with the inclusion of "conscience" and "equity" in this list, but we can readily agree that the idea of an independent or independently reachable set of moral provisions apart from Scripture was for Calvin, unthinkable. As Hcipfl explains, the innumerable references by Calvin to specific requirements of "natural" justice appear in the end to be only "polemical" attempts either to "hammer

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Anabaptists for their literalism, or to account for the undeniable elements of soundness in the morality of the pagans."36 In spite of his language, or perhaps by means of it, Calvin was inexorably "grinding" the idea of natural law "into insignificance," doing so "between the upper millstone of divine law and the nether millstone of positive law" (Hopfl, 181). In other words, between God's direct— that is, nonintellectual—revelation of himself in Scripture and in individual conscience, and his explicit directing of human affairs through the placement of rulers (and they not always good) in positions of authority, the notion of natural hierarchy discernible by reason alone crumbles and wanes.37

Law as "Help" Christian prudence and continuing sin thus imply the need for external aids or helps (externa subsidia [4.1.1, ion] or auxilia [4.1.6, 1020]): Scriptural mandates or institutional mechanisms which can bridle the believer's self-centered and selfdestructive tendencies and direct his attention to God's glory through a pointed recognition of, and service to, his fellows. Calvin devotes the last book of his Institutes to a full description of these helps, examining specifically the institutional church and civil government.38 The basis for such institutional help, though, lies in Calvin's understanding of law and its specific relation to human life. Calvin distinguishes himself markedly from the other major reformers by describing a "third use" of the law (2.7.12, 360-61 ).39 With the others, Calvin sees the moral law as first of all God's instrument to "warn, inform, convict, and . . . condemn every man of his own unrighteousness" (2.7.6, 354). In this sense the law serves as a "mirror" in which to contemplate one's weakness (2.7.7, 355! Comm. Harm. Moses on Deut. 10:12 [3:197—98]). In the second place, the law serves as a direct restraint on malefaction. "[B]y fear of punishment, [the law] bridles [human beings to] keep their hands from outward activity, and hold inside the depravity that otherwise they would wantonly have indulged" (2.7.10, 358).40 But Calvin goes further. For him the law clearly also serves as a guide and a goad to oftentimes sluggish believers. This third use (MSMS) or function, comprises two aspects, both of which are substantially positive (i.e., additive) to the life of a believer. The law serves as "the best instrument for them to learn more thoroughly each day the nature of the Lord's will to which they aspire, and to confirm them in their understanding of it." The believer, even if he resembles a servant "already prepared with all earnestness of heart to commend himself to his master," nevertheless, "must search out and observe his master's ways more carefully in order to conform and accommodate himself to them." Do not delude yourselves, Calvin tells believers, "not one of us may escape from this necessity." If the experience of faith means anything, it means confronting the recognition that "no man has . . . attained to such wisdom as to be unable, from the daily instruction of the law, to make fresh progress toward a purer knowledge of the divine will" (2.7.12, 360). Even more to the point, believers need "not only teaching but exhortation." Their benefit lies in being "aroused to obedience." The law thus helps believers to be

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"drawn back from the slippery path of transgression." For "however eagerly they may in accordance with the Spirit strive toward God's righteousness, the listless flesh always so burdens them that they do not proceed with due readiness." Hence, in this way, "the law is to the flesh like a whip to an idle and balky ass, to arouse it to work." Because the believer is "not yet free of the weight of the flesh," the law provides "a constant sting that will not let him stand still" (2.7.12, 36o-6i).41 Worth exploring, given our overall investigation, though, is that for Calvin the third use of the law does not simply detail one more possible relationship one might have with the law. Rather, Calvin says, the third use, this substantively positive use, constitutes the law's principal use (praedpuus est), primarily because it "pertains more closely to the proper purpose of law" (2.7.12, 36o).42 Thus Calvin notes in a number of places that he understands law primarily to mean guide more than restraint, help more than hindrance.43 Before discussing the proper end of law for Calvin, though, we should explore what particular content Calvin means to indicate when he uses the term "law." In beginning his discussion of the uses or functions of law, in Institutes (2.7.1), Calvin states explicitly how he means to use the term "law." "I understand by the word 'law' not only the Ten Commandments, which set forth a godly and righteous rule of living, but the form of religion handed down by God through Moses" (2.7.1, 348). In other places, Calvin fills out this understanding. For example, in Commenting on Psalms 1:1-2 (1:4), Calvin notes that when David speaks of the law, "it ought not to be understood as if the other parts of Scripture should be excluded, but rather, since the whole of Scripture is nothing else than an exposition of the law, under it, as the head is comprehended in the whole body."44 Calvin makes more explicit this understanding of law (as God's entire word) in commenting on the Decalogue, where he notes that "the sum of the contents of the Law," as made plain not only by Christ's answer to the Pharisees in Matthew 22:37, but also by Moses's own summary in Deuteronomy 6:5, Deuteronomy 10: 12, and Leviticus 19:18, indeed, "the whole perfection of righteousness" thereby consists of this: "that we should serve God with true piety, and conduct ourselves innocently towards men according to the rule of charity." In other words, "nothing is required of us by the law, but that we should love God, together with our neighbors . . . [P]iety and justice," that is, provide a "short and clear definition" of the law (Comm. Harm. Moses on Deut. 10:12 [3:i9o-9i]).45 Moreover, it turns out, these two parts really make up only one whole. "For. . . there will never be true charity towards neighbors, unless where the love of God reigns." Moreover, "it is impossible for the love of God to reign without producing brotherly kindness among men" (Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 22:39 b: 59\)Given this understanding of the law's coherence, we can see why, for Calvin, there exists no inherent conflict between law and gospel.46 Whereas for Luther "love needs no law" (from Allen, 21), for Calvin love is the law. Indeed, says Calvin, "the Gospel... is nothing else than a fulfillment of the law" (Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 5:17 [1:278] [emphasis in the original]). Indeed, as is the gospel, the law is a manifestation of God's love and God's care. As Calvin says, "the purpose of the whole law [is] to form human life to the archetype of divine purity."

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"For God has so depicted his character in the law," he goes on, "that if any man carries out in deeds whatever is enjoined there, he will express the image of God, as it were, in his own life." Anyone who believes that "the law teaches nothing but some rudiments and preliminaries of righteousness by which men begin their apprenticeship . . . [therefore, does] not understand its purpose" (2.8.51, 415-16). The law, for Calvin, is thus God's full and sufficient act of self-revelation; it lays bare "all the duties of piety and love" (2.8.51, 415). As a result, it is a clear sign of God's will for communion and intimacy with his creatures and its purpose is to consummate that communion. In his law, God prescribes a loving order to his creation and calls his creatures to full participation in that order.47 The content of the law and the content of the gospel (of Christ as God's incarnate Word) can appear antagonistic only for those who interpret the law "amiss." Those who seek in themselves what they ought instead to seek in Christ, those who try "to propitiate" God "by the merit of their works," rather than seek "to please God by gratuitous reconciliation" (Comm. Harm. Moses on Deut. 10:12 [3: 199]), who seek in the words of the law what they ought to seek in the spirit of the law (2.8.8, 374-75), work against the purpose of the law rather than alongside it.48 Rather than supplant the law, the gospel "confirmed and satisfied whatever the law had promised, and gave substance to the shadows." Hence, "where the whole law is concerned, the gospel differs from it only in clarity of manifestation" (2.9.4, 427). The gospel as "new covenant" is needed not to be different from the first, "old covenant," but rather "to give a perpetual sanction to the covenant, which [God] had made, from the beginning, with his own people." Christ fulfilled the law "by quickening, with his Spirit, the dead letter, and then exhibiting, in reality, what had hitherto appeared only in figures" (Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 5:17 [i: 277]). The coming of Christ has therefore not freed believers "from the authority of the law" (1:277) but only from the "curse" of the law (Comm. GaL 3:10 [i: 89]), that is, the "condemnation" of the law (3.19.3, 836). To be Christians "under the law of grace," therefore, "does not mean to wander unbridled outside the law," but rather "to be engrafted in Christ, by whose grace we are free of the curse of the law, and by whose Spirit we have the law engraved upon our hearts" (2.8.57, 421).49 The law is indeed, says Calvin, "itself bright." However, "it is only when Christ appears to us in it, that we enjoy its splendor" (Comm. 2 Cor. 3:15 [2: 183])The first part of Christian freedom for Calvin, then, is nothing like freedom from the law, it is freedom within the law, even freedom as a result of the law (when mediated by grace). As Calvin says in his Commentary on Psalms 116:1 (4:360), "those who have been heard [exaudhi] by God, but do not place themselves entirely under his guidance and guardianship [non se penitus ipsus fidei tradunt] have derived little advantage from the experience of his grace."50 Calvin's argument regarding the third use of the law, though, is that the written law provides just the sort of tangible detail needed to shine through the dusk of human sin surrounding all human beings, even those, as long as they are in this life, engrafted into Christ. "[T]he Lord has provided us with a written law" (i.e.,

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something concrete), he says, "to give us a clearer witness of what was too obscure in the natural law" (i.e., something abstract). He does this to "shake off our listlessness, and strike more vigorously our mind and memory" (2.8.1, 368). Thus, as noted previously, Calvin wants explicitly to equate, at least as to content, natural law with moral law (i.e., the Decalogue, or the "law of love"). Says Calvin, "that inward law [lex ilia interior], which we have above described as written, even engraved, upon the hearts of all, in a sense asserts the very same things that are to be learned from the two Tables" (2.8.1, 367-68).51 But the need for written law, and ultimately for the embodiment of law in Christ, arises out of the self-made and self-obscuring fog of human sin. "|T]here is nothing more common than for a man to be sufficiently instructed in a right standard of conduct by natural law [quam lege naturali]," yet "man is so indulgent toward himself that when he commits evil he readily averts his mind, as much as he can, from the feeling of sin" (2.2.22, 281-82). He rationalizes his own behavior as conforming to the tenets of natural law, deluding himself in the degree to which such behavior actually follows those tenets. Once again, Calvin's specific examples stand out: "Every man will affirm that murder is evil. But he who is plotting the death of an enemy contemplates murder as something good." Likewise, "the adulterer will condemn adultery in general, but will privately flatter himself in his own adultery." Within the context of natural law, human ignorance is palpable: "when he comes to a particular case, he forgets the general principle that he has just laid down" (2.2.23, 282). H With regard to a true estimate of himself, therefore, "all [human] understanding is nothing else than mere vanity" (Comm. John 1:5 [1:34]). For natural law to be of any substantial use to human beings, Calvin states, the assertions of the "Schoolmen" regarding the innate human capacity to choose and to excercise self-control would have to be operative. It is not enough to say that human beings have a "natural desire for good." Such an assumption, as we have already seen in the previous discussion of conscience, Calvin finds noncontroversial. The real question, he says, is not "whether or not man is impelled to seek after good by an impulse of nature" but, rather, and more to the point, whether the human being "discerns good by right reason," whether "knowing it he choose[s] it," and whether "having chosen it, he followjs] it" (2.2.26, 286). To assert human capacity to reason correctly, to choose correctly, or to behave correctly, the Schoolmen must inevitably assert the "freedom [really, emancipation] of the will," an assertion which Calvin then sets out, very deliberately, to disprove. When, for example, the Schoolmen interpret Paul's words in Romans 7 describing his inner struggle (which, Calvin notes, "believers constantly feel in themselves in the conflict between flesh and spirit") as indicating the existence of "a faculty in the soul" which "voluntarily aspirc[s] to good," but which is "too feeble to be able to come forth into good intention, or to arouse effort," at such time they "wrongly pervert," says Calvin, "the whole argument that Paul is pursuing here." Instead, "the Spirit comes, not from nature, but from regeneration." Indeed, "who would have such strife in himself but a man who, regenerated by the Spirit of God, bears the remains of his flesh about with him" (2.2.27, 287-88)?" When Calvin goes on to explore the connection between Spirit and flesh, flesh turns out to pertain not only to the sensual part of the soul, but also to the "higher

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part," indeed to the "whole man." Hence, those, such as Erasmus, who argue that human proclivity to evil exists alongside human freedom to choose the good, are "thoroughly refuted" by the words of Christ and the Apostle. Pointing specifically to John 3:6 and Romans 8:7, Calvin argues that Christ is "not teaching a re-birth as regards the body" but of the whole human being. Moreover, "the soul is not reborn if merely a part of it is reformed, but only when it is wholly renewed." In both these passages, then, "the Spirit is so contrasted with flesh [the 'whole man'] that no intermediate thing is left." Paul "relieves us of any possible doubt on this matter: . . . We have nothing of the Spirit. . . except through regeneration" (2.3.1, 289 [emphasis added]).54 In sum, "the desire for well-being natural to men [naturale hominibus bene habandi desiderium] no more proves freedom of the will than the tendency of metals and stones toward perfection of their essence proves it in them" (2.2.26, 287).55 On the contrary, the prayer of the wise Solomon shows "the stubbornness of our hearts," hearts which "by nature . .. glory in rebelling against God's law" (2.3.9, 301). Indeed, every human being "by nature inclines to deluded self-admiration" (2.1.2, 242-43). Ironically then, says Calvin echoing his agreement with the apostle Paul, "the man who thinks he knows something, does not yet know as he ought to know" (Comm. i Cor. 8:2 [1:274]). At base, then, natural law, the content of which is equivalent to moral law (i.e., divine law),56 but whose illuminating and motivating power is blocked by human sin, has one purpose, and one purpose only: "to render man inexcusable" (2.2.22, 282). It cannot serve as a reliable guide to Christian living. For all practical purposes it provides no positive help.57 Given this understanding of the plain gap between knowing and doing, even in the actions of believers, the nourishing, illuminating, and regenerating force of the written law, as mediated by grace, shines through. Calvin thus finds the Psalmist's use of the metaphor of the "lamp" in describing God's law to be a powerful and informative one. "Unless the word of God enlighten men's path, the whole of their life is enveloped in darkness and obscurity, so that they cannot do anything else than miserably wander from the right way."58 Hence, in this verse (105) from Psalm 119, "the Psalmist testifies that the Divine Law was his schoolmaster and guide in leading a holy life," and thereby "prescribes the same rule to us all." And the prescription is right and true. Should we instead "follow what seems good in [our] own estimation, we become entangled in inextricable and frightful mazes" (Comm. Ps. 119:105 [4:479]).59 Indeed, rather than drudging acceptance or even dispassionate determination, God's written law ought to fill us with "delight" (Comm. Ps. ii9:2 4 [4:4i8]). 60

Institutional Helps The law is therefore far from superfluous for believers. "Even though before God's judgment seat it has no place in their consciences . . . it does not stop teaching and exhorting and urging them to good" (3.19.2, 835). Or as Hancock has put it, "clearly the freedom of the Christian from the burden of the law is anything but

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freedom from concern for the law" (Foundations, 52). Thus, although the believer experiences a very real individual responsibility for his own destiny, he understands fully just how dependent he is not only on God's mercy and God's specific guidance in his revealed law, but also (and because of this dependence) on the support, encouragement, and exhortation of his fellow believers, of the institutional church, and of God's ordained social and political order.61 As may now be apparent, Calvin finds the effort to distinguish sharply between sacred law and secular law to be, in many ways, an artificial endeavor. Although Christian conscience does set Christian individuals apart from thoughtless obedience to institutional structures, it ends up freeing them for thoughtful awareness of their need for such structures. Christian freedom thereby opens the eyes of believers to God's gracious provision, through his law, of just the sort of institutional structures they need for full spiritual maturation. Through his law God provides for church, family, work, school, and civil polity. His word announces, inspires, and undergirds these institutions. Hence, to suggest that rules promulgated by these institutions are ordinarily distinct from, or at substantial variance with, God's law is to question their divine ordination. For church and civil government in particular, Calvin uses the term "helps" because in their ordinary institutional functioning they point Christian people directly to a God of mercy, and to his Gospel of grace. In many respects, then, directives from such institutions are not distinct from the law; they are discernible reflections of it.62 For God's law to be fully present and effective in the lives of believers, therefore, they must not only understand themselves to be integral parts of a specific worshipping community but must also shoulder their responsibility to ensure that God's law as presented to others remains consistent with its biblical expression. They must maintain the institutional integrity of the church, not only by guarding the purity of Christian doctrine but also by continual provoking of believers to purity of heart. Calvin's vision of ecclesiastical organization demonstrates this emphasis clearly. First, pastors held up for believers the purity of God's word in Scripture. As Calvin put the matter in his sermon on Job 38:1—4 (287), preachers indispensably "chew" God's word, so that congregants may digest it fully. Second, teachers "teach sound doctrine to the faithful" (quoted in Monter, 136). Third, elders "keep watch over every man's life." Where necessary they "admonish amiably those they see leading a disorderly life," or even "make fraternal correction" (in Monter, 137). Calvin understood the role of the elders to be "essentially remedial rather than oppressive," for whereas they were told in a number of places in their written instructions how and when to "admonish" offenders, "they were never told that they should punish them" (Monter, 137).63 A constant and key danger in maintaining the church's institutional integrity is that of hypocrisy (hypocrisis, fraus). Hypocrisy, which "prevails in us, and is deeply fixed in the hearts of almost all," in its own way "generates insolence and pride against God" (Comm. Jer. 2:30 [1:131]). The fraudulence of hypocrisy consists not only in "uttering with the tongue, before men, one thing, while we think a different thing in our hearts." Human dissimilitude sinks more deeply, attaches to the human heart with more subtlety, and is thus "more hidden" than that. It manifests itself in "flattcr(ing] God in a slavish manner," only out of a kind of

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superficial fear of exclusion from the church, when, "if he could," such a hypocrite "would shun the judgment of God" (Comm. Ps. 78:36 [3:253]). Clearly, for Calvin, the human heart has "so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood lurks," that it often "dupes itself." The church must aim to demonstrate a wholesome faith, one with "living roots," which "penetrate to the heart itself, there to remain fixed" (3.2.10, 554). It is therefore important not only that the Christian faith be "externally fortified and protected by the ramparts of the word" but also that such faith should be "garrisoned within by the same word, lest novel imaginations should secretly insinuate themselves and destroy the purity of the doctrine" (Comm. Harm. Moses on Deut. 13:1-4 [1:439]).64 Thus, "in seeking God, it would not be sufficient to teach what is right, unless men's minds are established in it; it is requisite, therefore, that religion should be sure and firm, or it will not be duly ordered" (Comm. Harm. Moses on Deut. 13:1-4 [i:44o]).65 As "men are ordinarily induced to turn aside from the right path. . . little by little," then "the servants of God must endeavor utterly to abhor the life of ungodly men" (Comm. Ps. 1:1 [i:3]).66 The lifelong process of sanctification must proceed with the constant support, even goading, of fellow believers, in the light of God's law. Indeed, the silencing of the prophetic voice of the church is "assuredly the most dreadful kind of punishment which can be inflicted upon us. ... [T]here is no plague more deadly than for men to be left to the guidance of their own counsels" (Comm. Ps. 81:11-12 [3:321-22]).^ Hence, for Calvin, church discipline, not to mention the discipline imposed by civil magistrates and positive law, must be an integral part of the the believer's frame of reference. "[A]s the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the church, so does discipline serve as its sinews, through which the members of the body hold each other, each in its own place." And "all who desire to remove discipline or to hinder its restoration... are simply contributing to the dissolution of the church" (4.12.1, i23o).68 Calvin does not have in mind either laxity of discipline or exclusiveness of membership. Indeed, he condemns outright the Anabaptists' "overscrupulousness" in expecting "no assembly of Christ to exist except one conspicuous in every respect for its angelic perfection." Their predictable response, "the sacrilege of schism [serves] only to corrupt and break the bond of peace and unity" which should characterize the church (4.12.12, i239-4o).69 In the words of Hopfl, Calvin's "master concepts were the same: order, or harmony, is the sine qua non; order requires law, and laws need enforcement" (54)™ Says Calvin, "[W]e need correction, that we may learn to submit ourselves to God; because, in consequence of the obstinacy which belongs to our nature, we shall never make progress in the word of God, till we have been subdued by violence [nisi violenter subacti]" (Comm. Is. 2:4 [1:99])." Calvin's appreciation of the gift of discipline grows both from his low expectations for human geniality and from his high hopes for human progress. Institutional manifestations of law's third use thus follow easily, even organically, from Calvin's stress on individual human helplessness. Human beings are individuals, and individual Christian believers have, in a very real sense, direct access to God's personal and tangible revelation. Yet even believers continue to

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discover within themselves only feeble and halfhearted attempts to communicate with God (and with others about God) and thus must acknowledge their continuing—and complete—dependence not only on him but on his people and thus on his institutional helps (2.2.25, 284-86). Individual believers find themselves, says Calvin, under a "twofold government" (duplex regimen) (4.20.1, 1485; 3.19.15, 847), one aspect of which is "spiritual [spirituale] whereby the conscience is instructed [instituitur] in piety and in reverencing [ad cultum] God," the other of which is "political [politicum], whereby man is educated [eruditur\ for the duties of humanity and citizenship [civilitatis] that must be maintained among men" (3.19.15, 847). There is no inherent conflict between these two "governments" for Calvin; they simply concern differing aspects of human life. The former concerns "the life of the soul," the latter "has to do with the concerns of the present life." Whereas the former "resides in the inner mind," the latter "regulates only outward behavior." Christian freedom does not mean that Christians are "less s u b j e c t . . . to human laws, because their consciences have been set free in God's sight" (3.19.15, 847). Indeed, "spiritual freedom can perfectly well exist alongside civil bondage" (4.20.1, 1486). More to the point, the two governments are not at variance. They are merely two aspects (or "folds": remember duplex) of one God-ordained order. Civil government has as a primary end not only "to adjust our life to the society of men, to form our social behavior to civil righteousness, to reconcile us with one another, and to promote general peace and tranquility" but, perhaps even primarily, "to cherish and protect the outward worship of God, [and] to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church" (4.20.2, 1487).72 One is reminded, and Calvin proceeds to point to it, of the important distinction he names regarding the two tables of the law, the first concerned with the "inner" person, the second with "outer" behavior toward others. Yet Calvin's point in distinguishing the two tables is to show that they are really only two dimensions of one law: One could not really imagine the one without the other.73 So too here. Given Calvin's statement of the "ends" of government, and his subsequent claim that its "function among men is no less than that of bread, water, sun and air" (4.20.3, 1488), the conclusion that, for Calvin, the insitutions of church and state74 are simply two dimensions of one divine help arises logically and inevitably. For all institutional order, and the law which it all promulgates, is, in some important measure, accountable to and representative of God's Word, his moral law.75 Indeed, bearing out this relation, Calvin states explicitly that "no government can be happily established unless piety is the first concern." Hence civil magistracy inevitably "extends to both Tables of the Law." References to impious kings in Old Testament scripture make plain "the folly of those who would neglect the concern for God and would give attention only to rendering justice among men" (4.20.9, 1495). Thus Calvin asserts in his commentary on Deuteronomy 13:5 (2: 75) that "while their severity is preposterous who defend superstitions with the sword," yet "in a well constituted polity, profane men are by no means to be tolerated, by whom religion is subverted." Because of Calvin's emphasis on the disciplinary role of institutional helps, many scholars argue persuasively that Calvinist societies, in contrast to their Lu-

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theran counterparts, developed both strong chuch polities and vigorous civil polities. Says Wolin, the Calvinist church, "enveloped in a structure of power, [ended up being] something more than a community and something less than a christianized polis" (176). Echoes Joan O'Donovan, in critiquing the Lutheran heritage, "While effective in freeing the church from the works-righteousness of the pope's juridical system, Lutheran ecclesiology was less effective in evolving adequate institutional forms for Christ's discipline of grace. Above all, it failed to give adequate expression to the degree of organizational freedom from secular interference and control required by the church's divine mission" (4).76 It quickly becomes clear that, for Calvin, the individual believer is never in a position either to dispense with the instruction of church, civil government, or individual fellow believers or, therefore, to take God's mercy for granted. Sanctification, effectuated by the Holy Spirit through the instrumentalities of spiritual and political communities remains a constant task and a lifelong process. As Calvin says, "Whoever either flatters himself or buries his sins by inattention to them, deserves to pine away in his miseries" (Comm. Ps. 130: 3 [5:129]). To fulfill its purpose, human conscience must serve as a constant goad to further advancement in love and acceptance of God's law for one's life. And to perform this function, conscience must be placed within the milieu of a supportive but vigorous institutional structure. To maintain the ardor "justly required in the faithful," believers "ought to animate and stir one another." Only with such collective zeal will believers produce a mutual benefit (Comm. Micah 4:2 [256]). Because "the only way of pleasing God is to institute a rigid course of selfexamination" (Comm. Ps. 106:6 [4:211]), and because each individual believer needs therefore to see himself in the context of God's creation and redemption order, as manifested by his law, and as incarnated, however crudely, by the institutional structures of church and civil polity, then each individual can hardly fail to appreciate not only his radical insufficiency and incompleteness but also his blessedness in the face of a community's love and care. Rather than the proud and spiritually self-sufficient (effectively autonomous) individual of modern liberalism, Calvin asks instead, "[W]here is the man who renounces his own judgment, and is ready to learn only from the mouth of God?" Indeed, "the beginning of piety is willingness to be taught;" it is present "when we have renounced our own judgment and follow wherever God calls." Yet, says Calvin, "this fault has been too common in all ages." Persons who "would shrink from openly rejecting the doctrine of godliness" appear nonetheless "so far from being truly obedient and teachable that they haughtily reject everything that does not please them." Although "they acknowledge that they need some bridle," nonetheless they "are so much blinded by their presumption" that they "break out into violent indignation at the censure passed on their proceedings" (Comm. Is. 5:21 [1:187]).

Civil Obedience, Civil Discipline Two ideas, largely complementary, flow from Calvin's emphasis on the legitimacy, indispensability, and overall benevolence of institutional helps. These include,

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first, the duty on the part of believers of nonresistance to God's ordained civil and ecclesiastical order and, second, the urgency of publicly identifying "false prophets" and suppressing their disruptive words and deeds, even by public force if necessary. The more one examines the place of the individual in Calvin's conception, therefore, the more apparent it is that Calvin was far from a modern liberal. For Calvin, liberty for individuals tended to metamorphose into license, if those individuals were uninstructed and unconstrained by the relevant manifestations of divine law. Calvin's urging of the position of nonresistance to civil authority is thus plain throughout his writings, in spite of the apparent exceptions he makes for it (which I already noted in chapter i). Beginning with his Prefatory Letter to Francis I, his Institutes, in each and every edition, counsels obedience to civil authority. Indeed, Battles has pointed out that in the Institutes' first edition (1536) Calvin clearly intended Chapter 6, which incorporated essays on Christian freedom, church order, and civil government, to be such a threefold conclusion to the letter itself. The first essay, on Christian Freedom, claims on a Scriptural basis freedom for Christians in the spiritual (ecclesiastical) as opposed to the political (temporal) sphere. The second essay, On Ecclesiastical Power, both rejects humanly devised ecclesiastical laws and customs as violations of this freedom, arid also tries to demonstrate to the monarch the fact that the Roman Catholic eccesiastical establishment has usurped some portion of the secular power. There ought to be two kings: Christ over his church, and the earthly monarch over his domain. This latter topic is the subject of the third essay, On Civil Goveniment, designed both to assure Francis of the Evangelicals' political loyalty, and to apprise him of their utter rejection of the false political views of the Anabaptists, and warn him that the ultimate spiritual stakes are in the hands of God the King of kings." (Inst. [1536, Battles trans.], Intro., liv) 77

Whatever Calvin's intent, his words in the letter and in the final chapter of the 1559 Institutes still appear rather plain. Telling Francis that from him and his followers "not one seditious word was ever heard," and that "when we lived under you, [our] life . . . was always acknowledged to be quiet and simple" (Pref. 8, 30), Calvin concluded his work, and his final chapter on civil government, with strong words of obedience. "Let no man deceive himself here," he asserts, "the magistrate cannot be resisted without God being resisted at the same time" (4.20.23, 1511). Moreover, Calvin goes on to detail the obedience believers owe even to unjust and wicked rulers. For, in the end, obedience is about the recognition of the office of magistrate and not about affection for the particular holder of the office. Even "a very wicked man utterly unworthy of all honor," as long as he "has the public power in his hands," should be "held in the same reverence and esteem by his subjects, in so far as obedience is concerned, in which they would hold the best of kings if he were given to them." For in his public office "that noble and divine power resides which the Lord has by his Word given to the ministers of his justice and judgment" (4.20.25, 1512-13).78 Those who rule "have been raised to that honor not by chance, but by God's providence" (Comm. i Pet. 2:13 [81]). Christian believers ought, to be concerned "not to inquire about another's duties, but every man should keep in mind that one duty which is his own," and in the case of subjects under government, that duty is responsible obedience (4.20.29, i5i6). 7 9

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In determining the extent to which subjects may assert their freedom as Christians, then, one must consider the place of conscience not only as an individual source of judgment but also as communal responsibility to reside within the bounds of one's identifiable, and identified, place. As Herman Bavinck (459) puts it, "Christian perfection must be realized not above and outside of, but within the sphere of the calling assigned us by God here on earth." Hence, perfection or sanctification consists "neither in compliance with arbitrary human or ecclesiastical commandments, nor in the performance of all sorts of extraordinary activities." Instead, "it consists in the faithful discharge of those ordinary daily duties which have been laid by God upon every man in the conduct of life." As discussed in chapter i (in this volume), Calvin does envision the possibility of resolution to the sometimes explicit conflict between the civil authority and God's revealed word in Scripture. Such resolution is modeled, for Calvin, by the example of Daniel under King Darius. In explicitly addressing "the inhabitants of France," he dedicates his 1561 commentaries on Daniel to them, thereby pointing to Daniel as exemplary. The book of Daniel shows clearly not only "how God proves the faith of his people . . . by various trials" but also how his goodness "shines forth" in the midst of such trials (Comm. Dan., Dedic., Ixiv-lxv). Although we can find apparent support for insurrection in the commentary's Dedicatory Letter, as noted in chapter I (in this volume), we must appreciate not only the fuller context of Calvin's writing but also Calvin's full sensitivity to the struggles of conscience. The Lord may call for the assertion of individual conscience, but he is unlikely to call for the destruction either of institutional restraints on behavior or of institutional prompts to righteous living.80 Daniel finds that he must disobey, but he never resists, rebels against, or even questions the king's authority. Calvin sees God's miraculous intervention on Daniel's behalf to be clear evidence of his commendation of Daniel and of his will for all: "Daniel might. .. have complained of the king's cruelty and perfidy. He does not do this, but is silent concerning this injury, because his deliverance would sufficiently magnify the glory of God. The holy Prophet desired nothing else, except the king's welfare, which he prays for" (Comm. Dan. 6:21-22 [i:379]).81 Calvin is of course aware that examples of the sort of deliverance Daniel experienced are rare. Nevertheless, in using such "ancient examples [to] strengthen [the] minds" of believers, God's word "ought to satisfy us" as to God's promise "that he will be a faithful guardian of our life" (Comm. Dan., Dedic., Ixiv, Ixvi).82 How we work out our response to any apparent conflict depends on the degree to which we understand our own—that is, individual—obligations, and also our larger, more public and communal obligations. Our individual perspective is thus far from unitary; it is shaped by and accountable to, a larger community.83 Perhaps the best example of the kind of calculus Calvin envisions is that laid out in his Commentary on i John 4:1. Here Calvin is addressing the "difficult question" of "trying the spirits." Although this confrontation does not relate specifically to the issue of civil obedience, it is a good example of that intricate interplay which Calvin acknowledges takes place between individual conscience and communal responsibility. On the one hand, says Calvin, "If everyone has the right and liberty to judge, nothing can be settled for certain, but on the contrary the whole of

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religion will be uncertain." Therefore, Calvin says, there must be a "twofold trial of doctrine, public and private." The "private trial" consists of "that by which everyone settles his own faith, when he wholly acquiesces in that doctrine which he knows has come from God." "Public trial," on the other hand, "refers to the common consent and polity of the church." In this case "the faithful meet together and seek a way by which they agree in a holy and godly manner." Calvin then goes on to express his faith that, in spite of the likelihood that "so many heads" will yield "so many opinions," God does work through his Spirit in properly reverential common assemblies: "|I]t is doubtless a singular work of God, when he subdues our perverseness and makes us to think the same thing, and to agree in a holy unity of faith" (Comm. i John 4:1 [231]). Calvin's words here would appear to call into question his prior condemnation of Roman church councils, but Calvin is quick to articulate a difference. "For though it be the ordinary way of seeking consent, to gather a godly and holy council. . . yet God has never bound himself to the decrees of any council" (Comm. i John 4:1 [231]). Calvin's point is twofold: First, councils may not always be constituted of "godly and holy" men, such that God may indeed signal his displeasure with the decisions of such councils (4.9.11, 1174; 4.9.2, 1167). Second, Roman councils take on more of a life of their own than any biblically connected faith would allow (4.9.14, 1177-78). Church assemblies, in other words, must always be open to revision in light of changing circumstances and the Holy Spirit's more explicit movement (4.9.8, .1171-72; 4.9.10, 1173-74). When each member of a communal gathering comes ready to do the Lord's bidding, that gathering can, in prayerful hope, confidently seek the Word's light and the Spirit's guidance.84 Calvin's emphasis on communal decision making, which saturates his description of church polity (Inst. 4.1-4.19), sheds further light on the whole question of the meaning of Christian freedom for individuals within the public, civil realm. The last thing Calvin wished to propose was an individual fully sufficient and fully independent. Individual insufficiency and individual dependence worked themselves out clearly in the world. Believers found their strength and progress within their membership in institutional society. Calvinist Christians were neither "lone rangers" nor cogs in some totalitarian machinery but, rather, delicate and invaluable members "one of another" (Comm. Rom. 12:5 [458]). They ought both to guide and to be guided, to teach and to be taught by each other. The strength of each would depend in large measure on the strength of all. "When all the gifts God has bestowed upon us are called to mind, they are like rays of the divine countenance by which we are illumined to contemplate that supreme light of goodness" (3.14.18, 785). And only when the body of believers comes together are individuals fully cognizant of the body's gracious provisions: spiritual nourishment, material support, instruction, care, comfort, love, and inspiration. Obedience to God is, indeed, most important (4.20.32, 1520-21), but God mediates himself not only through his written word but also through his mandated institutional order. "[Sjtrictly speaking," says Calvin, "when we perform our duty towards men, we thereby render obedience to God" (Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 22:21 [3=45]).8S

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It is thus not Calvinism that appears in modern liberal individualism, says Graham. Rather, "Calvin's own world-affirmation" was "smothered under the individualistic rationalism which denied the total community" (Constructive, 201). As Hancock makes the point, "It would be a mistake . . . to associate Calvin's teaching ... too hastily with modern individualism. For Calvin does not authorize men to rise up against rulers who threaten their interests, but only to disobey those who would prevent them from accomplishing their sacred duties" (Foundations, 73).8
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Part II

Corporate Action, but under Judgment

Hancock is far from alone in arguing that Calvin's "religious worldview providejs] Raalphmotive for the pursuit of distinctly secular ends" (Foundations, ix). Indeed, the continuing resurrections of Max Weber's provocative thesis, advanced earlier this century, that Calvinism provided the impetus for modern capitalism, must be taken seriously.1 The roots of a kind of activist materialism can in fact be seen in Calvin's writings. When Calvin describes Christian freedom's second part, he describes the societal, or corporate response to conscience's individual vision. Now "freed from the law's yoke," he says, consciences "willingly obey God's will" (3.19.4, 836). In other words, here a rejuvenated conscience moves through a grateful soul to act as a "goad" to social action (3.23.12, 960). Calvin thus appears to promote not only an individual freedom to judge, as examined earlier, but also a corporate freedom to act. Calvin's doctrine of predestination also figures prominently in shoring up his understanding of this second part. We noted in chapter i how the work of God predestining some human beings for salvation performs as an indicator of individual worth. Recognition of God's gracious choice independent of individual merit points to a redeemed individual now singled out by God, now touched by the divine hand. So distinguished, the individual believer would appear to stand in new and superior relationship to all humanly contrived institutional structures. Yet we then noted in chapter 2 how God's sovereign but gracious choice works to bind believers even more tightly to each other and to the institutional helps God in his providential mercy provides for their instruction and support. As far as Christian freedom's second part is concerned, God's predestination looms even larger. Understanding themselves marked and claimed by God, through no worth or merit of their own, frees believers from existential anxiety regarding their eternal home. Understanding themselves bound to each other by means of God's sovereign grace, not to mention

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guided by his loving rule, frees them for positive service in God's developing kingdom. In sum, the doctrine of predestination engenders a kind of corporate confidence. Assured of God's love and care, and so renewed and reborn, believers can leave behind petty worries over their deservedness of God's mercy, relish the warmth of his fatherly gaze, and concentrate their energies on social renewal. For Calvin, then, the doctrine of predestination is as much a religious, as a metaphysical doctrine. Its reassurance emboldens the body of Christ to act forthrightly and purposefully in the world. What are they to do? They are to perform, says Calvin, "all the duties of love." They are to embrace and build up what societal institutions they confront. They are to practice piety by serving the material and spiritual interests of others. They are to attend to the poor and strengthen the body of believers. Does the societal action thus encouraged paint a picture of a thoroughly materialist, and secular, social movement, such as drawn earlier this century by Max Weber and redrawn more recently by Ralph Hancock? The question is legitimate. Is there in Calvin's energized corporate campaign an "activist" mentality, primed to the point of secular power seeking? After all, does not the fact of his apparently arbitrary predestinational choices establish for once and all that God and all those in his service are primarily about power? Once again, the answer is yes and no. The liberation of Christian conscience for the end of resolute Christian action is a concrete reality for Calvin. Yet the promotion of social activism, as significant and obvious as it is, remains only one dimension in Calvin's analysis of freedom's second part. Once again we must be sensitive to both the subtleties and the amplitude of Calvin's thinking to see the creative tension intrinsic to that thinking, not to mention its holding together in the larger frame of God's sovereign grace. Christian freedom not only liberates the Christian actor; it liberates the Christian prophet. Hence, while it frees the Christian community for service in the world, it simultaneously puts that service under God's omniscient and continuing judgment. Not unlike the experience one has of Christian freedom's first part—that of being personally set apart yet effectively helpless on one's own—the experience of Christian freedom's second part works both to loosen and to bind. Because, out of gratitude and spiritual security, one is driven to do God's work, it follows that one is also, out of the very same motivations, driven to hold to that work and no other. To be free for action is therefore to be captive to God's sovereign will. Believers strive to demonstrate their gratitude and commitment to God in the midst of a delicate and creative tension, in other words. It is not enough for them simply to be active in the world, their works must promote God's glory in service to his will. Their deeds must ever be measured against his divine standard. Indeed, their faith should make clear to them that only God can inspire and perfect their works. They must act for the good without understanding themselves to be the real actors. The primary ingredient in Christian social action, therefore, is the bright light of God's omniscient and loving judgment. In the realm of such action Calvin seeks to show both the reality, the tangibility, of God's judgment and the bearing for Christian behavior of the clear presence of such judgment. The living reality of God's judgment manifests itself first in the fundamental laws governing the creation order, which God reveals in Scripture and in the natural order itself. When humans ignore or take lightly this order, they reap their own punishment. Similarly, God's judgment is plain in the historical undulation of societies. Calvin finds scriptural and historical examples both of God's wrath and of God's unmerited protection. In short, the living presence of an all-seeing and all-judging God presents be-

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lievers with as many grounds for hesitation as for action. The reality of God's judgment confronts believers with the limits inhering in their institutional aspirations. Even believers, Calvin is quick to acknowledge, are prone to self-exultation. The basis of God's judgment is of course his sovereign will, and scholars such as Hancock are right to point this out. Yet Calvin, contrary to Hancock's interpretation, does not confuse the nonanswerability of God's will with something like the ultimate lawlessness of God. To portray God as accountable to no one but himself is not, for Calvin, to portray him as arbitrary but only as exempt from any judgment but his own. Indeed, Calvin points to the clear self-revelation of God in Scripture, in creation and in Christ, and asks how one could envision such a God as being anything other than self-sacrificially loving. God judges his creatures only as a measure of his love. He limits them only as a parentally inspired act of nurturance. His sovereignty and his love are one. Hence, although Calvin often speaks of God's power, he speaks only of God's loving use of it. The practical implications of God's establishment of explicit limitations on human action should now be clear. God exercises his power for a purpose: He seeks through the rule of Christ and the work of his Spirit to reclaim, restore, renew, and revitalize all that is his own in order that he might live in eternal community with it. Human exercises of power are thus legitimate only when they work toward the same goals of renewal and revivification and do so in praise of God's incredible mercy. To illustrate the point, Calvin is fond of noting that temporal government does have specific duties, and that those duties consist of a good deal more than merely clearing the way for an oppressive and presumptuous institutional church. Were power itself the criterion of good government, Calvin would hardly be so quick to argue for gifted, attentive, and responsive rulers; for constitutional restraints on exercises of power; for governmental "modesty" in both style and substance; and for governmental duties both to protect the true church and to serve the socially and politically dispossessed. The fact that he consistently argues all these things, and does so from a position in his own time of governmental powerlessness, would indicate that for him at least Christian freedom to act is as much about right judgment as it is about rash exertion.

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he writing of the Institutes," according to Suzanne Selinger, "was an unconT scious and intuitively therapeutic vita activa" (9). Calvinism "as a whole," Ernest Troeltsch once asserted, is "active and aggressive." It "desires to re-shape the world to the glory of God, and make the reprobate bow submissively to the Divine law." To this end, it will "with all diligence create and maintain a Christian commonwealth." Whereas Lutheranism, Ernst Troeltsch says, "endures the world in suffering, pain and martyrdom," Calvinism "masters it" (Protestantism, 83-84). Upon studying Calvin, Fred Graham claims that it is no wonder that while Lutheranism "tended toward quiescence in the economic and political realms," Calvinism tended "toward activism and seizure of the reins of power, whether political or technological" (Constructive, 208). Charles Taylor agrees: "Calvinism is marked out by a militant activism, a drive to reorganize the church and the world" (Sources of the Self, 227). Indeed, Ralph Hancock speaks of "the paradoxical worldliness of Calvin's otherworldliness" (Foundations, 20).! To find such an activist spirit in Calvin takes little effort. It resides openly in his thinking and writing, to be sure. "Upon the advent of Christ," he says, God's glory "shines through all the earth." In this sense, "the whole world became an enlarged Mount Zion," the "everlasting residence of God" (Comm. Ps. 132:14 [5: 158]). Wherever the church may be, he means to say, there God is. Hence wherever the church may be, there it has temporal work to do. Yet, as this quotation reveals, if Calvinism appears to breed a kind of worldly imperialism, then such imperialism, as John DeGruchy points out, "embodied something essentially biblical." It grows from Calvin's vision of God's kingdom, and the "concomitant calling and responsibility of the church to proclaim God's rule within and over 63

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the world" (20). Christians are not merely to worship God, they are to put themselves in his hands for the massive, indeed global, reclamation project which Christ and his Spirit are working to accomplish.2

Predestination and Freedom from Anxiety Following Hancock's lead, one might say that the seeds of Calvin's worldliness lie palpably within his well-known doctrine of predestination. And they do appear there to lie. There is much controversy regarding the full ramifications of the doctrine of predestination, to be sure, but those finding in Calvin's writings a stern, hard-nosed, supralapsarian double predestinarian—one, that is, who envisions God as a playful and ultimately arbitrary puppeteer—have little trouble citing passages to support their view.3 From his reading of Scripture, Calvin says in his commentary on Malachi 1:2-5 (479). he has no trouble finding a "mass" of passages which make "sufficiently evident" the fact that "some are chosen" while "others are rejected," and so "before the creation of the world," such choice being "according to God's good pleasure only." Indeed, "there is no other cause to be found but his will."4 Even assuming that Calvin is at heart a full-blown double predestinarian, that he sees God as something like an idiosyncratic junk-picker sorting through human refuse, what connections might one make to the matter at hand, the matter of Christian "freedom?" Simply stated, because, through Christ's supralapsarian intercession, God freely chooses only some human beings for eternal communion with him, and because he does so with no regard for "the worthiness of [individual] men" or for "the merit of [their] works" (3.21.5, 927; 3.22.1, 932-33), he thereby liberates those he chooses from any anxiety over the adequacy of their personal virtue, or "holiness." Holiness, says Calvin, does not cause but results from election (3.22.3, 935). In his sovereign mercy, God frees the elect from self-absorption regarding their destiny, thereby outfitting them for meaningful service in his world (3.24.4, 968-69). Not self-absorption with personal godliness, but "it is the part of a godly man to realize that free power in outward matters has been given him in order that he may be the more ready for all the duties of love [charitatis officia]" (3.19.12, 845). Let us ask more deliberately, then, what is Calvin's doctrine of predestination and how does it become so significant for understanding Christian freedom.' "We call predestination [praedestinatio] God's eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man." While "eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation, [is likewise foreordained] for others" (3.21.5, 926).' An arbitrary God decides ahead of time, one might indeed interpret this definition to imply, not only who plays but who wins and who loses. But a closer examination of the doctrine reveals an intricate connection with Calvin's view of human sin, thus with his vision of God's justice and mercy, arid finally with his determination to sever ties with any notion of "works righteousness." God's election remains anchored in "his freely given mercy, without regard to human worth,"

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and in his "just and irreprehensible but incomprehensible judgment" (3.21.7, 6 93 i). Calvin insists, first, that God's revelation in Scripture makes plain his offerof salvation to all human beings and the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice to accomplish such deliverance. Calvin finds that i Timothy 2:4 is Scripture's most explicit statement of this point. Here, notes Calvin, Paul demonstrates that "God has at heart the salvation of all." Such intention is clear from the fact that God "invites all to the acknowledgment of his truth" (Comm. i Tim. 2:4 [54]). When God "directs exhortations to all in common," he so much as "declares" that he "wills the conversion of all" (3.3.21, 615, citing i Tim. 2:4). The difficulty of this doctrine appears to arise in the midst of its universal appeal, however. For if God intends the salvation of all, why does he choose, and so inspire to faith and repentance, only some (3.24.15, 982; 3.24.17, 985)? Calvin is obviously troubled by this question, and offers an explanation which to him rests on sound biblical exegesis. Indeed, he asserts, in the first letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul "simply means, that there is no people and no rank in the world that is excluded from salvation." Paul's statement addresses "classes of men" not "individual persons" (Comm. i Tim. 2:4 [55]). By this statement, then, Paul "surely means only that God has not closed the way unto salvation to any order of men [nulli hominum ordini]" (3.24.16, 984). Yet while God's "mercy is extended to all," not all "seek after it and implore it," but "only those whom he has illumined to do this" (3.24.17, 985). To come to grips with God's salvation work, Calvin declares, one must ground one's thinking in the hard reality of human sin. Only if one begins with the premise that humankind needs salvation, that it has by its own initiative estranged itself from both its Maker and its true destiny, will one begin to see something of the divine perspective on human salvation. Rather than purposing to identify the "speck" of apparent arbitrariness in God's eye, one might say, Calvin wants us first to remove the "log" of presumption from our own (Matt. 7:3-5). To elaborate, if—as Scripture teaches—human beings are sinners through and through; if each is not only unworthy of God's attentive care, but profoundly ungrateful for it—even in conscious rebellion against it—then none can claim excuse in the face of God's omniscient judgment. Moreover, one is not in a position to compensate for one's sin through good works, for sin's motives taint all works, especially those superficially good.7 Indeed, the first use of God's law is to reveal to us just how far we are from its perfect observance.8 All our own efforts to obey the law counterproductively lead us even further into the prison of superficiality and even the closed cell of self-idolatry (3.13.2, 764~65).9 As Richard Muller puts the matter, Calvin's intent was "to demonstrate the continuity of God's saving will with its effects in the temporal order," to demonstrate, in other words, the "unity of the entire soteriological enterprise" (Christ and the Decree, 10). For Calvin, says Muller, "predestination does not oppose Christology nor does it reduce Christology to a mere function of the divine will." Rather, "the work of Christ. . . occupies the center of Calvin's thought." Or, as P. H. Reardon has put the point, "one is predestined only in Christ" (533). God is less the idiosyncratic

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junk-picker and more the loving tender of the garden whose plants actively resist his care and nourishment. Genuinely beholding the despair, incorrigibility and hopelessness of humankind, without God's unmerited love, mercy, inspiration, and rejuvenation, should therefore beget in the believer a firmer and fuller gratitude for God's gifts and a more settled deference to the giver. In choosing some and rejecting others, God reveals not so much his arbitrariness as his determination for communion with his otherwise intractable creatures. For this reason, Christ's atoning sacrifice, while "sufficient" for all is nonetheless "efficient" only for some (Comm. i John 2:2 [i73])- 10 The atoning mediation of Christ, what Calvin calls his expiation (expiatio) for human sin (2.16.6, 510), thus fully suffices as a "propitiary sacrifice" for the sins of all (Muller, Christ and the Decree, 34). One could hardly call a God who goes to such lengths, "even [to] death on a cross," wanton, whimsical, or capricious. Indeed, says Calvin in his commentary on Philippians 2:8, "such a pattern of humility . . . ought to absorb the attention of all mankind," impossible as it is "to unfold it in words . . . suitable to its dignity" (59). It is precisely in his expiation, or "satisfaction," for human sin that Christ's atonement is universal and unlimited. Only in Christ are all the requirements of divine justice met; and only in Christ are they met for all (Muller, Christ and the Decree, 34)." God's predestination thus looms large more in the matter of Christ's work of reconciliation than in his expiation. By their own participation in his death, says Calvin, believers experience its "second effect." This effect "kills the old man in us" so that the old sin-filled self "may not flourish and bear fruit." Inherent in Christ's death is "an efficacy which ought to be manifest in all Christians" (2.16.7, 512). Hence it is the "restoration and purchase of individuals," as Muller (Christ and the Decree, 34) expresses it, which grows from Christ's work of reconciliation. And this restoration work, accomplished only in those whom by his mysterious election God has prepared for it, points to the inordinate care God lavishes on particular persons. While "the Gospel appeal is universal," Muller describes Calvin as saying, "Christ's intercession, like the divine election, is personal, individual, particular" (Christ and the Decree, 35). Most important for our purposes here, Calvin's notion of limited atonement intends to depict not a stingy, self-serving, and self-absorbed God but, in fact, a God of immeasurable generosity and love. If the central focus of Calvin's theology is "the work of Christ as mediator" (Muller, Christ and the Decree, 10), then the doctrine of predestination can only be fully explored within the context of a loving, forgiving, and personally attentive Lord and Master (3.24.16, 984; Comm. i John 2:2 [173]). As Calvin puts the matter in his commentary on Ephesians i: 4 (1:199): The doctrine of election illustrates "the infinite goodness of God" and ought to work as "an excitement to gratitude." Indeed, "[t]his is the true fountain from which we must draw our knowledge of the divine mercy."12 To emphasize the point, Calvin explicitly repudiates the notion of a seed of election. On the contrary, he asserts that the elect "differ not at all from others except that they are protected by God's especial mercy from rushing headlong into the final ruin of death." Indeed, "if you look upon them, you will see Adam's

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offspring, who savor of the common corruption of the mass." The only thing keeping them from "utter and even desparate impiety," far from "any innate goodness of theirs" is "the eye of God watch[ing] over their safety" (3.24.10, 976). The elect, in other words, having no intrinsic worth, have no cause to boast, and every cause to display their gratitude for God's unwarranted mercy.13 One might say that the likely most observable distinction between the elect and the nonelect would be the presence or absence of that very gratitude! Familiarity with the scriptural doctrine of predestination, based on God's free election, thus reveals in the final analysis both the "usefulness" of this doctrine and its "very sweet fruit." Indeed, an ignorance of the doctine of predestination both "detracts from God's glory" and "takes away from true humility." Understanding ourselves to be the beneficiaries of divine mercy will not only "suffice to make us humble as we ought to be" but also show us "how much we are obliged to God" (3.21.1, 921-22). The doctrine of predestination therefore ought to point simultaneously to God's glory and to human frailty. If human beings take God's revelation of this doctrine in Scripture as an opportunity to grade God's divine performance, they miss its point altogether. For the real basis of Christian belief ends up being the trust engendered in human beings by the promise of God's intimate and everlasting love. When God announces in Exodus 33:19, "I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy, and I will take pity on whom I will take pity," what ought to glisten in human eyes is not the opacity of God's will, but the bright light of his mercy. Says Calvin, "God is moved to mercy for no other reason but that he wills to be merciful" (3.22.8, 942). What frustrated Calvin, apparently throughout his career, was the determination of human beings to criticize, even sneer at, God's free acts of mercy and love. Through the doctrine of predestination, and especially through the choosing of the Jews, Calvin testifies, "God's mercy is magnified." How else ought one to feel about a God who "deals so indulgently" with such a "guilty people" (Comm. Harm, Moses on Deut. 33:19 [3:378-79] [emphasis added])?14 Calvin's emphasis on the usefulness of the doctrine of predestination, and on its fruit rather than on its logic, or even its truth, is worth noting. As Philip Schaff has put it, "his chief interest in the doctrine was religious rather than metaphysical" (VIII, 549). To Calvin the plain fact of the doctrine's authority in Scripture was sufficient to convince believers of its reality (3.21.2, 923-24). In a number of places, then, Calvin disparages metaphysical speculation about the doctrine, counseling instead quiet submission to its tenets on the basis of scriptural authority. Those who determine to "inquire into predestination" should realize that "they are penetrating the sacred precincts of divine wisdom." If indeed "anyone with carefree assurance breaks into this place, he will not succeed in satisfying his curiosity" but will instead "enter a labyrinth from which he can find no exit" (3.21.1, 922-23). Both self-defeating and self-destructive, such assaults on divine wisdom—attempts "unrestrainedly to search out things that the Lord has willed to be hid in himself"—would display precisely those qualities of pride and presumption that estrange human beings from their rightful place in God's creation design, and thus ought to be conspicuously absent in a person of genuine faith. To believe in God

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is to trust in his promises. And God "has set forth by his Word the secrets of his will that he has decided to reveal to us." And what he has decided to reveal are only those things he "foresaw" would "concern and benefit us." Can believers not rest content with Christ's words to his disciples in John 16:12: "I have much more to say to you, [but it is] more than you can now bear" (3.21.1-2, Q22-23)?15 Perhaps the most interesting, even ironic, aspect of Calvin's religious use of predestination, then, concerns the confidence it engenders in genuine believers. Suppressing pride and presumption, it aims to unleash bold assertion. Once believers come to appreciate fully their unconditional acceptance by God in Christ into the fullness of his kingdom, their self-constructed shields of self-absorption disintegrate and disappear, and a confidence planted in gratitude blossoms within. The doctrine, fully appropriated by the believer, yields not only a genuine humility in the face of God's gracious compassion and mercy but also a soaring reassurance of one's safety in the hands of a loving savior. "We have this matchless fruit of faith," says Calvin in his commentary on John 10:28, "that, by Christ's command, we live with confidence and safety when we are gathered in his fold." Believers thus know "that the salvation of all the elect is as certain as that God's power is invincible" (from Haroutunian, 197).16 The assurance engendered by genuine faith, therefore, not only comforts the believer now hypersensitive to his own sin but also equips him for unflinching displays, within the world, of his larger gratitude. God's reassurances in Scripture dissipate both anxiety over one's final destination and despair over one's undeservedness of salvation.17 Believers rooted in such assurance and hope—now eager to spring forward and say with the prophet Isaiah, "Here am I; send me"—would indeed be a force with which the world would have to reckon.18 By anticipating such confidence, and its energizing effects, Calvin is often thought to be luring pride and presumption, now surreptitiously, back into the believer's identity and makeup. As Nancy Phillips puts the prospect, for Calvin "freedom from anxiety is always preferable to freedom from difficulty or freedom from moral judgment, and this is where Calvin's view . . . stops being helpful and starts to be a trap." Sensitive to the "radical split. . . between the good found in God and the evil found in humanity," the believer, who should "take in God's guidance in the broadest sense, instead becomes narrowly focused on morality." Once moral judgment becomes a preoccupation for believers, they begin "to assume that [they] can make [them]selves loved or acceptable" and so find themselves right back "in the labyrinth of human effort." The obsession now arises "about who is or who is not going to be redeemed in the end," and believers begin to "split other people into categories of good and evil" (12). Phillips's point is well taken, but does Calvin surreptitiously, or inadvertently, encourage such human presumption? Calvin himself certainly thought not. For him the assurance of acceptance and the humility of undeservedness would overshadow temptations to self-confidence and se(/-assertion. And in the end, to assert God is a far cry from the assertion of oneself. Calvin's long and draining relationship with the city of Geneva provides some interesting evidence of his determination to assert God rather than himself in public encounter. As he personally

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recounted and as a number of commentators have conclusively shown, Calvin resisted both of the city's invitations that he take their pastorate, originally in 1536 and, after a three-year exile in Strassbourg, again in 1541. Moreover, after his return to Geneva in September 1541, Calvin remained a ridiculed and embattled figure at least until spring 1555. If there were indeed a "Calvin's Geneva," it lasted only a few short years, until his death on May 27, 1564. Hence if he were only a political profiteer, he picked a strange and hostile political climate in which to assert selfish control! On the other hand, if he were indeed out to serve God, his perseverance in a bruising pastorate makes a bit more sense. Whatever the case, it is plain that Calvin at least understood the distinction in theory between the believer's convicted assertion of God and his mere assertion of self.19 As the ground of the believer's confidence is his acknowledgement and acceptance of the indecipherable mystery of God's choosing, therefore, Calvin does in fact disparage mystical introspection. Such "contemplation," encouraged not only by the late medieval churchmen but even by Luther and Melancthon among the Reformers, Calvin tended to see as an excercise in weakened faith (3.24.3, 968). Commenting on Deuteronomy 13:14, Calvin asserts that "there is such certainty in the divine doctrines as to prevent our faith from being undermined or shaken," provided, that is, "it has put forth into [these doctrines] living roots, and is firmly grounded upon them." Indeed, "justly does God require of his people that they should not waver, but constantly persist in the truth delivered to them" (Comm. Harm. Moses [1:439]). As Bavinck has rightly noted, faith for Calvin does mean "unshakable conviction, firm assurance" (448-49).20 But such faith follows and results from election; it neither precedes nor engenders divine attention. As a result, in Hancock's description, the Calvinist, "unlike the Lutheran," is "freed from preoccupation with the inward condition of his soul." Hence, he need pay "no attention to the perfection of his faith," for faith, "since it is Christ's work, can be nothing but perfect" (Foundations, 132). Indeed, says Calvin, without the knowledge and experience of "Christian freedom"—as freedom not only from pride and presumption but also from paralyzing anxiety and despair—"consciences dare undertake almost nothing without doubting; they hesitate and recoil from many things; they constantly waver and are afraid" (3.19.1, 833).21 The deep-seated experience of Christian freedom would thus empower believers to offer gifts of good deeds to God, not in anxiety about their worthiness but in joyful gratitude for the recipient's favor. The believer can give not as a servant bound by the yoke of his master's demands but as a child of a loving parent presents to that parent "incomplete and half-done and even defective works," knowing that his parent will delight in the gifts of love "however small, rude, and imperfect" they may be. A believer does not need constantly to pause, and to contemplate his kingdom status. Rather, called with "fatherly gentleness" by God, he can scarcely help but "cheerfully and with great eagerness answer, and follow [God's] leading" (3.19.5, 83v). 22 Indeed, such readiness constitutes the clearest evidence of genuine faith: "For the Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain," but instead "when it takes root in the depth of the heart" (3.2.26, 583)."

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Social Duty Upon truly taking root in the heart, then, faith transforms conscience into a goad for the believer to perform "all the duties of love" (3.19.12, 845). When the authority of God's predestination plan frees believers from personal anxiety, it also frees them to follow the goad of conscience without fear of inadequacy of effort or insufficiency of deed. It is thus clear to Calvin that good works inevitably follow genuine faith. "These benefits [of faith and of works] are joined together by an everlasting and indissoluble bond," for those whom Christ "illumines by his wisdom, he redeems; those whom he redeems, he justifies; those whom he justifies, he sanctifies" (3.16.1, 798).24 The goad of conscience inevitably works more effectively in the heart, mind, and limbs of one freed from the fear that God somehow conditions his love on one's philanthropic performance. For such a person knows that God does not reject "either the labor, the enterprises, or the counsel" of those who "diligently . . . discharge the duties of [their] office." The Lord does not disparage efforts, however feeble, of dutiful human gratitude. Indeed, it is emphatically not the Lord's will "that we should be like blocks of wood, or that we should keep our arms folded without doing anything; but that we should apply to use all the talents and advantages which he has conferred upon us" (Comm. Ps. 127:1 [5:104]). Examining Calvin's sermons on this score, Graham finds that they "do not speak very much of another world and happiness there." Instead, "they speak of this world—of the necessity of serving God here. They cry scorn against all injustice, whether it be ecclesiastical, bureaucratic, legal, or in the marketplace" (Constructive, 19).25 One might say, then, that for Calvin freedom of conscience is meaningful only as a motivation for social action. "It is a powerful aid to our confidence," he writes in his commentary on Isaiah 6:8, "when we know that we are not destitute of the necessary gifts, but that God has bestowed them on us, in order that we may be better enabled to discharge our office." Isaiah's example should affect the minds of believers to the point that "we should readily and cheerfully undertake any task which [God] may be pleased to enjoin, and shall never refuse any task, however difficult we may imagine it to be" (1:213-14). For Calvin, says Bavinck, the freedom resulting from genuine faith "renews the entire man in his being and consciousness, in soul and body, in all his relations and activities." In so doing it "exercises its sanctifying influence in the entire range of life, upon church and school, upon society and state, upon science and art" (448).26 The Christian faith thus liberates believers for full participation in human social institutions. The purpose of Christian freedom is "to encourage us to do good" (3.19.6, 838). Relieved, through Christ's intercession, of the anxiety that one cannot "do good," Christian believers demonstrate their freedom by, in fact, unhesitatingly "doing good." The apparent irony of Christian freedom's second part thus points rather starkly to Hancock's conclusion regarding the "paradoxical worldliness of Calvin's otherworldliness": that Calvin's "absolute rejection of works righteousness yields a new attention to works" (Foundations, 20 & 134)- After all, it is a small step from the motivation to do good works to the doing of works to assert one's right motivation.

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There is little doubt that Calvin's apparent emphasis here—that Christian piety manifests itself primarily as confident social action—is both real and integral to his understanding of Christian freedom.27 Furthermore, by exploring fully the implications of this emphasis, we can begin to see the extent to which Calvin could indeed have contributed to the "Calvinist" social revolutions undertaken in his name,28 If freedom consists not only in individual judgment but in active service within social settings; if such freedom therefore manifests itself as service that challenges but ultimately reinvigorates and reinvents social institutions, then one can begin to see how Calvinist freedom could perhaps issue into the social autonomy later attributed to Calvin's Genevan compariot Jean-Jacques Rousseau.29 If the social body is freed to act, and to act independently of any earthly judge, then one can easily imagine the social deeds themselves working insidiously to justify the larger corporate intention. There is indeed a kind of worldly emphasis on social action inherent in Christian freedom's second part, which we need to uncover. Though it remains but one aspect of Calvin's larger understanding, it is real and plain. Christian freedom exists for tangible societal organization. The "duties of love," of which Calvin speaks, do imply worldly change and some potentially dramatic effects on social institutions.30 To begin, what are these primary duties of love, for Calvin? Not surprisingly, ranking highest would be promoting, defending, "vindicating" the "pure worship of God" (Comm. Dan., Dedic., Ixv). Failure to so defend the public worship of God in the world is tantamount to acquiescence in "the very kingdom of Christ lay prostrate" (Ixiv). Refusal to "submit to the yoke of being taught [the pure worship of God] by human word and ministry... is like blotting out the face of God..." (4.1.5, 1018). Indeed, separation from the church, that human institution designed and destined to "preach the Word" and to "administer the sacraments," is equivalent to "the denial of God and Christ" (4.1.23, 1036; 4.1.10, 1024). Hence, it ought not to surprise us that Calvin sees as the primary duty of "civil government" to "cherish and protect the outward worship of God," and "to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church," among other things (4.20.2, 1487). Defending the pure worship of God is no mere academic enterprise, therefore; it is always a very tangible struggle with the "ungodly" (4.1.5, 1018). Rather than join with "philosophers" who "come before us skillfully disputing about the virtues peacefully in the shade," Christians ought to imitate "the indefatigable constancy of holy men in the pursuit of piety" and "to oppose all [Satan's] assaults by a fearless contempt of death and of all evils" (Comm. Dan., Dedic., Ixvi).31 In its missionary zeal to their brethren throughout Europe, Calvinist Geneva certainly appeared to live up to this injunction (for example, Monter, 135; Kingdon, Coming of Wars, 124, 129). Moreover, as God sustains his people in material, tangible ways, so his people ought to sustain each other in material, tangible ways.32 For the Gospel "is a doctrine not of the tongue but of life." To be fully alive it "must enter our heart and pass into our daily living" (3.6.4, 688). The Christian individual's ultimate value thus consists in his service to others. As Wilhelm Niesel puts it, for Calvin "Christ has made us free so that we may serve him and our neighbor" (142). As,

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Calvin asserts, "you strive in vain to enrich the Lord by sharing your possessions,"33 one ought instead to "practice your generosity . . . toward the saints on earth." Indeed, according to Scripture, "the lawful use of benefits \gratiamm, i.e., possessions or talents] consists in a liberal and kindly sharing [communicationem] of them with others" (3.7.5, 695 & 696).™ Commenting on Micah 6:8, Calvin notes that it is no surprise that Micah "begins with the duties of love [of neighbor]." For although "the worship of God precedes these duties," nevertheless "justice, which is to be exercised towards men, is the real evidence of true religion" (343). And in Psalms 112:9, Calvin notes, the Psalmist "affirms that the righteous never lose the fruit and the reward of their liberality" (Comrn. Ps. 112:9 [4:328]). The righteousness issuing from freedom means "becoming] skilled in acts of kindness," "the actual practice of what is good and right." Specifically, the Lord calls on believers to "relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, [and] plead for the widow" (Comm. Is. 1:17 [1:65-66]). Indeed, "the praise which belongs to liberality" does not arise from mere sharing, with indifference as to both persons or purposes, but rather "in relieving the wants of the really necessitous, and in the money being expended on things proper and lawful" (Comm. Ps. 112:9 i4:329])- If believers "desire really to prove [themselves] to be the disciples of Christ," Calvin says, they must not only "refrain from doing harm" to their fellows, but be "occupied in doing good." Unless believers "endeavor to relieve the necessities" of others, there will be in them "but one part of true conversion" (Comm. Micah 4:3 [264] [emphasis added]).35 Conspicuous institutional examples of Calvin's point here abound. Late in his career Calvin worked diligently to establish in Geneva a free public school, the Academy of Geneva, staffing it with the best teachers he could find among the other reformers, including several distinguished former members of the Bernese Academy in Lausanne (one of whom was the later renowned Theodore Beza) (Monter, 111-14). In addition, he urged inclusion in the 1541 "ordinances" establishing the Genevan church the Biblical office of deacon, charged with nursing the sick and feeding the poor. And his emphasis on the work of the diaconate played itself out in his continuing support of the public hopital general, administered by lay church members and charged with the traditional diaconal duties (Monter, 139; Kingdon, "Social Welfare," passim).

Embracing and Edifying Social Institutions Two primary implications of Christian freedom's second part should now be apparent. First, Christian freedom implies, to a significant degree, losing oneself in the bonds of corporate, social life. Second, such freedom obliges believers to serve the material interests of other human beings and their societal institutions. Drawing on the discussion of the socially ensconced Calvinian individual presented in chapter 2 (in this volume), we can see that for Calvin social bonds are both natural and necessary. The blot of sin, although painfully apparent, does not completely obscure mankind's "rational instinct to foster and preserve society" (2.2.13, 2 7 2 )Hence, the liberation from the curse of sin engineered by grace uncovers the glory

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of God's image in one's fellows, at least what still remains after the Fall. Recognizing their common nature as image bearers, believers come quickly to see how serving one's neighbor and serving one's Maker and Ruler amount, practically speaking, to the same thing (Templin, i65-68).36 Corporate links therefore require, as we have already seen, institutional mechanisms sufficient to reinforce such links. Responding to God's call to follow his law willingly, eagerly, and freely means immersing ourselves in the practice of piety. Says Calvin: "Scripture calls us to resign ourselves and all our possessions to the Lord's will" (3.7.8, 698). The practical effect of this call is to engage believers in building up those social institutions that tend to be the most reliable helps for encouraging them in their resignation to God's will, namely the church and civil government. "Since . . . in our ignorance and sloth . . . we need outward helps to beget and increase faith within us, and advance it to its goal, God has also added these aids that he may provide for our weakness" (4.1.1, ion). 37 But these institutions will be of little aid if believers dissociate themselves. Indeed, as God's gifts for their good, believers are wholly bound to seek not only the nourishment of these institutions but also their edification. For they offer not only comfort and spiritual protection but also the gift of "discipline," which, at least in the church, "serves as its sinews, through which the members of the body hold together, each in his own place" (4.12.1, i23o).38 More to the point, social institutions provide, on the whole, predictable and reliable avenues to social justice. As mechanisms for ensuring one's continuing attention to one's needy fellows, they serve as God's everpresent reminders of one's duty and thus of God's faithful determination to assemble Christ's body in full purity and love. Philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff's examination of "Calvin's theology of social injustice" makes this point with clarity and insight. If mistreating human beings is tantamount to "wounding God" (Comm. Gen. 9:6 [1:295]), then believers have a special responsibility to seek the transformation of those "structures of injustice" that cause God pain. As Wolterstorff puts it, "[T]he call to eliminate injustice is the call to alleviate divine suffering" (22). Ultimately for Calvin, agrees Jane Dempsey Douglass, "[r]estored humanity is not individual but social." Believers, she summarizes, have a special responsibility "to organize society so that it reflects God's order, showing love and justice" ("Calvin's Relation," 75). Consider civil government, whose "function among men is no less than that of bread, water, sun, and air." Civil government does not merely see to it "that men breathe, eat, drink, and are kept warm"; it also "prevents idolatry, sacrilege against God's name, blasphemies against his truth, and other public offenses against religion from arising and spreading among the people." In short, "it provides that a public manifestation of religion may exist among Christians, and that humanity be maintained among men" (4.20.3, 1488). Strong, vital, and just social institutions are essential to the health and growth of all Christian individuals, and such vitality and strength can arise only with the full participation and involvement of Christians in the workings and "sanctifications" of such institutions.39 Indeed, then, if the strength and health of such worldly (i.e., tangible) institutions are so significant for the Christian life, their strength and health must grow out of the material support God directs and then frees believers to provide them.

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The second key implication of freedom's second part thus points to believers' obligations to serve the material interests of other human beings and their communal institutions. "Nothing is plainer than this rule, that we should use our freedom if it results in the edification [aedificatio] of our neighbor, but if it doesn't help our neighbor, then we should forgo it" (3.19.12, 845). The term aedificatio, for "edification" or "upbuilding," surfaces frequently in Calvin's writings and thus takes on a measure of some importance. And when one examines the contexts in which he uses this term, it quickly becomes apparent that for Calvin edification is a multidimensional process. The church's members, and thus the church itself, are "built up" when the whole of their compositions are addressed and attended to in love. Edification emerges, in other words, when the entire human being is taken into account. When human beings are encouraged, and allowed, to grow spiritually, psychically, and physically, Calvin believes, they are edified. Spiritual edification thus results from fasting and public testimony (4.12.15 & 17, 1242 & 1243); from the constructive and coherent teaching of church doctrine (4.8.1, 1149-50); from the witness of martyrdom (4.2.2, 1042); from the practice and experience of forgiveness (4.1.20, 1034); and from the "use of the sacraments. . . decently and in [good] order" (4.1.12, 1026). But at the same time psychological edification appears when members receive basic education (4.1.5, 1016-17); when they recognize the many avenues of service to the Lord and so encourage and appreciate a division of labor (4.3.1, 1053-54); when they experience basic fellowship (communio—3.20.47, 915); when the church accepts them even in their frailty and sin, resisting the Donatist and Anabaptist temptations to purge itself of every "spot" or "wrinkle" during its earthy pilgrimage, thereby practicing not a "rigid" and prideful "severity" (which ultimately works as a "subversion" of "the bond of peace and unity") but instead a "modest" and "prudent" determination to keep the "unity of peace" (4.12.12, 1239—40); when they are welcomed by public worship and prayer performed in their own language and style (3.20.33, 896); when the church constructively accommodates their local, and familiar, customs and traditions (4.10.30-32, 1207-10); and when they experience the grace of civic peace (4.20.4, 1489). How much more, then, does edification emanate from the practice of tangible generosity and the sharing of material possessions (3.7.5, 695-96; 3.19.8, 839-40; and 3.20.47, 9i5)? 40 The significance of Calvin's notion of upbuilding for our purposes here shines through when we consider the extent to which the edification process requires concrete action. Calvin is no contemplative. His concerns are ever in the world: in the physical health and strength of the visible church and in the physical and psychic condition of its present and potential members. To this end, that of the growth and bodily health of contemporary social institutions and the palpable human persons that make them up, Calvin exerted enormous energy. As noted previously, he repeatedly asserts the need to attend to the poor and dispossessed. "To treat such [persons] with cruelty argues a singular degree of impiety, and contempt of divine authority" (Comm. Ps. 94:5-6 [4:i4]).41 Moreover, by clear evidence he understood his job as Genevan pastor not only to provide material aid (in the way of men, money, books, even gunpowder) to fellow believers struggling in France and elsewhere but also to encourage Cenevan political

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authorities to redefine governmental oversight of its subjects to include what we would now call social welfare programs.42 "The city authorities themselves," says Ronald Wallace, "had to be encouraged to think of their work in government as involving a social care for the welfare of each individual corresponding to the pastoral care exerted by the ministry of the Word" (i25). 43 Calvin's voluminous correspondence offers plentiful evidence of his devotion to the physical upbuilding of the churches both within and without his Geneva. As early as July 1545, for example, he urges local pastors to "stir up the torpid" on behalf of the persecuted Christian brethren in Provence, and to "demand of the king" the release of religious prisoners (Letter CXXXVIII [4:472-73]). From the mid-i54os until his death in 1564, Calvin's correspondence shows that he devoted considerable time and effort to the training of pastors to be sent in harm's way, pastors whom he expected would follow his own path of exhorting the faithful and decrying injustice. One long stream of letters thereby announces the sending of such new pastors, along with some pointed advice as to their use.44 This correspondence also demonstrates his own pastoral preoccupation with bucking up his often fatigued and demoralized Christian soldiers in carrying on the work of reform.45 Perhaps most significantly for my purposes in this chapter, however, Calvin is quick to urge institutional, political reforms upon a number of public officials throughout Europe. To the Protector, the Duke of Somerset (ruling England during the minority of Edward VI), Calvin writes on October 22, 1548, that "rebels [against] true religion [in England] deserve to be repressed by the sword which is committed to you," so that "the name of God [not] be blasphemed" (Letter CCXXIX [5:185, 187, 189]). He goes on in this lengthy epistle to lay out his threepronged strategy that under the Protector's rule, "the doctrine of God may be proclaimed with efficacy and power," in quest of "an open and complete reformation of the church." For the Protector must be made aware of the intricacies, first, of pioneering "the sound instruction of the people"; second, of "rooting out [the] abuses which have prevailed hitherto"; and, third, of undertaking "the careful repression and correction of vice," taking heed "that scandals and loose conversation . . . may not grow into a fashion" (188-89). In the years following, Calvin's determination to advise foreign magistrates seemed only to grow. Letters offering reformational instruction and advice to the nobility and royalty of numerous European principalities are liberally sprinkled throughout the standard collection of his correspondence.46 In emphasizing the ministry of material aid and institutional change, Calvin was clearly no ascetic. As his correspondence reveals, and as R. Wallace properly notes, Calvin even "gave some encouragement... to people with opportunities for a high standard of living to enjoy it in a moderate way provided they cared for their poor neighbors" (204). Of course, the same also holds for those in positions of obvious power. As Calvin puts the matter to the young Edward VI, "It is indeed a great thing to be a king, and . . . more, over such a country." In placing Edward in office, God has entrusted to him "an invaluable privilege." Yet it is precisely the "acknowledgment of such great benefits received from his infinite goodness" that ought to "stir up" Edward "to employ all [his] energies to [God's]

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honor and service, setting to [his] subjects an example of homage to this great King" (Letter CCXCVII of 4 July 1552 [5: 355]).47 Whether in money, possessions, or power, says Calvin in the essay "On Christian Freedom," "God nourishes us to live, [but] not to luxuriate" (3.19.9, 841). What Fred Graham describes Calvin as thinking about wealth and poverty, that they were both "sacramental—that is, they were channels of grace from God, and means of evidencing faith on the part of men" (Constructive, 67)—Calvin also thought about power.48 Human power is a gift from a sovereign God to be shared with a needy world. In sum, it is not too much to say that Calvin finds in the material world and its organizational structures a real source of spiritual truth. Not only is the material world part and parcel of God's creation, it is primary evidence of his creative power, his merciful providence, and his gracious intercession.49 God provides his human creatures material nourishment and aid to live godly lives, and their best show of gratitude is to share such aid with their fellows.

Action or Activism? When one sees Calvin's apparent "materialism" in light of his doctrine of predestination, it can appear to yield, as it apparently does for Ralph Hancock, an inventive secularism. "Since all concern for self is excluded, including concern for so-called 'virtue' and for philosophical 'contemplation,' the believer can only turn his attention to preserving or increasing the worldly goods of other men" (Foundations, 95). Because, for Calvin, God's predestination is beyond the bounds of human inquiry, "God is pushed so far beyond the human world that divinity can provide no intelligible reference point above the common, material interests of humanity, but only a spiritual sanction for the universalization of these interests." As a result, "God becomes a vanishing point of transcendence from which the material world itself is infused with spiritual purpose" (Hancock, "Religion," 69394). Further, because Calvin "denies man the power of free choice" in the matter of choosing the good, "which only God knows or wills," but because he also teaches "that man is not incapable of recognizing what is necessary to his selfpreservation," then "self-preservation [becomes] the point where divine and human power coincide" (Foundations, 39).50 If Hancock is right, then we ought not to be overly surprised to find later Calvinists, and their "Protestant ethic," providing impetus to the "the spirit of capitalism." For the material world becomes the one place where God's favor might most clearly shine. Hence the believer might very well act as a way to demonstrate his election. Forbidden from looking inward to probe his justification and sanctification, he would now naturally look outward. Is he performing what appear to be good works? Do they appear to him to have good consequences? Then clearly he must be one of the elect. Were he not, he would logically be incapable of such performance. The question of the believer's inner motivation quickly loses its piquancy. As Hancock says, "Calvin's radicalization of the inwardness of the Lutheran idea of justification by faith alone thus yields a radical outwardness; the Calvinist learns to leave behind the question of the goodness of his soul and to

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strain forward in the production of signs of his absolutely certain election" (Foundations, I34-35).51 There is no question that Calvin refers in a number of places to the "signs" (signa) of one's election, that he discourages introspection regarding such election, and that he tries to reassure believers by pointing to the outward "fruit" of genuine faith. Believers, he says in the Institutes, "regard themselves as having been chosen as sons by the Lord" after having noted "the fruits of their calling." Though inspired by faith to bear such fruit, they can legitimately "take the fruits of regeneration as proof of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit" (3.14.19, 785-86). Later, when discussing "the right and wrong way to attain certainty of election," Calvin asserts, "we shall be following the best order if, in seeking the certainty of our election, we cling to those latter signs [signis posteriori^} which are sure attestations of it" (3.24.4, 968). Works are "the signs of the calling by which [believers] realize their election" (3.14.20, 786).52 Indeed, in his commentary on Psalms 1:1—2 (i: 2), Calvin appears to invoke the very "works righteousness" he labored so long to condemn. For the Psalmist, he says, "it was of importance that the righteous should be confirmed in the way of holiness. . . and the conviction that God is favorable to none but those who zealously devote themselves to the study of divine truth [Deum vero nuUis nisi doctrinae suae studiosis propittum esse]." One can easily see how such an emphasis on "works" (or "signs") might breed an activist, materialist, even revolutionary self-righteousness, a spirit of manipulation and redesign of social institutions. To indicate that God is in charge transcendentally, his people must be in charge tangibly and immanently. The work ethic thus would breed not only sure confidence but unbounded pretension, not to mention a determination to demonstrate God's power in the material world. To Hancock (Foundations, 161), then, the equation of order with "sheer power ... is the central teaching or basic doctrine underlying the Institutes."53 Hence, contemporary Reformed thinkers such as South African John DeGruchy can speak appropriately of "the fundamental ambiguity in the Reformed tradition, its evangelical and transformative witness on the one hand, and its dominating imperialism on the other" (DeGruchy, ig).54 And one can easily discern the appearance, in Calvin's occasional pieces, particularly the Letters to which we have just alluded, of an activist and restive materiality. In his letter of January 16, 1561, to the King of Navarre, for example, Calvin exhorts the king to understand that the "reestablishment" of a Christian kingdom "is an object for which we should spare nothing." Even more, "it is our most imperious duty" to see that "the reign of the Son of God, true religion and the pure doctrine of salvation.. . should be completely re-established" (DLXXXII [7:161-62]). It is difficult not to conclude from such language that Calvin sees as a real possibility the complete transformation of earthly political structures, and other social institutions, by energized Christian believers.53 Yet a number of scholars, including, interestingly, Max Weber, have made strong cases that the activist and domineering Calvinism visible in the seventeenth century traces its roots not to Calvin himself but to his immediate successor, Theodore Beza. For the triumphalism implied by an activist Calvinism rests ultimately on the extraordinary, even self-righteous, confidence in one's ability to

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discern the patterns of God's transhistorical election. And Calvin, according to Weber, "rejects in principle the assumption that one can learn from the conduct of others whether they are chosen or damned." Hence, although for Calvin "the elect differ externally in this life in no way from the damned," thus "remaining] God's invisible church," holding this stance was "impossible for his followers as early as Beza, and, above all, for the broad mass of ordinary men" (Weber, no).56 Weber's facile conclusion, that for Calvin believers "differ externally . . . in no way from the damned," is clearly problematic. Calvin states quite explicitly in his commentary on 2 Peter 1:10 that "purity of life is not improperly called the evidence and proof of election, by which the faithful may not only testify to others that they are the children of God, but also confirm themselves in this confidence" (377 [emphasis added]). Yet Weber was correct in noting Calvin's determination to keep Christian assertiveness in check with proper Christian humility. The point Calvin wants to emphasize in commenting on 2 Peter 1:10 is not the self-glorying over one's inclusion in the divine clique but, rather, the "goodness of God" which shines through a pious life. One's calling both "begins and is completed through his gratuitous goodness"; it most emphatically does not "depend on us." Peter's words are not meant to "show that it is in our own hand or power to confirm election" (376-77). Immediately after assuring believers of the "fruits of regeneration as proof of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit" in Institutes 3.14.19, then, Calvin sets out in 3.14.20 to preempt the possibility of works "becom[ing] the foundation of self-confidence for believers." "The saints have not a confidence in works. . . since they regard them solely as gifts of God." Indeed, the believer "dare not vaunt his works before God," for two reasons: first, "if he has anything of good works, he sees in them nothing of his own," and, second, his awareness that any works of his are "overwhelmed by a multitude of sins" (3.14.20, 786-87 [emphasis added]).57 On the same day Calvin wrote to the King of Navarre promoting the reestablishment of a Christian kingdom, he also wrote to Navarre's wife, the Queen. "Whereas kings and princes would often wish to be exempted from subjection to Jesus Christ, and are accustomed to make a buckler [or shield] of their privileges under pretence of their greatness," Calvin says to her, nonetheless the "dignity and grandeur in which this God of goodness has brought you up" should become a "double tie to bind you to obedience to him." Christians holding power, and using it to effect change, must understand "that it is from him that [they] hold everything." More to the point, "according to the measure which each one has received," that person "shall have to render a stricter account" (Letter DLXXXIII [7:164]). The efficacy of works wholly depends on God's instigation and sustenance. It is precisely those who "are regenerated by the spirit of God, and who worship him with true devotion," says Calvin in another place, who understand that they have "nothing on which their hope may rest but the mere goodness of God" (Comm. Ps. 103:17 [4:139]). The temptation to classify others as elect or reprobate, and in this way to undertake a triumphal "cleansing" of the political order on behalf, and in the name of the elect is one Calvin understands very well. He sees God prodding believers to act, bur they must also understand that God does indeed hold the

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prod. Moreover, in his mysterious providence the prod can metastasize into a club when believers forget or ignore the real ground of their salvation energy. In an ironic twist, then, election breeds not chauvinism but servility. Once Christians do hold power, then "to look upon those who are oppressed with afflictions as condemned and reprobate" is, Calvin asserts, "an error . . . far too common among men (Comm. Ps. 41:1 [2:113]).58 In spite of Calvin's apparent determination to keep believers' pretension in check, one can certainly question the degree of his success. As Graham notes, in speaking of Calvin's sermons, "They are visionary and yet practical in an immediate way, harsh when looking out but sternly tender toward the redeemed flock, sharp in denunciation of injustice but perhaps not sufficiently aware of the atrocities which may be committed by the saints of the new order" (Constructive, 20). Indeed, as Philip Holtrop has painstakingly and exhaustively shown, the roots of later Calvinist excesses can be clearly seen in Calvin's handling of the controversy over the alleged heresy of Jerome Bolsec. For Calvin, says Holtrop, "[t]rue love required that we root out the weeds from God's garden." Holtrop has Calvin saying that since the heretic "threatens insurrection in the community," then believers "can have integrity in the community only when [they] weed out the Satanic [i.e., heretical] elements" (The Bolsec Controversy, 219—20).59 One would be hardpressed to deny the truth of Holtrop's argument for explicit Calvinist "weeding." Certainly, in the Bolsec and later the Michael Servetus affairs, Calvin appeared remarkably determined to identify the accused parties as belonging among the reprobate, and to root them out of the societal garden.60 However, we must also remember Holtrop's limited scope. That Calvin sowed the seeds of later "Calvinist" excesses is not difficult to perceive. But that his thinking was as simplistic as these later excesses implied can be flatly refuted. Indeed, perhaps we ought not to forget the larger historical context of Calvin's life and writing. The sixteenth-century political context in which Calvin found himself might explain quite a bit. Did not a struggling Reform, seeking some political acceptance for what it understood to be the legitimate expression of God's truth, have a primary obligation to exhort believers to confident assertion and action? "These things ought to be united and never. . . separated," says Calvin, "namely, faith and its profession." God requires "not only faith in the heart and the inward affections, but also in the witness and confession of our piety" (Comm. Dan. 6:10 [1:359-60]). What Reformed believers needed more than anything else was a minimal degree of self-assurance that separation from the "Mother" church was in fact a legitimate act of faith! Hence Calvin's determination to emphasize the utility of the doctrine of predestination, apparently to reassure the faithful and thus build up the flock, ought not to surprise us. What is remarkable, in the midst of these textual concerns, is the extent to which Calvin did recognize human frailty and thus anticipated the falling away by many from "sound doctrine." The desire to delve into the grounds and purposes of one's election and to search for selfjustification was, and still is, very real. Indeed, "this temptation is all the deadlier, since almost all of us are more inclined to it than any other" (3.24.4, 969). The evidence seems plain that Calvin attempted to stay a middle course between paralytic introspection on the one hand and self-righteous domination on

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the other. Christian freedom's second part does imply a freedom to act, consciously and confidently. But Calvin himself clearly recognized the spiritual anemia of this apparently simple statement. What grounds and sustains Christian freedom is the awareness that believers live their lives at the behest of, and in the light and presence of, the living, sovereign God of grace. Hence, freedom's second part also has a second side, a second dimension. And although the arguments of Hancock, Holtrop, and others are powerful and persuasive, each fails to take into account this other important dimension of Calvin's thinking, one I shall explore as the complement to freedom as action in the world.

4 ACTION U N D E R J U D G M E N T Grant, Almighty God . . . that we may become teachable, and be so displeased with our vices. . . that, relying on the Mediator whom thou has given us, we may flee to thy mercy, . . . and shall enjoy that glory which thine only-begotten son has obtained for us by his own blood. Amen. Commentary on Jeremiah 16:5, Opening prayer

fuller vision of Christian freedom's second part points us beyond Calvin's A doctrine of predestination to his doctrine of God's sovereignty, from which predestination derives. For to be free for action in the world means simultaneously to be captive to God's sovereign will. All actions, both of individual human beings and of human societies, remain under God's omniscient eye and eternal judgment. Believers are never "so free to choose, that God's will does not rule over their freedom." Indeed, Calvin emphasizes, "whether you will or not, daily experience compels you to realize that your mind is guided by God's prompting [a motione Dei , . . pendere] rather than by your own freedom to choose" (2.4.7, 3 J 5)- God's will stands as the sovereign authority for human beings (1.14.1, 161). Although believers are free for action, therefore, they are not free from God's prompting and God's judgment regarding their actions. They live ever "under the eyes [sub oculis]" of God (Letter CCCCXII to Melanchthon [6:219]).' When God declares through Jeremiah that he "fill[s] heaven and earth," he describes himself as a God who "governs all things," who "notice[s]" all things, and who "judge[s]" all things. Human beings simply cannot hide from God's ubiquitous justice and judgment. God discerns human motivation and behavior in "the thickest darkness as well as in the clearest light" (Comm. Jer. 23:24 [3:189]). In sum then, "having liberty is one thing, practicing it quite another" (Comm. GaL 5:13-14, from Haroutunian, 325).

Belief and Presumption God's sovereign authority starkly curtails the extravagances of freedom. Human manipulation and use of the physical and spiritual goods of the created world, for 81

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example, must always aim at God's glory (3.10.2, 720). The problem remains that believers, though freed "willingly [to] obey God's law," do not cease being human creatures whose finitude, fallibility, and pride still color their actions, their "willing obedience." Even believers, as all human beings, are tempted to act "in exclusive reliance upon their own wisdom and strength." Hence, even they must be exhorted "to modesty and the invocation of God." Too often "blinded by presumption," they are tempted "forcibly [to] appropriate to themselves that which belongs to God." They must be "admonished" that "their being busily occupied will profit them nothing, except insofar as God blesses their exertions" (Comm. Ps. 127:1 [5: 104-5]). Although the process of a believer's "sanctification" would appear to preempt the possibility of his wrongful choice and presumptuous deeds, Calvin is quick to deny, as we have already noted, that the holiness resulting from election annihilates all sinful desire (2.2.25, 284-86; 3.14.13-14, 780-81). Indeed, the believer who by faith understands himself to be one of the elect would be all the more prone to a kind of hyperconsciousness, even despair, over his unworthiness. It is precisely because of this tendency that Calvin must exert as much energy as he does to exhort believers to recognize the freedom from such anxiety they do have in Christ. Believers, he says, must "turn our attention [away] from ourselves," and instead "look only to Christ"; they must "embrace God's mercy alone" (3.19.2, 834).2 After all, the salvation they experience in Christ exists only because the living Christ "turns the Father's eyes to his own righteousness to avert his gaze from our sins" (2.16.16, 524)^ In any case, the Christian believer inevitably finds himself confronting an irresolvable tension, and although Calvin does not name this tension (indeed, in some ways, as described in chapter 3, in this volume, he appears to ignore it), he does recognize it. The believer must choose the good while simultaneously recognizing and confronting his own incapacity to do so; he must acknowledge God's authority while simultaneously acknowledging his own penchant for ignoring such authority and for following his own prideful desire. He must, in other words, act for good without understanding himself to be the actor who accomplishes—yea, even leans toward—the good. He must understand himself to be free in Christ without yet being free from his own sinful self. Using the language of Aristotle, Calvin notes that "the efficient cause of our obtaining eternal life is the mercy of the Heavenly Father and his freely given love toward us." Moreover, "surely the material cause is Christ." As to the formal, or "instrumental" cause, "What shall we say . . . but faith?" The final cause, therefore, would consist "both in the proof of divine justice and in the praise of God's goodness" (3.14.17, 783-84). The believer's journey into salvation is not only initiated by God, but indispensably aided by God, inspired by God, and aimed at God. Believers can take little, if any, credit, for such a posture. Calvin is constantly reminding his fellow believers how far they all still are from full "sanctification." He reminds them how "little proficiency in the gospel" those have accomplished "whose hearts have not been formed to meekness, and among whom there does not yet reign that brotherly love which leads men to perform kind offices to each other" (Comm. Is. 2:4 [1:101]). He prods them dare

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they ever forget "that nothing is hid from God," that "he penetrates into the inmost recesses of the heart," that "he discerns between the thoughts and the feelings, and leaves not unobserved the very marrow" (Comm. ]er. 23:23-24 [3: iSs]).4 A fine line confronts believers. They need to face up to their sometimes "drowsy consciences," their lack of "dread" of God's judgment, on the one hand (Comm. Is. 2:10 [i:m]), as well as their "excessive fear of men," so as to "care nothing about God's assistance," on the other (Comm. Is. 51:12 [4:78]). "[A]way with all arrogance and complacency!" shouts Calvin. Only when believers have "shaken o f f . . . sloth" as well as "any confidence in ourselves" can they "without hindrance hasten to Christ" (3.12.8, 762). Even believers, says Calvin, are confronted with the temptation to collapse God's omniscient justice and judgment into its human counterpart. Yet even a moment's serious consideration reveals the absurdity of the comparison. How can human beings even entertain, rails Calvin, the possibility that they can "measure by our own small measure" the full scope and dimensions of God's justice and the content of his judgment? For the Lord's justice remains "so perfect" that nothing can even be admitted into its presence unless it be "in every part whole and complete and undefiled by any corruption." Among human beings such wholeness and purity "was never found . . . and never will be" (3.12.1, 754). Calvin goes on to cite a number of Old Testament passages, primarily from Job, in a conspicuous drive to shock believers into full realization of the yawning chasm between their watery conceptions of the divine Judge and God's own selfrevelation. Believers are accountable to a God, he says, "by whose brightness the stars are darkened; by whose strength the mountains are melted; by whose wrath the earth is shaken.. . whose righteousness not even the angels can bear; [and] beside whose purity all things are defiled" (3.12.1, 755).' Calvin means this recollection of divine purity primarily to introduce his conceptions of sola fidei and sola gratia, and therefore to condemn "works righteousness." But he couches his presentation in a patent determination to remind even believers—yea, especially believers—of the ever-present temptation to envisage self-salvation.6 In sum, then, believers remain perennially under God's omniscient judgment. Their charge, not only as individuals but as a flock, is to serve God's sovereign will. Calvin is thus quick to refute any notion of "supererogatory" (or superfluous) works. Indeed, he argues, how can one conceive of supererogatory deeds, when "we are servants obligated to render so many services that we cannot perform them, even though all our thoughts and our members were turned toward the duties of the law?" How dare believers, then, who are, "every one, so far away from this goal, boast that we have accumulated something beyond the measure due" (3.14.14, 781 [emphasis added]? More to the point, "there are two plagues that we must especially banish from our minds." These include the temptations, for believers, to "put any confidence in the righteousness of works," and to "ascribe to works any glory." Instead, Scripture "consistently dissuades us from confidence." It teaches "that all our righteous deeds are foul in God's sight unless these derive a good odor from Christ's innocence." Hence, "works can only arouse God's vengeance, unless they be sustained by his merciful pardon." Anything believers do "leave[s] us nothing but to implore our Judge for mercy with that confession of

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David's: that no one will be justified before him if he demands a reckoning from his servants" (3.14.16, 782-83, re Psalm 143:2). The point here is that if works are irrelevant to salvation before justification, then in one important sense they continue to be irrelevant to one's status as a redeemed person after one's justification. Only those deeds blessed by God in his incomparable and mysterious grace have constructive value, and the redeemed are no more likely to do good inevitably than are the reprobate to fall short.7 God's will is the highest, yea the only, human authority (1.14.1, 161), and human societies remain under that judgment no matter the particular historical circumstances (Comm. Is. 34:6 [3:49-50]). As Bavinck notes, "The unfathomable mystery of the world compels the intellect and the heart, theology and philosophy alike, to fall back upon the will of God and seek rest in it" (450). Indeed, whatever action believers undertake "shall dissolve into smoke, unless God . . . cause it to prosper" (Comm. Ps. 127:1 [5:105]). From Jeremiah 7:22-23, Calvin finds "this clear statement" that "removes all ambiguity": "God sets obedience against sacrifice (even though sacrifice was a part of obedience)" (Comm. Jer, 7:22—23 [1:78]).8 For Calvin, Psalm 127:1 offers pointed and valuable counsel to believers that they, as it were, think before they act. The rush to action, he says, to "build cities" and to "order the state [i.e., condition] of the . . . world," more than likely will display only "profane boldness," a kind of "madness the Holy Spirit justly reproves." Believers ought rather to concentrate their energies in more modest endeavors, "according to the measure of [their] ability and the nature of [their] office." In doing so they allow the praise "attending our exertions" to remain "exclusively with God." They ought especially to be conscious of the temptation to think themselves generous, even "valiant," when they "leave half of the praise to God." Such self-elevation "is deserving of all condemnation"; rather, "[t]he blessing of God should have the whole share and exclusively hold the throne" (Comm. Ps. 127:1 [5:106]). God's judgment alone is determinative for human beings, and they are all under it. Hence, all human beings ought to understand themselves as primarily reflective of God's judgment. This fact clearly implies several theological points relevant to politics, and they ought to be more thoroughly addressed here. First, God's judgment and his justice are real and tangible. Second, human beings can see only so far with regard to God's ultimate plan for them; hence to be under God's judgment means to be neither overly curious in thought nor overly presumptuous in deed. Third, due to the attitude of humility necessary in the face of God's judgment, human accountability to God's judgment ought to breed a tolerance for human opinions regarding specific aspects of that judgment and therefore a plea for peace as a primary duty of governments.

God's Judgment and Human Caution First, God's judgment, and his justice, are real and tangible, hence visible. Not only does he create and then govern his creation generally (1.5.6, 58-59; 1.16.1-2, 197-99), but he "administers human society" so that "although kindly and be-

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neficent toward all in numberless ways, he still by open and daily indications declares his clemency to the godly and his severity to the wicked and criminal" (1.5.7, 6°)- One can see God's justice, that is, both in human discounting of the patterns and norms of creation and in the historical undulation of human societies. The creation itself reveals the full dimensions of God's pattern for human life and of God's righteous judgment. Romans 1:18-32 is a most important Scripture passage for Calvin on this point.9 Here, says Calvin, Paul shows clearly how God reveals his justice in creation norms. Were human beings fully to recognize such norms, and praise their source in divine mercy and love, they would experience both gratitude and the fullness of authentic humanity. In fact, however, human beings are prone to self-elevation and pride. Thus, when the human heart is, as it were, "left to itself," when it relies only on its own presumed sufficiency and power, it generates inhuman "progeny." For example, when some part of the created order, such as the human body, is anointed to "religious honor," the result can only be an "abandonment" to "beastly lusts." Indeed, when human beings find within themselves alone their primary standards for living a "human" life, they end up following their own unquenchable lusts to the point where they become "degraded beyond the beasts," and so, "reverse the whole order of nature" (Comm. Rom. i: 24-26 [76-79] [emphasis added]). If the standard is bodily pleasure, its ephemeral, transitory, and temporary nature yields only a yawning chasm between expectation and reality, one the pleasure seeker works to fill not only with deepening self' absorbtion but necessarily with the self-absorbing manipulation of all others. The point, for Calvin, is that only God's "equitable judgment" would "allow" the pride of men to be "led and carried into such [dehumanizing] madness by their own lusts." The punishment of a dehumanized and degraded life thus follows naturally and inevitably from "the just judgment of God" and his "divine vengeance." Creation norms spell out quite legibly the proper order of nature and of human allegiance (Comm. Rom. 1:24 [76]). To sell oneself into the slavery of worldly pleasures is to spurn such norms, to announce one's "self-sufficiency, and in the end only to degrade oneself below even nonhuman creatures: a pitiable sight indeed, and a clear manifestation of God's righteous judgment. As Michael Wittmer argues in a recent essay, "Prudence and folly only have predictable consequences because [these consequences] are controlled by God. In a world ruled by chance, no one could predict the results of [such] actions" (7). Another cogent example Calvin uses to demonstrate the inevitable and perverse consequences arising from human attempts at self-assertion concerns those political rulers, primarily "kings," who "cannot contain themselves in the ordinary rank and station of men," but instead "wish to penetrate the clouds and become on a level with God." God's "most just vengeance" displays itself in the outwardly ironic turn that such rulers "become the veriest slaves of their own servants." Their breathing of the rarified air of self-announced superiority yields only the insecurity of the starkest loneliness. Having raised themselves above all others, they are "without friends [and] dare not utter anything with freedom." But in their pomposity they ultimately "become a laughing stock." Inflated with self-importance, they inescapably fear exposure and so are "afraid to summon their subjects into their presence, and to entrust either one or another with their wishes." In the

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end, "slaves rule the kingdoms of the world, because kings assume superiority to mortals" (Comm. Dan. 6:16 [1:370-71]).10 Seeing how the prophet Jeremiah inveighs against King Jehoiakim, Calvin notes that this king "seemed not to think himself a king unless he conducted himself like a madman." But more to the point, "[s]uch is the case with kings at this day." Looking at the kings that surround him, Calvin finds that in most cases "they are ashamed to appear humane, and devise means only to exercise tyranny." For whatever reasons, "they also contrive how they may depart as far as possible from the common usage and practice of men." Kings, by virtue of their kingship, seem determined to believe what their courtiers say about them! Again the pathetic irony: "When they ambitiously seek through a blind zeal to be the slaves of pride, it is a vain attempt, and contributes nothing towards that happy life which they foolishly imagine" (Comm. ]er. 22:16 (3:102-3]). In sum, human beings cannot give religious honor to some part of the created order, themselves included, "without taking it away, in a disgraceful and sacrilegious manner, from God" (Comm. Rom. 1:25 [78]). "For what is idolatry," Calvin asks in another place, "if not this: to worship the gifts in place of the giver" (4.17.36, 1413). As Calvin's interpretation of Romans i implies, God's judgment, and so his justice, manifests itself as unmistakably in world history. Violators of God's creation order visibly fall prey to their own perversions and thus to the vengeance evident in the withdrawal of his hand of mercy. Because God's enemies, "forgetful of all human feelings," perversely and "unjustly oppressed the Church of God" and "treated the children of God with cruelty," then, says Calvin, Isaiah declares that in "their blood is offered a sacrifice of sweet savor, and highly acceptable to God, because he executes his judgment." Indeed, "such is the destruction which awaits all the reprobate." Calvin thus notes that those "who of their own accord refuse to devote themselves to the service of God" will find only this fate: "irreligious hands shall offer them in sacrifice" (Comm. Is. 34:6—7 [3:49—51] [emphasis in the original]). Precisely when, he says in another place, such people are "raging . . . violently against others," at that time will "the mischief, which they so eagerly desire, . . . come upon them." Hence, "all the machinations of the wicked will eventually recoil upon their own heads" (Comm. Ps. 109:17-19 [4:285]),u A quick glance through Scripture shows specific instances of the historical execution of God's judgment. From the more miraculous examples, such as the rain of fire on Sodom and Gomorrah (Comm. Gen. 19:24 [1:512-13]) and the ten plagues on Egypt (for example, Comm. Harm. Moses on Ex. 7:22 [1:155-56]), to the more predictable and seemingly mundane, such as the fall of Israel and Judah, each after generations of perverse leadership (for example, Comm. Hosea 2:12-13 [97-100]; Comm. Jer. 2:17-18 [1:99-101]), God's judgment in history, says Calvin, is most conspicuous. Moreover, in examining the events of his own time, Calvin noted what appeared to him clear examples of divine judgment. Perhaps the brightest and clearest example for Calvin (and the other Reformers as well) of God exercising his judgment in the unfolding of events was the sudden death of the young Francis II, King of France, at the height of his persecution of French protestants. In re-

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counting the event in a Letter to fellow reformer John Sturm, Calvin asks rhetorically, "Did you ever read or hear of anything more opportune than the death of the king?" When the "evils had reached an extremity for which there was no remedy," then "all of a sudden God shows himself from heaven." As God had "pierced the eye of the father" (i.e., Henry II), he has now "struck the ear of the son."12 True to his realistic, and largely submissive attitude toward enfolding events, Calvin did not see the king's death as an opening for the presumption that believers would now be in position "to transform the whole world in an instant." For him, he writes, "it is enough that [through this sign of his judgment] God approves of my diligence." Upon hearing of the king's death, Calvin goes on, he prefers "the testimony of impartial and moderate men" to the "noisy outcries of the multitude" (Letter DLXXIX of 16 December 1560 [7:152-53]). On a number of other occasions as well, Calvin finds God's judgment actively intervening in contemporary events. When God provides for a faithful but nearly desparate church flock a pastor of "singular simplicity and probity," thereby displaying his "compassion on that little church" (Letter DLXXVIII of 11 December 1560 [7:150-51]); when Calvin points the king of Poland to the "opportunity offered by God" for reform in Poland, due to the "greater part of the Polish nobility" showing "a prompt and cheerful disposition to embrace the faith of Christ," this after a long period wherein the Polish people were "sunk in a slough of errors" (Letter CCCCXXV of 24 December 1555 [6:245-47]); when Lord John Grey, a pious and faithful man, is "snatched from the jaws of death" amidst the accession persecutions of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary (Letter CCCLXXI of 13 November 1554 [6:94-95]); and when Calvin is reminded of the incredible accommodation and absorption of religious exiles by the Genevan people (Letter CCCLV of 7 August 1554 [6:53]); in all these developments and more, Calvin sees the "helping hand" of the Lord (CCCLV[6:53]) in exercising his transcendent judgment, a judgment to believers "of no ordinary consolation" (CCCLXXI[6:95]). Full awareness of God's judgment is necessary both to reign in the potential pride of believers, on the one hand, and to lift up their confidence, on the other. We learn from Isaiah, for example, "that God avows himself to be the enemy of all the proud." Those "who unduly exalt themselves, cannot escape being crushed by his hand" (Comm. Is. 2:12 [1:113]). Furthermore, believers must be acutely aware that "it is impossible for us to escape punishment from the Lord, if we are puffed up with vain confidence and flatter ourselves." Indeed, "the Prophet here includes every kind of pride, whether men think that they are something, or admire their riches, and despise others in comparison of themselves." In sum, "God cannot endure any arrogancy, or suffer it to pass unpunished" (Comm. Is. 13:11 [1:41920]). Generalizing from Isaiah's prophecy, Calvin notes that in tyrants "[a]rrogance [is] joined, as it usually is, to violence and cruelty." The tyrannical impulse in all human beings, the impulse to "despise others," leads almost inevitably to deeds of "violence and injustice and oppression." Indeed, "it is impossible for men to abstain from doing harm to others, if they do not lay aside all conceit and high estimation of themselves." Henceforth, Calvin speaks to believers, "let us willingly . . . bring down our minds to true humility, if we do not wish to be cast down and

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laid low to our destruction" (Comm. Is. 13:11 [i: 420]). To impersonate such humility, a public persona is far from sufficient. Commenting on Jeremiah 23:2324 (" 'Am I only a God nearby,' declares the Lord, 'and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?' "), Calvin notes that here Jeremiah "shakes off from hypocrites their self-delusions . . . because they thought that they could in a manner blind the eyes of God." Indeed, if the truth of God's omniscience were "fixed in the hearts of all," they "would certainly obey God with more reverence, and also dread his threatenings" (3:185). It is especially when God judges the proud that "his glory shines forth illustriously" (Comm. Is. 2:11 [mil]). Calvin's point in discussing pride is to caution even believers against that very human temptation to think that they can live apart from, independent of, or even in equality with, the Lord of the universe. Whereas public and self-conscious glorying in oneself would no doubt be rare among Christians, Calvin understands the more subtle and insidious dimensions of human pride. The problem is not the loudest and most boisterous kind of self-promotion but the "vain" or "empty confidence" (vana confidentia or inanis confidentia) in one's own abilities and virtues. As he puts the matter in a number of places in the Institutes, believers, as all human beings, too "readily esteem our virtue above its due measure" (3.8.2, 703). Hence, "presumption" can "creep [in] upon the saints from the vestiges of the flesh" (3.2.22, 568). The result of such sly latency is that "we are lifted up into stupid and empty confidence [in stolidam et inanem . . . confidentiam]" (3.8.2, 703). For a believer to claim "ever so little beyond what is rightfully his" is to "lose himself in vain confidence" (2.2.10, 267). Christ's injunction to the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16-22, aimed not to call to account a "treacherous" (Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 19:16 [2:392]) or "evil intent" (4.13.13, 1267, on Matt. 19:21), for the young man harbored neither. In fact, he came to Jesus in a certain humility and out of "a desire for instruction" (Comm. Harm, Evang. on Matt. 19:16 [2:392]). Nevertheless, Christ sees that he comes "puffed up with vain confidence [vana confidentia] . . . that he has kept all the precepts of the law" (4.13.13, 1267).u To recognize the real condition of their humanity, believers must be empty of all pretension. For even an apparently harmless "recognition" of one's "own righteousness" steps down a slippery slope: "[T]here can be no such estimation without engendering confidence, and no confidence without giving birth to glorying" (3.13.2, 764).

Divine Will as the Foundation of Judgment As to the unmistakable signs of God's justice, healthy believers acknowledge such signs as pointing to both the soundness of God's judgments and his right to make them. Cultivating humility means letting God be God. "Far be it from us to say that judgment belongs to the clay, not to the potter" (3.23.14, 963). It is enough to say "God wills it" without determining to second-guess either his justice or his judgment. Indeed, the "free dispensing of his grace . . . illumines such nations as he wills." He "evokes the preaching of his Word at such places as he will." He

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"gives progress and success to his doctrine in such way and measure as he wills." He even "deprives the world, because of its ungratefulness, of the knowledge of his name for such ages as he will, and according to his mercy . . . restores it when he again wills" (2.11.14, 464). Because human beings will never have direct access either to the immediate results or to the reasoning behind God's particular judgments, and aspiration to such access is nothing more than a sign of pride,14 they ought "not to prate so irresponsibly about this lofty mystery" (3.22.1, 933).15 Any people which tries to build a society on anything but a determined subservience to God's will, be they "the mightiest governments of this world," will find they have "a slippery foundation" and are "unexpectedly overturned and suddenly fall" (Comm. Is. 9:7 [i: 313])- Indeed, "in a single moment God can cast down those whom he has raised up, and also raise up on high those whom he has before brought down to the ground" (Comm. Jer. 18:6 [2:393]). Calvin's references to the sovereignty of God (imperium Dei) in the Institutes are thus frequent and predictable.16 Simply stated, "Sober wisdom is precisely this, that one good pleasure of God is more than a thousand reasons." Indeed, "people rage against Christ himself when they raise a hue and cry upon hearing that by the will of God some are freely chosen and other rejected; they do it because they cannot bear to let God have his way" (Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 11:25-26 [from Haroutunian, 297]). Both true humility and true recognition of God's glory arise only when we recognize him to be "the Author of every blessing," and hence only when "the world has been stripped of all wisdom and strength, and righteousness, and, in a word, of all praise" (Comm. Is. 2:22 [1:121-22]).17 Believers must be conscious, therefore, that God elucidates any particular human action only through his will. Such action can never fare as creative, from the human perspective, but only as faithful or unfaithful. Either it conforms to God's will or it rebels and resists. It can occupy no middle ground. And God's judgment flows according to the extent of this correspondence: human action to his sovereign will. The significance of the believer's sensitivity to this correspondence manifests itself in his determination less to act than to follow God's will. Although one can, of course, act as a means of asserting God's will (and there is no question Calvin was often prone to reach this conclusion himself),18 to be acutely conscious of God's judgment means not only to question the potential legitimacy of particular action but also to recognize the very limited attainments of human social institutions. "When a house is planned," says Calvin in his commentary on Psalms 127:1 (5:105-6), "or a certain manner of life is chosen—yea, even when laws are enacted and justice administered, all this is nothing else than to creep upon the earth." Indeed, "the Holy Spirit declares that all our endeavors in this way are fruitless and of no value." But however much men in their institution building "excel in wisdom and virtue," and "whatever may be the undertakings in which they engage," they can "affect nothing, unless insofar as God stretches forth his hand to them, or rather makes use of them as his instruments."19 In the arena of politics this reasoning means that any magistrate, in performing his duties, "does nothing by himself" but instead "carries out the very judgments of God" (4.20.10, 1497). Indeed, even "they that rule unjustly and incompetently"

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do so by God's investment, for they have been "raised up by him to punish the wickedness of the people" (4.20.25, 1512).20 There is no question for Calvin but that "all the kings of the earth . . . have been placed upon their thrones by the hand of God" (Comm. Ps. 110:1 [4:297] [emphasis added]).21 God alone manifests the true source of political authority.22 To the extent that either rulers or subjects claim alternate sources of authority (for example, their own or the "people's" prerogative), they forfeit all legitimacy in God's eyes, and they prepare the way of their own demise. As Calvin puts the matter in his Prefatory Address in the Institutes, "[T]his consideration makes a true king: to recognize himself a minister of God in governing his kingdom" (Pref. 2, 12). Ignoring the divine source of all political authority brings about its own punishment: "Before his face all kings [doing so] shall fall and be crushed" (4.20.29, 1517).23 Particular rulers, then, have no authority of their own, even though they are constantly tempted to assert their own. "The dignity, therefore, with which they are clothed is only temporary and will pass away with the fashion of the world" (Comm. Ps. 82:6 [3:335]). Tempted to "lift their heads above the clouds," kings may forget that "they, as well as the rest of mankind, are under the government of God [ . . . ut regantur sub Dei many]." Such being the case, it is "vain" for them "arrogantly to struggle to obtain exemption from the obligations of reason" (Comm. Ps. 82:2 [3:330]). In Psalm 82:1, says Calvin, in order that the potentates of this world may not arrogate to themselves more than belongs to them, the prophet here erects a throne for God, from which he judges them all, and represses their pride; a thing which is highly necessary. [Indeed,] [tjhey may . . . admit that they owe their elevation to royal power to the favor of God, and they may worship him by outward ceremonies, but their greatness so infatuates them that they are chargeable with expelling and casting him to a distance from their assembly, by their vain imaginations; for they cannot bear to be subject to reason and law. (Comm. Ps. 82:1 [3:329]).24 Rulers and magistrates quickly forget that only so far as they have "the public power" in their hands, "that noble and divine power which the Lord by his word has given to the ministers of his justice and judgment," only then do they elicit "reverence by [their] subjects" (4.20.25, 1513). In other words, God elevates the office rather than the officeholder.25 As Hancock puts it, "Calvin emphatically distinguishes office from man: all authority resides finally not in any human being but in a divine calling" (Foundations, 68). Rulers thus too easily forget that "the government of the world has been committed to them upon the distinct understanding that they themselves also must one day appear at the judgment seat to render up an account" (Comm. Ps. 82:6 [3:334-35])- Indeed, Calvin goes so far to say in his commentary on Matthew 22:21 (3:45) that "if princes claim any part of the authority of God, we ought not to obey them any further than can be done without offending God."26 As Hopfl has noted, it was important for Calvin to distinguish between auctoritas, "the capacity to inspire respect," potestas and imperium, "the 'right to do' that goes with a particular office," and, finally, potentia, "the resources with which to coerce" (139). In other words, "However splendid the dignity of kingship might be, God does not wish it to be a pretext for unlimited

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might (immensae potentiae), but restricts and restrains it ad tivilem modum" (Hopfl, 169, citing Comm. Harm. Moses on Deut. i7:i4-i7[2:94-98]), from CO 24, 369). In spite of Calvin's protestations, Hancock has argued that Calvin's description of the divine power reposing in kingly office, rather than being reined in by modesty and faith, is effectively unlimited. Hancock consistently follows the logic of his interpretation of Calvin's theology, though we must ask whether the ground of that interpretation accurately portrays Calvin's thinking. The Calvinist official, says Hancock, "does not rule in the name of any [humanly comprehensible] end but by the [unpredictable] will of God." As a result, "the political order is not intelligible in the light of a [predictable] purpose." Hence, no hierarchy can be authoritative on any knowable grounds (Foundations, 68-69). If there is a tension in Calvin's teaching on political authority, "the unity behind [it] resides in the fact that for him the reason behind all authority remains hidden in God." Thus, "There is no reason but God for authority." And if this is so, says Hancock, "We cannot know God's reasons but can only obey his will." Since Calvin believes that God's will "is indicated by the sheer existence of power," as it manifests itself in historic circumstance, then "God's authority is revealed to us as power..." (75). As a result, "For Calvin .. . there is no standard above power" (76), because only power reveals the particularities of God's will. Hopfl (213), somewhat ironically, reinforces this criticism by noting that Calvin's oft-stated position of obedience to magistrates begs two questions: First, in the event of a dispute between magistrates, which magistrate should one obey? Second, whom do particular magistrates obey (and how does one know when they are obeying) ? Hopfl states that as neither of these questions arose in the context of the Genevan polity, Calvin was not properly confronted with their significance. Ultimately, then, in spite of the rhetorical distinctions Calvin draws between authority and power, he erects no practical principle to stand in the way of sheer compulsion. Absent human tools for judgment, both Hancock and Hopfl appear to be saying, Calvin provides no effective limitation on a ruler's aspirations: All the particular ruler need do is clothe those aspirations in Christian language. The foundation of viability for this criticism is real and easy to see in the subsequent history of Calvinist political movements. Yet this criticism, as perhaps do the later Calvinist movements, fails to take Calvin's position on the practical implications of God's judgment fully into account.

Church and Civil Order: Boundaries and Obligations A more comprehensive elucidation of Calvin's position would emphasize, or at least consider more fully, the following propositions. First, as noted already, Calvin understands that God's judgment is rendered, and visible, both within time and beyond time. Through his providence, God can and does withdraw his authority from particular regimes. Second, then, God has in fact designated a specific and limited role for human governments. As a result, and third, the duties of particular magistrates are quite plain. Fourth, the church, in the face of a modest but bibli-

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cally explicit role for civil authority, will always maintain a distinct and separate source of spiritual authority. And last, the church must, and will, ever exert the embodiment of prophetic voice. To begin, Hancock's criticism that human power exercised "in God's name" is effectively unlimited for Calvin ignores the primary foundation for Calvin's thinking. Calvin begins with the premise that God's revelation in Scripture is real and true. And the vision of God one gets from Scripture is one of both power and presence, of both dominion and discernment, of both love and loyalty. Calvin does not assume a God who is either undiscriminating, uncaring, or unconnected to human experience. On the contrary, he assumes a God who seeks the good of human company and will go to whatever lengths are necessary to experience it. At the same time, he assumes a human being who inevitably senses his place in God's world, and a human believer joined fast to God's mercy and love. At base, then, the assertion that power exercised in God's name by judicially handicapped human beings is unlimited and therefore dangerous and destructive betrays, first, an unstated preconception that human beings are capable of acting independent of God's will and desire and, second, an assumption that the way human beings exercise power is of little concern to the Lord of the universe. There exists a twist of irony in Hancock's criticism, then. The same human beings who are incapable of exercising independent judgment over their world are capable of exercising independent power over that world.27 Hancock's criticism thus works, first, to "restrain," as it were, God's sphere of action and correspondingly to enlarge the human sphere. Second, and consequently, it works against the manifestations of God's loving faithfulness. To say that for Calvin power is, practically speaking, unlimited is to say that Calvin envisions both emancipated human beings and an indifferent, or at best incompetent, God. It is true that the hidden mysteries of God's judgment, combined with the often ungodly assertions of power experienced by human beings, would appear, from the human perspective, to indicate the potential emancipation of power holders from all restraint. And Calvin's apparent arid unquestioning deferral to God's mysterious judgment does appear to consecrate all exertions of power (or at least those done in God's name), erecting in this way a new version of the Thrasymachian notion that might means right. However, to criticize Calvin for diluting human capacity for rational judgment in the face of "sheer consciousness of power" is in large measure to deny both the connectedness of human beings to God and the trustworthiness of the providential God who exercises his power over humankind. Although Hancock is right in suggesting that Calvin does not give human beings much credit in their capacity for judgment, he fails to see that the reason Calvin insists on shortchanging human beings is to ensure that he does not shortchange God. If God is who he says he is, then believers ought to be able to trust him with their larger destinies. What matters most is not so much who is using power how, for what ends, and against whom but, rather, the fact that a loving God has in his mysterious judgment "ordained" this power, and thus that the believer now has the responsibility to try to envision how the experience of this power might draw him closer to God. The question becomes not so much whether the particular use of power is justifiable from the human perspective but whether

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it opens a door to fuller communion with God: Not "Is this use of power right?" but "What does God seek to reveal in this use of power?" In a revealing final chapter, "Providence," in Calvin's 1552 tract Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, Calvin explicitly opposes the medieval nominalist position that God is manifest simply as "absolute power." He does understand God's will to be "the chief and principal cause of all things," as we have already noted, but he does not understand that will to be either arbitrary or tyrannical. On the contrary, "to make God beyond law is to rob him of the greatest part of his glory." As its author, God's will is certainly above his own decreed law. Yet in his love and his justice he restrains himself from whimsical exercises of that will. Says Calvin, "[I]t is easier to dissever the light of the sun from its heat, or for that matter its heat from its fire, than to separate God's power from his righteousness." God is indeed the "judge of the world," but Christians understand "his power... to be tempered with righteousness and equity" (X.ia-13 [17779])-28 Thus, when Hancock suggests that Calvin provides for human beings no ultimate "ends" in the face of which they might, in their own ingenuity, evaluate human action, other than God's largely mysterious will, he is indeed correct. Yet when he asserts that the lack of humanly discernible ends implies the lack of any significant ends beyond power, he misses Calvin's emphasis altogether. For Calvin is not declaring that human action is injudicable but only that it is so from the pitted and pock-marked perspective of human reason. Calvin is not implying that human beings have no evaluative tools but only that the adequacy and gauge of such tools, and the scope and range of possible evaluative exercises, depend entirely on the free grace of God's pinpoint providence. Hence, discussion of the ends of power can and should go only so far, unless, that is, one wishes presumptuously to question God's love. Moreover, though, God does provide both necessary evaluative insight and the strength and courage to proclaim such insight in the face of human power holders. God does use human beings to express his judgment on particular human—that is, political—actions. Calvin insists that believers do have in Scripture some clear indications of God's specifically designated, and indeed limited, role for human governments. Government's role, Calvinist revolutionary movements notwithstanding, is less to radically reorient than to point subjects toward orderly peaceableness. "So long as we live among men," civil government's "appointed end" is not only "to cherish and protect the outward worship of God, [and] to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church" but also, and as important, "to adjust our life to the society of men, to form our social behavior to civil righteousness, to reconcile us with one another, and to promote general peace and tranquility." Civil government is thus one of those helps God provides while "we go as pilgrims upon the earth" ultimately "aspir[ing] to the true fatherland," and we ought never "stupidly [to] imagine [any] perfection [as can] never be found in a community of men" (4.20.2, 1487). Hence, we ought never to assume that civil government can remake the world but only that it might "provide that a public manifestation of religion may exist among Christians, and that humanity be maintained among men" (4.20.3, i 4 88). 2t >

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To the extent that government should try to remake human beings, spiritually or any other way, it is, as we have already seen, doomed to fail. God's creation order will not be mocked, asserts Calvin. Although he did not (and could not have done so) experience first hand anything like the totalitarian experimentation of the twentieth century, Calvin would surely show no surprise that the pretensions of totalitarian rule became, in a steady stream, perverse, feckless, counterproductive, laughable, and hollow, before they died what one might call a predestined death.30 Aiming at modest and biblically sound goals, governments serve God's purposes well. The primary "end," says Calvin, "for which judges bear the sword is to restrain the wicked, and thus to prevent violence from prevailing among men" (Comm. Ps. 82:3-4 [3:332]). Even pointing to these apparently modest goals does not convince critics such as Hancock and Hopfl of the ultimate accountability of Calvin's scheme to some transcendent good, though. For by "denying] any knowable spiritual purpose to human action," Calvin unleashes "the apparent anarchic potential of this doctrine," whereupon he "must rigorously distinguish between two kingdoms" and ultimately must conclude, according to Hancock, that "the natural end of politics" is "not the perfection of the human soul but simply the maintenance of peace" (Foundations, 43, 31). In Hancock's mind, then, Calvin unknowingly and unwittingly anticipates Hobbes as much as he follows Thrasymachus (Foundations, 32). Like Hobbes, Calvin "rigorously distinguishes between the secular and the spiritual in order to join them fast together" (Foundations, 25). Although Calvin's "argument from political necessity" appears to depart from Hobbes by displaying its roots "in Calvin's concern for true piety," that is, "the upholding of God's order in the realm of civil government," in fact it does not. For the civil government was an "effective agency of Calvinist sanctification precisely because [it] did not aim at human virtue or perfection" (Foundations, 6o).31 If government itself served no important spiritual function, it simply redounded to the position of a kind of secular aid to the church. Hancock understands that Calvin was not arguing for a medieval unam sanctam.32 Indeed, Calvin understood God's order in the realm of civil government to be threatened "both by those who esteem political authority too little, because they do not recognize its divine foundation, and by those who claim too much for political authority—because they, too, fail to recognize that it depends on God" (Foundations, 26). Nonetheless, Hancock argues that the only primary determinant of proper government which Calvin has left, after virtue and popular choice,33 is raw power. Government which by its power protects the church and keeps the peace is proper and good. This is because, according to Hancock, the only way Calvin sees human beings recognizing God's will is through sheer consciousness of his power. Hence, Calvin becomes Hobbesian to the extent that civil power is the effective equivalent of physical peace.

What Is Good Government? In fact, however, Calvin does have in mind some clear, scripturally based criteria for good government, criteria which concern more than simply keeping order and

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protecting the institutional church. As a result they serve, I shall argue, as a clear check on human action, and as a clear indicator of God's justice and his judgment. Although these criteria may not satisfy Hancock, they indicate that Calvin sufficiently acknowledged both a larger purpose to civil government and a more comprehensive picture of human character. Procedurally, for example, good government is government that acknowledges those with the "calling" to administer. It does not assume, as Hobbes does, that just anyone can govern. Rather, says Calvin, "ruling" is properly thought of as "among God's gifts," distributed to human beings "according to the diversity of grace," and for "the upbuilding [aedificatio] of the church." By his words through the Apostle Paul in Romans 13, and by his actions in support of just rulers such as Moses, Joshua, David, and Josiah, God speaks clearly that "civil authority is a calling, [and so] not only holy and lawful before God, but also the most sacred and by far the most honorable of all callings in the whole of mortal life" (4.20.4, 1489-90). Moreover, the signs of such a calling will be manifest to anyone inspired to see them. For those "who know that they have been ordained ministers of divine justice," qualities such as "zeal for uprightness [studium integritatis], for prudence, gentleness [mansnetudinis], self-control [continentiae], and for innocence [innocentiae]" should be readily apparent. Indeed, "if they remember that they are vicars of God [Dei vicarios]," then they will be especially diligent "to represent in themselves .. . some image of divine providence, protection [custodiae], goodness, benevolence, and justice" (4.20.6, 1491 ).34 Beyond the particular expectations of rulers, Calvin's vision of good government does in fact assume some built-in, institutional and intragovernmental checks on the exercise of power. When he refers (as I noted in chapter i, in this volume) to the impropriety of "private" resistance to tyrants, he speaks with some admiration about the possibility of popular magistrates (populares magistratus), constitutionally embodied and divinely appointed "protectors" of the subjects under government (4.20.31, 1519). In effect, whereas Calvin does indeed understand God to speak through his use of political power, as Hancock asserts, he also, contra Hobbes, appreciates human determination to usurp God's authority, even under the mantle of that authority. Because of human sin, he says, in referring to governmental forms, it is "safer and more bearable for a number to exercise government." This is so because such number will be able to "help one another, teach and admonish one another," and even, if necessary, "restrain" one another. (4.20.8, 1493-94). Interestingly, perhaps the best indication of Calvin's sense of the need for institutional restraints on power arises in his discussion of church polity. Here, Calvin says plainly, not only should "this spiritual power be completely separated from the right of the sword" but also, and as important, the church should be administered "not by the decision of one man but by a lawful assembly (4.11.5, 1217).35 Finally, good government is modest in its appearance and operation. In any number of places, as already noted, Calvin castigates kings for their "pomp." For him, moderation (moderatio) is a vital concept and a living reality. Acknowledging, in a letter to the Duke of Longueville, that one ought not to be "so austere as to

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condemn the fetes of princes," he nevertheless exhorts the young seigneur to recall the extent to which the "pomp, vanities, and excesses" of the "ordinary train of the court" can so easily lead one "astray," ultimately to a "gulf of ruin and disorder" (Letter DXXXVII [7:45]). Moderation, then, for Calvin implies both disciplined frugality and orderly restraint. Even those with whom Calvin shares political goals he condemns, on occasion, for their "inconsiderate zeal" (Letter DCXIX of 24 December 1561 [7:251]), their "impetuosity," and their "pretensions" to the property of vanquished church of Rome buildings (Letter DCXXX of 13 May 1562 [7: 272]).36 Interestingly, therefore, as Hopfl rightly notes, "moderatio is a term Calvin not infrequently employed to mean government, its connotations [being] those of containment and regulation rather than direction" (i59). 37 The procedural criteria of gifted and responsive rulers, of institutional checks, of modest appearance, and of disciplined restraint may not alone be determinative to refute Hancock. For example, the recognition of gifted and responsive rulers requires an insight most people will clearly lack. Moreover, such insight grows primarily out of what from another human being's perspective would no doubt seem largely subjective, that is, both the ruler's and the subject's own personal sense of "call." Lesser magistrates or other institutional checks may not solve the problem either, for, as Hopfl (213) has put it, how does one choose between conflicting magistrates or other authorities? Finally, modest appearance can disguise remarkably perverse ambitions, as we have seen dramatically illustrated in the twentieth century,' 8 Calvin's substantive criteria thus loom large. Do they indeed offer genuine curbs on human ambition? Calvin certainly thought so. We might begin by probing a bit more deeply Calvin's stated purposes of protecting the church and keeping the peace. In fact, Calvin has rather specific and substantive criteria in mind for what each of these goals would entail. And true to form, Calvin finds these criteria grounded preeminently in sacred Scripture. For instance, what does it mean to protect the church? If the primary marks of the true church are the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments (4.1.10, 1024), and if preaching the gospel means the public proclamation of the key elements of God's Word (such as "God is one; Christ is God and the Son of God; our salvation rests in God's mercy; and the like" [4.1.12, 1026]), and if administration of the sacraments means the public performance of the biblically mandated ceremonies that signify God's forgiving and redeeming grace (namely baptism and the Lord's supper [4.14.22, 1298]), then not just any institution giving itself the name "church" can claim government "protection."39 Moreover, if keeping the peace means more than just ensuring lack of overt conflict, and includes thereby minimal "protection, . . . benevolence, and justice," then not just any terrorist regime can claim divine legitimacy (4.20.6, I49i). 40 Most important, Calvin determines to follow Scripture in emphasizing the duty of both church and civil polity (both as preaching the Gospel and protecting the preaching of the Gospel) to direct their attention to the disenfranchised and dispossessed. As Calvin puts the matter directly in his commentary on Jeremiah 7:5-7 (1:367), whenever God speaks of a "right government," he "mentions strangers and orphans and widows." This is so because when "others obtain their right, it is

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no matter of wonder, since they have advocates to defend their cause, and they have also the aid of friends." However, "strangers and orphans and widows. . . [are] almost destitute of protection." Such people are "subject to many wrongs, as though they were exposed as prey." A government that recognizes its responsibility to reflect and channel God's paternal care (4.20.6, 1491) to all under its charge will thus take especial pains to enfold and protect those most vulnerable to exploitation. Imaging God means imaging God's communal construction work in the world; it means joining in the work of "edification" (4.20.4, ^Sg).41 As a result, Calvin says in another place, although "rulers are bound to observe justice toward all men without distinction," they hold a divine appointment "to be the defenders of the miserable and oppressed." And this is so not only because "such persons stand in need of the assistance of others" but, even more important, because "they can only obtain this [assistance] where rulers are free from avarice, ambition, and other vices" (Comm. Ps. 82:3-4 fo'SS1—21)- Whereas the pious official feels intimately the tug of God-given and public responsibilities, the impious official thinks only of sating his own perverse hungers. Indeed, says Calvin in a letter to the King of Navarre, "[I]n proportion to the difficulty of the office which kings and princes have to discharge, so much greater need have they of being put in mind of their duty." As a result, the primary roots of good government lie in the public official's sense of connectedness to God's will through his word in Scripture. The greater the public responsibility, Calvin recounts in the same letter to Navarre, the "more diligent heed" the office holder must give "to study how to profit by God's law" (Letter CCCCLXXXIV [6:385]).42 But the tangible evidence of good government lies in the outward and public care for those most in need of attention. It is because of this connectedness to God's will, Calvin says, that "although the divine glory shines forth in every part of the world," yet when "lawful government flourishes among men, it is reflected therefrom with pre-eminent lustre" (Comm. Ps. 82:1 [3:33o]).43 Yet describing such substantive criteria raises another potential criticism of Calvin's position. Hopfl and Bouwsma, among others, have noted potential problems precisely with Calvin's apparent determination to mark off the duties and to limit the role of secular government. As Bouwsma puts it, "The assignment of major spiritual duties to political rulers was. . . built into Calvin's very mode of thought, and he could describe those duties in such sweeping terms that the distinction between political and spiritual responsibility was all but obliterated" (212). And according to Hopfl, Calvin's "view was that the business of magistrates is to enforce virtue" (iSg). 44 Hence, "[c]hurch and polity ultimately have the same goal but concerning different aspects of human experience" (193). For example, Calvin did not "dissociate sin and crime in his later years any more than he had done in the De dementia Commentary." Rather, "[h]e persistently supposed that sound polity and godliness pointed to the same policies" (iSg). 45 As Graham (Constructive, 48) notes, in describing the Bolsec episode, "Calvin wanted both church freedom from the state and state support of the church. It's no wonder that he encountered some difficulty eating his cake and having it, too." On these grounds, any number of critics of Calvin's political ideas point to his involvement in the banishing of Jerome Bolsec and the execution of Michael Servetus.

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As to Servetus, Calvin expressed his regret along with the inevitability of the action in his brief autobiographical statement contained within the Dedicatory Letter of his commentary on the Psalms. Regarding attacks on the church "from within," he writes, matters "had come to such a state" that no end could be put to the "machinations" of the attackers other than by "cutting them off in an ignominious death." Such a "spectacle," he recounts, was both "painful and pitiable to me." Yet had the attackers "not been altogether incorrigible," Calvin would clearly have preferred "that they might live in prosperity, and continue safe and untouched" (Comm. Ps. [Pref., xliv-xlv]).46 The point is significant, however—and it is one already conceded in chapter 3 in this volume: For Calvin, civil government does indeed have "spiritual" responsibilities. Indeed, why would it not? In the same way a father oversees both the physical, emotional, and spiritual development of his children, a civil government inevitably oversees the multidimensional growth, or else deterioration, of its subjects. From our point of view as twentieth-century liberal democrats, such necessarily indirect responsibility for spiritual nurturance on the part of civil government conjures up images of terrorist totalitarian regimes. But for Calvin human beings were neither the largely self-directed and self-sufficient individuals of modern liberalism, on the one hand, nor the empty-headed and manipulable herds assumed by modern secular ideology, on the other.47 Bearing out this more balanced view of humankind are some of the historical practices of the Genevan church during Calvin's time. As Monter put it, the Geneva of Calvin's time was "governed by God through a balance of spiritual and secular powers" (144). Perhaps the best example of this balance was the Genevan "Consistory," a body of church elders, chosen from among secular officials, but charged, in conjunction with the company of pastors, with important spiritual duties. The job of the elders was to "keep watch over every man's life," and "to admonish amiably those whom they see leading a disorderly life." It was not to punish, only to admonish. According to Monter, "Calvin himself saw this body as essentially remedial rather than oppressive, as one phase [one 'help' perhaps?] in the care of souls" (136-37). Reinforcing this conclusion, Kingdon ("Consistory," 32-33) recently presented a number of specific accounts from the Consistory records of Calvin's involvement with both "remonstrances" and "ceremonies of reconciliation." What such accounts reveal about Calvin, Kingdon says, is "a pastor continually concerned with bringing people back into good relationships both with their own relatives and neighbors and with the wider Christian community."48 In the Consistory, in other words, one can see government taking on "spiritual" responsibilities without its metamorphosing into a "church." Its cases, as Kingdon, Valeri, and others have recounted them, have primarily to do with items of significant public concern.49 By the same token, "[t]he Consistory was closer to an obligatory counseling service than to a court." Its "power to admonish and reconcile was the only power that everyone from the beginning agreed the Consistory possessed" (Kingdon, "Consistory," 23). It rulings brought forth neither fines nor jail terms (Valeri, 126; Kingdon, "Consistory," 23). In this institution one sees the church seeking the aid and comfort of temporal government but without at-

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tempting itself to exercise coercive power and without giving up its own respon' sibility to exercise spiritual authority. On the latter count, for example, Calvin worked indefatigably to wrest from the civil government per se the power of ex' communication, accomplishing for the Consistory in 1555 what none of the other major reformers had been able to do (Monter, 138-39). As a result, David Little properly points out that although "Calvinism unques' tionably inspired an impulse toward uniformity and established religion, it simul' taneously inspired a countervailing impulse toward dissociating the spiritual from the temporal kingdoms and immunizing the one from the other" (Little, "Re' formed Faith," 10-11). Indeed, with Calvin, according to William Thompson, "[u]nder God, no single group can claim final political authority." In his own day, "influence and authority [were] divided among Calvin, the ministers, the elders, the Church members, and the Councils, with the place of the ordinary individual especially to be recognized." In an interesting way, then, "Calvin's radical religious monism has led to a political pluralism" (Abstract, i).50 In recognizing the obverse of freedom for active service, then, we can discern that to be truly free, all those who profess to act in the realm of politics (including, of course, all those holding public office) must do so not out of emancipated zeal but only out of sacred duty. Action, for Calvin, presupposes obligation, obedience, moderation, and susceptibility to divine judgment. No particular action is irrelevant to God's purposes, and every action is justiciable in his eyes. Clearly, then, the primary role of governments and the primary duties of governors revolve around their faithfulness to God as the source of their authority. Rightful civil government, says Calvin, again, "provides that a public manifestation of religion may exist among Christians, and that humanity be maintained among men" (4.20.3, 1488). Indeed, "no government can be happily established unless piety is the first concern." Moreover, "those laws are preposterous which neglect God's right and provide only for men" (4.20.9, I495).51 The particular duties of public officials are thus quite clear. "As all men origi' nally stand upon a level as to condition, the higher persons have risen, and the nearer they have been brought to God, the more sacredly are they bound to proclaim his goodness." As kings and princes are almost inevitably "blinded by the dazzling influence of their station," and thus "think the world was made for them," God "particularly calls them to [their] duty." Tempted "to despise God in the pride of their hearts," they find themselves confronted by a God who, through the Psalmist, "reproves their ingratitude [by] withholding their tribute of praise" so they can begin to fathom that "they are under greater obligations than others" (Comm. Ps. 148:11-13 [5:308]). Indeed, even though rulers "may not be solicited for succour," nonetheless, they are "accounted guilty before God of negligence, if they do not, of their own accord, succour those who stand in need of their interference." It is quite plain, says Calvin, why "the cause of the poor and needy is [by the Psalmist] chiefly commended to rulers." In the same way that the poor and dispossessed "are exposed an easy prey to the cruelty and wrongs of the rich," and thus have need of governmental protection, "the sick have [need] of the aid of the physician." And if

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the test of a good physician is his treatment of the sick, one can hardly call good a government that does not go out of its way to assist and comfort the needy, in prompt and persistent response to God's call. When God's truth is "deeply fixed in the minds of kings and other judges," when they understand clearly that "they are appointed to be the guardians of the poor" and are bound both to acknowledge their own station and to "resist the wrongs" done to the poor, only then can we speak of good government (Comm. Ps. 82:3-4 [3:332]). Calvin notes in his sermons on 2 Samuel that there are three ingredients of genuine kingship: The king is freely chosen by God; he exercises his office as shepherd of his people; and, finally, he exercises as well the office of prophet. He speaks and acts out God's truth in prominence and determination (cited by Willis-Watkins, 121-22)."

The Perils of Action Given overwhelming human duty and God's omniscient and ubiquitous judgment, some hazards to human action do exist. Christian freedom implies clear limitations and responsibilities. Although, "it is sometimes important for our freedom to be declared before men," all believers "must with the greatest caution hold to this limitation" that in exertion of their freedom, they do not "abandon the cause of the weak" (3.19.10, 842). Generally, then, believers must neither ignore nor "give offense" to weak brethren (3.19.10-11, 842—43).53 In the final analysis, freedom consists of more than mere external actions, Calvin declares; it arises out of rightly ordered internal motivations. Hence one must not simply perform (defungor)the duties of love, one must fulfill them (nullum praetermittere). "Of Christians something even more is required than to show a cheerful countenance and to render their duties pleasing with friendly words." They "must put themselves in the place of him whom they see in need of their assistance, and pity his ill fortune as if they themselves experienced and bore it, so that they may be impelled by a feeling of mercy and humaneness to go to his aid just as to their own" (3.7.7, 697).54 As we have seen, then, Christian freedom exists for "the edification of our neighbor" (3.19.12, 845). Commenting on Isaiah 1:16 (1:63), Calvin notes that "nothing can please God, unless it proceed from a pure conscience; for God does not, like men, judge of our works according to their outward appearance." Indeed, "it frequently happens that some particular action, though performed by a very wicked man, obtains applause among men; but in the sight of God, who beholds the heart, a depraved conscience pollutes every virtue." Christian freedom thus leaves believers not only free of anxiety but also full of awareness of their dependence on Christ and the Holy Spirit to accomplish anything constructive in the world. As Calvin puts it, in his exegesis of John 15:5 in the Institutes, Christ "does not say [merely] that we are too weak to be sufficient unto ourselves, but in reducing us to nothing he excludes all estimation of even the slightest little ability." Christians "bear fruit" because they are "grafted in Christ"; otherwise they are "dry and worthless wood" (2.3.9, 302)." Recognition of their "puny capacities" (facultatulae) (3.6.5, 689) ought to keep believers both humble and attached to Christ.

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Hazards to action thus concern the everpresent pitfalls of limited vision, fleshly lust, and imperfect faith. Human beings must contend with the mystery of God's providence. They must also contend with the "strong tendency to fleshly lusts which naturally rage within us" (Comm. Ps. 106:14 [4:218]). The maxim, "that no man is free from sin," is, says Calvin, "received among all men without dispute, and yet the majority shut their eyes to their own faults, and settle securely in hiding-places to which, in their ignorance, they have betaken themselves, if they are not forcibly roused out of them" (Comm. Ps. 130:4 [5:130]). As to imperfect faith, all believers understand "that faith ought to be certain and assured." Yet whereas, as we have seen above, the core of faith composes a firm foundation, nevertheless "we cannot imagine any certainty that is not tinged with doubt, or any assurance that is not assailed by some anxiety." To say that "believers are in perpetual conflict with their own unbelief" might be stretching the point too far, for Calvin, yet "far ... are we from putting their consciences in any peaceful repose."56 To deny that believers ever "fall away . .. from the certain assurance [of] God's mercy" is by no means to assert that the journey of faith is without obstacle, frustration, or holy hesitation before God's omnipotent judgment (3.2.17, 562-63). The fact of human limitation in the face of God's omniscience, then, counsels humility, patience, and cautious prudence in political action. From Isaiah, for example, believers learn that "God will be a shepherd to none but those who, in modesty and gentleness, shall imitate the sheep and the lambs." If believers "wish to be gathered into the fold of which God promises that he will be the guardian," then "we m u s t . . . lay aside our fierceness, and permit ourselves to be tamed" (Comm. Is. 40:11 [3:216]). Likewise, "We must not become agitated, or throw ourselves forward rashly, but 'wait' patiently" (Comm. Is. 40:31 [3:239]). Summing up, Calvin finds that the psalmist in Psalm 127 "intends to repulse the foolish self-confidence of men who, ignoring God and relying only on their own wisdom or strength, dare to start anything that comes to their heads." In his judgment, God "sweeps away everything which [human beings] rashly claim for their own and calls them to humility and prayer" (Comm. Ps. 127:1-2 [from Haroutunian, 34o])-57 Calvin himself was apparently quite hesitant to hold public office, though not of course to enter the public arena. As Kingdon and others have pointed out, during his tenure as pastor in Geneva Calvin held no political office, and thus technically had no political power. He rather conspicuously did not seek the power of public office (Kingdon, "Reformation a Revolution?," 215). Instead, from his position as a spiritual leader, Calvin sought to speak a prophetic voice to those doing the indispensable work of politics. In Monter's words, Calvin saw the church's role as "supplying certain moral checks and balances to the civil government," thereby "tempering the harsh necessities of secular rule with the persuasions of conscience" (i44).58 He respected the work of politics and recognized God's hand in it, but Calvin determined to keep church and civil government institutionally separate. He understood that the church must be a strong and prophetic voice in the world but that it must exercise its spiritual authority in contradistinction to civil government.

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"While it is true that all men were created to praise God, there are reasons why the church is specially said to have been formed for that end" (Comm. Ps. 95:7 [4:35]). As John Tonkin puts it, "While all creation is under God's providential rule, it is the church which is his real dwelling place" (150). Hence, not only are the two jurisdictions of church and civil order dramatically distinct, they "have a completely different nature" (4.20.1, 1486). Ultimately, the salvation in Christ promised believers "belongs to the Kingdom of Christ," not to "some earthly kingdom" (Comm. Jer, 33:16 [4:254]). The church "does not have the right of the sword to punish or compel." For the church, "it is not a question of punishing the sinner against his will, but of the sinner professing his repentance in a voluntary chastisement" (4.11.3, 1215).59 Moreover, as members of Christ's body, believers remember the ultimate "vanity of this life" and so do not get too attached to worldly change and worldly institutions (3.9.1-6, 712-19). Even King David, Calvin points out, "knew his own kingdom to be merely a shadow" of Christ's kingdom (Comm. Ps. 2:1-3 f i ' i i ] ) ' Perhaps Rouald Wallace sums the point up best: "[Calvin's] program could be described as one of social sanctification rather than social reconstruction. A transformation first had to be brought about in the personal lives of Geneva's citizens" (31). In the final analysis, then, not only does Christian conscience liberate the believing community for societal change, it cautions them to beware both the presumption to power and the fatuous infatuation with worldly institutions and political change. Christian conscience, that is, operates also as a goad to prophesy. As institutional holder of the Christian conscience, the visible church thereby has special responsibility to "speak truth to power" and not to allow itself to become instead comfortably ensconced in the midst of such worldly power. Calvin's commentaries on the Psalms are loaded with the language of such prophetic witness. The need for prophetic voices to "stir up" Christian believers to right relationship with their Lord (Comm. Ps. 102:1 [4:97]) Calvin asserts in any number of places.60 Through the prophets, God provides necessary and "continual incitement [to] our slothfulness," for believers have "abundant experience of our own torpor" (Comm. Ps. 103:1 [4:125]). When Calvin uses the terms "slothfulness" (inertia or pigrities) and "torpor" (torpor), and the language of "stirring up" (exagitare) and "shaking out" (excutere), he is obviously not thinking merely of physical movement. One could be busily engaged in political action and still be slothfully complacent about giving God his due. The prophetic witness intends to stir up believers to gratitude and to recognition "of the duty incumbent upon him" to give God alone pride of place (Comm. Ps. 103:1 [4:125]). Believers are "in need of incitements . . . to the duty of prayer." It is not the body as much as the "heart" which "often flags or performs its duty in a slow and sluggish manner" (Comm. Ps. 102:1 [4:97]). The church needs both to admonish those "inflated with pride" and to "lift up our eyes to heaven" and to "call upon [God]" (Comm. Ps. 82:8 [3: 336]).61 As Calvin expresses the matter in two of his letters, here to the King and Queen of Navarre, the church must be both God's "attorney," thereby "maintaining his rights" (UCXIX [7:249]), and God's "watch dog," one who "barks and stands at bay if he sees anyone assault his master" (CXXX [4:455-56]).62

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Summary Although believers find themselves free in Christ for social action and worldly service, the accent falls on "service" more than "action." Modern activism denies its Calvinist roots when it forgets this accent. Hancock comes close to this accent when he says, "Calvin's teaching is not hostile, in the last analysis, to human action, but it is hostile to human choice—for human choice implies human authority" (Foundations, 81). However, in the end he misses Calvin's larger point. For Calvin's concern is not whether human beings "choose" but, rather, whether they acknowledge God in the midst of their "choices." Accountability to God's sovereign yet gracious will knits together both freedom as vision and freedom as action. Thus any significant distancing from his will exposes freedom's barrenness. Authentic freedom resides, of course, in the light of God's omniscient eye. But it resides as well within the bounds of his sovereign authority, and in recognition of the warmth of his loving embrace. For Calvin, in sum, the second part of freedom arises not only through conscience as goad to social action but also through conscience as God's prophetic voice in the face of social action. In the realm of politics, the spiritual leaders of the church ought to speak this voice. As a final check on human action, the church has spiritual power and jurisdiction separate and distinct from the civil authorities: It "requires no physical force but is content with the power of God" (4.11.5, 1217). By keeping its distance from political power, the church thereby exercises its prophetic voice even more effectively. Though free in Christ to act, even to reform, believers simultaneously find themselves subject to God's judgment of their actions. Freedom for active service means primarily servitude to God's free acts of grace.

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Part III

Cultural Dissociation and the Tutelage of History Dear Farel, how I wish that all men would accustom themselves to bear their cross, and at the same time surmount all stumbling blocks! Letter CCCXLIX to Farel, 25 May 1554

reedom also has an historical dimension, and Calvin's description of freedom's third Fpart points naturally to it. In describing this third part, Calvin points to the "indifference" believers accord certain historical and cultural idiosyncrasies. To avoid the stranglehold of cultural superstitions, Calvin says, the believer declares indifferent the outward things God gives him independent of his faith, justification, and sanctification. Indeed, if the believer's sure faith suffices for his eternal destiny, what ultimate significance could there be to such things as the restricted eating of meat, the "use of holidays and of vestments," the use of linen, and the consumption of plain food and "flat wine" (3.19.7, 83839)? Calvin thus emancipates Christian conscience from both particular cultures and particular traditions. In a European society bound in both its ecclesiastical and its secular aspects by tradition and cultural authority, Calvin's third part of Christian freedom constituted perhaps his most "revolutionary" teaching. Beginning with his "Prefatory Address" to Francis I, virtually unchanged through every edition of the Institutes from 1536 to 1560, Calvin exhorts precedence of God's truth over "custom" (consuetude). God's eternal truth "must alone be listened to and observed," for it marks the one truth that alone "cannot be dictated to by length of time, by long-standing custom, or by conspiracy of men [coniuratione]" (Pref. 5, 23).' In the face of God's eternal truth, historical events, cultural artifacts and other timebound things diminish in significance. Hence, only the triumph of God's purposes beyond history really matters. Christian freedom prepares the way for the advance of these purposes by dissociating Christian believers from the purely cultural and time-bound context in which they live, their liberation being both from custom and cultural tradition and for the advancement of God's purposes. In explicating freedom's third part, then, we must dig under the edifice of "liberation" and uncover the foundation of Calvin's doctrine of God's providence, of God "seeing" ahead in loving faithfulness. For it is because of God's plan for his creation, for its full

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restoration and redemption through Christ, that human institutions and customs, present only within time, must pale in significance. Because God is the author (i.e., creator) of both space and time, his continuing care and plan for his creation, as explicitly revealed in Scripture, must overwhelm and displace any humanly devised historical constructs. His plan supersedes human superficiality. In chapter 5 I begin this exploration of Calvin's doctrine of providence. The mindfulness of God manifests itself in his all-encompassing care. It flows logically, for Calvin, from God's role as Creator of all that is and is clearly established in Scripture. The fact of God's providence means that God continually cares for all he has made. What happens in the world is neither a function of chance nor merely the result of some independent process of nature. In describing God's providence in this way, however, Calvin is neither denying the fact of human agency in events nor attributing to God the existence of evil. He merely intends, as we shall see, to give God full credit for being the God of all that is, was, and will be. More to the point for our purposes here, though, is Calvin's determination to see God's providential judgment in historical events and in political ordering. The implications of such divine design should be apparent: History is a process of growth, change, and, ultimately, culmination in the full restoration of God's created order. History is thus the story of the progress of God's kingdom, and Christian believers are integral instruments in the unfolding of that story. The church acts as an agent of historical renewal, a force for progressive change, and it ought to jettison those temporal artifacts that restrict its flowering into God's special instrument. Christian freedom's third part thus has clear revolutionary implications. If existing social order is ultimately temporary and superficial, then its destruction and reconstruction might very well be called for, especially if in some important way this order perverts and subverts the coming Kingdom of God. Calvin is quite aware of the dangers of triumphalism. He understands that the story of salvation in history unfolds through trials and persecutions as well as triumphs. Nevertheless, the progress of God's blossoming kingdom is uninterruptable and the knowledge of its progress fills Christian believers with historical hope. Such progress is indeed quite visible, says Calvin, in the processes of the personal sanctification of believers and Christ's progressive work in the world. Holding only to this progressive dimension to providence (and to freedom's third part), the stark portraits drawn by scholars such as Michael Walzer and Eric Voegelin—portraits of the Calvinist as frenzied ideologue—appear almost reasonable. Yet Calvin works hard to dissuade his future interpreters from such simplification of God's historical work. For there is another, countervailing tendency both to Christian freedom's third part and to Calvin's doctrine of providence. If believers are liberated from "outward things," they are, for that reason, instructed not to put any more emphasis on the avoidance of such things as on their attachment. If such things are truly indifferent the believer can take them or leave them alone. Christian freedom is thus primarily a "spiritual" matter (3.19.9, 840), such that one ought not to assert such freedom if it "offends weak brothers" (3.19.10, 842). Christian freedom binds one even tighter to cultural context, partly by desacralizing such context. More to the point, Calvin's doctrine of providence also has another side, one that logically reinforces the obverse of Christian freedom's third part. After all, if God is truly directing history, then not only will his purposes triumph, with believers performing as his

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instruments, but historical events will reveal God's direction. The historical past will thus function as the present's prologue. Particular historical circumstances may exist in order to teach believers some particular aspect of God's judgment, God's mercy, or God's plan. If God is active in history, then he is active not merely as engineer driving the train of events but also as architect designing passenger cars and laborer laying the tracks. Indeed, as Calvin argues, the doctrine of providence yields primarily the fact that the historical situation in which believers find themselves exists because God has, in some sense, manufactured it in all its intricacy, and because he has desired, in the mystery of his grace, to confront them with it. Hence, each particular set of historical circumstances—that is, the cultural matrix of institutions—needs to be seen as a significant part of God's-plan for salvation and the believer's reponse to such constraints, one of patience, forbearance, and eagerness to learn the lesson that God's direction of historical events is teaching. There is thus stored up within Calvin's doctrine of God's providence a respect for established order and a strongly conservative bent. In chapter 6, I lay out this alternate dimension of God's providence by examining, first, what Calvin asserts is its mysterious, "secret," "hidden" nature. Calvin argues explicitly that believers must acknowledge and humbly attend to the more puzzling aspects of God's transhistorical care. They must ask how present historical circumstances might serve God's purposes. Because they do not have God's perspective on temporal things, because they are both finite in vision and self-blinded by sin, they must acknowledge both the possibility that God intentionally hides himself for their good and the possibility that what afflictions they experience may be his mechanisms for their spiritual growth and should perhaps be quietly accepted as such. According to God's self-revelation in Scripture, after all, his secrecy implies only his ultimate care and concern. Do not the mysteries of his providence inspire the existential wonder Christians experience in historical time? Indeed, how could believers fully appreciate the depth, breadth, and height of God's grace in their own lives if they were privy to all the details of his choice making? Seen from this angle, providence begins to reveal the grace of custom and tradition. Are not social and political institutions signs of God's remembrance of and care for his human creatures? Indeed, is not political order itself such a gift? Bouwsma goes too far in his portrait of the almost schizophrenic Calvin—one "personality" of whom "fears" change; yet there is in Calvin's teaching a stern warning that believers not casually assume that their present circumstances are offensive to God. Their call is as much to seek God's will in their present surroundings as to follow his call to renew and restore those surroundings. God seeks their attentiveness, their patience, and their perseverance as much as he seeks their hope, their zeal for progressive change.

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5 PROGRESS AND R E V O L U T I O N

Freedom as Detachment from "Outward Things" he beginning of believers' dissociation from their cultural context, and ultiT mately of the church's role as a progressive agent of change in history, then, resides in Christian freedom's declaration of the "things indifferent" (adiaphom) (3.19.7, 838).l The adiaphora are of course those things believers can literally take or leave, things ultimately irrelevant to their spiritual journey and their salvation in Christ. To announce this irrelevance is not to devalue such things per se, but only to place their value in the proper light. Their value consists not in their intrinsic worth as much as in their significance as symbols of divine mercy and grace. Hence, their value emerges not only when believers approach them in a spirit of temperance and detachment for what they are but also in a spirit of enjoyment and gratitude for God's lovingkindness, which they signify. The double danger of either "mistaken strictness" or "mistaken laxity"2 is thus to be avoided. We should, as Calvin paraphrases Paul, "use this world as if not using it" (3.10.1, 72o[on i Corinthians 7:30-31]). Or as Bavinck expresses the point, the believer should "possess everything as not possessing it," thereby "put[ting] his confidence in God alone" (459).3 What sort of "outward things" does Calvin have in mind here? He provides no detailed list, but the examples he sets before his readers reveal his intentions. Beyond customs in clothing, food and drink, and the things themselves (3.19.7, 838-39), Calvin mentions religious practices and ceremonies such as the wearing of shawls and the public silence of women believers, specific burial rites, even the days and hours of public worship, the "structure" of the places of worship, and 109

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"what psalms are to be sung on what day" (4.10.31, 1209). As we shall see shortly, forms of civil government also fall easily into this category (4.20.8, 1493). Believers must remember, says Calvin, that Christ "did not will in outward discipline and ceremonies what we ought to do." Instead, clearly he foresaw that such things would "depend upon the state of the times." As long as believers "let love be our guide," they can begin to distinguish what is "necessary to salvation" and what is not (4.10.30, i2o8). 4 Christian believers must indeed keep the ordinances respecting outward things the church (not to mention civil society more generally) may "require for order and decorum" (4.10.30, 1208). Believers must not "despise" such things, "pass over them in careless negligence," or "openly violate them through pride and obstinacy [per fastum et contumadam]." Concern for minimal controversy, for "humanity," for the "rule of modesty" (modestiae regula), and for the "preservation of the peace" (servandae pads), all ought to incline free believers to respect the "established custom of the region" (mos regionis) (4.10,31, 1208-1209). There is no point, says Calvin in following Paul, of "indiscriminately and unwisely" (promiscue et imprudenter) casting such things aside. For by this "heedless use" (qua importune usurpatione) of their freedom, believers only "offend weak brothers" (infirmos fratres . . . offendunt) (3.19.10, 842). 5 As a consequence, though, Christian freedom requires that believers see such ceremonies, practices, and things for what they are: not intrinsic to Christ and ultimately inessential to salvation (4.10.30, 1208). They have, one might say, some historical, but no suprahistorical or eschatological significance. Believers ought to obey them, but "without superstition" (4.10.31, 1208; 3.19.7, 838—39). Having no core value, such outward things remain means of worship and praise, but they ought never to become the objects of one's worship and praise. "The Lord has left external rites in our choice with this view: that we may not think that his worship consists wholly in those things" (Comm. i Cor. 14:40 [1:474]). "What?" says Calvin in another place, "Does religion consist in a woman's shawl?" Or, for that matter, in her "silence," in any believer's "bended knee," in a burial shroud, or in designated pallbearers? "Not at all," he declares (4.10.31, 1209). The issue "is not about flesh or fish, or about a black or ashy color, or about Friday or Wednesday, but about the mad superstitions of men, who wish to appease God by such trifles" (Comm. i Tim. 4:1 [98]). More to the point, believers need to guard against the "public pestilence [publica . . . pestis] [of] evil custom [prava consuetude] . . . in which men do not perish the less though they fall with the multitude [in turba cadunt]" (Pref. 5, 23). If it means anything, then, Christian freedom means the right "to change and abrogate traditional practices and to establish new ones" as circumstances and true religion may require (4.10.30, 1208). If approached in the right spirit, outward things can be enjoyed as good gifts of God, gifts that have a use integral to their design. For example, says Calvin, "if we ponder to what end God created food, we shall find that he meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer." Moreover, the purpose of clothing, "apart from necessity, was comeliness and decency." Asking rhetorically, Calvin asserts, "Has the Lord clothed the flowers with the great beauty that greets our eyes, the sweetness of smell that is wafted upon our nostrils, arid yet

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will it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected by that beauty, or our sense of smell by the sweetness of that odor?" (3.10.2, 72o-2i).6 Likewise, religious ceremonies "by which discipline and order are maintained," point believers to true worship and thereby "have a manifest approval, as it were, from the mouth of Christ himself" (Comm. i Cor. 14:40 [1:474]). Believers may certainly take both comfort and pleasure in such gifts. In the same way civil governments, whatever their particular form, work to instruct and to harness believers in peace, security, and spiritual sustenance (4.20.23, 1510-11). Believers can surely celebrate the good gift of orderly government as being a good deal more than a "necessary evil" (4.20.22, 1510). In fine, says Calvin, "God has made us lords of all things and has so subjected them to us that we may use them all for our benefit." Yet "if we yield ourselves in bondage to external things,... there is no reason why we should expect it to be a service acceptable to God" (4.13.3, 1258). Christian believers should thus be free from the curse of thinking that their ultimate salvation hinged either on their embracing and revering or on their avoiding and disdaining, such things. Plainly, for Calvin, the topic remains "a slippery one," one that "slopes on both sides into error" (3.10.1, 720). Hence, the knowledge of Christian freedom's third part "is very necessary for us, for if it is lacking, our consciences will have no repose and there will be no end to superstitions" (3.19.7, 838). As theologian Wilhelm Niesel makes the point, Christian freedom here means that believers "can go through life fearlessly,... in the comfort and assurance that God does not judge us according to our achievement but after the perfect obedience which Christ has shown." Believers are thus "free from the tyranny of things" (141). To the extent that Scripture "gives general rules for lawful use," says Calvin, then surely "we ought... to limit our use in accordance with them." Otherwise, though, Christian freedom on these matters "is not to be restrained by any limitation but. . . left to every man's conscience" (3.10.1, 720), consciences strengthened and assured through the grace of true faith.7 It should now be apparent that Calvin's elaboration of Christian freedom's third part draws heavily on his notion of common grace (genemlis gratia).8 It is plain to Calvin that in spite of the historical human perversion of God's good creation, od continues to shower his world with small sources of pleasure, delight, and enlightenment.9 And these "delicacies," as Calvin calls them (Comm. Gen. 43:34 [2: 363]), should be appreciated for what they are, manifestations of God's eternal goodness, not to mention his care for, and delight in, his creation. One of these gifts, for example, is the gift of music, which Calvin calls one of the "most evident testimonies of divine goodness" (luculenta divinae bonitatis testimonia) (Comm. Gen. 4:21 [1:218-19]). To see the full potential impact of the cultural liberation growing out of Christian freedom's third part, though, we need to examine more thoroughly Calvin's description and evaluation of religious, and cultural, ceremonies (ritus and ceremoniae) and other cultural forms. For Christian freedom means an ultimate indifference to particular ceremony, ritual, and institutional form in the light of Christ's transhistorical (indeed suprahistorical) and transcultural redemptive process. Calvin's primary discussion of the theoretical underpinnings to the indifference believers accord to "ceremony" occurs in Institutes 4.20. Here, in analyzing the var-

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ious dimensions of law, Calvin distinguishes "ceremonial" law from "judicial" and "moral" law. Calvin's stated reason for so distinguishing is to ensure that believers do not confuse ritual observance with true "piety." Whereas rituals can indeed instruct in piety and even encourage piety, they cannot replace piety. Piety, what we owe God, namely, "the perpetual duties and precepts of love," describes a stance "in service and reverence to God." Piety is thus an attitude as much as it is an action, and it is an action only when springing from the right attitude of faith and love (4.20.15, 1503). In commenting on God's rejection of Cain's sacrifice in Genesis 4:5, Calvin makes the point explicitly: It is God's will "first to have us devoted to himself." Beyond that devotion, "he then seeks our works in testimony of our obedience to him, but only in the second place" (Comm. Gen. 4:5 [i: 196]).'° Calvin notes then that the ceremonial law "was the tutelage of the Jews." By means of prescribed ceremony, "the Lord . . . train[ed] this people, as it were, in their childhood" (4.20.15, 1503). Ceremony provided a structure within which the Hebrew people might come to learn both to love God and to serve their fellow men. God demanded sacrifices of healthy young animals and rich new crops in order that these sacrifices might be "aids to piety." Such ceremonies "were not. . . a satisfaction by which [God] should be appeased, but in order that by means of them the nation might be trained to godliness, and might make greater and greater progress in faith and in the pure worship of God" (Comm. Is. 1:11 [1:55-56] [emphasis added]).11 As Calvin recounts the Mosaic rituals in his commentary on Leviticus 1:1—4, for example, he finds it manifest that the Lord specified to Moses the threefold requirement that sacrifice be made only of domesticated animals, "without defect," by means of the laying on of hands, in order that the Israelites have constantly before them three things. First, God intended a certain order to human use of his created beings; he intended that "men should not offer promiscuously this or that victim" but only those "such as allow themselves to be directed by the hand and will of men." Second, God saw in the sacrificial victims "types of Christ," by which the Hebrew people might be reminded both of God's perfection and of their own impurity in the light of his majesty. And third, in consequence of this divinehuman relation, God intended that the people come to see the need for "atonement" and "sacramental. . . reconciliation," the need, that is, to "transfer their guilt and whatever penalties they had deserved to the victims." Whereas full atonement and reconciliation comes only through the Word made flesh, the symbolic rituals were to be effective "exercises unto faith and repentance, so that the sinner might learn to fear God's wrath, and to seek pardon in Christ" (Comm. Harm. Moses on Lev. 1:1-4 [2:324-25]).12 Of course, in Christ believers take on an entirely new perspective on ceremonial acts. Calvin makes the point in his commentary on John 4:23: When Jesus says that "the hour is coming . . . when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth," he "shows that the order laid down by Moses will not be perpetual." Indeed, at that moment, he effectively "repeal[s] the worship, or ceremonies, prescribed by law," thus "put[ting] an end to the ceremonies, and de-

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clar[ing] that the time of reformation . .. has been fulfilled" (Comm. John 4:23 [i: 161]). In Christ believers can see ritual acts entirely for what they are: aids to piety but not necessarily acts of piety. Indeed, approached with an impious heart, such ceremonies manifest only "hypocrisy," presenting to God "nothing but a mask," and effectively transforming the ritual behavior into a "gross and manifest mockery" of God (Comm. Gen, 4:5 [i: 196]).B Moreover, during the present reign of Christ, too close attachment to ceremony not only denies Christian freedom, it can actually work to draw believers away from God's grace in Christ. As Calvin asks rhetorically in commenting on i Timothy 4:1-5, "Why are men's consciences burdened with laws about marriage and foods, unless to permit them to seek perfection outside of God's law [nisi quia perfectio extra Dei legem quaeritur]" (from Haroutunian, 345 [emphasis added])? Do they not know that in Christ, "the middle wall of partition is now broken down, that the Gentiles might be called in" (Comm. Ps. 65:4 [2:456-57])?14 In sum, then, ceremonial observances must be seen in larger, more comprehensive perspective. In their particularity they are neither finally necessary nor sufficient for believers to experience fully God's grace. Indeed, such practices may even be counterproductive if approached in the wrong spirit. Christian freedom encompasses "exemption from the ceremonies of the law" (Comm. GaL 5:1 [147]). If believers are, in a larger sense, free from the very ceremonies prescribed by Old Testament Scripture, then certainly particular cultural, social, and political institutions and customs are called into even more profound question. One's historical context thus becomes only a kind of tentative frame for one's larger salvation experience and faith journey. In any case, as Bouwsma (John Calvin, 144) puts it, "there is nothing sacred in custom; God's will always takes precedence over it." When Calvin distinguishes three kinds of law in Institutes 4.20, then, only the "moral law" (which "commands us to worship God with pure faith and piety" and "to embrace men with sincere affection") is the "true and eternal rule of righteousness" and is "prescribed for men of all nations and times."15 As to even "judicial law," says Calvin, "surely every nation is left free to make such laws as it forsees to be profitable to itself," so long as they are "in conformity to that perpetual rule of love [caritas]" (4.20.15, 1503). How "false and foolish," even "perilous and seditious," for example, says Calvin, to claim that no polity "is duly framed which neglects the political system of Moses" (4.20.14, 1502). Indeed, Calvin explicitly refuses to engage in "long discourse concerning the best kind of [civil] laws." His discussion of civil law, and its relationship to "moral law," he says, ought not to provide a "reason why anyone should expect" such a discourse, a discourse which would, ultimately, "be endless and would not pertain to the present purpose and place" (4.20.14, 1502). Comprehending the moral law is fundamental to healthy politics, but in building on that foundation, human beings are free to exercise their own judgment and prudence.16 Calvin proceeds, not unexpectedly, to place the subject of governmental "forms," which was a matter of grave concern to the ancient Greek and late

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medieval thinkers, into the category of only secondary import. As is true with religious ceremonies, governmental forms are a good deal less weighty than are the content of men's hearts- Moreover, although there may indeed be a proper governmental form for a particular society, such design "depends largely upon the circumstances." God in his providence "has wisely arranged that various countries should be ruled by various kinds of government [ut diversis politiis regiones variae administrentur]." Calvin does disclose a preference for "a system compounded of aristocracy and democracy," but only for the very practical reason that "men's fault or failing causes it to be safer and more bearable for a number to exercise government [tenere gubernacula]," this because "it is very rare for kings to control themselves" (4.20.8, 1493—94). But in the final analysis, he says, citing Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:11, "it makes no difference what your condition among men may be or under what nation's laws you live, since the Kingdom of Christ does not at all consist in these things" (4.20.1, i486). 17 In delegating civil (judicial) law and governmental forms, not to mention social custom and religious ceremony, to a level of secondary concern, Calvin detaches culture from its moorings in tradition. The past, as reflected in culture, politics, and custom, appears no longer to be obvious prologue to the future. This detachment in and of itself lays the ground for revolutionary thinking. For if any particular social arrangement or political order is largely idiosyncratic, what would keep believers in any way loyal to such arrangement or such order? But Calvin is not finished. For when he adds to the mix one significant dimension of his doctrine of God's providence, he makes possible a revolutionary mind-set now fueled with the impetus of God's plan for, and power in, history.

Providence as God's Mindfulness As noted in the introduction to this part, Calvin's idea of God's providence ends up having both a progressive—even revolutionary—and a conservative cast to it. In chapter 6 (in this volume) I explore this latter dimension, but, for now, I must admit candidly that Calvin's idea does have progressive and even revolutionary implications, implications later Calvinists were quick to draw out.18 To begin, though, we should examine Calvin's idea of providence with some care. What does God's providence (providentia) mean for Calvin and from what scriptural foundation does it arise? When Calvin uses the term "providence," he has in mind God's all-encompassing, faithful and loving governance of all aspects of his creation. As provident Creator, God is "everlasting Governor and Preserver," in that "he sustains, nourishes, and cares for, everything he has made" (1.16.1, 197-98). God does not "idly observe from heaven what takes place on earth," rather, through his providence, he "governs all events" (1.16.4, 202). God's providence flows naturally and inevitably from his having created the world. It is inconceivable to Calvin that an omnipotent Creator God would "sit idle in heaven, and take no concern in the management of [his creation]." Such a vision of God detached from his creation would be not only absurd, but unbiblical and even insulting. To articulate it would be "to cast an imperious asper-

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sion upon his power" (Comm. Ps. 135:6 [5:174]).19 Indeed, if natural philosophy did not make clear God's providential care (and because we know that for Calvin human beings tend to be blind and deaf to its conclusion, we have little confidence that for him it will), God's word in Scripture, mediated by Christ's intercession and the Holy Spirit's inspiration, screams loudly, as we shall see. Two elements of Calvin's meaning should be emphasized here. First, the fact of God's providence rules out any other equal or superior motivating force within history. Second, God takes special and elaborate care of all that is his. To begin, providence rules out "chance," or "fortune," on the one hand, and "nature," or "natural forces," on the other. Tempting as it may be for human beings to ascribe certain events to chance, or random luck, Christ's very lips insist that we "look farther afield for a cause" (1.16.2, 198-99 [citing Matt. 10:30]). From the human perspective, events often do appear random, or contingent, but such an appearance masks an underlying reality: the reality that "all things are divinely created." The real cause of apparent contingency, says Calvin, is that "human reason is blind and prone to disputation" (Cone. Etem. Predest. X-7 [168-70]). Indeed, Scripture teaches that it is precisely in the unusual and extraordinary events of history that the hand of God is most clearly visible. Commenting on Psalm 113:7-8, Calvin notes that "the prophet enjoins us to admire [God's] providence [precisely] in matters of marvelous, or of unusual occurrence." Rather than the larger "structure of the heavens and the earth," which we come to perceive as part of "the ordinary course of things," the psalmist instructs believers that they should take note especially of the "marvelous, or ... unusual occurrence." When, for example, "men of mean and abject condition are elevated not merely to some petty sovereignty, b u t . . . are invested with power and authority over God's holy people," such events ought to cause us to sit up and take note (4:334-35). What else would account for such unlikely events but the active hand of a transcendent builder of history?20 As to "natural" events, Calvin concedes that God exercises his providence in both a "general" (or "universal") and a "special" way. It may be true that many things "are moved by a secret impulse of nature," so that "once determined" they "flow on by [themselves]" (fluere sponte). Yet even nature, as his creational design, "obey[s] God's eternal command" (1.16.4, 203)- The "sending forth of [God's] word [emissio sermonis]," ever stands behind all events. "[W]ithout his orders and appointment," without his "foregoing secret decree \praeiret arcanum . . . mandatum]" nothing could take place on its "own spontaneous impulse \proprio instinctu]" (Comm. Ps. 147:15-18 [5: 301]). Natural events would thus be largely within the category of general providence: general, but still "providential." As Calvin puts the matter in his tract Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God (X.i [162-63]), That the sun should daily rise for us, that in its swift course it has degrees so fitly tempered, that the separate orbits of the stars are wonderfully undisturbed, that the seasons continually recur; that the earth yields its annual produce for the nourishment of men, that elements and particles do not cease to discharge their office, that finally the fertility of nature never fails as though it were fatigued—this is to be ascribed solely to his directing hand who once made all things.21

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In Calvin's doctrine of "special" providence, the other key element of his meaning becomes clear. For providence means not only intentional design and general governance on God's part but extensive, intricate, and painstaking care as well. Not only does God "watch the order of nature imposed by himself," he also "exercises a particular care of each one of his creatures" (Cone. Etern. Predest. X.i [162]). God is "the best of fathers," and as a result "no part of the world is forgotten by him," and "no creature is excluded from his care" (Comm. Ps. 104:16 [4: 160]). He does not simply "foresee" or "foreknow" historical events, he actively "directs everything by his incomprehensible wisdom and disposes it to his own end" (1.16.4. 202). By means of his "special ordinance," God "guides all things in accordance with what he deems to be expedient." Thus, "prosperity and adversity alike, rain, wind, sleet, hail, good weather, abundance, famine, war, and peace are all works of God's hand" (Against the Libertines, ch. 14 [Farley, ed., 244]). Within the larger purview of his providence, therefore, God directs not only the life of each individual human being, and the development of each human society, but the welfare of each nonhuman creature and each "natural" phenomenon as well, even to the point of commanding the rain to fall, the wind to blow, and the seasons to change (1.16.5-7, 2O3-7)- In tne wondrous interweaving of the various dimensions to his providence, God uses both natural phenomena and nonhuman creatures to "punish crimes, instruct the faithful in patience and the subduing of the flesh, purge the vices of the world, rouse many from indolence, oppose the pride of the ungodly, deride the strategems of the wise, [and] demolish the machinations of the wicked." At the same time, and by the same means, he "assists the wretched, protects and defends the safety of the innocent, and brings help to the despairing" (Cone. Etern. Predest. X.2 [163]). As divine parent, says Calvin in commenting on Isaiah 49:15 (4:31), "Will it be [even] possible [for God] to lay aside a Father's love? Certainly not."22 Indeed, says Calvin, we ought not to be surprised at his "sustaining the character of a kind and provident father to his own people," when we can hardly help but note that "he condescends to care for the cattle, and the asses of the field, and the crow and the sparrow" (Comm. Ps. 136:23-26 [5:188]). For Calvin, then, the psalmist speaks truly when he declares the Lord to be his "sun" and his shield: In the same way that "the sun by [its] light vivifies, nourishes, and rejoices the world," so "the benign countenance of God fills with joy the hearts of his people," to the point that "they neither live nor breathe except insofar as he shines upon them" (Comm. Ps. 84:11 [3: 365]). There are two common objections to a Calvinistic notion of God's providence. First, many object that such a notion appears to deny the human capacity for choice. Second, many object that Calvin thereby makes God the author of evil. Although I have already addressed the former issue at some length in chapters I and 2, it is worth noting once more that Calvin's consistent emphasis throughout his writing was less to deny or disparage certain human capabilities and experiences than to assert the sovereignty and supremacy of God. Indeed, his entire doctrine of predestination grows out of just this determination. 25 At base, says Calvin, human beings simply cannot assert their supposed free will, without "losing [themselves] in vain confidence," and without "usurping God's honor" (2.2.10, 267).

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Whether one wishes to or not, "daily experience compels you to realize that your own mind is guided by God's prompting rather than by your own freedom to choose" (2.4.7. 3 r 5)To say such things is of course riot so much to deny human choice as to place it in a larger context of accountability. In his tracts Against the Libertines and Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, Calvin addresses this issue in thorough and explicit ways. In arguing against the Libertines, who sought to attribute to God's direct action and intent every good or evil thing that happens, Calvin insists that human agency must remain firmly in the equation. In making their claim, the Libertines "attribute nothing to the will of man, no more than if he were a stone." In Calvin's mind, the pernicious consequences of such a teaching should be obvious. Without the presence and activity of the human will, there would in the end "be no difference whatsoever between God and the devil." Because "all men would no longer have a conscience for abstaining from evil, but like beasts would follow their sensual appetites without discretion," then human beings "would be unable to make any judgments." As a result, given the direct action and intent of God behind every occurrence, "it would be necessary to find everything good; whether lechery, murder, or stealing, the worst crimes that we can imagine would have to be viewed as laudable works" (Against the Libertines, ch. 13 [238-41]). In his tract Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, Calvin goes on to lay out his understanding of the real place of human agency. In effect, God makes continual use of "inferior causes." To deny such a hierarchical chain of causes is to make God the author of sin and evil. To accept it is to acknowledge the mystery of human choice making. "God promises his blessing to the labor of our hands," but "the providence of God as rightly expounded does not bind our hands." Indeed, "if anyone boast that he expects to have bread by mere idle desire, because it is the blessing of God that makes the earth fruitful, does he not simply spurn the providence of God in preaching such an understanding of it" (Cone. Etern. Predest. X.8 [170-71] [emphasis added])? Instead, believers must understand "the distinction between the equitable providence of God and stormy assaults of men." For example, "Shimei assaults his king with monstrous petulance; and sin appears. God uses this agent for the just humiliation of David, as a rod to chastise him. Who accuses [God] of sin?" Clearly Scripture teaches that "there is a great difference between God and man: For God wills for good what men will for evil." The point, though, is that "men will." Calvin finds Augustine's summary of the point most apt: "[T]he great works of the Lord are contrived according to his desire, so that in a wonderful and ineffable way what is done against his will is yet not done beyond his will" (Cone. Etern. Predest. X.I4 [181-82] [emphasis added]).24 Hopfl (192) goes so far as to argue that Calvin ends up with the implicit, and ironic, inference that only the reprobate exhibit free choice. Choice requires agency, says Hopfl, and only the reprobate retain their agency and so exhibit such choice (in their case, the choice to rebel). "[T]he godly," on the other hand, are merely "God's perfectly serviceable instruments." Indeed, "the more godly they are, the less they are anything but instruments."25

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On the surface, Hopfl's conclusion appears plausible. Calvin does speak of Christian believers as "instruments of [God's] power" (Cone. Etern. Predest. X.8 [170-71]). However, one ought not to forget the fervent emphasis Calvin continually puts on the choices believers do make. Moreover, Calvin as often speaks of the "ungodly" as God's instruments. From Pharoah, to Shimei, to Job's robbers, Calvin consistently reminds believers that "they are ruled by a secret rein," so that "they cannot move a finger without performing God's rather than their own work" (Cone. Etern. Predest. X.g [i72]). 26 In fact, the self-perception of free "choice" in the "carnal man," says Calvin in his commentary on Romans 7:15, grows from plain old self-deception. Because such a person "rushes into sin with the whole propensity of his mind, he seems to sin with . . . a free choice." But alas, that is "a most pernicious opinion." For in reality a person "left to his own nature" is only in a condition "wholly borne along by his lusts without any resistance" (262 [emphasis added]). In an interesting twist on Hopfl's analysis, then, Calvin is arguing that only divinely inspired pangs of conscience motivate real choice. For the inner conflict of which the Apostle Paul speaks in Romans 7:15, "does not exist in man before he is renewed by the Spirit of God" (Comm. Rom. 7:15 [262]). Without a true set of alternatives available, human choice remains an exercise in self-delusion. As a result, we might ask, if Hopfl were right about Calvin seeing in believers a lack of agency, what would be the point of Calvin's entire corpus of writings, writings in which he repeatedly determines to uphold sound doctrine in the face of believers' everyday struggles? Indeed, if believers lack agency, what becomes of the "third use" of the law, not to mention God's ubiquitous and perspicacious judgment? Only those with choices to make need guidance and face judgment. As noted previously, then, Calvin's disparagement of free will is less a diagnosis of nonagency than a condemnation of human will set adrift from its divine moorings. Human will cannot, in its "emancipation or manumission from righteousness" (emancipatio vel manumissio a iustitia), be anything but an "empty name" (2.2.8, 266). Authentic freedom consists in the will's embodiment in divine purposes (2.2.9, 266-67). If its source and destiny be in God, its self-liberation from God can hardly be a sign of health or humanity, much less "freedom." Using Augustinian language, real freedom for Calvin ends up being freedom from sin, in Christ (2.2.5—6, 262—63). As Calvin, explicitly following Augustine, puts the matter in his discussion of free will in the Institutes, "without grace the will [can]not be sufficient unto itself [sine qua [i.e., gratia] voluntatem sibi per se nan sufficere videbant]" (2.2.4, 261). Self-liberation issues only in self-enslavement, whereas Christ's intercession yields true freedom (2.2.8, 265-66). The second common objection to a Calvinistic doctrine of providence, that because God is the author of all that happens he must thereby be the author of evil, Calvin refutes as well. He acknowledges the theological question: How can the wicked triumph, for example, not to mention "applaud their own good fortune, as if there was no judge above" (Comm. Ps. 92:5 [3: 497])? Indeed, why doesn't God "restrain the devil arid all the wicked who set themselves in opposition to him" (Comm. Ps. 115:3 [4:345!)? But Calvin flatly denies that God is

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"the author of evil." In the same mysterious commingling of contrary purposes, "[w]hatever things are done wrongly and unjustly by man, these very things are the right and just works of God" (Cone. Etern. Predest. X-7 [169]). Once again, Calvin says, one must understand that "the proximate cause is one thing, the remote cause another." God's "hidden counsel" and the "manifestly vicious lusts of men" must be kept separate (Cone. Etern. Predest. X.I4 [181-82]). After all, "[w]hen men commit theft or murder, they offend for this cause, because they are thieves or murderers." And in theft or murder "there is a wicked purpose." Yet God may "use their wickedness." By means of sinful motives and sinful deeds God "will chastise the one, and exercise the patience of the other." In both cases, "he never decline[s] from his nature, that is, from perfect righteousness" (Comm. Acts 2:23[i:99]).27 In any event, Calvin's answer, though no doubt unsatisfactory to many, is nonetheless the only one he sees human beings as qualified to give. True to his loyalty to Scripture, Calvin asserts both God's love and the human incapacity fully to know God's design and plan. The conjoining of a sovereign God and a willful humankind "may seem paradoxical at first sight to some." However, lest human beings look with "pride and stubbornness" to find the answers they think their logic compels—"as if it were proper for God to fit himself to our standards"—they ought to look instead to God's self-revelation in Scripture, "where the whole definition of the works of God is to be found" (Cone. Etern. Predest. X.7 [169]). And if nothing occurs "unless by the counsel and determination of God, [then] he apparently does not disallow sin." Nevertheless, Scripture is clear: God has "secret and to us unknown causes why he permits that which perverse men do, and yet this is not done because he approves of their wicked inclinations" (Comm. Ps. 115:3 [4: 345l)-28 In spite of apparent "confusion" and "disorder" in history, therefore, Calvin asserts the presence, through his providence, of God's judgment. Most important, although many aspects of God's judgment on people, societies, and events may be withheld from human understanding, many others are revealed plainly. Indeed, the revolutionary energy behind the doctrine of providence catalyzes within the context of God's historical judgment. For, as we discovered in chapter 4, Calvin understands God's judgment to be clearly present and, on the whole, clearly manifest within history. This understanding, which Calvin draws directly and extensively from Scripture, is most plainly revealed throughout his commentary on the Psalms. Scripture reveals clearly, for Calvin, that God cannot either "shut his eyes to our miseries" or "allow this license which the wicked take in doing evil to pass with impunity, without denying himself" (Comm. Ps. 69:19 [3:63-64]). Although God's actions may at times perplex us—as well they might given our more limited and, yes, sinful perspective—his providential judgment clearly manifests itself within history. The psalmist in Psalm 66, for example, reveals that the special favor shown Abraham's progeny, in consideration of his covenant with the patriarch, did not prevent God from "extending an eye of providential consideration to the surrounding nations." Perhaps ironically, the psalmist finds evidence of

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God's care in "the judgment which God executed upon the wicked and the ungodly." Yet in this way the psalmist shows "that there was no part of the human family which God overlooked." Only a universally provident God, after all, would bother to discipline all humankind (Comm. Ps. 66:7 [2:470-71]). In this way, Calvin declares in another place, "God's goodness extends even to the ungodly" (Comm. Ps. 103:3 [4: 126]). Although "[t]here may be much in the Divine administration of the world calculated to perplex our conclusions," there exist nonetheless "always some tokens to be seen of his judgments," which are "sufficiently clear to strike the eye of an acute and attentive observer" (Comm. Ps. 66:7 [2: 471).

Again and again, Calvin finds Scripture revealing that whereas "God may postpone the punishment of the wicked," nonetheless "in due time" he demonstrates (i.e., within history) that he will not: "overlook or fail to perceive [their sins]." And "though he exercises his own children with the cross, he proves in the issue, that he was not indifferent to their welfare" (Comm. Ps. 92:5 [3:496-97]). God "accomplishes his work in the reprobate" (often in an "incomprehensible manner") in that he "brings forth light even out of darkness" (Comm. Ps. 105:25 [4: I 9 2]). 29

Perhaps Calvin's most intriguing discussion of God's providential care, as it manifests itself in his tangible judgment within history, occurs in his sermons on Job. In his sermon on Job 36:6-14 (272), for example, Calvin comments on Elihu's rather persuasive points of evidence that God is actively nourishing human beings by judging them in the world. "For if a poor man who is utterly destitute of help and an outcast in the world is nevertheless delivered from affliction and persecution," then clearly "the same must proceed from God." Indeed, says Calvin, "it must be attributed to God." After all, "if we have no support from the world and yet have strong and powerful enemies, what is to be said except that we are lost and that there is no longer any hope for our life?" Yet, if, then, "we are restored, it is manifest that God has been at work." Interestingly, Calvin draws from Elihu's speech a second point of evidence of God's love and care. Here Calvin points to what social and political order does exist in the world. "[W]hen we see that there is some order in the world," then "we can see as in a mirror that God has not so let loose the reins to all confusion that he does not still show us some sign and token of his justice." The point is a powerful one, says Calvin, if his listener will only consider, on the one hand, "what the nature of man is [quelle est la nature des hommes]," and, on the other hand, "how governors and magistrates and those who have the sword of justice in their hands discharge themselves," then one "will . . . easily discern [the] miracle of God that there is any common weal among us." For one can easily see that "all men are given to evil and their lusts are so boiling that every man wishes to have complete license." Therefore, any order or justice must "come from God," and in such order, God shows both "his power and his goodness." In the face of God's restraining of the wicked and their destructive impulses, says Calvin, "let us humble ourselves to honor his providence" (Serm. Job 36:6-14 [272-74] [emphasis added]).'0

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Change as Progress The facts of God's providential care and of his intrahistorical judgment have important implications for political change, therefore. First of all, if God is watching, caring for, and directing historical events, then believers can be assured that he will accomplish his purpose. The doctrine of providence thus breeds a strong sense of inevitability to the inworking and unveiling of God's plan for redemption. History becomes less a riddle and more an expectant vision. Certainly Calvin's language often reflects this kind of triumphalist attitude. As he puts the matter in his commentary on Isaiah 26:5 (2:215), "when the prophet speaks of the strength and power of God, he does not mean power which is unemployed, but power active and energetic, which is actually exerted on us," power, moreover, "which conducts to the end what [God] had begun." And in Psalm 18, according to Calvin, David "celebrates . . . the wonderful grace which God had shown towards him," and simultaneously "shows that his reign was an image and type of the kingdom of Christ." David's kingdom imaged Christ's kingdom in this sense: "[I]n spite of the whole world, and of all the resistance which it can make," it will, "by the stupendous and incomprehensible power of the Father, be always victorious" (Comm. Ps. 18, Intro. [1:256-5v]).31 Likewise, in his commentary on Isaiah 40:3 (3:203), Calvin finds in God's promises to Isaiah, "that although every road were shut up, and not a chink were open, the Lord will easily cleave a path through the most impassable tracts for himself and his people." With "ever-increasing splendor," says Calvin in book 3 of the Institutes, God "displays his light and truth." In time, he "overthrows the wicked conspiracies of [his] enemies, unravels their strategems and deceits, opposes their malice, [and] represses their obstinacy" (3.20.42, 905-6). One primary piece of evidence for the inevitability of God's historical plan thus concerns the numerous attempts to seize Jesus during his active ministry and the surprising failure of all these attempts, despite the strength, number, and determination of the abductors, because Jesus' "time had not yet come" (Comm. John 7:30 [1:300-1]). Providence thus manifests itself as historical hope. No matter the circumstances within which a people (or a single believer, for that matter) finds itself, and no matter the day or the hour, the promise and vision of God deliberately, obstinately, persistently, sculpting his kingdom within history inspires a hope out of which one can generate incredible energy and perseverance. Reading the story of God's people in Old Testament Scripture is for Calvin a loud reminder of God's determination and faithfulness: "History certainly bears ample testimony that the people of God had not to deal with a few enemies, but they were assaulted by almost the whole world; and further, that they were molested not only by external foes, but also by those of an internal kind, by such as professed to belong to the Church." Yet in spite of this experience (yea, because of this experience), says the psalmist, God's people retain a hope undergirded by "the encouraging consideration that the Church, by patient endurance, has uniformly proved victorious" (Comm. Ps. 129:1 [5:121]). Indeed, "he who shall entrust the keeping of his life to God's care, will not doubt of its safety even in the midst of death" (Comm. Ps. 31:5 [1:503]).-" Of

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all the books of Scripture, the Book of Joshua "suggests the very useful reflection," that even though it appears "men are cut off by death and fail in the middle of their career, the faithfulness of God never fails" (Comm. Joshua, Intro., xix). Such hope not only sparks energy for historical change, but, potentially, carves out a resevoir of stunning, even inexpressible, patience and endurance. Calvin notes on any number of occasions how, throughout history, the Church has not only been scourged, but has also shown the patience and fortitude of faith, and ultimately emerged intact and victorious. Believers do not "measure the assistance of God after the manner of men," but instead "despise whatever terrors may stand in our way." In the end, says Calvin, since "the power of God is infinite," believers are reassured "that it shall be invincible against all the assaults, outrages, preparations, and forces of the whole world" (Comm. Ps. 3:6 [1:34]).^ Although there have been, and will no doubt continue to be, times of trial for God's people, they can and will endure these times in confident hope. The trials they do endure appear only at God's bidding: "[I]f God does whatsoever he pleases, then it is not his pleasure to do that which is not done." Hence, if God "appears to us to be asleep," or for some reason "has not the means of succouring us," when he "winks and holds his peace [conrdvet Deus ac quiesdt] at the afflictions of the church," then believers must "wait patiently," knowing that "it is not his pleasure to act speedily the part of our deliverer, because he knows that delay and procrastination are profitable to us" (Comm. Ps. 115:3 [4:346]). Indeed, "the people of God must not yield to despondency even in the most distressing circumstances, when their enemies may seem to have enclosed them on every side." Rather, they should rest assured "that God, although he connives for a time [quid scilicet Dominus, quamvis dissimulet ac quiescat], is awake to their condition, and only watches the best opportunity of executing his judgments" (Comm. Ps. 49:5 [2:239—4°])-M As to why God might allow particular hardships, he may of course wish "to instruct his own people in patience," but he may also seek "to correct their wicked affections and tame their lust," or "to subjugate them to self-denial," or even "to arouse them from sluggishness." In sum, he undoubtedly seeks "to bring low the proud, to shatter the cunning of the impious and to overthrow their devices" (1.17.1, 210-11). In any event, Calvin says in another place, "God is treated with the highest dishonor when we doubt his truth," that is, "when we are so completely overcome by human terrors that we cannot rest on his promises" (Comm. Is. 51: 12 [4:78]). Believers rest ultimately on their personal assurance of God's love and care. Why should physical hardship cause them to doubt either the reality of such parental oversight or the depth and breadth of such love? Ironically, then, while "violent men dash themselves to pieces by their own eagerness," it is in just the quiet patience of godly people that the real "vigor" of faith, "though it has less display, and often appears to lie buried," is thereby "refreshed and renewed" (Comm. Is. 40:31 [3:239]).-'5 Perhaps the key significance of Calvin's vision of providential hope for our purposes here concerns the sense in which hope of historical judgment and providential redemption imply a "progressive" view of history. If God is slowly, deliberately, methodically constructing, redeeming, and restoring his kingdom, then each stage in his process of restoration will invite an increasingly enthusiastic

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welcome. Calvin is not, of course, unique in pointing to the eschatological hope embedded in the Christian faith. He is, however, one who inspires a new appreciation for the political implications of such hope within historical time, and he does so at a time that a recognition of the full significance of historical change was beginning to germinate and sprout. Perhaps most important, Calvin challenged head on the transhistorical "antispeculation" of the medieval/Augustinian vision.36 As a result, we can with little trouble see in Calvin's doctrine of providence the theme of historical progress. And the possibility of historical progress, of the real, visible, tangible advance of God's kingdom in the world, mixed with a spiritual detachment from particular cultural institutions and customs, would in the midst of catalytic events such as the counter-Reformation, lead to—or at least point to—the possibility of revolutionary change. Before addressing these potentially revolutionary implications more directly, though, we need to examine carefully the progressive implications in Calvin's idea of providence. One of these implications flows from Calvin's doctrine of personal "sanctification," already discussed in chapters i and 2 (in this volume). The thrust behind the doctrine of sanctification is the idea that believers can "advance in godliness" (Comm. Ps. 28:5 [1:471-72]). By God's grace, "through the intercession of Christ's righteousness," God "reconciles" (recondliat) believers to himself. From this intercession and reconciliation flows a lifelong process of sanctification. Through his Holy Spirit God, "dwells" (habitat) in believers, and "by his goodness" (cuius virtute)37 the "lusts of the flesh are each day more and more mortified." Believers are thereby "consecrated to the Lord in true purity of life," their hearts "formed in obedience to the law [in legis obsequium formatis]," The end of this process, says Calvin, is "that our especial will may be to serve [God's] will and by every means to advance his glory alone" (3.14.9, 776). Sanctification is of course a lifelong process, and believers ought not to boast (3.14.9, 776-77), as we have seen already. However, the notion of the progressive cleansing of individuals may very well bleed over into a kind of historical progress. The prayer Calvin routinely used to open his lectures (later published as Commentaries) from Scripture displays the ambiguity here: "May the Lord grant that we study the heavenly mysteries of his wisdom, making true progress in religion to his glory and our upbuilding" (from Haroutunian, 17). Given the communal, largely academic context wherein we find Calvin's frequent use of the phrase "progress in religion," can he really mean to confine this conception to individual faith journeys alone? Indeed, as Troeltsch (Protestantism, 39) points out, it is precisely the Reformers' deep "religious personalism" that makes possible, even inevitable, notions not only of individual autonomy but also of progress, of "the all-embracing community of mental outlook," and of "the indestructibility and strength of our confidence in life and our impulse to work."38 In fact, however, Calvin does not shy away from the connection of personal sanctification to historical development. What is most interesting for our purposes here, then, is the extent to which Calvin's doctrine of providence does imply social and political progress. On any number of occasions, Calvin makes clear his understanding that Christ's redemptive work takes place within time and progressively transforms all it touches. In his commentary on John 12:31, for example,

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Calvin states that Jesus' words ("Now is the judgment of this world; now is the prince of this world cast out") clearly refer to "reformation" and not "condemnation" of the world. Because, Calvin argues, the Hebrew word mishpat, which is there translated "judgment," means "a well-ordered state" (i.e., "condition"), Jesus clearly means "that the world must be restored to a proper order," that "Christ had already begun to erect the kingdom of God," and that his death "was the commencement of a well-regulated condition, and the full restoration of the world" (Comm. John 12:31 [2:36] [emphasis in the original]). Bathed in the blood of Christ's sacrifice, believers now fully understand the extent of God's love and care. Their "true riches" thereby consist in their "relying upon the providence of God for the sufficiency of their support." As a result, they are energized for actively "doing good" (Comm. 2 Cor, 9:11 [2:314]). In his commentaries on Isaiah 2:2 and 11:6, Calvin amplifies this understanding. "[W]hile the fullness of days began at the coming of Christ, it flows on in uninterrupted progress until he appears the second time for our salvation" (Comm. Is. 2:2 [1:92]). Regarding Isaiah's blissful vision of the wolf living peaceably with the lamb, Calvin notes that "the prophet's discourse looks beyond this [vision]." Isaiah's words "amount to a promise that there will be a blessed restoration of the world," that Christ will reestablish "the order which was at the beginning," that, indeed, under this re-created order, "the people of Christ will have no disposition to do injury, no fierceness or cruelty" (Comm. Is. 11:6 [i:383~84]).39 In order for this re-creation to take place, Calvin elaborates, the "confusion and deformity" arising from Satan's "tyrannical dominion" must be removed; hence Satan must be "cast out." Only when he is so cast out will the world be "brought back from its revolt, and placed under obedience to the government of God." Notably, Calvin asserts that "this casting out must not be limited to any short period of time, but is a description of that remarkable effect of the death of Christ which is daily manifested" (Comm. John 12:31 [2:36—37]). Christ's work does not manifest itself suddenly, but—as it were—progressively (i.e., by degrees).

Impetus for Revolution? It is not so surprising, then, that Calvin's vision of God's providence (one of God working progressively through Christ and his Spirit to, as Ronald Wallace, puts it, "cleanse, regenerate, and direct not only the human heart but every aspect of social life on earth—family affairs, education, economics, politics" [28]), should inspire later Calvinists to lead the charge for constructive, even revolutionary, political change. If God through Christ is actively reforming, or re-creating the world, and if Christ works primarily through the Spirit spread abroad in his people, then believers can hardly help but see themselves as inspired agents of change, agents of "restoration," and agents of the "casting out" of Satan's influence. "It is thus," says Hopfl, "clearly the duty of every Christian commonwealth to aim at exemplary righteousness and piety." With such a manifest goal, says Hopfl, it is hardly a surprise that some discern in Calvin "a doctrine of progress," a "propen-

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sity" to see in Calvin's work and life "an attempt to make the church . . . an agency for the continuous transformation of the Christian society, a transformation to be accomplished in the last days" (193). Hopfl mentions Bieler and Little in this context, and rightly so,40 but others could be cited as well. Hancock categorizes Emile Doumergue as the "boldest and most prolific representative" of the position that "Calvin deserves the title 'founder of the modern world' " (Foundations, 2 [citing Doumergue, )ean Calvin, V:2i2]) but notes also that "the most famous and influential version of the thesis associating Protestantism and progress" is that of Hegel (Foundations, 2).41 More overtly "Calvinist" scholars also see a progressivist impulse in the Reformed tradition. South African John DeGruchy, for example, asserts that Reformed theology "is best understood as a liberating theology that is catholic in its substance, evangelical in principle, and socially engaged and prophetic in its witness" (xii).42 Even the very cautious and balanced historian Fred Graham points to the apparent impetus toward a modernity obsessed with "progress" which is implicit in Calvin's thought. "For Calvin the church could never be a cell in society whose influence was inward and merely spiritual." Instead, it would, "wielding the Word of God,.. . transform [society] for the betterment of the human condition and for the greater glory of God" (Constructive, 53).43 As Robert Kingdon ("Reformation a Revolution?") has argued persuasively, one of the primary marks of Calvinism's "revolutionary" character was its determined attack on the Roman church hierarchy, particularly in Geneva. Whereas preCalvin Geneva had been "part of an episcopal principality"—the Roman church clergy being the primary "ruling class" of pre-Reformation Europe—under Calvin's tutelage Geneva "unleashed an anti-clerical revolution" (206-7). Kingdon thus documents the Genevan city Council's incremental but deliberate "seizing" of "powers that had heretofore been held by the episcopal government as part of its sovereign prerogatives" until at last "nothing remained for the bishop" (211). Indeed, Roman catholic theology was "brutally rejected and a new variety of protestant theology was created to take its place" (220). As a result, Kingdon concludes, "the changes in Geneva between 1526 and 1559 constitute a genuine revolution" (219). During this time there were "fundamental changes" in political organization, in social structure, in the control of economic goods, and, underlying them all, in "the predominant myth of social order" (22o).44 A number of scholars have noted the dangers of oversimplification in describing the progressivist and modernist implications of Calvin's notion of providence, however. Harro Hopfl, for example, is quick to caution against the simple discovery of such implications: There is no doubt. . . that Calvin attributed a transformative power to the Gospel, and more particularly to its agents, and that he expected such transformation to bear visible fruit in the lives of men. What is in doubt is the propriety of calling this "the regeneration of society" or "the creation of a new order" and of seeing it as a cumulative process building up to a climax in the last days. For the latter implies an openendedness in the transformations and a progressive triumph of righteousness in the world, and this is not at all what Calvin imagined. There is nothing whatever

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in his works to suggest that the church would not always be a beleaguered and persecuted minority until a dramatic and sudden termination of its sufferings in the last days. (194)

Hopfi puts his finger on a crucial dimension of Calvin's notion of providence here, one which I shall explore more fully in chapter 6. Yet even in the face of this important insight one is hard-pressed to deny completely the progressivist implications of Calvin's notion, not to mention his own apparent determination to draw them out and put them into practice.45 Indeed, even Calvin's view of "common grace" tends to reinforce his progressivist impulses. For part of the wonder of God's providence is the extent to which it works even by way of the non-Christian, occasionally pagan, world. For example, Calvin devotes an extended discussion in book 2 of his Institutes to developing among Christian believers an appreciation for the truth about God's created order wherever it may be found. Regarding pagan science, Calvin asserts that "if we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God" (2.2.15, 2 73~74)- Inventions and discoveries that arise out of such science are thus "rightly counted among natural gifts" and should be appreciated as such by Christian believers (2.2.14, 273> an(i 2.2.15—16, 273—75).46 At base, as Tonkin asserts, "Calvin never tired of insisting that the ultimate purpose of Creation, as of all the works of God, was the showing forth of his glory. Every created thing, every living creature, every human being, whether destined for salvation or perdition, lives to manifest that glory" (144-45). And salvation history is the long, deliberate story of God's saving, restoring, and re-creating grace. If history is the story of God's progressive and deliberate restoration of all created order, even through nonbelievers, and if believers themselves have been liberated from all humanly devised traditions and customs to be fully God's instruments for historical redemption and change, then the potentially "revolutionary" implications of Christian freedom's third part become clearly manifest. By forcefully drawing out these implications, Michael Walzer, Eric Voegelin, and David Little emerge as perhaps the most persuasive (or at least the most conspicuous) proponents of the idea of "revolutionary" Calvinism, though Little appears to display a bit more openness to the nuances of Calvin's thought here. Let us examine Walzer's argument first. For Walzer, Calvinist puritanism "was the earliest form of political radicalism" (vii). Calvin himself, then, was not "a theologian or a philosopher but an ideologist." As ideology, the power of his thought lay in its capacity "to activate its adherents and to change the world" (27). From early specimens of Calvinist political practice, Walzer can see that reform came to mean "transformations of the sort associated today with revolution" (n). For Walzer, such connotations of Calvinist politics are logical and ineluctable. Beginning with the individual believer, or "saint," Walzer finds Calvin developing a new Christian psychology. The Christian believer is no longer a patient and largely passive member of society; he is now a divine instrument. As such, he poses as a manifest and prototypal agent of God's righteous judgment on worldly institutions and practices. Saints were thus "oppositional men," their primary task

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being "the destruction of traditional order." Hence, they were without hesitation transformational, political beings, beings whose politics was that "of wreckers, architects, and builders" (3). Furthermore, the Calvinist saint is "an extraordinarily bold, inventive, and ruthless politician," one who has " 'great works' to perform," great works which have "great enemies" (vii). The Calvinist notion or conscience thus "gave to war and to politics... a new sense of method and [historical] purpose" (13). More to the point, through Calvin's "theology antitheological" (24), he demanded that "politics be bent to serve a religious purpose" (26). Whereas secular political order "could only repress nature," Calvinist religion (or, perhaps, ideology) "could transform it" (47). Hence, "[t]he struggle for a new human community, replacing the lost Eden, was made a matter of concrete political activity" (28). Calvin thereby inspired "a tightly disciplined group" of saints, as the "supreme example of the new ideology's organizing power" (53-54). Demanding of his followers "wholehearted participation" in the transformational activity, he called upon "every saint... to do his share for the holy cause" (28-29). As a result, Christian fellowship "required the sacrifice of all familial ties" (48). Not surprisingly, Walzer concludes that such a perverse psychology of "Calvinist saintliness [has] scarred us all" (vii). Walzer's characterization of Calvinism as the first modern ideology clearly has at least a superficial basis in fact. Calvinist revolutionaries were extraordinarily committed. The renowned intellectual historian Eric Voegelin (a strange bedfellow with Walzer, to be sure) reaches a similar conclusion. Categorizing Calvinist puritans as early and paradigmatic examples of "Gnostic" revolutionaries, Voegelin points to Calvin himself as a key source for modern gnosticism. Culminating in totalitarianism, the "existential rule of Gnostic activists," and thus the "end of progressive civilization," gnosticism for Voegelin is simply that "great modern enterprise of salvation through world-immanent action." The perversity of gnosticism is thus the ineluctable gnostic murder. Losing oneself in "world-immanent action" commits one to "sacrifice God to civilization" (New Science, 131-32). What Voegelin means is that modern ideological movements both assume an unquestionable truth and organize to actualize that truth in concrete social structures. Their perversity lies in their denial both of the mystery of divine transcendence and of the scope and ground of human limitations. Standing visibly behind the puritan revolutionaries, according to Voegelin, was Calvin, whose Institutes provided for his holy warriors a "Gnostic koran." Intending through his Institutes to offer both "a guide to the right reading of Scripture [and] an authentic formulation of truth that would make recourse to earlier literature unnecessary," Calvin, says Voegelin, seeks to "break with the intellectual tradition of mankind because he lives in the faith that a new truth and a new world begin with him" (138-39). Following Calvin's lead, and his "Gnostic koran," puritan revolutionaries used Calvin's "codification of the truth" as the "spiritual and intellectual nourishment of the faithful" (140). As a result of his unquestioning obedience, the Calvinist saint becomes a "Gnostic who will not leave the transfiguration of the world to the grace of God beyond history but will do the work of God himself, right here and now, in history" (147).

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I cannot help but find the characterizations of both Walzer and Voegelin to be simplistic and far-fetched.47 Within Calvin's mind clearly rests a more moderate ambition and a more profoundly Christian humility, as we have seen already, and I shall attempt to draw these out even further in chapter 6. Moreover, as Carlos Eire has perceptively pointed out, to make Calvinism "no more than a political party" (307), which both Walzer and Voegelin appear in the end to do, is to engage in just the kind of ideological reductionism their characterizations of Calvin purport to discredit. Definitions of Calvinism that fail to take Calvin's full theology of the grace of divine sovereignty into account tend thereby to miss the point. Nevertheless, one can hardly deny the revolutionary implications that can flow from a doctrine of providential restoration, especially when this doctrine is ripped from its footing in God's sovereign mercy and grace. Graham, for example, who sees Calvin as "constructive" but no less a revolutionary, has no trouble seeing important parallels between the Huguenot revolt in sixteenth-century France and the French Revolution two centuries later. Indeed, Graham is struck by the similarities in revolutionary political outlook between Calvin and his latter-day Genevan compatriot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Constructive, 22—24). Although, as DeGruchy (3) has summed up, Walzer's thesis (and Voegelin's, too, we can assume) "is undoubtedly open to criticism," nevertheless, "there is no denying that Calvinism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries contributed significantly to social movements that managed to turn a theology of evangelical salvation into a program of political transformation."48 For David Little, who appears to work harder at reading Calvin empathetically than either Walzer or Voegelin, the "unstable combination" of "two essentially incompatible images of the relation between church and state" worked to produce "a peculiarly destabilizing and renovating effect on political and religious life" wherever Calvinism went. The two images result from "the fact that Calvin both disassociates and interconnects the two tables of the Decalogue." One image is thus "uniformist [and] establishmentarian," according to which "the state by means of coercion enforces, at least externally, true piety and worship as well as civil righteousness." The other image "moves in the opposite direction." This image "differentiates true piety and worship—'things of the spirit,' of the inner life— from social behavior and civic virtue." It thereby places "the spiritual order . . . beyond the reach" of the civil order ("Reformed Faith," 9-11).49 According to Little, the hardly surprising result of such conflicted thinking was the revolutionary impetus found both in France and in Scotland. John Knox, "[i]n the name of the freedom of Christian conscience . . . endeavored to reform Scotland along the lines of Calvin's Genevan ['establishmentarian'] ideal." In Knox's thought, says Little, "as in the thought of some other Calvinists. . . the assault upon idolatry became the foundation for political resistance and reform" ("Reformed Faith," n). Hence, for Calvin, "a 'new order'—a new command and a new structure—not only is possible, but already is making its mark on the world" (Religion, 37).50 What Little sees as "essentially incompatible images" are, I hope to show in chapter 6, not only "compatible" but: even necessary and inevitable if one is to follow Scripture faithfully, as Calvin tries to do. Indeed, the two "images" are really only two dynamic dimensions of one Christian vision.

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Graham ends up presenting, on the whole, a comparable analysis of Calvin's political thought in his The Constructive Revolutionary. Graham (Constructive, 185) points to a "tension" in Calvin between his double predestinarianism and his preaching of human "mastership over nature, politics and history." On the one hand, Graham argues, Calvin sees human beings as involuntarily caught up in God's salvation plan. Yet on the other hand, and because of their predicament, they sense the acute pull of personal responsibility and accountability to the God who lovingly captures them. Calvin's sermons can thus "remind us in many ways of revolutionary preaching in any age." They address themselves to "this world" and to "the necessity of serving God here." "They cry scorn against all injustice," of whatever kind. And they are "stern, dogmatic, and occasionally self-righteous" (19). Indeed, says Graham, in its deterministic yet revolutionary impetus Calvinism anticipates Marxism. Atheistic, socialistic Marxism "flies in the face of most Western revolutionary thinking since the Reformation," yet in Marxism's self-portrayed determination "to be a future-oriented revolutionary movement dedicated to the smashing of all the unhealthy traditions of the past," it is not difficult to discern that Calvin "expressed clearly enough this same tendency" (Constructive, 209). According to Graham, then, the "tension" Calvin develops between predestination and human freedom is ultimately unresolved, and, by implication, unresolvable. It did help to "create a great number of spiritual heroes—witness the bravery of Pilgrims and Puritans.. . —[heroes who] knew themselves predestined to give man a new beginning." Yet, "when the heroics were over and it was time to get with the task of shaping the future, the Calvinist found himself confronted by a tyrant God, not a heavenly Father." Indeed, if the Calvinist "could not be free spiritually, how could he be free to create human community" (Constructive, 185)? Graham's point is well taken. There is clearly in Calvin's predestinarian thinking an impetus to social revolution. If God through Christ is truly restoring and re-creating, his world, and human beings are his primary instruments, then any acutely sensitive human being, attentively attuned to God's Word and to God's will, could easily envision himself to be a revolutionary instrument in God's hands. Yet we have already worked hard (in chapters i to 4) to show that the tension of which Graham speaks can be both an energizing and a humbling tension. Although Graham is no doubt right to portray many Calvinist revolutionaries as more destructive than creative, he is wrong to suggest that this imbalance results from the unresolved tension. Rather, because the tension is indeed unresolved, and yes, unresolvable, Calvinist destructiveness is more likely the result of that universal human determination (of which Calvin himself was very much aware) to be free of such tensions, to be, as it were, either completely controlled by God and therefore somehow personally irresponsible, on the one hand, or completely liberated from any transcendent standards, thereby exercising only one's own criteria of judgment, on the other. Yet Calvin repeatedly denies that Christian freedom entails either a liberation from God's expectations and standards or a liberation from one's own personal responsibility to attend to those expectations and standards.51 Rather, Christian freedom means, in a sense, living within the tension between sin and grace, between revealed providence and hidden providence, be-

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tween individual and society, between action and judgment, and between worldly change and Christ's eternal rest.52 Hancock is, of course, another who finds Calvin unleashing a "driven" believer. As we have already noted, in Hancock's case the culprit is Calvin's emphasis on the sovereignty and providence of God discernible only as power. For Hancock, Calvin holds up no basis for human judgment other than the power of God. Human beings have no discernible purpose other than to act out God's plan within history. They are neither inclined nor equipped to deliberate on the right and the just but only to heighten their consciousness of God's power. "There is no need to wonder about what God is when it is obvious what he does" (Foundations, 152). Hence, "Human activity is wonderfully increased when it is freed from the encumbrance of human purposes. Precisely because man can be nothing, there is no limit to what he can do" (Foundations, 109). As a political force, Calvinism thus has tremendous potential. Because "God's agents do not claim to comprehend the whole," because "they claim only that they advance the order that God wills," then inevitably "they are representatives not of God's goodness but of his power" (Foundations, 80). As a result, what appears as a practical contradiction between what must be and what ought to be is overcome theoretically by Calvin's confidence that what must be, ought to be, or that what ought to be, will be—not by any human choice, but by God's power. The contradiction is overcome practically when men are called, that is, empowered, to be God's agents. For such men action becomes its own argument. (Foundations, 78)

And therefore, "God's glory exhibits itself in history without any respect to human authority. The meaning of history is the laying low of human authority; this is accomplished by humans empowered by God" (Foundations, 81), The peculiarly unsettling aspect here is that, as Hancock puts it, "Order is not a perfected condition of intelligible being but a consciousness of perpetual becoming. The active and fluid nergy of the spirit is not merely the agent of the process of restoration or order; it is the basis of order itself; for order is a process" (Foundations, 161). The implications of Hancock's argument, as we have already seen, are clear. Yes, to a large extent, the Calvinist believer's sense of destiny and place drives him to conquer and transform his world. And, even more profoundly, such psychic mien may drive him to abandon himself to pure action, with revolutionary action quite possibly serving as an outlet for this transformative purpose. But there is plainly more to Calvin's thinking here. Although I have taken steps to address the "activist" account of Calvin's thought in chapter 4, the need to address and explore the "revolutionary" implications of Hancock's argument more fully (not to mention the arguments of Walzer, Voegelin, Little, and others) requires that we inspect that other, more conservative, dimension to Christian freedom's third part. For it turns out that in Calvin's mind God's power, God's purposes, and God's plan are also revealed by and within existing worldly structures and institutions.

6 HISTORICAL PEDAGOGY

hen combined with a strong identification by believers of God's providential W intention and design, Calvin's third part of Christian freedom places those believers in an "indifferent" pose toward certain cultural "outward" things, thereby implying the possibility of real historical progress and even revolutionary change. On the other hand, however, this third part—freedom from the adiaphora—also, and as important, reminds believers of the indeterminacy, the ambiguity, even the apparent "contingency" (contingentia) (1.16.9, 2I°) °f God's providence. It reminds them that history unfolds not as their story but as God's story. And God's specific purposes and directions are not always manifest. The other side of freedom as indifference to cultural forms, therefore, tells believers that any particular culture or tradition, far from being idiosyncratic, signifies a clear and potentially crucial stage in God's unfolding providential design. As much as Christian freedom emancipates believers from their cultural, historical contexts, it grounds them even more firmly in the workings of God by means of such contexts. The other side of providence as change and transformation, then, is providence as the force behind the historical and developed institutional life in which human beings find themselves. Clearly God is active in history, for Calvin. Yet he is active not only in possible future restoration and change but also in past institutional hedges, restraints, and guides. His providential pedagogy commands as much (if not more!) attention as his providential "ideology": What he is immediately teaching becomes as critical as where he is ultimately leading. This equally significant but distinct dimension to Calvin's doctrine of providence grounds itself in another kind of Christian humility. Certainly believers ought humbly to await God's will and then follow with confidence his revealed 131

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plan, especially when that plan calls for historical change. Christian freedom does indeed detach human beings from worldly institutions and structures to lead them toward the reformation of self and condition that God envisions for them. Yet, Christian freedom also implies liberation from the fear that one is overly, problematically, embedded in certain institutional structures and thus must assert one's independence on grounds of principle. Christian believers understand that God may be looking out for them in spite of themselves, by enclosing them and their brothers within certain institutional structures. The Christian believer is thus free both to change such structures through God's inspiration and to accept such structures as signs of God's care and love. Christian humility can mean both a raucous charge into the fray, riding the Lord's will, and a quiet acceptance of one's place and time in recognition of one's deep ignorance of the particular details of God's plan. Ultimately, Christian freedom's indifference can imply both cool scepticism and warm acceptance of one's historical circumstances.

Providence as God's Personal, though Puzzling, Care Although Christian believers should indeed, on occasion "declare [their freedom] before men," they ought not to do so, as we have seen already, in a way that "offends weak brothers." The point here, says Calvin, is that the freedom of believers "consists as much in abstaining as in using" the indifferent things of the world. Because "the conscience . . . is now set free," because, that is, one's destiny is not tied up with a particular stance toward such things, because "it makes no difference in God's sight whether they eat meat or eggs," and so on, they can use or abstain "with a free conscience." Consequently, the assertion of one's freedom must be accompanied by "the greatest caution." The obvious limitation of such Christian freedom is that it not cause believers to "abandon the care of the weak, whom the Lord has so strongly commended to us" (3.19.10, 842). The obverse of freedom as cultural dissociation, then, is that believers ought not rashly to undermine those cultural institutions that in their own way express God's providential love and care, both to themselves and to their "weaker" brethren. The important point about God's providence here is not only that it is real, restorative, and redemptive but that the details of it are obscure, hidden, even secret. God rules history, but all the manifest and innumerable details of that rule are for him alone to know. Before believers recklessly sever themselves from established patterns of life, they ought first to consider the possibility that such patterns mysteriously serve God's salvation plan.1 After all, believers' ignorance of the precise unfolding and circumstances of God's providence is both deep and profound. We have already noted Calvin's common use of the adjectives "secret" and "hidden" to describe both God's providence (e.g., 1.16.9, 209) and his predestination, not to mention his "judgment."2 Not only are the details of God's predestined salvation plan ultimately hidden from human view, so are the details of his specific provision of providential care. The particular means by which God nourishes and sustains believers are therefore not always clearly visible to them. Should the obscurity of God's providence sur-

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prise believers? Not at all, Calvin affirms. Given what Scripture plainly teaches about both human experience and divine reality, believers ought to expect the unfolding of God's providential care to be both hazy and, in the end, arresting. How could it be otherwise? For believers to anticipate God's action in the world would be an implicit claim to forsee the unforseeable, to have achieved the transcendent vision which is in reality available to God alone. Perhaps more to the point, Calvin understands God on occasion intentionally to conceal his salvation tactics to keep believers humble and attentive to his leading. The mystery of providence thereby owes itself to God's hiding of the details of his work from human beings as well as to the very limited vision human beings have in the world, not only because of their status as creatures but also because of the blinding effects of their own sin. God does of course reveal much of himself to his creatures. In Scripture, in the life of Jesus, in the still faintly discernible Creation order, and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God provides both rules for life and glimpses of glory. Yet he also, necessarily and for his own good purposes, hides much of himself from them as well. Indeed, because of both the great chasm separating Creator and creature, and the obstinacy of the rebellious and hardhearted creatures themselves, God must often go to great lengths to get through to humankind. Not only are human beings deficient in their spiritual senses, they are stubbornly determined not to use what sense capacity they do have.3 To begin, God surely does withhold much of himself and his purposes from humankind. As I noted in chapter 5 (in this volume), Calvin is often pointing out in his Commentaries the extent to which God apparently conceals himself and his purposes, and the confusion and anxiety such concealment understandably brings to human believers.4 In fact, in his primary discussion of providence in book i of the Institutes, Calvin acknowledges that from the human perspective the historical unfolding of God's providence appears "fortuitous" (fortuita). While the Christian believer can entertain no notion of chance or fortune (fortuna), he must acknowledge that "the order [ordo], reason [ratio], end [finis], and necessity [necessitas] of those things which happen for the most part lie hidden [plurimum latet] in God's purpose [in Dei consiJio]." As a result, the specific aims of God's providence can never be comprehended or even fully "apprehended" by human beings (1.16.9, 208). Such inscrutability need not imply an ectopia of events, and to the Christian believer it will not so insinuate. For Calvin is quite certain that God's selfconcealment of the great number of details of his providence is not only intentional on his part but necessary and helpful for human beings.5 The discussion Calvin devotes to the doctrine of election in book 3 of his Institutes is instructive on this pedagogical dimension to the mysterious nature of God's providence. It is no accident that the prospect of God's election of only some human beings to eternal life, and that on criteria independent of "merit," presents a "baffling question" to many, says Calvin. It is also no accident (as already noted) that to inquire persistently into this question, to attempt thereby to "penetrate the sacred precincts of divine wisdom [in dwinae sapientiae adyta penetrare]" in a futile attempt to "satisfy [one's] curiosity" will be to "enter a labyrinth [labyrinthum] from which [one] can find no exit" (3.21.1, 921-23). Indeed, says Calvin elsewhere, "if anyone will seek to know more than what God has

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revealed, he shall be overwhelmed with the immeasurable brightness of his inaccessible light" (Comm. Rom. 11:34 i447l)- Human impertinence "unrestrainedly [impune] to search out things that the Lord has willed to be hid in himself [seipso abscondita], and to unfold from eternity itself [ipsa aeternitate evolvat] the sublimest wisdom" is, quite simply, "not right [aequum]" (3.21.1, 923). In fact, Calvin says later, "it is very wicked" (3-23.2, g4g).6 For human beings to claim either cognitive or moral equality with God would be to assert the worst kind of pride. Not surprisingly, then, God condemns at the very fountainhead of human experience such perverse and inequitable self-assertion. The root cause of human pride, after all, is the human "desire to know more than is right, and more than God allows" (Comm. Gen. 3:5 [1:151]). For Adam and through him for all human beings, Calvin writes, it somehow "seems a small thing" to have been made "in the likeness of God . .. unless equality [with God] be added" (Comm. Gen. 3:6 [i: 155] [emphasis in the original]). The later Tower of Babel account thus makes crystal clear that "everyone who trangresses his prescribed bounds makes a direct attack upon God" (Comm. Gen. n:i [1:324]).7 God withholds full knowledge of himself because "he would have us revere" him, so that by way of our human lack of understanding "he should fill us with wonder." His Word therefore sets before human beings only those "secrets of his will that he has decided to reveal to us." And what things God has decided to reveal he does so only "in so far as he foresaw that they would concern us and benefit us" (3.21.1, 923 [emphasis added]).8 As far as the doctrine of election is concerned, then, Calvin finds Scripture teaching that God withholds the details of his election from human beings for his own reasons. Yet for anyone who will give God the benefit of the doubt, the beneficence of his concealment is plain enough. For without the mystery of election, "We shall never be clearly persuaded, as we ought to be, that our salvation flows from the well-spring of God's free mercy." It is only through human ignorance of God's particular choices that human beings can come to appreciate their undeservedness in the face of God's grace. If they thought that they could discern a pattern to God's election, they would inevitably conclude that election is based on some sort of "reward" or compensation. Yet only when "the salvation of a remnant of the people is ascribed to the election of grace" will human beings "acknowledge [that] God of his mere good pleasure preserves whom he will." Of course, "he pays no reward, since he can owe none" (3.21.1, 923). Ultimately, as Bavinck expresses it, for Calvin, "God wants us to adore, not to comprehend, the majesty of his wisdom" (450). To propose God's will as the final arbiter is, as we have seen, a sticking point for many.9 Yet Calvin backs off not one whit. By what right, he asserts, do "[fjoolish men contend with God . . . as though they held him liable to their accusations?" God's will is, "and rightly ought to be, the cause of all things that are." If instead God's will has some prior "cause," then "something must precede it, to which it is, as it were, bound." Yet such speculative projection "is an abomination [ne/as] to imagine."10 God's will must be "the highest rule of righteousness," the final end or cause, because "if you proceed further to ask why he so willed," then "you are seeking something greater arid higher than God's will, which cannot be found" (3.23.2, 949). To assert the accountability of God's will

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to some superior cause is in the end to assert a superior God, for Calvin an absurd nonsequitur. At the same time, contrary to Hancock's assertion, Calvin does not, he says, "advocate the fiction of 'absolute might.' " Calvin envisions "no lawless god who is a law unto himself." To describe God's will as unaccountable is not to portray such will as either insouciant about or unattached to its own creation scheme or plan. For God reveals himself in Scripture as both free and loving, as both emancipated from human representations of him and bound in love to those who attempt so perversely to represent him. God is love, in other words (i John 4:8), and if human beings require "evidence" or even "proof" of that divine character and essence, they need only contemplate Christ: "[W]henever we look upon him, he fully confirms to us the truth that God is love" (Comm. i John 4:9 [239]).u More to the point, if "the will of God is not only free of all fault but is the highest rule of perfection, and even the law of all laws," then human beings can hardly hold God "liable to render an account." Indeed, how can human beings even claim to be "competent judges [able] to pronounce judgment in this cause according to our own understanding?" Will not "God . . . be the victor whenever he is judged by mortal man" (3.23.2, 950)?12 The chasm between divine and human reality places before human beings an impasse which only God, through Christ and the Spirit, can bridge (e.g., Comm. Rom. 11:34 [446]). Hence, "there cannot be greater folly than to make our own judgment the measure of God's works" (Comm. Ps. 147:4-5 [5:294]).13 If believers only "ponder who God is" (3.23.4, 951), they will cease trying to "separate the justice of God from his ruling power" (Ccdumniae nebulonis. . ., reply to art. i). 14 "For how could he who is the judge of the earth allow any iniquity?" The point is this: "If the execution of judgment properly belongs to God's nature, then by nature he loves righteousness." To envision a supreme judge, believers know through the grace of faith, is to behold a supreme justice; without justice the act of judging loses its meaning. And although God does not always reveal the precise tenor of his judgments, he does reveal through the eyes of faith that he is a righteous judge. Simple human modesty thereby enjoins believers to acknowledge, as the Apostle Paul shows clearly, "that the reason of divine righteousness [iustitiae divinae rationem] is higher than man's standard [humano modo] can measure, or even man's slender wit [ingenii humani tenuitate] can comprehend" (3.23.4, 951-52).15 In fact, the mystery of God's providence is so far removed from human comprehension that God must go to incredible lengths to make himself understood. This is so not only because of the chasm between Creator and creature but, most significantly for Calvin, because of the general human stubbornness and determination not to listen when God speaks. Calvin elaborates quite thoroughly on this point in his sermon on Job 38:1-4. There he argues the necessity of the Lord's appearance to Job "in a whirlwind" from the Lord's need to get Job's full attention. Because, from the human perspective, "God dwells as it were in an obscure cloud," and thus when human beings wish to contemplate God "our senses are dazzled," it appropriately serves God's purposes to grab human attention through extraordinary natural phenomena. Yet there is also another divine motivation at work here: "[N]amely, because of our rebellion God must show himself in terror" (289).

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The remarkable thing about the Lord's coming to Job in a whirlwind, then, was that Job was generally considered, and indeed was, "a holy man who had applied all his study honoring God." If Job "needed to be thus checked, what about us?" When believers look at Job, in the "mirror of angelic holiness," they realize that "we are as carnal as could be." Their "vanities so carry us away that we are as it were drunk." Is there not a need "that our Lord shall cause us to experience his majesty, and that we should be consciously affected by it" (Serm. ]ob 38:1-4 [290] [emphasis added]). Indeed, "when the Scripture shows us who we are, it is to empty us of all pride." Although human beings tend to "prize themselves," God sees in them "only odor and stink." In examining themselves, human beings, "from the greatest to the least," should thus learn "to humble ourselves, knowing that all our glories are only confusion and shame before God" (Serm. Job 38:1-4 [293-94]). God must therefore jolt human beings, even believers, into attentive posture.16 Job's whirlwind and Moses's burning bush are not the only ways God brings human beings up short, of course. As the story of Job also discloses, God often shatters human obstinacy through the medium of personal hardship and loss. What better way for God to penetrate human stubbornness, Calvin believes, when "he sees some hardness in us," than to demand human attention through unexpected and onerous burdens. Calvin is not suggesting that God idiosyncratically sends afflictions, but he is saying that for a while he "lets us run like escaped horses," until human beings fall of their own pretense and pride. The point, however, is that when God eventually "awakens us," when through personal hardship he "thunders with his voice," that, says Calvin, "is a privilege which he does not give to everyone" (Serm. Job 38:1-4 [293]).17 In his many letters Calvin finds numerous occasions to confirm this truth in his own and in his fellow believers' daily experience. To the Admiral de Coligny, taken prisoner by the Spanish in August 1557, Calvin is blunt: "fl]n sending you this affliction [God] has intended to set you apart, as it were, that you might listen to him more attentively." How difficult it is, Calvin points out, "in the midst of worldly honors, riches, and power to lend to him an attentive ear, because these things draw our attention too much in different directions." Personal deprivation thus promises a new insight into God's mercy and grace. Moreover, in the midst of such hardship, believers can discover the special grace of being singled out. God uses "such means" to "bring under his wings those whom he has chosen for his own." Hardship presents a unique opportunity "of making progress in [God's] school," as though God had "wished to whisper secretly [and personally] in your ear" (Letter DXII of 4 September 1558 [6:466]). Writing to Madame de Coligny the same day, Calvin elaborates on the point: "God has sent you this affliction only for your good and your spiritual welfare." When God "withdraws us from the allurements and delights of the world, which deceive us," he does so to "let us taste his bounty and feel his aid." Adversity confronts the victim with "our supreme good," which is "to cleave to him." In this instance, as he does so often, Calvin points to King David, who confesses "that when he was at his ease he had more confidence in himself than was lawful," to the point where he was "no longer thinking that: all his virtue was to lean upon

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God." David thus confesses in his distress that he "had need of such a medicine" as the hardship he experienced provided him (Letter DXIII [6:468] [emphasis added]).18 In his later sermons on 2 Samuel, Calvin returns to this theme when he summarizes King David's confrontation with the prophet Nathan. For the longterm spiritual health not only of David but of all believers, Calvin here insists, "there is nothing better than when God sends us messengers of his wrath" (Serm. 2 Sam. 12:1-6 [522]). To be called to account is to be called back to one's true home so that one might rest anew in the arms of one's fully sufficient homemaker. It is precisely in adversity, therefore, adversity which "is so hateful to us," that human beings can "perceive the justice of God." For his justice "never shines so brightly as when he punishes our sins" (Comm. Is. 5:15 [1:180]). Hence, God must often "afflict [affligendi] his people to test their patience [ut ipsorum patientam exploret] and to instruct them to obedience [ad obedientiam eos erudiat]." In this way, he can "make manifest and clear the graces which he has conferred upon the saints [as] unmistakable proofs [documentis testotas]," so that these graces will to stubborn and rebellious hearts "not lie idle [otiosae fateant] or hidden within [intus]" (3.8.4, 7o4).19 The full implications of the hiddenness of God's providence thus reveals not only his sovereignty and majesty but also his determination through ways often unexpected and wearisome to hem in and care for his creatures. The providence of God in carefully setting before each human being and each human society what each needs at that moment and what each can bear thus takes on much more significance than the potentially sterile and abstract dimension of Calvin's doctrine of providence manifest in Calvin's description of God's double predestination. Predestination can indeed energize believers to live out what they understand to be God's call in history, but to do so almost headlong. On the other hand, providence as nourishing care provided by and through existing institutions and circumstances (be they comfortable or uncomfortable) works to restrain fanatical manifestations of belief by reminding believers that God knows them better than they know themselves, and that he often hems them in by certain social, political, and cultural institutions, to restrain them for their own good. Indeed, as a number of commentators have pointed out, and as we have seen already, Calvin's apparent "fascination" (some would say "obsession") with predestination grows consistently, and concomitantly with his doctrine of providence, out of his doctrine of God's sovereignty. As Franfois Wendel has put it, "to recognize that Calvin taught double predestination, and underlined its dogmatic and practical interest, is not to say that this must be taken to be the very center of his teaching." In fact, says Wendel, "[h]is earliest writings do not contain any systematic statement of the problem, and although . . . he accorded a growing importance to it, he did so under the sway of ecclesiastical and pastoral preoccupations rather than in order to make it a main foundation of his theology" ("Justification," 161). Muller embodies this frame of reference as well, stating the point forthrightly: "Predestination stands, simply, as the guarantee of divine sovereignty in the work of salvation" (Christ and the Decree, 179). Muller goes on to show in Calvin an "ultimate separation of the doctrines of predestination and providence." Whereas the decree of predestination "has as its intention the salvation of the

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elect," the decree of providential care "does not have a primarily soteriological function" (Christ and the Decree, 19). Yet providence continues to serve as a kind of auxiliary to God's predestination decree, as we have seen. Through his providential care God elicits from the elect examples of his glory and grace. And both providence and predestination answer to God's sovereignty over his created order.20 Thus, even with all of Calvin's apparent emphasis on predestination later in his career, we ought never to try to separate either this doctrine or that of God's providence from Calvin's emphasis on God's eternal, and sovereign, mercy and grace. After all, for God to predestine any human being to salvation is, in Calvin's mind, to show incredible generosity. Although people often characterize Calvin as though "he knew of nothing else to preach but the decree of predestination," says Bavinck, "[fjhe truth is that no preacher of the Gospel has ever surpassed Calvin in the free, generous proclamation of the grace and love of God" (452). Indeed, says Calvin, predestination is "the true fountain from which we must draw our knowledge of the divine mercy" (Comm. Eph. 1:4 [199]). Summarizes Harold Dekker, "As a preacher Calvin used the doctrine of divine sovereignty first of all as the balm of Gilead. Sovereignty in his sermons is not viewed in the abstract, or developed as a page in dogmatics. It is never dissociated from grace. In a sense sovereign grace is the theme of every sermon" (xxxiv). 21

The Grace of Tradition If God's mercy and love are the primary lessons, and primary foundations, of predestination, then believers must remember that through God's providence he sends not only individualized signals of care and concern, but also his law and the earthly helps discussed in chapter 2. God's providential care manifests itself in one's existing circumstances, as much as it does in one's anticipated circumstances. The institutional helps one experiences thus work not only within history but also through social and political contexts, even through custom and tradition, to encourage, support, and guide believers along their earthly journeys. As Calvin puts the point in his chapter "Providence" in Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, believers should "refer" the providence of God "to past as well as future time" (X.6 [167]). In sum, then, God's providence is just as real, and can be just as apparent, in the status quo as in any anticipated political or social change. Calvin opens his famed essay On Civil Government with just this point. Human beings, he says, are indeed under a twofold government (duplex regimen), one spiritual and one civil (the latter pertaining to "the establishment of civil justice and outward morality"), but it is essential, says Calvin, for believers to understand that the topic of civil government is not "by nature alien to the spiritual doctrine of faith which I have undertaken to discuss." Instead, "necessity compels me [to] join [coniwgi]" them fast together. For the trick, says Calvin is to avoid the twin evils present at each extreme. On the one side "insane and barbarous men furiously strive to overturn [the] divinely established order [ordinem . . . divinitus sancitum] . . . of civil govern-

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ment \politica administratione]." And on the other side, "the flatterers of princes, immoderately praising their power, do not hesitate to set them against the rule of God himself." Unless both these evils are checked, "purity of faith will perish" (4.20.1, 1485-86).22 Existing governmental structures, in other words, manifest clear divine ordination. The particular institutions one faces have arisen due to God's providential intention and act. Calvin thus goes on, as already noted in chapter 2 (in this volume), to argue the key function of civil government "is no less among men than that of bread, water, sun, and air" (4.20.3, 1488). Would any established government, therefore, to the extent it is able to accomplish its minimal tasks of maintaining civic peace and at least superficial harmony, be anything but a good gift of God? After all, Scripture plainly reveals that "the Lord has designed [civil government] to provide for the tranquility of the good and to restrain the waywardness of the wicked" (Comm. Rom. 13:3 [480]). Political institutions are a clear sign of God's providential care. Having foreseen human rebellion against his created order, God determined not to leave the human race "in a state of confusion," that they might "live after the manner of beasts." Instead, he provided "as it were . . . a building regularly formed, and divided into several compartments." Serving as mechanism to structure and confine human behavior, the building of political order—along with the compartments of civil institutions—provides a mode of living that is "well-arranged and duly ordered, [and as such] is peculiar to men." Such order the Apostle Peter calls "a human ordination" precisely because God designs it so fittingly for human habitation (Comm. i Pet. 2:13 [80]).23 In a very real sense, then, Calvin reports in his Romans commentary, "the safety of mankind is secured" by means of civil order. For "except the fury of the wicked be resisted, and the innocent be protected from their violence, all things would come to an entire confusion." Civil government thus appears to be "the only remedy by which mankind can be preserved from destruction." Civil government is more than a mere expedient to peace, of course. As demonstrated in chapters 2 and 3 (in this volume), such order serves spiritual and pedagogical purposes as well. Nevertheless, the mere "ground of utility," which Paul proposes in Romans 13:3, ought to carry believers a long way toward full appreciation of God's manifest providence in civil government. Even if such government is imperfect, perhaps even despotic, it cannot help but "assist in consolidating the society of men." For rulers "do never so far abuse their power, by harassing the good and innocent, that they do not retain in their tyranny some kind of just government" (Comm. Rom. 13:3 [480]).24 As clear manifestation of God's providential care, existing, established civil government deserves both obedience and respect. To resist or rebel against such government would be not only to "avow ourselves as the public enemies of the human race" (Comm. Rom. 13:3 [480]), but as well, and consequently, "to despise the providence of him who is the founder of civil power." Magistrates are indeed "constituted by God's ordination," which is the primary reason "why we ought to be subject" to them. As the Apostle Paul states explicitly, "it ought to be enough for us" that the particular governing authorities believers face "do rule" (Comm. Rom. 13:1 [478-79] [emphasis in the original]).

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In working through the subject of civil government, Paul points directly to God's loving providence by way of the "higher powers." He does this, says Calvin, primarily "to take away the frivolous curiosity of men." For Paul understands that stubborn human beings have an ingrained tendency "to inquire by what right they who rule have obtained their authority." More to the point, by declaring that "every soul" be subject to existing government, Paul "removes every exception, lest anyone should claim an immunity from the common duty of obedience" (Comm. Rom. 13:1 [478] [emphasis in the original]). Likewise the Apostle Peter exhorts believers to submit themselves "to every ordination of man" (New International Version: "to every authority instituted among men"). Not only is every person under government subject to that government, in other words, but every government is worthy of such obedience. "[O]bedience is due to all who rule, because they have been raised to that honor not by chance, but by God's providence" (Comm. i Pet. 2:13 [8o-8i]).25 Such language and public sentiment call into serious question any "revolutionary" implications in Calvin's notion of freedom. Indeed, it seems clear that Calvin tries continually to distance his teaching from any revolutionary ends. As far as political forms and political leaders go, Calvin asserts, Christian freedom buttresses as much as it undermines their authority. Opening his first edition of his Institutes, Calvin provides a "Prefatory Address to King Francis," a preface no doubt intended for all his readers and not simply for King Francis (given that Calvin retained the preface long after the death of this king in 1547), and one he kept virtually unchanged throughout his revisions of the rest of the work. In this preface, Calvin asserts clearly what his intentions are in composing and publishing his compendium, and they are not, as some charged, "to wrest the scepters from the hands of kings, to cast down all courts and judgments, to subvert all order and civil governments, to disrupt the peace and quiet of the people, to abolish all laws, to scatter all lordships and possessions—in short, to turn everything upside down!" If any of these things were true, Calvin states emphatically, "the whole world would rightly judge this doctrine and its authors worthy of a thousand fires and crosses" (Pref. i, 10). Instead, Calvin represents himself—not inaccurately, I believe—as one "from whom not one seditious word was ever heard," and as one "who do[es] not cease to pray for the full prosperity of [the king] and [his] kingdom" (Pref. 8, 30). Robert Kingdon's careful study of Calvinist Geneva's role in assisting the French Huguenot rebellions (Coming of Wars) is most instructive on this point of Calvin's sympathy for existing regimes. Kingdon documents the ways and means by which Geneva became during the 15603 a prime source of money and material for the Huguenot effort. According to Kingdon, Geneva produced a "tide of men and propaganda" (106), making it a "veritable arsenal of Calvinism" (124). Without doubt, Kingdon asserts, Geneva was "the fountainhead of the war's effort" (129). Under the circumstances, however (namely, Calvin's French protestant identity and thus his personal interest in the Huguenot cause, as well as the increasingly ugly oppression of Evangelical believers by the French church hierarchy), Calvin's resistance to the idea of an all-out Huguenot rebellion is notable. As Kingdon himself notes, for example, Calvin apparently expressed to the major plotters in

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the so-called Conspiracy of Amboise his "firmest opposition" to their plan (Coming of Wars, 69). Were there to be a movement against the Guise regents then ruling in the stead of the young Francis II, Calvin later testified he had told the conspirators, such a movement could and should only be led by the man "who ought to be chief of the Council of the King according to the laws of France," namely, Antoine de Bourbon, the King of Navarre. And there were in fact significant legal grounds to justify Navarre's leadership of the King's Council (68-69). No doubt Calvin's motives were not entirely pure in this case, as Navarre was a known friend of the evangelical cause. Nevertheless, Calvin's determination to discourage capricious and potentially anarchical attacks on the French polity is noteworthy for our purposes here. Indeed, as Kingdon recounts, and as we shall see again shortly, Calvin's opposition to specific riotous outbreaks was conspicuous and vehement.26 In sum, though, Calvin proclaims that existing regimes are no accident: Believers need to recognize God's hand in precisely those regimes. In his providence, God does not merely "permit" (permittit) particular institutions and structures to arise, he "commands" (sub Dei . . . imperio . . . esse) them (1.18.1, 229). Indeed, Calvin insists in another place, "[I]f we admit that God is invested with prescience, [that he] superintends and governs the world he has made, [and that he] does not overlook any part of it," then it must follow that "everything which takes place is done according to his will" (Comtn. Ps. 115:3 [4:345]).27 God's manifest will "may be mysterious" (abscondita note), but such occlusion ought not to keep believers from regarding it "with reverence," it being "the fountain of all justice and rectitude." Clearly its apparent fruits, such as existing historical circumstances, deserve "our supreme consideration" (Comm. Ps. 135:6 [5:175]).

Christian Freedom's "Conservatism" The second dimension of Calvin's doctrine of providence thereby points to a fundamental conservatism. As Brandt Boeke (58) puts the matter, Calvin's "political judgments" have "a conservative and decidedly anti-revolutionary stamp." Graham, who sides more with the "revolutionary" dimension to Calvin's thinking, nonetheless is also careful to point out this largely conservative dimension to Calvin's political thinking. Calvin "would have understood" many modern revolutionaries, says Graham. "Like him, they have little sentiment for the past or for people who stand in the way of the future. Like him, they speak longingly of justice and mercy...." Yet the biggest difference between Calvin and most modern revolutionaries is that "they want [their] goals reached at any price." As a result, the peculiar horrors of modern revolution "are lost on people who know no history but the personal history of their own maltreatment and the misery of the oppressed." Put alongside Robespierre, Lenin, even Cromwell, says Graham, "Calvin was here conservative." Although he "wanted to uproot evil and usher in a new age," he wanted to do so "without destroying society." Moreover, any new age should be "based on the old" (Constructive, 25-26).Z8 In regard to Kingdon's argument ("Reformation a Revolution?") about Calvin's revolutionary intent and impact, then, one must recall—as Kingdon himself

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notes—that the official end of Catholic power in Geneva came in May 1536, some months before Calvin even first set foot in the city. In this sense, Calvin was called as spiritual leader in Geneva less to tear down than to build up, less to overturn current social order than to establish it, to "fill the void" left by the previously prevailing Catholic hierarchy (214). 29 In his recent biography, Alister McGrath calls appropriate attention to this relationship of man and place by determining to show not only that "Calvin would shape" Geneva but, as important, that Calvin "[would] be shaped by" Geneva (79-80). Bouwsma also sees clearly the conservative streak in Calvin. Yet Bouwsma sees this streak as a manifestation of the "two Calvins" he outlines in his well-received biography. For Bouwsma, Calvin shows himself to be a person "full of paradoxes." Moreover, "no set of antitheses can adequately characterize" the intricacies of these paradoxes. One Calvin was "a philosopher, a rationalist and a schoolman . . . , a man of fixed principles, and a conservative." The other Calvin "was a rhetorician and humanist, a skeptical fideist. . . , flexible to the point of opportunism, and a revolutionary in spite of himself" (John Calvin, 230-31). In Bouwsma's hands, therefore, Calvin becomes almost a schizophrenic personality. For Bouwsma's argument ends up being that the two Calvins are largely selfcontradictory. Thus he can speak of Calvin's conservatism as a manifestation of personal anxieties about change. According to Bouwsma, Calvin was "unusually anxious; [he] clung to traditional certainties because he preferred the familiar dangers of the labyrinth to an abyss of doubt" (John Calvin, 69). Indeed, Calvin "dreaded change." Change was "a sign of God's displeasure." Bouwsma goes on to paint this one side of Calvin as fully within the Petrarchian (Renaissance humanist) mold such that "change . .. represented estrangement and loss: the loss of peace, but also the loss of continuity, community, and cultural context." Calvin thus had an "abhorrence of change" (John Calvin, 81). Without discounting or undermining Bouwsma's insightful portrayal of the tensions and apparent ambiguities in Calvin's thinking, a project which generally one ought to applaud, we must nevertheless question whether Bouwsma does not end up letting the tail of his "psychological" portrayal of Calvin wag the dog of Calvin's actual writings. The passages Bouwsma cites supporting his particular point about Calvin's dread of change, for example—his commentaries on Numbers 11:20 (4: 35) and John 17:12 (2:177)—seem to have been taken rather seriously out of context. In the first instance, Calvin appears merely to be stating the truism that change is unsettling and has consequences for public order. Here Bouwsma quotes only the line "almost any change is injurious," to support his point about Calvin's dread of change. In the second, even more egregious misquotation, Bouwsma substitutes "properly" for Calvin's adverb "commonly" (or "usually"—fere), in the phrase "we commonly startle at what is new and sudden." Bouwsma consequently now cites the phrase as follows: "we are properly 'terrified by almost anything new and sudden.' " But Calvin's point, once again, appears to be a truism: The human tendency is to fear change. Instead, Bouwsma paints Calvin as prescribing for believers a proper fear of change.50 Without questioning Bouwsma's credentials as a psychologist/historian, I do think his presentation of the two Calvins, as far as he asserts its grounding in

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Calvin's writings, can be readily called into question. Whatever may have been hidden away in Calvin's mind, I hope this presentation of Calvin's conception of freedom has shown this conception to be a fuller, more integrated, yet more thoroughly differentiated conception than Bouwsma apparently appreciates, one that flows quite logically not only from Calvin's published writings but also from his public life. Attempting to be faithful to Scripture, Calvin saw in God's providence both liberation from cultural context and an obligation to recognize the presence of God's will within that context. The conservative dimension to Calvin's doctrine of providence is thus real and, although superficially paradoxical, not at all incongruous with his theology as a whole. Attempting faithfulness to Scripture, Calvin simply desires politically minded believers to carry in their minds an appreciation of their very human temptations to identify their purposes with God's purposes rather than the reverse. God does rule and he often does so in surprisingly ordinary and "traditional" ways. Calvin promotes a Christian posture not so much conflicted as attentive—attentive to God's word in Scripture and to his constancy and activity within history. Most remarkable on this score is Calvin's continuous flow of letters cautioning believers against heedless and impious disruption of established institutions. Writing to Englishman William Cecil in May 1559, for example, Calvin responds to John Knox's inflammatory pamphlet against the government of women. As troublesome as the reign of a woman, in this case Queen Mary, might be, Calvin can think of a number of examples of women "raised up by the providence of God," such ascension "either because he willed . . . to condemn the supineness of men, or thus to show more distinctly his own glory." More to the point, says Calvin, "in my judgment it is not permitted to unsettle governments that have been set up by the peculiar providence of God" however they may appear to indignant but mortal eyes (Letter DXXXVIII [7:47]). In a later epistle to the Church of Paris (February 26, 1561), Calvin cautions French believers against thoughtless protestations of the impending reassembly of the Council of Trent: "[Y]ou would only give occasion for stirring up violent tumult without any useful results." When all is said and done, declares Calvin, "you will find that there is neither opening nor grounds for your interference, and that in this matter you will do well to fold your hands and sit still" (Letter DLXXXVI [7:i7i-72]).31 Perhaps most intriguing is Calvin's advice to M. de Soubise, governor of Lyon, a Reformed believer who found himself ousted from power by the terms of the Treaty of Amboise. Had Soubise been present at the proceedings that concluded the treaty, it would clearly have been his "duty ... to resist with all due liberty the evil they wished to accomplish." However, due in fact to no lack of diligence on his part, he was now confronted with a matter—hastily and imprudently put together though it was—nevertheless "concluded and done." Calvin's advice under these circumstances was unambiguous: "You have then to practise the doctrine of the holy Scriptures, which is, that if God takes away the sword from those he had girt with it, this change should make us give way and regulate our conduct accordingly." If the consequences of the treaty should be as destructive as it appears they will be, even then, writes Calvin, "since God is pleased to afflict us, let us stoop quietly to his will" (Letter DCXXXIX of 5 April 1563 [7:295-96]).32 In sum,

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as Calvin writes to the church in Paris in September 1557 (a church burdened with violent persecution), "[BJetter it were that we were all involved in ruin than that the gospel of God should be exposed to the reproach of arming men to sedition and tumult." God will ever, declares Calvin, "cause the ashes of his servants to fructify, but excesses and violence will bring them nothing but barrenness" (Letter CCCCLXXV [6:361]). Hancock would no doubt use the above excerpts as further evidence to complete his picture of an overly dogmatic and irrational Calvin, such as we have already seen. Arguing that because human beings could never understand God's purposes, Hancock concludes that for Calvin God had no justifiable purpose in what he did but only power. Hancock does recognize that such "sheer power" can manifest itself in impetus either to headlong revolutionary change or to mossbacked intransigence. Yet at base, for Hancock, Calvin intends "to eradicate the last impulse of human presumption, by unequivocally identifying order with power." The result, says Hancock? "To leave politics to God in this radical sense is to leave it to history. The tension that we have noticed within Calvin's thought between the authority of existing powers and the divine mission of politics, is fundamentally a dynamic tension within a single idea: the divine authority of the factual." Therefore, "Calvin attaches divine authority to presently visible powers not because of what they are but because of what God can do with them." Hancock thus treats Calvin's hesitancy to evaluate God's purposes as a stubborn refusal to follow the dictates of his own logic: "Calvin agrees with the nominalists that there is no cause above God's will, but he refuses to conclude from this fact that from a human point of view God's will is lawless or arbitrary" (Foundations, 159). Yet Hancock's summary of Calvin's doctrine of providence ends up being not so much wrong as incomplete. He appears to forget that for Calvin, the "human point of view" must in every case take a back seat to the divine point of view as revealed in Scripture. Hancock assumes that if the details of God's will are unintelligible to human beings, such will can only be perceived by these human beings as "lawless or arbitrary." Yet for Calvin God's revelation of himself in Scripture—in its broad outlines at least—is unmistakable, and the biblical selfportrait shows a God who is anything but arbitrary. Indeed, as Calvin forcefully proclaims, his law and purpose are made plain throughout Scripture, from his creation injunctions to Adam through his Mosaic covenant with Israel through his self-revelation in Christ to his inspiration of the Apostles.33 What Hancock appears to forget and what Calvin continually affirms is that the key part of Christian faith is taking God at his Word. As we have tried to uncover, then—taking Calvin at his own words—the "illogic" and even schizophrenia diagnosed by some unfairly disguise the coherence in Calvin's Christian understanding which he himself sought to reveal. For Calvin, God's providential care inevitably has both progressive and conservative dimensions. Moreover these two dimensions reinforce each other rather than conflict with each other. Aware of both, believers must stretch themselves a bit to discern the Lord's leading. Both human complacency with established order and human presumption about future potentialities arc ruled out. The two dimensions of providence can thus be read together as one message from God: "Be open to where I

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lead you; and thus to the possibility that you are presuming to lead yourself rather than trying to follow me." The point, for Calvin, is that God is gradually, deliberately, and doggedly bringing together his kingdom within history, to culminate beyond history. Because of this, believers must neither idolize nor demonize the world they now confront. As the Lord works his way in the world, believers need both to try to recognize his working in existing institutions and to listen for his call to address obvious injustice and sacrilege. Believers live on faith in a world still shot through with sin. As Hopfl points out, nothing in Calvin's works suggests that the church would ever be anything "but a beleaguered and persecuted minority" (194). Haroutunian makes the point, too, in describing Calvin's impatience with those who expected miraculous, revolutionary, and godly changes in their status at any moment. Instead Calvin counseled patience and the long-haul of faith. When Calvin contemplated those of his fellow believers who "languished and died in prison without any miracle to enable them to escape," he recognized that "these people lived, not by miracles, but by the word of God, by their faithfulness to Christ. What they had available was not the hope of physical escape, but the greater miracle of faithfulness and joy" (Haroutunian, 4i).34 Believers need to understand, as Calvin puts it, that "the Kingdom of Christ here is only beginning." Indeed, it is "excessive folly" to think otherwise (Comm. Is. 2:4 [1:102]). When the prophet Isaiah presents a description of the last days in Isaiah 2:4, Calvin notes that "the fulfillment of this prophecy,... in its full extent, must not be looked for on earth." Instead, "it is enough, if we experience the beginning, and if, being reconciled to God through Christ, we cultivate mutual friendship, and abstain from doing harm to anyone." In the meantime, of course, believers must understand that "God did not gather a Church . . . so as to be separate from others; but the good are always mixed with the bad." Moreover, the good themselves "have not yet reached the goal, and are widely distant from that perfection which is required from them" (Comm. Is. 2:4 [1:102]). Until the Kingdom of Christ arrives in its fullness, "everything must be said to be in a state of suspense." The present state of affairs is thus "only a shadow" of the full reality of Christ. Believers must "not fix their eyes on the present condition of things, ... but on the Redeemer" (Comm. Is. 2:2 [1:91]).35 Within the present time, peace and order thus end up being quite valuable, in both the short and the long term. They are not only a sign of God's providential care and an innate disposition of his created order and his created beings (Comm. Jer. 2:25 [1:121]) but a pointer to his coming Kingdom. Any institutional structure that brings these gifts ought thus to be gratefully welcomed. Once again, though, believers must understand that they are neither to resign themselves to a "fate" of some sort nor to presume to redesign for themselves a new and perfect order. Rather, they are to attend to God's word and to await God's providential unfolding, as they faithfully discharge their godly duties. They are, in short, to listen for the call of destiny.36 Although God's providence does not relieve human beings from responsibility for their actions, excuse them from "due prudence," or "exculpate" their "wickedness," it surely can serve to "put joyous trust toward God in our hearts" (1.17.3-

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ii, 214-24). In the face of oppressive political leaders and demeaning cultural conditions, for example, the believer can rest assured that God sees his suffering and will ultimately deliver him from such things. The believer's primary job: "first be mindful of our own misdeeds, which without doubt are chastised by such whips of the Lord." In this way, "humility will restrain our impatience" (4.20.29, 1516). The great gifts of believers confronting trials, therefore, include not only the gift of prophecy but also the gift of perseverance. Calvin points to the prophet Isaiah for palpable reminders of this lesson. "Heralds of God's judgment," prophets "threaten vengeance against the ungodly" as well as "endeavor... to bring as many as they can to some kind of repentance." God's judgment on Israel foretold in Isaiah 2:6, for example, thus "ought to yield abundant consolation to godly teachers." For often such teachers see themselves as "speaking to the deaf" and consequently "become faint, and are tempted to give up all exertion, and to say, 'What am I about? I am beating the air' " (Comm. Is. 2:6 [1:104]). When they do, they are "comforted" by the Gospel, and by its account both of God's lovingkindness and his eternal faithfulness. Hence, the prophet's words in Isaiah 40:1 "ought not to be limited to the captivity of Babylon." Instead, they have "a very extensive meaning." For in the doctrine of the Gospel "chiefly lies the power of 'comforting'," it being in truth called "good news" (Comm. Is., 40:1 [3:199])." Once again, we can look to Calvin's letters to find plentiful evidence of his view of the Christian witness as largely one of patience and of perseverance in the faith of God's providential promises. Living a Christian life ends up being as much about "waiting" for the Lord as it is about crossing swords for the Lord. Calvin's letters to Christian believers in France are his most poignant on this score. Faced with the most blatant persecution, and composed of his own fellow countrymen, the Reformed church in France elicited some of Calvin's most heartrending prose. And, almost without exception,38 Calvin counsels in these letters patient submission to God's will as manifest in his Gospel truth and in his historical providence, even to the point of martyrdom. In a letter of July 24, 1547, for example, he acknowledges that from recent setbacks to the Reformed cause in Germany the "carnal mind [I'opinion de la chair]" might very well conclude that God's "spiritual kingdom . . . is in danger." Yet to the eyes of faith such a conclusion is far from apparent. Christians must live in the "hope that [God] will provide for all, beyond what we can think." Believers therefore must resist the temptation to follow "hard-headed and stiff-necked rebels" who "by riotous courses [seek] to dissipate and abolish all order in the church" and instead to "continue steadfast," thereby "holding fast [to] the assurance of [God's] help." On guard against spiritual surrender, they should "seek rather to advance in the way of proficiency, . . . edifying one another . . . by your good life" so that "the wicked may be put to confusion" (Letter CCII [5:129-31]). Over twelve years later, in November 1559, Calvin writes in very similar vein. He reminds his brethren that "[i]t is no new thing for you to be like sheep in the jaws of the wolf." Yet although through their persecutions "Satan . . . with unbridled rage vents against them all his spite," believers know that "God . . . assists them" such that they "still do ... persevere in the confession of his name." Hence,

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believers "ought humbly to submit; as it is the will of God that his church be subjected to such conditions." Because believers know "by the Scriptures" that "tyrants can do nothing more against us than what our merciful Father permits them," they know as well that "he knows who we are, and will thus provide for the issue." And "in waiting for such an issue it is our duty to possess our souls in patience" (Letter DLII [7:82-85]). One of the most interesting and moving examples of Calvin's pastoral advice to suffering believers shines forth in a letter of September 1557 to a number of French women (of both the nobility and the peasantry) now imprisoned together for their faith in the dungeons of Chastelet. Here, Calvin points first to the way God "works in frail vessels" knowing as he does "how to display his stength in the infirmity of his followers." He then goes on to cite Joel 2:28-29 as full authority that God has "shed his spirit on all flesh" and thus "leaves neither sons nor daughters, men nor women, destitute of the gifts proper for maintaining his glory." But perhaps most important, he reminds them of "the courage and constancy of women at the death of our Lord Jesus Christ." For "when the apostles had forsaken him," the women "continued by him with marvelous constancy" (Letter CCCCLXXVI [6:364-65]).39

Summary In sum, the third part of Christian freedom contains "something loftier than freedom of ceremonies" (3.19.3, 835). The latter "is only a small part of [the liberty] which Christ has procured for us: for how small a matter would it be, if he had only freed us from ceremonies? This is but a stream, which must be traced to a higher source." This third part, the freedom from "adiaphora," Calvin apparently saw as the most significant of all.40 For within the third part lay the church's sense of its destiny within history, and that sense must be both balanced and "moderate." The real import of Christian freedom, says Calvin, is that Christ "has rescued us from the tyranny of sin, Satan, and death" (Comm. Gal. 5:1 [147]). Christian believers thus must inevitably see themselves as both providentially embedded in historical context and providentially destined to emancipation from that context. If they misunderstand this third part of freedom, they mistake their status and fall prey to either a debasement of historical order or an idolization of mere culture. On the one hand, God wishes believers to use the things of this world "for the purpose for which he gave them to us, with no scruple of conscience, no trouble of mind" (3.19.8, 840). Believers need not surrender to the entanglement, the long and "inextricable maze," of cultural traditions but may use and enjoy God's gifts, even those arising through provincial custom, as they see fit. At the same time, believers must understand that a reckless, headlong assertion of their freedom (seeing "an offense of conscience everywhere present" [3.19.7, 839]) not only denigrates the institutional order that shapes and holds them but arrogates to themselves ungodly presumption and dilutes the church's strength by offending weaker brethren. Although "it is sometimes important for our freedom to be de-

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clared before men," nonetheless, "we must with the greatest caution hold to this limitation, that we not abandon the care of the weak, whom the Lord has so strongly commended to us" (3.19.10, 842). Calvin therefore distinguishes between an "offense [scandalum] . . . of the Pharisees," by which "something, otherwise not wickedly or unseasonably committed, is by ill will or malicious intent of mind wrenched into occasion for offense," and a true "offense of the weak." Clearly, believers ought to "temper the use of our freedom as to allow for the ignorance of our weak brothers." But as to confronting "the rigor of the Pharisees," believers should temper their freedom "not at all!" Hence, one ought not to "do anything with unseemly levity, or wantonness, or rashness, out of its proper order or place, so as to cause the ignorant and the simple to stumble" (3.19.11, 843). Ultimately, then, as I have noted throughout, "Christian freedom is, in all its parts, a spiritual thing." Says Calvin, "Its whole face consists in quieting frightened consciences before God" (3.19.9, 840). Its power, one might say, equips one "to be content whatever the circumstances," to know "what it is to be in need" and "what it is to have plenty" (Philippians 4:11-12). The comfort and inspiration of Christian freedom grow from the realization that one does not, as it were, belong to oneself (see Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A i, in Schaff, Creeds 3:307-8). Believers are free to live constructively wherever God puts them. And he would not put them in a place and time within which they could not either grow spiritually or, perhaps the same thing, edify their neighbors.

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point in Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, Calvin sets forth A ta one concise formula for believers to use in comprehending the "end" or purpose of the scriptural doctrine of God's providence. In fact, he writes, there are two ends: "to divest us of rash confidence" and "to teach us to rest in God with quiet and tranquil minds." In the first sense, the doctrine of providence works to keep believers humble, to "hold us in the fear of God and then to arouse us to invoke him." In the second sense, a knowledge of providence works to inspire believers to "despise with confidence and courage the perils that surround us and the hundred deaths that threaten us" (X.5 [166]). In the first place, God's providence reminds believers of who, in their human capacities, they really are: rebellious, stubborn, presumptuous, rude, and altogether incomplete. In the second place, the doctrine reminds them of who, in his majesterial and loving sovereignty, God is: creator, ruler, loving redeemer, restorer of all that exists, and motivator of all that happens. The two ends of providence Calvin recounts here could readily serve to showcase the overall dimensions of Christian freedom I have sought to elaborate in this book. Indeed, if freedom arrives by way of God's predestinational choice, it matures in recognition of God's providential judgment and care. In a very real sense then, the ends of providence and the ends of freedom are the same. On the one hand, in presenting believers with newfound security in God's salvation choices, Christian freedom unleashes a new gratitude and a new excitement about the possibilities of Christian service. Yet on the other hand, in presenting believers with their complete emptiness in the face of Christ's redemptive work, Christian freedom lashes them ever more tightly to his loving and often mysterious guidance. 149

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In the first instance, Christian freedom leads believers to "despise with confidence and courage the perils that surround us and the hundred deaths that threaten us." A now energized Christian individual, for example, awakens to his capacity to signal God's judgment on political and social institutions. Moreover, a now energized church awakens to God's call for socially transformative acts of service. Finally, now bathed in the light of God's New Covenant, believers detach themselves from the meddlesome and impeding hands of custom and tradition and begin to see clearly the historical destination of God's restorative plan. In sum, secure in God's love and care, believers excitedly align themselves with his purposes, resolving to witness to his grace in their various acts of social involvement. Yet in the second instance, Christian freedom operates in believers to "divest us of rash confidence," to "hold us in the fear of God," to "arouse us to invoke him." The now energized individual, this means, comes to fuller recognition of the institutional food that fuels and guides him, not to mention the source of this food in the sovereign God who plants, grows, harvests, and prepares it. Moreover, the now energized church sees its activist steps in the new light of God's judicial boundaries; it sees itself laboring under the heavy gaze of his truth, sensing anew both his direction and his stated limits. And last, believers "detached" from historical settings come to new appreciation of the providential placement of those settings, learning patience and perseverance as much as ambition and daring. Worth noting once more, then, is that the moods of aspiration and wariness, of resolution and prudence, of prerogative and dependency, all hold together in the loving embrace of sovereign God. Freedom arises from God's sovereign choice, out of his forgiving temper, for thankful service, under his discerning eye, and through his parental foresight. Once God sets believers free from their own selfenslavement, he announces to them their new status and then nourishes and sustains their freedom as they move about in the world. Through Christian freedom believers know God's rule over all that is, and seek to assert that rule in his name. At the same time, though, they experience his love for all that is and seek to embody that love by preserving and protecting all that he has claimed for himself. Christian freedom's internal coherence radiates manifest tensions in temporal life. As individuals, believers will never be wholehearted supporters of social and political structures; yet neither will they stand off from such structures in hermitlike solitude. They will oscillate between fitting themselves to God's world and fitting the world to transcendent conscience. As the church, they will never let slip opportunities for constructive service to God in the world around them; yet at the same time they will never assume a constructive dimension to any acts of "service." They will move, one might say, between active service and attentive service. Finally, sensing their place in God's historical plan, they will see beyond historical setting; yet at the same time they will seek to see through God's planned historical setting to their ultimate destiny in his holy community. 1 have argued, therefore, that Christian freedom bridges theology and politics for Calvin. The multidimensionality of authentic freedom reveals itself only in right relation to God, and manifests itself only in right relation to God's ordained social order. God's loving and fatherly embrace places believers in a new and constructive relationship with the world around them. When God through Christ

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removes their self-inflicted blinders, believers can see the world aright. When the Spirit moves through God's inspired Word, believers can know aright their business in that world. And in the assurance of God's parental, trans-historical oversight believers can at last change and endure aright the world they now see and fill. Perhaps more important, I have argued that Calvin's conception of Christian freedom pulls together otherwise diverse interpretations of his political ideas. Seeing Calvin through the lens of his essay shows us a thinker neither "liberal democratic" nor social authoritarian, but someone reaching beyond both; neither activist nor overly circumspect, but someone seeking to transcend both; neither "progressive" nor "traditional," but someone aimed at the God of both. In the end, Calvin speaks of a God who, as Hancock would have it, performs as a law unto himself. Yet the idea of Christian freedom reveals a divine authority emanating not from a willful and capricious divine self but rather from a loving and deliberate divine self. To listen for and follow this divine self is for Calvin our human imperative. And we should make no mistake about it: Calvin's God is alive. He is not an inanimate authority, a model for living, or a logical correlate. In his living presence he speaks, he listens, he watches, he waits, he shares, he loves, he participates, he rules. He is neither a cloud nor a rock but a living person, manifest in real time and space through the breath of his Spirit, the body of his only begotten Son, the story and instructions of his revealed Word, and the animating glory of his created order. Finally, I have argued that the conception of freedom presented here not only presages modern notions of freedom but also exposes their shallowness. Filling out this argument would take another book, but my hope is that readers will begin to see the possibilities inherent in it. It should now be plain, for example, that the three "parts" of Christian freedom, taken separately and seen superficially, readily lead to exaggerated, simplistic, and even perverse understandings. Pulled apart, the strands fray. Freedom as individual emancipation from the bonds of worldly structures, for example, would appear clearly headed toward moral bankrupcy. The irreducible human being, free in conscience to think independently, could quickly become the autonomous human being, free to think what he wants, plan what he will, and do what he may. Likewise, freedom in political action can also turn brittle. From "righteous reform" it can easily evolve into Rousseau's presumptive autonomy of social order and political life. Finally, freedom as cultural dissociation and historical progress can lead inexorably to spiritual homelessness and despair. At the "end of history" humankind may well discover that it has not re-created itself, that it is incapable of such fabrication, and that resting its hopes on the overturning of traditional structures only points up the emptiness of structureless life. The full strength of Calvin's conception of freedom thus appears only when we both tie the strands together and reinforce the resulting cord with the sheath of God's loving guidance, God's omniscient judgment, and God's unfolding, though inscrutable, plan for human beings. Calvin's freedom thus addresses all three dimensions of human political life, rather than overburdening any one, as modern

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thinkers seem wont to do. In therapeutic contrast to the overburdened Lockean individual, the Rousseauean communal being, and the Marxian "world-historical being," Calvin's believers discover their freedom not only in independent vision but also in loving service and in historical realism. Calvin's freedom provides a grounding in human reality that we could profit from examining. As well, Calvin's freedom addresses the obverse of each modern conception, tying them all to sovereign God. Such knitting gives both balance and wisdom to the modern strands and ought to give us constructive pause. For example, Calvin insists that individual conscience ultimately ties the human being back to his duty, thereby establishing his need for moral guidance. Simultaneously, Calvin ties social action back to the corporate body's attention to God's righteous and eternal judgment. And last, Calvin ties history, culture, tradition, and place back to God's providential purposes in historical time. Once again, then, Calvin's conception of freedom both anticipates the modern political conceptions and attempts to contain and compensate for them. Standing at the threshold of modern political thought, Calvin condemns its expansive pretensions. On this point Ralph Hancock has ably put his finger. However modern Calvin's idea may appear, Hancock says, "a vast chasm .. . separates Calvinist political thought from modern political thought: the chasm between the defense of the sovereignty of God and the assertion of the sovereignty of man" (Foundations, 10).

NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1. See Allen; McNeill, "Democratic Element"; Wolin; Walzer; Hopfl; Graham, Constructive; Bouwsma, John Calvin; and Hancock, Foundations. 2. For evidence of this portrayal, see, for example, Machiavelli, The Prince, chs. 9 and 26, and Discourses, bk. i, chs. 34-35; bk. 3, chs. 1-3, and 49; Hobbes, Leviathan, pt. i, chs. 13-14, and pt. 2, ch. 21; Locke, Second Treatise, chs. 2-4 and 7-9; Rousseau, Social Contract, bk. i, chs. i, 3, and 6; Hegel, Phi!osof>/vy of Right, paras, i, 4, 21, 27, 29, 30, 33, and passim; and Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, 80 and passim; and The German Ideology, 160 and passim, both in Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader. See as well the fine study by Robert Pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem. 3. See the citations in note 2, as well as Engels, The Anti-Duhring, in Tucker, 713; and Lenin, State and Revolution, ch. i, pt. 4. 4. On this particular point see the fine study by Wendel, Calvin, esp. 358. On the "systematic" nature of Calvin's thinking, see, for example, McGrath, 149-50, 211; Battles, Cflfcuius Fidei, 2; T. F. Torrance, Doctrine of Man, 7; Hudson, "Democratic Freedom," 180; Bouwsma, "Spirituality of Calvin," 108-9; Bouwsma, John Calvin 5; Hopfl, 37, 217; Hancock, Foundations, 32; and Oberman, "Calvin's Critique of Calvinism," i-io. 5. Suzanne Selinger sees in Institutes, bk. 2, the complementary "interweaving of sinredemption—sin—redemption" (32). PART ONE i. Unless otherwise noted, all citations to the Institutes will consist only of the book, chapter, and part numbers, with page numbers from the McNeill edition (Battles trans.) following the comma. Thus 3.19.2, 834 would refer to book 3, chapter 19, part 2, page 834. 153

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(Institutes 3.19 is, of course Calvin's essay "On Christian Freedom.") Citations to the Commentaries show the relevant volume and page numbers from the Calvin Translation Society edition in parentheses after the Scripture verse. Citations to Calvin's letters point to the numbering of Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet, and show the volume and page numbers from the Baker Books reprint edition, Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters. 2. Indeed, I am arguing that in many cases this is just what has happened. 3. See, for example, Wendel, Calvin, 357; Oberman, "Calvin's Pursuit,"i6; Woolley, 157; and Mullet, "To Digress," 32-33 and passim, where he refers to Calvin's theology as an exegetical system. See as well Calvin's perceptive metaphor likening Scripture to "spectacles," without which believers are unable to see clearly either God's creation order or his salvation plan (Comm. Gen., Arg. [62]). CHAPTER I 1. See also Comm. Gen. 1:26 (1:92-96); and Schreiner, Theatre, 70. 2. See also Comm. Is. 26:9 (2:220-21); and Schreiner, Theatre, 66-67. In his commentary on Jeremiah 24:7 (3:229), Calvin sees "reason" and "understanding" as synonyms. There has of course been much controversy over the extent to which Calvin understood human reason to remain generally intact. See Schreiner, Theatre, 55, 70-72, 6k passim, for a brief history and trenchant summary of this controversy. See also Leithart, ro; and Thomas, passim. 3. See also Inst. 1.15.8, 196; 1.5.11, 64; 2.2.24, 283—84; Comm. Jer. 13:23 (2:191); Comm. Jer. 16:20 (2:333); Comm. Gen., Arg., 62; Comm. John 1:9 (1:38); and Comm. i Pet. 3:21 (117); as well as Steinmetz, Calvin in Context, 31-32. 4. See, for example, Schreiner, Theatre, 67-69; and Muller, "Fides and Cognitio," 215. See also the discussion of sin in chapter 2 (in this volume). 5. On the matter of selfish rationalization, see Calvin's description of King David's encounter with the prophet Nathan in Serm. 2 Sam. 12:1-6 (Kelly, ed., 519-33). NB: All page number references to this sermon series are to the Kelly translation edition, unless otherwise noted. 6. See Bavinck, 454 & passim. 7. See also 1.3.1-3, 43-46; and 2.11.7, 456 (this latter re God under the New Covenant writing his law "upon men's hearts"); as well as, of course, Comm. Rom. 2:15 (97-98). Cf. 1.4.1, 47-48; and Comm. John 1:5 (1:34), where Calvin speaks of the "seed of religion" which God has "sown" in all men. Leithart, 7, argues for Cicero's influence on Calvin here. In addition, see Battenhouse, 469, and passim. 8. See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 79, aa. 12-13 ( I 2 4)9. The natural law tradition thus incorporates more than the simple possibility of a transcendent order. It also implies the capacity of human beings to understand such order by means of a fully functioning "reason." See, for example, one of Calvin's many refutations of such notions in Inst. 2.2.26, 286-87. See also Muller, "Calvin and the 'Calvinists'," I: 373—75; as well as Hancock, Foundations, where he asserts, "Calvin's doctrine is not opposed to reason as such, but only to the idea of the intrinsic goodness of reason, to the rational soul that pretends to govern by virtue of its own goodness. It is opposed not to modern rationalism but to classical reason" (no). Hopfl (180-84) notes Calvin's apparent determination to distance himself both from the scholastic natural law tradition and from the litcralist anabaptists. I do not mean to oversimplify a long-standing controversy, however. See Cochrane; "Natural Law in Calvin"; and Klempa, "Calvin on Natural Law," for exhaustive summaries of this controversy. See also the more extended discussion in chapter 2 (in this volume).

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In similar way, Calvin distinguishes himself from the later liberal conflation of conscience with "interest." See Wolin's (339-40) insightful tracing of this development to Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration. 10. See also Hancock, Foundations, 54, 107; Schreiner, Theatre, 70-71; Comm. Rom. 2: 15 (97); and 2.8.1, 368. 11. See also Comm. Is. 53:1 (4: 112); and Comm. ]er. 24:7 (3:229). 12. See, for example, Comm. Ps. 40:17 (2: in); 65:4 (2:455-56); and Comm. ]er. 13: 23 (2:192): "God can deliver, even from the lowest depths, such as have a hundred times past all recovery." 13. See, for example, Inst. 1.15.8, 196; i. 16.9, 209; 1.17.2, 213; and 1.18.4, 235 (he so-called natural theology portion of The Institutes); as well as, for example, Comm. Ps. Pref., xliv; Comm. Micah 4:3 (260); and Comm. MaL 1:2-5 (482). 14. See, for example, 1.15.8, 195; 2.1.10, 254; 3.21.3, 924-25; 3.22.6, 939; 3.23.7-8 & 12, 955-57 & 960; and 4.1.8, 1022. Calvin's numerous mentions of God's "providence" (providentia), his "predestination" (praedestinatio), his "judgment" (iuditium and consilium), and his "will" (voluntas and nutus), are in fact quite frequently accompanied by the adjectives "secret" (arcanus or secretus), "hidden" or "concealed" (occultus), or "obscured" (absconditus). In the Institutes alone, I count fifty-four such noun/adjective combinations, Calvin's favorite apparently being that of arcanus and consilium (twelve occasions). (On this account I am greatly in debt to Professor Richard Wevers of the Calvin College Department of Classical Languages, for his development and marketing of a computer search program for the Barth/Niesel edition (Joannis Calvini Opera Selecta) of Calvin's 1559 edition of the Institutes.) See also the more pointed discussion in chapter 6 (in this volume). 15. See also Wendel, "Justification," 177-78; as well as 4.1.2, 1013 ("We must leave to God alone the knowledge of his church."); Comm. Ps. 65:4 (2:457); Comm. Is. 53:1 (4: 112-13); Comm. MaL 1:2-6 (476-82); and Comm. Rom. 9:18 (361). 16. Hesselink, "Response," 77-78, echoing Battles (Inst. 1.13.1, I2o-2in.i), asserts that Calvin prefers the terms "glory" or "majesty" of God to "sovereignty" of God. Although one can appreciate the point, Calvin's use of the phrase imperium Dei, in the Institutes at least, appears to be rather common. Moreover, it appears in each case to refer to aspects of rule traditionally thought to partake of "sovereignty." See, for example, 1.14.3, IO^ (where Battles translates imperium as "authority"); 2.1.4, 245 ("command"); 2.17.6, 534 ("supreme dominion"); and 4.20.1, 1486 ("rule"). See also 1.14.3, ^3, where imperium, now referring to Satan, is translated "sovereignty!" Cf. Comm. Harm. Moses on Ex. 33:19 (3:380): "God's will is superior to all causes, so as to be the reason of all reasons, the law of all laws, and the rule of all rules." 17. See also 3.11.16, 746; Comm. Rom. 9:11 (350-51); 9:30 (376-78); 11:7 (416); Comm. Ps. 8:3-4 (1:100-1); 65:4 (2:456); Comm. John 3:16 (1:122-24); Comm. MaL 1:2-6 (462-82); and Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, passim. 18. See Comm. Jer. 23:3 (3:132); and Comm. i Cor. 10:29 (1:346). See also Wallace, 124. 19. See also Comm. Ps. 65:4 (2:457); and the discussion in chapter 3 (in this volume). 20. See also Comm. Jer. 24:7 (3:227); Comm. 2 Tim. 3:16-17 (250-51); Comm. 2 Pet. 1:20 (389-90); and Kendall, 21. 21. Recounted by Kendall and found in Inst. 3.2.14; 3.1.4; 3.2.2; 3.2.6; 3.2.16; and 3.2.22, respectively. 22. See also Corrmi. Is. 43:10 (3:331); Comm. Jer. 31:19 (4:103); 31:33 (4:132-33); Comm. John 1:47 (1:78); Kendall, 21; and Bouwsma, John Calvin, 157. See as well the discussion of "doubt" in chapter 2 (in this volume). 23. Calvin's statement of sola fide is in 3.11.19, 748-49. See also Kendall, 25. As evi-

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dence of Luther's more "monastic," "ascetic," hence, self-doubting model, see Schaff, VII: 124. See also Troeltsch, Protestantism, 70. 24. See also 3.24.6-7, 971-74; Cotnm. Ps. 3:1-2 (1:29-30); Comm. Is. 51:12 (4:79); and Comm. 2 Tim. 1:12 (198-201). 25. See also Troeltsch, Protestantism, 193. 26. See also T. F. Torrance, Doctrine of Man, 7-8. 27. See Comm. Gal. 5:2 (147). See also 3.19.15, 847; and Bouwsma, John Calvin, 48; as well as Calvin's later statement in Inst. 4.10.5, 1183, quoted earlier: "that men recognized man's conscience to be higher than all human judgments." 28. Whereas Doumergue ("Calvin, Epigone . . . ," 84) finds "little contradiction between Luther and Calvin," Hopfl argues that Calvin "discarded altogether Luther's . . . priesthood of all believers" (35-36), though "tacitly" rather than explicitly. Interestingly, though, in distinguishing Calvin from later English Calvinists, Hopfl insists that Calvin "was a most reluctant casuist" (173): "that comprehensive casuistry of the evangelical life, which his Puritan descendents. . . provided for their contemporaries in the next century, is no part of the Calvinian corpus" (142). 29. See also, for example, 4.9.12, 1175; Comm. Ps. 145:10 (5:276-77); Comm. Is. 43: 10 (3:331); and Letters CXXXVI (4:466-67); and CCCXCI (6:154): "But if it shall no longer be permitted to each interpreter on the different passages of Scripture to bring forward his opinion, into what a depth of servility have we fallen?" Cf. Hopfl, 37-39, who finds Calvin's determinations here to grow out of a kind of cynical political expediency. 30. See also Inst., "Prefatory Address," 14; Inst. 4.2.7 & 9, 1048 & 1049-50; Hopfl, 3537; Little, "Reformed Faith," i j ; Chappuis, 6; Mouw, God Who Commands, 3; Schaff, VII:5o and VIII:7oi; and Kuyper, 49. 31. See, for example, Comm. Jer. 18:18 (2:416); and Haroutunian, 34. See also Comm. Jer. 23:28 (3:197). Whereas Calvin retains a "high" view of sin, in that believers are still sinners, he does say that in believers sin has lost its "dominion" (3.3.10-11, 602-4). On the other hand, he is quick to disparage vanity and affectation in scriptural exegesis: "It is an intolerable profanation of the law of God, to drag out of it nothing that is profitable, but merely to pick up materials for talking, and to abuse the pretence of it for the purpose of burdening the church with contemptible trifles" (Comm. i Tim., Arg., 13-14). 32. This from the final sentence of the 1559 Institutes. See also Comm. Ps. 77:20 (3: 224) regarding Moses and Aaron in the face of Pharoah; and Naphy, Calvin and Consolidation, 156-59, regarding Calvin's aiming his sermons on Micah of 1550-51 at particular Genevan magistrates. 33. McGrath (5) notes the humanistic individualism in Calvin's contemporary, Erasmus. Skinner ("Origins," 319—24) argues Calvin's nourishment of Renaissance humanism. For the connections to Lockean liberalism, see the discussion just following as well as, inter alia, Little, Religion; Baker, "John Owen"; Baker, "Locke and Castellio"; and Marshall, John Locke. Walzer, Mercier, and others, of course, see Calvin as producing a kind of preRousseauean revolutionary. Cf. Kingdon, "First Expression," 88-89 & 92, who argues that the impetus for liberal democracy came as much from Theodore Beza, Calvin's successor in Geneva, as much as from Calvin himself. 34. Graham, Constructive, 36, notes that although the Genevans did subscribe to Calvin's "memorial" establishing a structure for church order, they rather belligerently refused to subscribe to his proposed confession of faith. For further discussion of the "consensual" tradition in Calvinism, see Little, "Max Weber Revisited," 423-24. Cf. Taylor, 229. 35. See Hobbes, Leviathan, pt. I, ch. 14, regarding the impossibility of human beings covenanting either with God or with "bruit Beasts," but only with each other in an act of "deliberation" and "will." See also Locke, Second Treatise, ch. VIII, paras. 95-96, recounting

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his well-known grounding of political authority on the subjects' "consent." Last, see Rousseau, Social Contract, bk. I, ch. 6, describing his understanding of the only legitimate "social pact." 36. For other examples of Calvin's biblical use of "covenant," see inter alia 3.17.3, 805; 3.20.25, 885; 4.1.27, 1039; and 4.9.2, 1167. }. Torrance, "Calvin and Puritanism," 4-5, perceptively points out that "[t]he Latin word foedus perhaps obscured the difference, for it means both a covenant and a contract." However, J. Torrance, goes on, "[t]he fallacy of legalism in all ages . . . is to turn God's covenant of grace into a contract" (7). See also Cheneviere, Pensee politique, 190. 37. See the discussion in chapter 2 (in this volume). 38. See also Witte, esp. 365-69; Mercier, 50-53; and Selinger, 5. Cf. Bouwsma, John Calvin: "Calvin thought private property fundamental to social order" (197). 39. See also Witte, passim; and Mercier, 53, who claims that Calvin unwittingly "opened an immense breach through which the spirit of the new era could rush forward." Cf. Anderson, who attributes the rise of freedom of religion largely to "the accidents of history" (262-63). 40. For a full discussion of the meaning of piety for Calvin, see the careful analysis by Lee, summarized at 233-37; as well as the discussions in chapters 3 and 4 (in this volume). 41. See Woolley, esp. 141 & 146; Naphy, Calvin and Consolidation 144; and Klempa, "Earth," 144; as well as the short but significant account of Calvin's motivations and skills for political "reconciliation," in Shriver, 56-58. See also the discussion of the Servetus affair in chapter 3 (in this volume). 42. See also Bavinck, 464; Bouwsma, John Calvin, 181; Templin, 169; and Hancock, Foundations, 98. N.B. Paul Marshall's fine study (Kind of Life), where he points out that for Calvin (in distinction from Luther) a "calling" is not just any employment but is in fact "something which comes into one's work" (24). Indeed, Calvin wished to show that certain kinds of work would almost by definition be excluded from the category "calling" (25-26). 43. See Valeri, esp. 134-40, regarding Calvin's use of "corporate imagery." 44. See also Witte, 400-2; Kingdon, Coming of Wars, 129; and Naphy, Calvin and Consolidation, 156-57, this last recounting Calvin's biting critiques of Geneva's political establishment. 45. See also Serm. Deut. 16:18-19 (620-26); and R. Wallace, 124-25. One could accuse Calvin of some latent professional jealousy in this letter to Melanchthon, of course! 46. See also Comm. Ps. 41:1 (2:112-114); Serm. 2 Sam. 12:1-6 (519-33); and McNeill, "Democratic Element," 167. 47. Cf. Doumergue, jean Calvin, V:45o-5i; and Wolin, 191, both of whom would no doubt have me take out "inadvertently." 48. See also McNeill, "Democratic Element," 167; Woolley, 141-48; Rice, 499; and Bavinck, 464. 49. See also McNeill, "Democratic Element," 159; and Wolterstorff, 16. 50. Calvin does not wish to encourage unhealthy litigiousness, however. The purpose of magisterial help, for ordinary people, is thus to "preserve their possessions, while maintaining friendliness toward their enemies" (4.20.20, 1508). See also 4.20.18, 1506-7; and 4.20.21, 1509. 51. See J. L. Thompson, "Daughters of Sarah," i (abstract) & passim. See also, for example, 4.4.12, 1080; 4.5.2, 1085; 4.6.3, 1104; and 4.10.1-8, 1179-87. Reviewing Calvin's argument in 4.4.12, on the selection of pastors, shows how wrong it would be, however, to label Calvin a "congregationalist," and thus the founder of full-scale democratic church polity. Indeed, Kingdon ("Calvinism and Democracy," 177, 186-88) argues that fellow

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Genevan Jean Merely was the real founder of democratic church polity among the reformers and thus a more significant source of modern political democracy. See as well Kingdon, "First Expression," on the importance of Beza's ideas. 52. See as well Witte, 383-84. 53. See also Serm. Job 10:16-17; Serm. Deut., passim; and Lect. Dan. 6 (all cited by McNeill, "Democratic Element"). See as well Serm. 2 Sam. 11-12 (re David, Bathsheba, Uriah, and Nathan); Comm. Jer. 22:15 (3:100-2); McNeill, "Democratic Element," 159; and Hopfl, 164—65. 54. See earlier discussion. 55. See, for example, 2.8.56, 419; 2.17.6, 534; 3.2.2, 544; 3.2.33, 581; and 3.4.39, 68889, for his disdain of such. Muller ("Calvin and the 'Calvinists'," 1:364-67, 1:373-75, H: 126-28, and passim) argues persuasively that the term "scholasticism" concerns only "a shared dialectical method." It is not, says Muller, a category within which there might not exist "substantive philosophical and theological differences." Thus, for example, "[rationalism and scholasticism do not stand in any necessary relation" (128). On this point, see also Breen, 30, 38-40. 56. See also Hopfl, 155—59. 57. This conclusion comes despite Calvin's explicit statement supporting Cheneviere in 4.20.8, 1493. 58. See, for example, Comm. Gen. 39:2 (2:292), where in speaking of Joseph in Egypt he states, "Nothing is more desirable than liberty." See also Comm. Jer. 38:25-26 (4:418); and Comm. i Cor. 10:29 (1:345). 59. See also Hancock, Foundations, 66; Hancock, Reformation, 2; Hancock, "Religion . . . ," passim; Wolin, 191; Schaff, VII: 4-5; Rice, 499; Little, "Reformed Faith," 7; Little, "Weber Revisited," 427; Hudson, "Democratic Freedom, 178-82; Meeter, Basic Ideas, 121; Kelly, passim; and DeGruchy, 3. Cf. Allen, 3; Tonkin, 159-60; and Troeltsch, Protestantism, 116. 60. Ends Calvin recounts explicitly in 4.20.3, 1488. See the additional discussion in chapter 4 (in this volume). 61. See also Hopfl, 162; and McNeill, "Democratic Element," 155; as well as Bouwsma, John Calvin, 208: "From the standpoint of subjects, tyranny is a violation of human dignity; full humanity requires liberty, which . . . is lost by anyone under the rule of a tyrant." Cf. 4.20.13, 1501: Although government has the right to levy taxes, "to impose them upon the common folk without cause is tyrannical extortion." See also Comm. Seneca 1:11 (193): "What is the difference between a tyrant and a king, . . . except that tyrants are cruel for their pleasure, kings only for good reason and by necessity?" as well as 1:12 (203). 62. Robert Kingdon (Coming of Wars) has impressively documented the extent of Genevan moral and material support to the French believers even as Geneva remained officially a "nonbelligerent." 63. See also Comm. Dan. 6:3-5 (1:353); 6:10 (1:358-59); 6:11 (1:364); and passim. One could argue that the mere addressing of Calvin's letter to French Protestants constituted Calvin's own act of rebellion within the prophetic framework he established. Ought he not to address instead the government of France? On the general point, see Inst. 4.20.29, 151617; and 4.20.32, 1520-21. 64. Interestingly, Skinner claims in a later piece that the "Calvinist" theory of revolution was Calvinist only in impetus, not in genesis. See Skinner, "Origins," 324-25. Cf. Skinner, Modern Political Thought, 2:206. See also the discussion at the end of chapter 2 (in this volume), below, as well as that of revolutionary change in chapters 5 and 6 (in this volume). Ralph Keen, in "Limits of Power," answers Skinner's specific conclusion regarding Calvin's "changing his mind." Paul Marshall, in "Quentin Skinner," addresses Skin-

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ner's conclusion that Calvinist theology introduced nothing "political" into modern resistance theories. 65. The phrase translated "to defy them," points out Ford L. Battles in a note to Inst. 4.20.31 (n_54), means literally "to spit on their heads" (conspuere in ipsorum capita). 66. See also Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 10:28 (1:462). 67. Henry Beveridge translates it as to "check" (Inst. [trans. Beveridge] [2:675]). On Calvin's living out this principle, see Robert Kingdon's (Coming of Wars, 69) description of Calvin's professed opposition to the Conspiracy of Amboise.

CHAPTER 2 1. See Hopfl, 37; and Foxgrover, 6. Suzanne Selinger, 3, calls this tension a "conflict" within Calvin. See also Holtrop, "Between the 'labyrinth' and the 'abyss,' " 27-28; and Bouwsma, John Calvin: "Calvin's acceptance of paradox, however ambivalent, signified not only his appreciation of the mystery at the center of faith, but also his insistence on the limits of human rationality and his openness to all the contradictory realities of human experience" (161). 2. See Cooper, 42; Troeltsch, Protestantism, 150, 173; and Doumergue, "Calvin, Epigone . . . ," 62-63. Hopfl even goes so far as to state that Calvin "clearly did not consider the doctrine of Christian liberty to be central to sound theology as he understood it" (35). I disagree with this account, pointing readers first to this book's opening epigraph. 3. See also Comm. Eph. 1:4-6 (199-200); Bouwsma, John Calvin, 50; and Parrington, 12. 4. See also Bouwsma, John Calvin, 50; Hopfl, 35; Cheneviere, Pensee Politique, 137; and Niesel, 140-41. 5. See also Comm. Gen. 15:6 (1:408); and Comm. John 11:26 (1:436). 6. The idiom "penitus devindre [to bind thoroughly (fully, inwardly)]" implies a long and deliberate process, of course. See also Comm. Jer. 24:7 (3:229). Cf. Augustine's oft-quoted line from his Con/essions, I:i (1:2-3): "because you made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." See also Letter LXXII to Farel: "But when I remember that I am not my own, I offer up my heart, presented as a sacrifice to the Lord" (4:280-81), 7. See also Comm. Is. 53:10 (4:125). Cf. Jesus' anticipation of his own death in John 12:23-25, and Calvin's Comm. John 12:25 (2:28-29). 8. See also Inst. 3.17.15, 820; 4.15.11, 1312; Comm. Gen. 1:26 (1:96); Comm. Ps. 8:3-4 (1:100); 18:20 (1:280); 62:9 (2:426); 66:20 (2:478); 71:9 (3:87); 104 (4:167); Comm. Is. 2: 22 (1:120-21); 9:6 (1:306-7); Comm. Jer. 24:7 (3:229); Comm. Rom. 12:1 (450-52); and Hancock, Foundations, 52. Cf. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 95. Hancock, Foundations, puts the matter as follows: "Humanity transcends itself only in the bare consciousness of its inability to transcend itself (107). 9. See also Comm. Ps. 22:1 (1:358); and Selinger, 17. 10. See Calvin's numerous references to Augustine, systematically compiled by Luchesius Smits, who notes that Calvin's citations to Augustine numbered more than his citations to all the other church fathers combined. See also McGrath, 45. On the Augustinian understanding of sin, see Stevenson, 47-59; as well as, for example, Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIII.i3-i5 (4:178-85); XIV.3-4 (4:268-82); and XIV.i 3 -i 4 (4:334-45). 11. See also Comm. Ps. 75:4 (3:187); 78:32 (3:251); Comm. Is. 2:12 (1:112-13); and Comm. Jer. 16:20 (2:333). 12. Calvin accepts the church fathers' use of the Latin peccatum for "sin" (2.1.5, 246). 13. Sec also Comm. Is. 2:4 (1:99-101); as well as 11:6 (1:383) re the "cruelty of brutes."

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14. See also Comm. Pi. 106:6 (4:211); 130:3 (5:129); Comm. Is. 34:7 (3:51); 53:6 (4: 117); Comm. Mica/i 4:3 (261); and Serm. Job 18, on Job 34:21-26 (258ff.). 15. "Even infants bear their condemnation with them from their mother's womb" (4.15.10, 1311). Cf. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIII.3 (4:140-45); XIII.14 (4:180-81); and XV.j (4:412-!5). 16. Cf. Inst. 2.5.19, 340: "The heart is so steeped in the poison of sin, that it can breathe out nothing but a loathsome stench." See also Comm. Gen. 1:26 (1:95); Comm. Ps. 8:5-6 (1:104); Comm. Jer. 24:7 (3:229); Comm. Rom. 7:14 (260-61); 12:2 (454); Comm. John 3:3 (1:107-9); 11:25 (1:435-36); Letter CCXXXII (5:203); Bouwsma, John Calvin, 139; and Steinmefz, Calvin in Context, 116. 17. Sec also 2.1.3, 243-44; Comm. Ps. 78:68 (3:278); 130:3 (5:129); Bouwsma, John Calvin, 173; Hancock, Foundations, 54, 107; and T. F. Torrancc, Doctrine of Man, 15. 18. Indeed, Calvin understands "appetite" and "will" to be effectively synonymous (2.2.2, 257). Cf. Comm. Ps. 106:15 (4:218-19). 19. As here, Calvin often uses "nature" in two senses. Ford L. Battles points this out in a footnote to Inst. 1.1.2, 38 (11.7). A prime example of this double meaning can be found in 1.15.1, 183. See also Letter CCXXXIII (5:203). 20. See also Comm. Ps. 106:6 (4:211); Comm. Jer. 13:23 (2:191); and Comm. Rom. 7: 14 (261). Cf. Augustine, De perfectione iustitiae horninis 6:13: "It is man's fault that he is not without sin on this account, because it has by man's sole will come to pass that he has come into such a necessity as cannot be overcome by man's sole will." For this reason Calvin speaks of "the foolish distinction that certain sins are venial, others mortal" (3.4.28, 654-55)21. See also Comm. Ps. 6:1 (1:67); and Comm. Is. 53:10 (4:123). Cf. Comm. John 3:12 (1:119): "It is too common a vice among men that they want to be taught in a subtle and ingenious way: hence, . . . many do not think much of the gospel. But it is most stupid not to honor the Word of God, because he has lowered himself to the level of our ignorance. When we find God prattling to us in the Bible in an uncultivated and vulgar style, let us remember that he does it for our sake." That is, only by doing so can God break through the barriers human beings have erected between themselves and his mercy. 22. See Comm. Ps. 38 (2:541^) regarding the misery inherent in recognition of human sin. For the kind of "duty" Calvin has in mind, see the discussion in chapter 3 (in this volume). 23. See also 3.14.9, 776-77; 4.15.10, 1311-1312; Comm. Ps. 103:14 (4:137-38); 106:6 (4:211); 130:3 (5:129); Comm. Rom. 7:15 (262-63); and Schreiner, Wisdom, 109. 24. See also 4.10.3, 1181; Hancock, Foundations, 52; Bosco, passim; and Chappuis, 7. It should be clear now why for Calvin faith must precede repentance in the "order of salvation" (3.3.1, 592-93; Kendall, 26). Without the faitlvengendered light of healthy conscience, the full array and damage of sin will remain in darkness. See Comm. Ps., Pref., xxxvii. 25. For discussions of Christian duty (offidum), see Inst. 1.17.4, 216; 2.7.13, 362; 2.8.53, 416-17; 3.9.2, 714; and 3.20.45, 911. 26. See Wolin, 167, regarding Calvin's aid in retarding the Reformation's "flight from civility." See also Hopfl, 53. 27. See also, for example, Comrn. Ps. 103:2 (4:126); and Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 22:21 (3:45). 28. Cf. Comm. Ps. 89:5 (3:358): "To lean with the whole heart upon God, is to attain to no ordinary degree of advancement: and this cannot be attained by any man, unless all his pride is laid prostrate in the dust, and his head truly humbled." See also Comm. Ps. 103:3 (4:126).

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29. See the further discussion of service to neighbor as "action" arising out of Christian freedom in chapter 3 (in this volume). See also 3.7.5-7, 695-98; Comm. Is. 5:21 (1:187); and Templin, 166-69. 30. See especially Inst. 1.17.3-4, 215-16. See also Hopfl, 186-87; Bouwsma, John Calvin, 159-60, 222; and Phillips, n. On occasion Calvin does use prudentia to mean a kindly of "worldly wisdom" (mundana prudentia) (for example, 4.10.12, 1190), or, as he puts it in one place, "wisdom of the flesh" (carnis prudentia) (4.10.11, 1189). Yet in most cases, as we shall see, he clearly thinks of prudence, or practical wisdom, as a Christian virtue. 31. On a number of occasions, Calvin points to the need for prudence within human institutional structures. In finding a kind of "balance" of authority between congregants and clergy, for example, the virtue of prudence is essential (4.4.12, 1080-81). Likewise, in conciliar decision making (4.9.8, 1171-72), in maintaining healthy relations between the church and temporal authority (4.11.15, 1227-28), in pondering and applying church discipline (4.12.8, 1236; 4.12.11, 1238-39), in devotion to ritual (4.12.19, 1245); and, of course, in governing a civil polity (4.20.6 & 8, 1491 & 1493; as well as Letter DCXXXVIII [7:293] to the Queen of Navarre), prudence figures prominently. See also, for example, Comm. i Cor. 10:30 (1:347-48) as to the prudence needed in using and approving the "things indifferent" (on which I elaborate in chapters 5 and 6). 32. See also 2.2.25, 284-86; 3.23.4, 952; Comm. John 14:6 (2:85-86); and Comm. Rom. 2:15 (97-98). Regarding the ease with which the "seed of religion" slides into idolatry, see Hart, 18; as well as 1.11.8, 107-109. 33. The reference is of course to 2 Corinthians 12:9. See also Bavinck, 457; Letter CCXXXII (5:203-4); and 2.2.10, 268: "[N]o one is permitted to receive God's blessings unless he is consumed with the awareness of his own poverty." 34. See, for example, Inst. 2.2.26-27, 286-89; Comm. Ps. 16:7 (1:226); Comm. Jer. 24:7 (3:228-29). 35. See also Clark, "Calvin on the Lex Naturalis." 36. See Hopfl, 180, for a full list of examples for Calvin of "natural" order. 37. See the fuller discussion of natural law later. As to God's providential placement of rulers, see the discussion in chapter 6 (in this volume). On the insignificance, even "rejection," of natural law thinking in the Protestant tradition, see Braaten, "Protestants." Braaten finds this rejection to be a bad rather than a good thing, and offers to help develop a new appreciation for natural law thinking among Protestants. 38. See, for example, 4.1.1, ion; 4.1.6, 1020; 4.12.4, 1231-32 (regarding the "spiritual jurisdiction of the church, which punishes sins according to the Lord's Word, [and therefore] is the best support [subsidium] of health, foundation of order, and bond of unity"); 4.15.4, 1306 (mentioning the "pure instruction of God" as one of his helps); and 4.20.2, 1487 (regarding civil government). 39. See Little, "Reformed Faith," 8. See also Allen, 21, noting that for Luther, " 'Love needs no law' (Babylonian Captivity)." 40. See also, for example, Comm. Harm. Moses on Deut. 10:13 (3:I97~98); and Comm. Harm. Evang. on Luke 10:26 (3:56). 41. See also 2.8.1, 368; 4.15.11, 1311-12; Comm. Micah 4:3 (261); Comm. John 10:28 (1:416); Comm. Heb. 6:19 (1:153); Letters CCXXXII (5:204); CCCCLXXXIV (6:388); Calvin's "Farewell to the Seigneurs of Geneva," in Letters (7:371); Muller, Christ and the Decree, 20; and Bouwsma, John Calvin, 173. Cf. 1.6.3, 72~73; and 1.14.1, 160-61, where Calvin argues the indispensability of Scripture for any healthy knowledge. 42. See also Kendall, 27; Dowey, "Law," 152; and Hancock, Foundations, 54. 43. See, for example, 2.7.7, 356; 2.8.39, 4°4; 2.8.42, 406; 2.8.51, 415; 4.20.18, 1507; Dowey, "Law," 152; Johnson, 37 & passim; and Hopfl, 35.

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44. See also Hesselink, Calvin's Concept of Law, 277-78 & passim; as well as Selinger, 53-

45. See also 2.8.51, 415-16. Cf. Braaten, 25, regarding the inherent connection, which he claims Protestants do not make, between love and law. 46. Cf. Hesselink, "Law and Gospel," who appears to argue that there is. But see also his Calvin's Concept of Law, 277, where he states that law and gospel can be antithetical "only when sin intervenes and the law is separated from the promises of the gospel." In the pure sense of each, "law and gospel complement each other." 47. See Comm. Is., Pref., xxvi: "Now, the Law consists chiefly of three parts: first, the doctrine of life; secondly, threatenings and promises; thirdly, the covenant of grace, which, being founded on Christ, contains within itself all the special promises." See also Johnson, 46. 48. See also 2.7.1, 349; Comm. Is. 1:11 (1:157); and Hesselink, Calvin's Concept of Law, 278: Calvin's "linking of the law to the will of God is one of the factors that precludes a literalistic understanding of the various commandments and guards against a possible legalism." 49. See also Hesselink, Cabin's Concept of Law, 278 & passim; and Dowey, "Law," 152. 50. See also Comm. Ps. 116:14 (4:3?0; and Comm. Ps. 121:1-2 (5:63). 51. See Battles's note (n-5) to 2.8.1, 367. See also Comm. Rom. 2:14—15 (96—99). 52. I have also quoted this passage in chapter i (in this volume). See also T. F. Torranee, Doctrine of Man, 15; and Henry, 55-56; as well as Serm, 2 Sam. 12:1-6 (519-21). Whether Calvin belongs in the natural law tradition is, as noted above, a long-standing controversy. See, inter alia, Bles, Natural Theology (the "Barth/Brunner" debate); McNeill, "Natural Law"; Cochrane, "Natural Law"; Klempa, "John Calvin"; and, more recently, the fine essay by Clark, "Calvin on the Lex Naturalis." Note i of this latter essay lists the key citations to, and participants in, this long-standing debate. 53. See also Comm. Rom. 2:15 (262); and Steinmetz, Calvin in Context, no—u. 54. See also Comm. John 1:5 (1:34); and 1:16-17 (1:50); as well as Cheneviere, Pensee Politique, 48; and Wallace, 201. 55. See discussion in chapter i (in this volume) regarding Calvin's view of conscience. See also 1.15.8, 196; 2.5.5, 322; an(i 2.4.13-14, 307-8. Calvin's ambiguous use of "nature" is exemplified in a number of places; see, for example, 2.1.11, 254: "[M]an is corrupted through natural vitiation, but a vitiation that did not flow from nature." 56. As noted previously, see Hancock, Foundations, 86, regarding Calvin's synonyms for "natural law." Cf. Hopfl, 167, who also spotlights Calvin's frequent inclarity regarding "law." For other examples of Calvin's use of the terms "natural," "divine," and "moral law," see, inter alia, 2.3.1, 289; 2.5.6, 323; 2.8.5-10, 371-76; 3.20.51, 918; 4.10.2, 1180; 4.10.10, 1188; 4.13.13, 1267; 4.13.21, 1276; and 4.15.12, 1312-13. 57. See also 2.2.24, 283; Comm. John 1:5 (1:34); Comm. Heb. 1:3 (36); Steinmetz, Calvin in Context, 206; Hopfl, 180-81; Wendel, Calvin, 208; Hancock, Foundations, 107; Little, "Max Weber Revisited," 422; and T. F. Torrance, Doctrine of Man, 15: "The antithesis to the motion of grace is man's self assertion and innate self-love, and that necessarily becomes the essential motion of independent self-knowledge, so that man is unable to descend humbly into himself to learn the truth about himself. To learn the truth he must go in the direction opposite to that which as a sinner he is naturally prone to take. . . . [H]e must proceed not natura duce et magistra, but scriptura duce et magistra." Cf. Leithart, 12, who concludes that "Cicero's influence on Calvin's theology is alien to his overall system," but that Calvin "doubtless believed [wrongly, for Leithart] that Cicero's ideas were consistent with Scripture," at least as far as the prelapsarian condition of humankind is concerned. Leithart's point about Calvin finding "special [i.e., biblical] revelation" unnecessary for

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prelapsarian human beings is most insightful and may go a long way toward explaining the continuing difficulty of reaching scholarly consensus on Calvin's doctrine of natural law! 58. See also Comm. Is. 26:7 (2:217); Comm. Heb. 1:3 (1:36); and Haroutunian, Intro., 36. Cf. Comm. John 8:12 (1:325): "out of [i.e., apart from] Christ there is not even a spark of true light. There may be some appearance of brightness, but it resembles lightning, which only dazzles the eyes." Calvin is fond as well, of course, of the metaphor of Scripture as a pair of "spectacles" able to sharpen otherwise blurry, if not nonexistent, vision. See, for example, Comm. Gen., Arg. (1:62). 59. See also Comm. John 1:5 (1:34). 60. See Calvin's commentary on the entire Psalm 119 (4:398-5:51). See also Comm. Ps. 1:1—3, (1:4-5). Cf. R. Wallace: "The 'multitude of people' who were recorded by the Council in Geneva to be attending the sermons of Viret and Calvin were not there as victims of an iron discipline. They wanted to hear the Word" (18). 61. See also Troeltsch, Protestantism, 70; and Doumergue, "Calvin . . . Epigone," 90, commenting on Inst. 3.25.2, 989. Cf. Allen, regarding Luther's position: "True Christians need no temporal power to rule them; it is, he says, the temporal power that needs them" (21). 62. See the recent study of the Geneva Consistory records by Valeri, who is struck above all by Calvin's "corporate imagery" in undertaking the disciplinary process. 63. See Kingdon's careful account of the practice of "Remonstrances" and "Ceremonies of Reconciliation" by the Genevan Consistory of Calvin's day, and of Calvin's own pastorally constructive use of these opportunities for censure and correction ("Consistory," 2433)64. For Calvin, as for many late medieval writers, "novel" has largely bad connotations. See, for example, Inst., Pref., 15-16. 65. The strongest prophetic voices are those who "derive their doctrine, like streams from a fountain, . . . from the Law" (Comm. Is., Pref., xxvi). 66. See also 4.12.8, 1236; and Comm. i Thess. 5:8 (289). Calvin argues in his brief recounting of church history in the Institutes that just such creeping hypocrisy undermined the legitimacy of the medieval church. See, for example, 4.7.9, 1127; and 4.7.18, 1136-38. 67. See also Comm. ]er. 13:23 (2:192); and Comm. Ps. 26:8 (1:446), regarding even David's felt need "of the church's common discipline and order," David who "therefore anxiously labored to retain his enjoyment of them." Cf. Serm. 2 Sam. 12:1-6 (519-33), and Kingdon, "Consistory," passim. Compare, too: Calvin's anxiety to ensure the prevalence of a strong tradition of discipline within the Geneva community arose as much from his concern for the welfare of the individual as from his desire to produce a model society. His own experience and reading had taught him that within the church life itself the warmth of the zeal of the individual and the strength of his resolution depend almost invariably on the help and encouragement that can come to him from the Christian community. (R. Wallace, 32)

See also R. Wallace, 124-25; Kingdon, "Control of Morals," 4; and Hancock, Foundations, 5i68. Cf. 4.3.2, 1055, where Calvin refers to "human ministry," which "God uses to govern the church," as being "the chief sinew by which believers are held in one body." See also Troeltsch, Protestantism, 72-73; Wolin, 175; Hopfl, 54. Cf. Allen: "If the essence of Protestantism is a claim to liberty for the individual," then "certainly Calvin was not a Protestant" (3). 69. See also 4.1.13, 1026-28; and Bavinck, 451. Cf. 4.3.1, 1054, whete Calvin says "this is the best and most useful exercise in humility, when [God] accustoms us to obey his Word,

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even though it be preached through men like us and sometime even by those of lower worth than we." 70. See also Hopfl, 190 & 198; as well as Bouwsma, John Calvin, 74. Cf. Kingdon, "Control of Morals," 5-6, regarding the "morals" legislation passed in Geneva before Calvin even arrived. Naphy, 108-109, has compiled a listing of "crimes" in Geneva, 1541-50, which shows not only a wide array of criminal offenses, but also surprisingly restrained criminal sanctions. The great bulk of death penalty cases for the period, for example, apparently concerned instances of plague-spreading behavior in 1545. 71. See also Comm. Micah 4:3 (261). Clearly, to Calvin, discipline did not mean simply "repression," as Hopfl (191) points out. Instead it acts as both "bridle" and "spur" (two of Calvin's favorite metaphors, as we have seen). Cf. Walzer, 42—43 & passim, who argues that for Calvin discipline does mean repression. To make this point, though, Michael Walzer appears to rely a bit too heavily on Henry Beveridge's misleading (or perhaps outdated) translation of Bernard of Clairvaux's statement, "Tranqullius Deus tranquillat omnia . . . ," which Calvin quotes approvingly in 3.24.4 (trans. Beveridge, [2:244]). Beveridge has Bernard's statement as "A tranquil God tranquilises all things." This is indeed a good literal translation, but Walzer fails to appreciate that the powerful contemporary ("zombie-esque?") connotation of the verb "to tranquilize" may not have been one Calvin intended to promote. Ford L. Battles's more contemporary translation seems to me much more apt here, though it does undermine Walzer's characterization of Calvin as a "repressive figure." Battles has the sentence thus: "The God of peace renders all things peaceful." 72. Interestingly, Calvin added these latter clauses to the 1559 Latin edition, whereas the former carried through from the 1536 (first Latin) edition. Moreover, Calvin placed these latter clauses at the front of his list of civil government's "ends." It goes without saying that this list distinguishes his mindset quite dramatically from that of theorists of the (secular) "state." On freedom as a "spiritual good," see also Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 22:21 (3:44); Comm. Gal. 5:13 (158-59); and Comm. i Pet. 2:13 (80). 73. See the earlier discussion re Calvin's view of the love of God and neighbor, as well as his view of law as a component of gospel and vice versa. 74. Calvin, of course, was quite unaware of the way we have come to use the term "state," its modern conception really being articulated only with Jean Bodin in 1576, and fully investigated only by Hegel in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right in 1821. Cf. Hunt, "Calvin's Theory of Church and State," 63, 68-69, & passim. Hunt's claim that for Calvin "church and state are united and inseparable" carries the point too far, as we shall see in chapter 4 (in this volume). 75. See, for example, Hopfl, 191; and Letter DCXXXVIII (7:291-92). See also Hancock, Foundations, 30; Cheneviere, "Did Calvin Advocate Theocracy?," 164 & passim; Kingdon, "Calvin and the Family," passim; and Heideman, 83-85. Cf. Hopfl, 53; and Troeltsch, Protestantism, 66-67, concerning Calvin's historical context. In addition, see the fuller discussion in chapters 3 and 4 (in this volume). 76. See also Hopfl, 37; Graham, Constructive, 60 6k 172; and Allen, 5. 77. By naming "two kings," Battles appears to have Calvin putting the earthly ruler on a plane with Christ, a placement Calvin would of course deny. The earthly ruler remains directly accountable to the "King of kings." See the discussion in chapter 4 (in this volume). 78. See also Comm. Ps. 2:1-3 (i:u); Letters CCCXXVI (5:426); DXXXVIII (7:48); Allen, 52; Hancock, Foundations, 69; and Laski. Compare the discussion in chapter 4 (in this volume) regarding Calvin's sense of the divine judgment awaiting wicked rulers. Compare also Hancock, Foundations, 113, where he attributes to the Calvinian ruler the Hobbesian virtue of protecting physical security even though through fear. 79. See also 4.20.23, 1510-1 i ; Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 26:52 (3:244-46); Letters

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CXXX (4:455); DLXXXVIII (7:176-77); DCXLI (7:302); Hopfl, 212; and Graham, "Calvin and Political Order," 56, as well as the discussion in chapter 6 (in this volume). 80. Kingdon's description of Calvin's largely negative reaction (in October 1559) to the planned Conspiracy of Amboise is instructive on this score (Coming of Wars, 68-69). 81. Cf. Laski, 10, where he notes that Calvin "did not clearly recommend any solution when the commands of God and the magistrate were in conflict." See also the discussion in chapter i (in this volume). 82. See the more extensive discussion of God's faithful "providence" in chapter 6 (in this volume). 83. Cf. Comm. Ps. 18, Intro. (1:258). 84. See also Comm. Micah 4:2 (257). 85. See also Bavinck: "[F]or Calvin the passive virtues of submission, humility, patience, self-denial, cross-bearing stand in the foreground. Like St. Augustine, Calvin is mortally afraid of pride, whereby man exalts himself above God" (457). (Bavinck cites Inst. 2.2.2; and 3.7.4.) 86. See the insightful analysis by Sheldon Wolin, 331-42, of the early liberal metamorphosis of individual "conscience" into individual "interest." 87. See Fred Graham, Constructive, 213, who refers to both "economic liberalism" and Marxist socialism" as "secular religions." Perhaps one could point to the rise of "political correctness" as a specific example of liberalism's "confessional" tendencies. Compare Alexis de Tocqueville's renowned portrait of the pressure toward conformity in "liberal" democratic societies in Democracy in America, I:xv (1:263-65). Calvin's statement here raises questions about his credentials as a "pluralist," of course. However, as James Skillen, "Covenant of Grace," has perceptively shown, the Calvinist strain from Johannes Althusius through the Dutch thinkers Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, Abraham Kuyper, and Herman Dooyeweerd did issue in a nonconfessional "public pluralism." 88. See the discussion in chapter i (in this volume). PART TWO i. See Weber, Protestant Ethic, 98-128 & passim; as well as Hancock, Foundations, xiii, 3, & passim. For other examples of resurrections of Weber's argument, see, inter alia, Little, Religion, 1-32 & passim; Skinner, Modern Political Thought, 11:322; Graham, Constructive, 189-201; Reid, "John Calvin: The Father of Capitalism?"; Hudson, "Weber Thesis"; and Burrell, "Calvinism, Capitalism, and the Middle Classes." A good summary of the scholarly shots fired in the controversy is available in G. Marshall, In Search of the Spirit of Capitalism. CHAPTER 3 1. See also Hancock, Foundations: "I show that Calvin explodes the simple dichotomy between secular and religious concerns . . . precisely in order to join them fast together" (xii). On Calvin's "activism" see as well Bainton, Reformation, 111-18; and McGrath, 233, who finds that in Calvin's thought "[ajction in the world is dignified and sanctified." Cf. Mitchell, "Protestant Thought and Republican Spirit." 2. Fred Graham, Constructive, 24, finds interesting parallels between Calvin and Rousseau on this score. See also Wolin, 193; Trocltsch, Protestantism, 138-40; Verduin, 82; Walzer, 1-2, 25-26, 317-19, 6k passim; and Hudson, "Democratic Freedom," 181. In additon see Comm. Gen. 1:26 (1:96) and Comm. Is. 2:4 (1:102). 3. See esp. Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy. See also, 3.21.2, 923—24; 3.21.5, 926—28;

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3.21.7, 931; Comm. Rom. 8:29-30 (316-20); and Comm. i John 2:2 (173). Cf. Graham, Constructive, 183; and the discussions immediately following and in chapter 5 (in this volume). 4. See also, 3.22.8, 942; as well as Comm. Rom. 9:11-13 (350-53). Electio, the term Calvin uses for election, normally means choice or selection. 5. Cf. Comm. Is. 53:1 (4:111): "Isaiah declares that there will be few that submit to the Gospel of Christ; for, when he exclaims, 'Who will believe the preaching?', he means that of those who hear the Gospel scarcely a hundredth person will be a believer." On this point see also 3.22.10, 944; Comm. Ps. 130:4 (5:130); and Comm. MicaJi 4:3 (266). 6. See also Muller, Christ and the Decree: Predestination "functions as a corollary of Calvin's emphasis on God's free and sovereign grace in salvation. The problems of human inability and man's reliance for salvation upon the sovereign grace of God as mediated by Christ are the two grounds of Calvin's predestinarian conceptually" (22). See, for example, Comm. Rom. 9:11—13 (348—53). 7. See, for example, 3.17.9, 812 and 3.14.19, 786. 8. See discussion in chapter 2 (in this volume). Note how often, Calvin says in commenting on Matthew 5-7, Jesus points to the "Pharisaical" tendency to "debase" the real "nature . . . object. . . and extent" of the law by limiting it to "a political order" and making obedience to it "consist entirely in the performance of outward duties" (i.e., "You have heard it said . . . but 1 say to you. . . .") (Comm. Harm Evang. on Matt. 5:21 [1:282-84]). See also Comm. Ps. 130:4 (5:130-31). 9. See Selinger, 17. 10. The language here is, as Richard Muller (Christ and the Decree, 34) points out, "Lombardian," but Calvin is willing to accept it. He does think such language unnecessary to make John's point in this verse, however. See also Comm. Ps. 81:12 (3:322). 11. I am especially indebted to Richard Mullet's insightful presentation of both this point and the one immediately following. See also 2.16.7, 5 l r ~ 1 2 ; Comm. i John 2:2 (173); and Kendall, 2-3 & 13. Cf. Kendall, 29-41, and Muller, Christ and the Decree, 79-96, for contrasting views on the role of Calvin's immediate successor, Theodore Beza, in the development of "Reformed theology." 12. See also Comm. Ps. 16:7 (1:226-27); Comm. Rom. 9:11 (349, 351). 13. See, for example, 3.22.11, 946-47; 3.22.1-6, 932-40; Comm. Gen. 15:6 (1:227); Comm. Ps. 27:10 (1:460); 65:4 (2:456); 68:10 (3:14); 103:3 (4:126-27); 103:14-17 (4:13839); 143:8 (5:255); and Comm. Rom. 8:29 (317-18). 14. In this passage, Calvin impatiently mentions human criticism of specific examples of God's timing, his choices, and his creative plan. See also Comm. Is. 23:9 (2:152): "Although the rectitude by which God regulates his judgments is not always apparent or made visible to us, still it is never lawful to separate his wisdom and justice from his power." 15. Bouwsma, John Calvin, organizes his entire "portrait" of Calvin around the psychological tension he perceives Calvin to have felt between the "labyrinth" of "order," of "traditional certainties," and of "boundaries," on the one hand, and the "abyss" of "novelty" and "doubt." For other notes of admonition to impudent inquiry, see 3.23.5, 952-53; and 3.24.3-4, 968-69. 16. See also 3.24.5-7, 970-74; Comm. Ps. 4:8 (1:50); 9:15-16 (1:127); 27:10 (1:460); 89:11 (3:365); and Comm. Jer. 38:6-14 (4: 392-402). 17. See Comm. Dan. Pref., Ixv; Comm. Ps. 130:4 (5:132); Comm. John 5:24 (1:202-4); as well as Bouwsma, John Calvin, 171; Haroutunian, 42; Selinger, 33; Bavinck, 451; Bainroti, Reformation, 116; and Bainton, "Calvin, Beza . . . ," 19. 18. See Comm. Is. 6:8 (1:213). See also Graham, Constructive, 21.

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19. For accounts of Calvin's early experience in Geneva, see, in particular Naphy, Calkin and Consolidation, passim; Monter, chs. 2-4; and Graham, Constructive, ch. 2; as well as Wendel, Calvin, pt. i, and McGrath, chs. 5-6. On the temptation to presume human judgment see, for example, Comm. Rom. 14:4 (495). On the more general point, see the fuller discussion that follows and in chapter 4 (in this volume). Hopfl decries the label "Calvin the Genevan Dictator" in typical understatement: "Not everything that was done at Geneva was Calvin's doing" Cf. (138-39). Walzer: The "reformer of Geneva insisted that the mitigation of anxiety and alienation could only be achieved in a Christian commonwealth" (28). Indeed, "secular repression was. . . the foundation stone of a Christian polity" (45). 20. See, for example, Comm. Is. 43:10 (3:331-32); and Comm. Ps. 69:19 (3:63). As we have already noted, Calvin does not mean to imply here that Christians never have second thoughts about their choices and behavior or about the Spirit's particular leading but only that the ultimate ground of their eternal security is manifest. On this point, see also the discussions in chapter i and 2 (in this volume). 21. See also Comm. Is. 6:8 (1:213). 22. See also 3.17.9, 812. 23. See also 3.7.4, 688. 24. See, of course, the familiar passage in Romans 8:30; and Comm. Rom. 8:30 (319— 20). See also Calvin's discussion of James 2 in Inst. 3.17.11—12, 814—17; as well as Comm. Ps. 103:3 (4:127) 25. See also Comm. Ps. 2:1-3 (1:9); 119:159 (5:35); 130:4 (5:132); and Niesel, 142. Cf. Hancock, Foundations, 59. Graham, Constructive, sums up the point thus: "The initiative for salvation is always with God, hence Calvin was correct in allowing God's election to take care of heaven, thus freeing men to take over the earth" (242 n.i9). 26. See also Comm. Is. 26:7 (2:217); Bouwsma, John Calvin, 159; DeGruchy, x & 45ff.; Chappuis, 6; Graham, Constructive, 21; Troeltsch, Protestantism, 63; Wolterstorff, passim; Little, "Max Weber Revisited," 423; Walzer, 12; Hancock, Foundations, 162; and Shriver, 56. 27. Regarding Calvin's expansive idea of pietos, see Lee, 233-34, 6k passim. 28. See, for example, Little, Religion; and Walzer. Cf. Skinner, "Origins." 29. See Rousseau's stated indebtedness to Calvinist Geneva in his "Second Discourse": "[F]ew people have an opportunity to know how far the true spirit of Christianity, holiness of manners, severity with regard to themselves and indulgence to their neighbors, prevail throughout the whole body of our ministers. It is, perhaps, in the power of the city of Geneva alone to produce an edifying example of so perfect a union subsisting between its clergy and men of letters" (Rousseau, 162). See as well Rousseau's note about Calvin's "genius" in particular in The Social Contract, bk. 2, ch. 7 (Rousseau, 44); and Little, "Max Weber Revisited," 424. Cf. von Kuenelt-Leddhin, "Calvin or Rousseau." 30. The phrase "duties of love" (clwritatis numeri or charitatis officia) appears quite frequently in Calvin's writings. In addition to the previously cited passage in 3.19.12, 845, see also 2.8.9. 376; 2.8.11, 377; 3.4.36; 666; 3.7.7, 697; 3.r8.3; 823; 3.18.8, 831; 4.17.40, 1418; 4.18.16, 1443; 4.20.15, 1503; Comm. Is. 58:7 (4:233); Comm. Jer. 22:16 (3:104); and Comm. Micah 6:8 (343). Regarding the implications of such "duties," cf. Hancock, Foundations, 134-35. Calvin speaks as well of the "duties of piety" (officia pietatis). See, for example, 2.8.43, 4°7; 2.8.51, 415 (pietatis et dilectionis officia); 3.3.16, 609 (the duties of piety as "fruits of repentance"); 3.10.3, 721; 4.13.5, 1259; and 4.13.10, 1264; as well as Lee, passim. 31. See also Comm. Ps. 99:5 (4:77); and George, "Calvin and Menno Simons," 195 & passim. Such bold language ought not to disguise Calvin's recognition of the virtue of

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prudence, his scorn of self-righteous action, or his acceptance of the historical place of human suffering, of course. For further discussion of these teachings, see chapters 2, 4, and 6 (in this volume). 32. See, for example, Comm. Ps. 105:24 (4:191); Comm. Dan., Dedic., Ixvi; Comm. Dan. 6:10 (1:359); and Leith, 184-85. See also Comm. Rom. 1:18 (68) regarding the effective identity of "unrighteousness" toward men and "impiety" toward God. 33. A thinly veiled reference to the futility of giving one's worldly goods to the already wealthy and transparently corrupt Roman church, perhaps! 34. See also Comm. Is. 58:7 (4:233-4); Comm. Jer. 31:31-32 (4:127); Hancock, Foundations, 93-96, 134; Bouwsma, John Calvin, 17, 159, 171; and Templin, 166-68. 35. See also Comm. Harm Moses on Lev. 19:13 (3:112) and on Deut. 15:1-11 (3:15458); Comm. 7s. 58:6-7; Comm. Jer. 22:16 (3:104); R. Wallace, 200; Wolterstorff, 20; Dempsey Douglas, "Calvin's Relation," 76-77; Bavinck, 459; and Hancock, Foundations, 134. Such sentiments would appear to be the source of Hancock's charge as to Calvin's emphasis on "works." 36. See, for example, Comm. Gen. 9:6 (1:295-96); and Wolterstorff, 18. For more detail see the discussion in chapter 2 (in this volume). 37. See the discussion in chapter 2 (in this discussion). 38. See Hancock, Foundations, 27, 35. Cf. Calvin's third use of the law, discussed in chapter 2 (in this volume). For examples from Genevan life, see, inter alia, Monter, passim; Kingdon, "Consistory"; and Naphy, Calvin and Consolidation, passim. 39. See also R. Wallace, 126; Wolin, 180, 191; Bouwsma, John Calvin, 201; Chappuis, 7; Bavinck, 461, 464. 40. Revealing examples of Calvin's edificatory pastoral work are recounted in Robert Kingdon's ("Consistory") recent look of the procedures and practice of the Genevan Consistory. On the subject of "edification" generally, see also Comm. Is. 23:18 (2:161-62); Comm. Rom. 14:19 (508—9); Comm. i Cor. 10:23 ( I : 34 l ); Comm. Gal. 5:13 (159); and 5:14 (160). 41. See also Comm. Ps. 72:4 (3:105); Comm. Jer. 7:5-7 (1:367); and Bavinck, 458. 42. See Kingdon, Coming of Wars, 93ff., 115-17, 124, & passim, on Geneva's support for the wars in France; as well as Monter, 139, 156, & passim; and Kingdon, "Social Welfare," on Geneva's hopital general. 43. See also Hancock, Foundations, 92. 44. See, inter alia, Letters CXIX of 24 June 1544 (4:422-26); CCCXXIX of 12 October 1553 (5:432-33); CCCLXXXIII of 28 January 1555 (6:127-29); CCCCLVII of 15 March 1557 (6:319-22); CCCCLXXXVI, CCCCLXXXVli, and CCCCLXXXVIIJ, all of 5 January 1558 (6:390-96); and DLVH of 15 April 1560 (7:95-96). Cf. Letter DLXXXVI of 26 February 1561 (7:170-73), in which Calvin, rather defensively, apologizes to the church in Paris for his inability "to satisfy your desire in sending you the man you demand." 45. See, inter alia, Letters CXLV of September 1545 (5:16-19); CCXXXIV of 16 January 1549 (5:208-9); CCXLIII of 10 June 1549 (5:229-31); CCCIX of 13 February 1553 (5:389-91); CCCLXXXVII of 13 February 1555 (6:133-35); CCCCXLIX of 21 December 1556 (6:302-5); CCCCXCVI of 10 April 1558 (6:416-18); DXXIII of 18 February 1559 (7:18-20); DLXVIII of 5 July 1560 (7:121-23); DCXXIX of 13 May 1562 (7:269-72); and DCLVI of 28 August 1563 (7:332-33). 46. See, for example, Letters, CCLXXIV of January 1551 to Edward VI, King of England (5:299-304); CCXCVIII of July 1552 to Archbishop Crantncr (5:356-58); CCCLIV of 6 August 1554 to the Duchess of Ferram (6:50-52); CCCLXXIV of 5 December 1554 to the King of Poland (6:99-109); CCCCXC1 of 21 February 1558 to the Duke of Wurtemberg (6:400-5); DXXI of 10 December 1558 to the King of Navarre (6:487-91); and DLXXXIII

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of 16 January 1561 (7:162-64), along with DCXXXVIII of 20 January 1563 (7:290-94), both to the Queen of Navarre. 47. Of course, in a number of other places Calvin exhorts public officials to use their power to aid, in tangible ways, the powerless. See, for example, Letter, CCCXI of 12 March 1553 to Edward VI (5:393-94); and CCCCXCIX of 8 June 1558 to the King of Navarre (6:423-26); as well as those just mentioned in note 46 and in the discussion in chapter 4 (in this volume). See also Monheit, 267 & passim, who shows that Calvin "opposed" what he called "godly work" to "ambition" (ambitio), thereby "rejecting the kinds of social relationships ambitio implied." 48. See Comm. Is. 23:9 (2:153); and Serm. Deut. 15:11-15 (584-90). See also Graham, Constructive, 68. 49. See, for example, Comm. Gen., Arg. (1:58); Comm. Ps. 19 (i: 3O7ff.); and Inst. 1.5.1-3, 51-55; and 1.5.6-9, 58-62. 50. See also Hancock, Foundations, 34, 60, and 153. 51. See also Selinger, 33; Phillips, 12; and J. Torrance, 16. Cf. Taylor, 228; Schaff, VII: 222, regarding Luther. 52. See also 3.21.7, 931; 3.23.12, 961; and Comm. Is. 1:16 (1:64): "[T]he true character of every man is manifested by his actions." Cf. 3.21.5, 929; and 3.24.7, 973, regarding "false" signs. 53. See also Hancock, "Religion," 695. 54. See also Selinger, 89. 55. Regarding the use of civil force to suppress religious error, see, for example, Woolley, 144-46, who appropriately cites Comm. Harm. Moses on Ex. 2:12 (1:48); and Comm. Dan. 4:1-3 (1:245-46). Regarding the use offeree by civil magistrates more generally, see, inter alia, 4.20.19, 1498; Comm. Micah 4:3 (266); and Comm. Rom. 13:4 (481-82). Cf. McGrath, 219; and Walzer, 54 & passim. McGrath here comments on the activist tendencies in Christianity generally. 56. See also Bainton, "Calvin, Beza . . . ," 18; Muller, Christ and the Decree, 25-26; Bray, 78-79; Kendall, 33; and Kingdon, "Control of Morals," 4. Cf. Holtrop, Bolsec Controversy, app. 4, "Calvin, Beza . . .," 822-92. 57. See also Bainton, "Calvin, Beza . . . ," 18. Regarding the motivation of the "work ethic," says Roland Bainton, "for Calvin it was entirely altruistic. The Christian should work with zest solely for the glory of God without regard to personal status as to predestination." With Beza, on the other hand, "the motivation was egoistic, to convince oneself by the evidence of good works that one was of the elect." Calvin goes on to address the possibility of "justification by faith" becoming "the basis of works righteousness" in 3.17.9, 812-13, and to deny it firmly and explicitly. Thus, Hancock's paraphrase of Calvin's point in 3.7-7 to be "when worldly goods are shared with sincere generosity, God puts no limit on the worldly resources Christians may acquire or possess" gets him exactly backward. Indeed, Calvin is quite explicit: The "sharing of tasks among members" has "nothing gratuitous about it." Instead, "each man will so consider with himself that in all his greatness he is a debtor to his neighbors, and that he ought in exercising kindness toward them to set no other limit than the end of his resources; these, as widely as they are extended, ought to have their limits set according to the rule of love" (3.7.7, 698). 58. See also Graham, Constructive, 66. 59. See Holtrop, Bolsec Controversy, passim, but especially his "Note on Calvin's Theology of Punishment," 212-29. Cf. Kaufman: "Calvin concluded that God had appointed two ministries to assist the elect in shaping and policing a civil order that reflected the importance and influence of their election" (115). 60. Cf. Graham, Constructive, regarding the heretic Servetus: "[W]hen he was killed,

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both Catholics and Protestants alike agreed that of all the world's dangerous men, this one most deserved to die" (48). See also Naphy, Calvin and Consolidation, who notes that "the action against Servetus was a wholly secular affair" (183). CHAPTER 4 1. See also Bavinck, 459. 2. See also 2.7.14-15, 362-64; and 3.11.17-18, 746-48. 3. See also Muller, Christ and the Decree, 34; Kendall, 16; and the discussion of "justification" in chapter 3 (in this volume). 4. See also Comm. Ps, 139:1 (5:207-8) and 139:23 (5:223-24). 5. Cf. Comm. Harm. Moses on Ex. 4:11 (1:93): "[Wjhile it is good to magnify the immense power of God, . . . so must we beware of resting upon it indiscriminately, as though it were subject to our fancies." 6. It is perhaps worth noting in particular here that most, if not all, of Calvin's corpus is pointedly aimed at those who consider themselves already among the faithful. See, for example, the sub-title of the 1536 edition of the Institutes: "A work most worthy to be read by all persons zealous for piety. . . ." See also Pref., 5, for Calvin's 1559 appended distich: "Tis those whose cause my former booklet pled whose zeal to learn has wrought this tome instead." 7. .Cf. Hopfl, 192, regarding the irony of the reprobate appearing to be "more free," and the description of his argument in chapter 5 (in this volume). See as well the related discussion in chapter 6 (in this volume). 8. See also Haroutunian, 48; and the discussion that follows. Cf. Selinger: "There is a decidedly tyrannical quality to Calvin's God, in positive as well as negative actions. Power asserting itself as control of something over something, rather than in creative action, is both a positive attribute of God and a good in itself for Calvin" (88). On this, see also Maclntyre, Short History of Ethics, 123; and Hancock, Foundations, 159-60. 9. See also, 1.5.2, 53; 1.5.6, 58-59; 1.5.14, 68; 3.5.8, 678; Comm. Gen. 1:28 (1:98); 1:31 (1:100); Comm. Ps. 19:1-2 (1:308-11); and Preface to Olivetan's New Testament, in Haroutunian, 59-60. Leithart suggests that "[tjhe argument of the first five chapters of the Institutes is little more than an extended commentary on Romans t" (6). to. Cf. Comm. Dan. 4:1—3 (1:244): When men "add sin to sin," Calvin says here, God often "loosens his reins and allows them to destroy themselves" (Ubi enim addunt peccata peccatis, laxat Deus illis habenas, ut sese proiiciant [literally, "plunge forward" into further sin]). This is true, interestingly, "even for the elect at times" (etiam cum electis interdum). 11. See also Serm. Job 34:21-26 (258-71); Comm. Harm. Moses on Ex. 7:12-13 (1:14950); and Comm. Is. 2:17 (1:116). 12. Henry II had died of a wound to the eye, Francis II of an abscess in the ear. Jules Bonnet, editor of the standard English edition of Calvin's Letters, includes here some verses composed by Beza which include the lines: "Tool of bad men, Henry thy thirst of blood / Fit retribution found" and "Following thy father in his mad career, Francis, unhappy youth / Thou fel'st God's arrow cleave thy guilty ear / Fast closed against God's truth." 13. For other uses of "vain" or "empty confidence," see, for example, 2.5.12, 331; 2.7.6, 355; 3.2.22, 568; 3.18.9, 832; 4.16.14, 1336; Comm. Ps. 132:14 (5:158); and Comm. Is. 13: i i (1:419). 14. See, for example, Inst. 3.21.5, 927; and 3.22.6, 939. 15. See also 3.21.1, 921-22; 3.24.12, 978; Comm. Rom. 11:34 (446-47); 14:4 (495); Bainton, "Calvin, Bcza . . . ," 19; as well as the discussion in chapter 3 (in this volume). 16. See, for example, 1.14.3, 162 (translated by Battles as God's "authority"); 1.18.1,

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229 ("power"); 2.1.4, 245 ("command"); 2.17.6, 534 ("supreme dominion"); 3.19.13, 846 ("authority"); and 4.20.1, 1486 ("rule"). See also the discussions in chapters i (note 18) and 3 (in this volume). In a footnote (120-21 n.i), Battles states that Calvin does not use the term "sovereignty of God." Yet the phrases he uses to translate imperium Dei do appear to add up to something like sovereignty. 17. See also, 1.2.1, 41; 3.13.2, 764; and the discussion in chapter 2 (in this volume). 18. See the discussion in chapter 3 (in this volume). 19. See also Comm. Ps. 72:1 (3:102); Comm. Is. 9:7 (1:313); Comm. Micah 4:3 (260); and Letter DCXXXVIII (7:292). 20. See also Comm. Is. 45:7 (3:403); Cheneviere, Pensee Politique, 229; and Hancock, Foundations, 27. 21. See also Comm. Ps. 82:6 (3:334); and 127:1 (5:106). 22. See Comm. Harm. Moses on Ex. 18:15 (1:304); Cheneviere, Pensee Politique, 335; Hopfl, 160; Lloyd, 67; and Hancock, Foundations 68, 70, 78, & 81. 23. See also Willis-Watkins, 117; and Calvin's explicit description of the self-induced trials of King Darius in Comm. Dan. 6:16 (370-71). 24. See also Comm. Ps. 72:12 (3:112); 132:14 (5:158); and Comm. Jer. 22:16 (3:1003). 25. See also Comm. i Tim. 2:2 (51-53). 26. See the discussion in Chapters i and 2 (in this volume). 27. On this point, cf. Graham, Constructive, who describes the "error" in Calvin's doctrine of predestination: "The relationship between God and man . . . is complete subservience on the part of man. He may acquiesce; he may rebel; but he can hardly assume the mastership over nature, politics and history which Calvin himself preached in his sermons to the habitants of Geneva" (185). I find Fred Graham's characterization of Calvin preaching human "mastership" to be inaccurate. 28. See the fine recent study on Calvin's struggle with the Book of Job by Schreiner, Wisdom, esp. 106-18. See also Comm. Rom. 9:11 (348, 352); and Wittmer, 20-25. Cf. Gillespie, Nihilism before Nietzsche: "The God of the Reformation is less austere and remote than the nominalist God, more Christlike, closer to man, a God of love, still awesome and magnificent but less terrifying than the God of Ockham. Such a God, however, is still fundamentally arbitrary" (26). 29. See also 3.19.15, 847; Comm. Jer. 2:25 (1:121); and Preface to Olivetan's New Testament (from Haroutunian, 71). 30. One might point to the writings of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn for evidence of this point, in spite of the fact that Solzhenitsyn claims not to be a "Calvinist." On Solzhenitsyn, see Ericson, esp. 155-74; and Pontuso, passim. On the point of Calvin's potential sympathy with totalitarian regimes, see Hopfl, who notes that in Calvin one finds no "ideology." 31. See also Walzer, 41. 32. However, on this point see Kaufman, 124; and Bainton, Hunted Heretic, 210. 33. See Hopfl, 160, re 4.20.7. 34. See Steinmetz, 205. See also Naphy, Calvin and Consolidation, 156-59, regarding Calvin's use of the pulpit to instruct and admonish Geneva's political leaders. Cf. Kaufman, 115. 35. See also 4.3.15, 1065-66; 4.4.10-12, 1077-81; Witte, 383-84; and Bouwsma, John Calvin, 54. See also the discussion of kingship in chapter i (in this volume). See as well Kingdon, Coming of Wars, 69, as to Calvin's opposition to the Conspiracy of Amboise, but his support of Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre. Cf. Comm. Is. 8:7 (1:266), regarding the need for such limitation. 36. See also Letters CCII of 24 July 1547 (5:129-32); CCCCXXXVI of 24 June 1556

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(6:271-72); Comm. James 3:18 (328); Graham, "Calvin and the Political Order," 59; and Bavinck, 451-52, 456. Cf. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 86 & passim, who argues that Calvin's emphasis on moderation arises out of an anxious, even panicky, insecurity. Parenthetically here, note that the dates of the letters cited here would indicate that Calvin has not, in his age, "changed his mind" about the impropriety of democratic resistance to tyrants, as some have suggested. See the additional references to this point in chapters 2 and 6 (in this volume). 37. See, for example, 1.15.8, 195 (where Battles translates mode-ratio as "guidance"); 2.8.32, 398 ("regulation"); 3.4.12, 637 ("rule"); 3.15.3, 791 ("restraint"); 3.19.12, 844 ("control"); and 4.20.2, 1487 ("government"). 38. One thinks, for example, not only of the city bosses in America but really of all popular demagogues. Cf. Plato's vision in the Republic (5643-666) of the transition from democracy to tyranny coinciding with the rise to power of a "friend" or "defender of the people." 39. Cf. Comm. Dan., Pref.: "Although I have been absent these six-and-twenty years, with little regret, from that native land which I own in common with yourselves . . . yet it would be in no degree pleasing or desirable to me to dwell in a region from which the Truth of God, pure Religion, and the doctrine of eternal salvation are banished, and the very kingdom of Christ laid prostrate"(lxiv)! On the other hand, the "unity of the church [ought] not be destroyed by our excessive rigor or moroseness" over a mere "difference in ceremonies" (Letter CCCXLVI to the Brethren of Wezel [6:29]). 40. See the earlier discussion re godly rulers. See also Comm. Is. 2:4 (1:100). 41. See also Comm. Rom. 12:8 (463). Cf. Maclntyre's rather cynical account of Calvin's prescription: "Provided that sex is restrained within the bounds of marriage and that churchgoing is enforced on Sundays, political and economic activity can proceed effectively unchecked by any sanctions whatsoever" (Short History, 123). P. Marshall (Kind of Life) provides a significant counter to such cynicism when he notes, for example, "it was on Calvin's own initiative that cloth manufacture was introduced into Geneva to provide work for the poor and unemployed" (125). 42. See also Letters DXXI (6:487-89); DCXIX (7:248); and CCCLXXIV (6:100), the last to the King of Poland. 43. In this psalm, says Calvin, in order "the more effectually to overthrow [the] irrational self-confidence with which [kings] are intoxicated, civil order is termed the assembly of God" (3:330). See also Graham, Constructive, 66-76, 97-115, & passim; Kingdon, "Social Welfare"; Kingdon, "Calvin's Ideas about the Diaconate"; Monter, Calvin's Geneva; McKee, Calvin on the Diaconate; and Wolterstorff. In addition, see 2.2.13, 273 (re tne agreement of human beings "on the general conception of equity"); R. Wallace, 115; Preface to Olivetan's New Testament, in Haroutunian, 71; Comm. Ps. 72:12 (3:112); and Willis-Watkins, 12527: "The continuity of the Prophetic Word is indispensable to being selected king, to being anointed king, to being continually judged and therefore continually renewed in the office" (125). See as well Letter CCCCXXV (6:244ff) to the King of Poland, in which Calvin points to positive examples of kingship in Scripture. 44. Cf. Hancock's criticism regarding the incomprehensibility of "virtue" for Calvin. 45. See Maclntyre, Short History of Ethics, 123; Hunt, "Calvin's Theory of Church and State," 71; Bouwsma, John Calvin, 97; Kingdon, "Control of Morals," 4-7; Allen, 64; Bavinck, 46r, re Calvin's creation of a "moral police" in Geneva; and Kaufman, ir3: Calvin "exhorted constables to be more aggressive," not to wait for complaints but to "search for the seeds of disorder and anti-social behavior before offenses were committed." Kaufman later insists that he does not mean to say that "Calvin created a police state" (122). Cf. Hancock, Foundations, 59; and Troeltsch, Protestantism, 72, for the contrary point.

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46. Shortly after the arrest of Servetus in August 1553, Calvin wrote to Farel noting his full "expectation [Calvin uses the verb spero here, which ordinarily means expect or anticipate, rather than desire, and the context, though not the English translator, makes plain that Calvin intends the ordinary meaning] that sentence of death w i l l . . . be passed upon him," but also his "desire that the severity of the punishment may be mitigated" (Letter CCCXXII of 20 August 1553 [5: 417]). In response, Farel suggested the imprudence of Calvin's apparent magnanimity: "[Y]ou act the part of a friend to a man who is most hostile to you. But I beseech you so to manage the matter that no one [else will be able to] throw all things into confusion with impunity for such a length of time as he has done" (CCCXXII [5:417 n. 2]). See also Letter CCCXXVII to Sulzer of 8 September 1553 (5: 427-30); Comm. John, Dedic. Ep. (1:15-19); Naphy, Calvin and Consolidation 183-84; McGrath, 105, 114-16, 120; and R. Wallace, 97; as well as the discussion in chapter 3 (in this volume). Cf. Bainton, Hunted Heretic, passim; Hopfl, 182; and Graham, Constructive, 48-50, 169, who points out that before the execution of the death sentence on Servetus, Calvin argued, in the interest both of humane treatment and good sanitation, "for death [first], then burning." Monter (83) and Witte (389) make this latter point as well. 47. On the point of manipulability, cf. Comm. Joel 2:28 (2:90): "By these words the Prophet reminds us, that people act absurdly when . . . they ask of God nothing more excellent that to be pampered like brute animals; for in what do the children of God differ from asses and dogs, except they aspire after spiritual life." Compare to Calvin's idea here the prophetic words of Dostoevsky in "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" (from The Brothers Karamazov) regarding the totalitarian pretensions of the "Grand Inquisitor." 48. One example of a "remonstrance" from March 1548, Kingdon records as follows: Marquet, a hatmaker, and his wife were summoned because of a domestic quarrel. He had beaten her with a whip, because she had disobeyed his order not to spend time with another woman, the wife of a man named Phocasse. His wife denied ever having heard the order and complained he had beaten her so severely that she was sick. He replied that he had gone to the Phocasse home one evening to find his wife and someone had thrown water on his head. Calvin admonished him that "a Christian man should not treat his wife in this way." He also warned her that she should "not visit the wife of Phocasse if that was against her husband's wish." (25)

49. In addition to Kingdon's work, see Valeri, 127-28 & passim. Kaufman, 124, disagrees with this conclusion. Cf. Hopfl, 46; and the discussion in chapter 3 (in this volume). 50. On this point, see esp. Skillen ("Covenant of Grace" and "Calvinistic Political Theory"), who, as noted previously, has worked to show that the structural implications of Calvinist political thinking (at least as it has come through the Dutch Calvinist tradition) have pointed largely to a nonconfessional "public pluralism." See also Little, "Max Weber Revisited," 423-24, 427-28; and Meeter, 121. Interestingly, Monter notes that although all residents of Geneva were "exhorted" to attend church services, "there really were no material penalties inflicted on Genevans who did not attend church" (101). Moreover, the church's "most powerful weapon, excommunication, was less radical than the traditional Catholic variety." At Geneva, the excommunicated were barred from the sacrament of communion but not from the worship services proper. Indeed, they were "expected to hear the sermon every Sunday except during the four weeks each year when communion was given" (140). Kingdon ("Consistory," 23) wishes to temind us, of course, that excommunication was still "a very serious penalty," one that "could lead to ostracism and even banishment from the city." 51. See also 4.20.9, 1496; Hopfl 169, 189, 6k 193; Hancock, Foundations, 26-27, 3°, & 68; Willis-Watkins, 121-22; R. Wallace, 115; Bouwsma, 212.

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52. See also 4.20.9, 1496; and Hopfl, 187. 53. See chapters 5 and 6 (in this volume). 54. Calvin does not expect the "visible church" ever to achieve perfection, of course. On this point see, for example, 3.18.8, 830-31; Comm. Acts 6:1 (1:229-30); and Tonkin, 194. On the important distinction between the "visible" and the "invisible" church, see 4.1.7, 1021-22. 55. See also Comm. John 15:5 (2:109-10). 56. Cf. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 44, who suggests that for Calvin a certain level of "anxiety" is both commodious and salutary. Not only does it "promote vigilance," it "alerts [believers] to danger," and is thus "essential to human survival." 57. See also, Comm. Ps. 115:3 (4:346); and Comm. Is. 1:16 (1:63). Von KuehneltLeddihn, passim, points out that although Calvin is cautious and conservative, he is no fatalist. On the important balance for Calvin between caution and assertion, see Woolley, esp. 140—46. 58. See also Little, "Max Weber Revisited," 423. On the point of Calvin's effectiveness as a prophetic witness to the Genevan polity, Naphy and Kingdon both insist that Calvin held considerable "political power," even if "exercised indirectly" (Kingdon, "Reformation a Revolution?," 215-16). Naphy (Calvin and Consolidation, 154, 161) stresses Calvin's influence by noting that as a preacher, "Calvin controlled the only means of mass communication and public indoctrination," thus putting his respondents "at a complete disadvantage." Especially noteworthy, then, would be the fact that on at least two occasions (in 1548 and 1552) Calvin was called before the Genevan magistrates and publicly censured (Calvin and Consolidation, 160). Noteworthy as well would be Monter's (no) reminder that Calvin was first offered full citizenship in Geneva only at Christmastime, 1559, eighteen years after his return from exile in 1541, a full thirteen years after his brother, Antoine, was offered citizenship, and long after most of the other refugee pastors. 59. See also 3.19.15, 847; and Little, Religion, 77-9. Yet cf. Bouwsma, John Calvin: "One of the worst expressions of hypocrisy, for Calvin, was the subordination of religion to politics" (63). 60. It is worth noting the care to which Calvin devoted his analysis of all the prophetic books of Scripture, and the obvious significance of these voices for Calvin, displayed in the prominent placement he gave them. His exegeses of the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, and the "minor prophets" take up well over half of his twenty-two volumes of published commentaries. Cf. Hopfl, 144. 61. See also Comm. Ps. 95:3 (4:33); 111:1 (4:311); Comm. Jer. 13:23 (2:190-92); Comm. Dan. 4:1-3 (1:245); Letter CXXXVIH (4:473); Bouwsma, John Calvin, 64; and Woolley, 142. For eloquent statements of the force of truth in the face of power, see Comm. Micah 4:3 (262); and 4:5 (272). 62. Cf. Comm. Is. 2:6 (1:104), where Calvin uses the metaphor of the unruly horse who "refuse[s] and gnaw[s] the [church's] bridle."

PART THREE i. This last reference is perhaps to the Roman Church hierarchy.

CHAPTER 5 I. See Mcylan, esp. 143-45, regarding the apparent source of this conception in Stoicism.

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2. Battles's English translation of the German heading (3.10.1, 719) added by editor Otto Weber (Neukirchen Kreis Moers: Buchhandlung des Erziehungsverein, 1955). 3. Bavinck cites here Inst. 3.7.8-10; 3.8.2ff; 3.9.1 & 6. See also R. Wallace, 202-3. Cf. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 106-7, who labels Calvinists "Manicheans!" 4. Notably Calvin (in 4.10.30, 1208) includes in the category of adiaphora items which through the Apostle Paul had been "suggested" rather than "explicitly stated" (fuerat indicatum magis quam exposition). See also Comm. i Cor.n:2-6 (1:352-56); and 14:34-40 (i: 467-74). 5. Clearly, then, diversity of ceremonies ought not to shatter the unity of the church. See Calvin's Letter CCCXLVI of 13 March 1554 to "the Brethren of Wezel" (6:29-32), on this point. 6. See also Comm. Gen. 4:21 (1:218-19); 43:34 (2:363); Comm. i Tim. 4:3 (103); and Bavinck, 460. 7. See also Comm. i Cor. 10:23 ( I: 34 I )> Comm. Ps. 104:14-15 (4:155); Doumergue, "Calvin, Epigone . .. ," 87-88; R. Wallace, 203; Niesel, 141; and Haroutunian, 48. 8. See the discussion in chapter i (in this volume). 9. See, for example, 2.2.17, 2v6; and 3.9.3, 714-15. See also Bavinck, 453-55 & passim; as well as Battles, Inst. 2.2.17, 2?6 n-63- Cf. Calvin's use of Matt. 5:45 in Comm. Harm. Evang. (1:306-7). 10. See the analysis of pietas, for Calvin, by Lee. n. See also Comm. Ps. 99:5 (4:77-78); and Comm. Is. 1:13 (1:59). 12. See also, Comm. Harm. Moses on Lev. 12:1-8 (1:499-502); Lev. 13:1-59 (2:1318); Lev. 14:1-57 (2:24-28); and Lev. 15:1-33 (2:31-33), inter alia. 13. See also Comm. Is. mi (1:56); 1:12 (1:58); and Lee, passim. 14. The "middle wall," of course, refers to the barrier erected in the Temple to keep the Gentiles out. 15. See the discussion in chapter 2 (in this volume), regarding natural law and moral law for Calvin. 16. See, for example, Hopfl, 154; as well as the discussion in chapter 2 (in this volume). 17. The Genevan polity, not surprisingly, fit Calvin's criteria well. Composed of the executive (administrative) and judicial "Small Council," the primarily legislative "Two Hundred," and the "general assembly of all male citizens" (Monter, 145), the arrangement constituted very much a "mixed" government. On this general topic, cf. Hopfl, who notes, interestingly, that Calvin's "treatment of the topic of forms of government seems almost deliberately designed to deny the capacity of unaided reason to deliver anything conclusive for the Christian" (51). Perhaps, given our discussion of "unaided reason" in chapter 2 (in this volume), this ought not to surprise us. On the importance of governmental "checks and balances" for Calvin, see Witte, 383-84. 18. I am thinking in particular of the French Huguenots (see Defence of Liberty); the Scottish resistance (see Knox, On Rebellion); and the Dutch Calvinists (see Marnix, Lettre CMLXVI, au Prince d'Orange, 27 mars 1580). My thanks to historian Frank C. Roberts for pointing out to me these references and their linkages to Calvin. 19. See also Comm. Ps. 89:11 (3:427). 20. See also Comm. Ps. 135:6 (5:174); Comm. Ps. 147:15-18 (5:300-1); and Comm. Is. 45:7 (3:403). 21. See also 1.5.2, 53-54; 1.14.1, 160; 1.14.2, i6i-62;Comm. Gen. 1:2 (1:73-74); Comm. Ps. 104:29 (4:168); Comm. Is. 48:13 (3:478-79); Schreiner, "Calvin's Use," 61-67; and Schreiner, Theatre, passim. 22. See also Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 10:28 (1:464); Comm. Ps. 33:10 (1:54546); 78:26 (3:248-49); 135:6 (5:175); 147:7-9 (5:296-97); Comm. Is. 35:1 (3:61); Reardon,

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529-30; Schreiner, "Calvin's Use," 67-69; Wright, 3-4 & passim; Phillips, n & passim; and Hancock, Foundations, 38. 23. Muller, Christ and the Decree, finds that "Calvin set providence below predestination in his order of discussion, implying that the work of providence lies under and serves predestination" (23). See also Reardon, 517; and Wendel, Calvin, 264-65. Cf. Bouwsma, "Spirituality of Calvin": "[I]t is only because God's power is sufficient absolutely to control the world that, as Calvin, repeatedly insisted, predestination is not a terrifying but a comforting doctrine for believers" (324). 24. Calvin is referring, of course to 2 Samuel 16: 5-14. On this subject—of human agency in Calvin's doctrine of providence—see also, Comm. Is. 10:5 (1:338-40) as well as the fine study by Wittmer, passim. For Augustine's view, see De Civitate Dei Vip-n (2: 166-89). 25. Cf. Hopfl, where he sympathetically describes Calvin as explicitly concluding that "Scripture . . . seems to affirm both free choice and predestination" (231 [app. II]). 26. See also, Comm. Is. 10:5 (1:338-40). 27. Calvin's listing, in Institutes 4.20.30, 1517, of Biblical instances of God's "fighting fire with fire" would of course be instructive here. 28. See the discussion of Calvin's use of the adjective "secret" in chapter i (in this volume). See also Comm. Ps. 92:9 (3:501); and Comm. Dan. 6:21-22 (1:379). F° Calvin's discussion of the "absurdity" of God being the "author" of evil, see as well Comm. Ps., Pref., xlvi; Comm. Is. 45:7 (3:403); Reardon, 523—24; Phillips, 11—12; and Schreiner, Wisdom, esp. chs. 3-4. 29. See also Comm. Ps. 82:8 (3:336); 106:6 (4:211); 127:1 (5:104); Comm. Is. 10:5 (i: 340); 34:6 & 8 (3:49 & 51); Comm. Harm. Evang. on Matt. 10:28 (1:265); Serm. job 1:1 (3); Haroutunian, 40; and the longer discussion in chapter 4 (in this volume). 30. See also passim; and Serm. Job 34:21-26 (258-71). Schreiner, Wisdom, 131-33, describes Calvin's affinity for Elihu's point of view. 31. See also Comm. Ps. 3:3 (1:36); 89:11 (3:426-27); 107:20 (4:255); 110:1 (4:299); Comm. Is. 2:4 (1:98); and Comm. Joshua, Pref., xix. 32. See also Comm. Ps. 69:19 (3:64); 91 (3:477-921); 43:8 (5:255); Comm. Is. 51:12 (4:78-79); arid Comm. Dan. 6:22 (1:380). 33. See also Comm. Ps. 2:1-3 ( I : l 2 ); Comm. Is. 26:5 (2:215), where Calvin comments, "as the power of God, which is the object of faith, is perpetual, so faith ought to be extended as to be equally perpetual"; Comm. Rom. 8:31 (1:321—22); and Letter CXXVIII to Viret (4: 451). Cf. Comm. Is. 51:12 (4:78), where Calvin rails against the "sinfulness" of being "agitated by the terrors of men." 34. See also Comm. Ps. 12:1-2 (1:171); 68:13 (3:16-17); 69:3 (3:48); 92:12 (3:504); 129:1 (5:120); Comm. Is., Pref., xxxi; 5:15 (1:180); 8:18 (1:284); and 40:1 (3:197). 35. Cf. Calvin's warnings to the faithful not to expect or anticipate "miracles." As Haroutunian puts it, because Calvin knew that the anticipation of miraculous relief from the stresses of living in history was "a permanent temptation in the church," he therefore insisted "repeatedly and strongly" that "miracle and doctrine go together" (41). The truly faithful rest on God's word and not on the vain hope of superficial relief. For specific examples of Calvin issuing such warnings, see, for example, Letters CCII (5:129); CCXXXII (5:201-4); CCCCXVIII (6:231-32); CCCCXIX (6:233-34); CCCCLXXVI (6:363-66); CCCCLXXXVIII (6:395-96); CCCCXCVII (6:418-21); DXXXIX (7:49-54); and DLII (7: 80-87), where Calvin exhorts the "brethren in France" to recall that God in his own way "shows us that as much as our faith is more precious than gold or silver, so it is the more reasonable that it should be tried." See also the discussion of hardship in chapter 6 (in this volume).

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36. On the other hand, of course, Calvin was no millennarian speculator. He had too little faith in human capacity to know God's plan for such speculation to erupt. As Hopfl has it, "In his commentaries, Calvin systematically ignored, attenuated or explained away as referring to the life-history of individuals, the favorite texts of the millennarians" (280 11.17). See also the discussion in chapter 6 (in this volume) and that on Calvin's sense of the humbling effects of the doctrine of predestination in chapter 3 (in this volume). 37. Battles translates emus, virtute as "by his power." 38. For further discussion of personal sanctification, see, for example, 3.20.42, 905-6 (where Calvin's discussion of the second petition of the Lord's Prayer binds together personal and "historical" sanctification); Comm. John 5:25 (1:205-6); 5:29 (1:209-10); and Comm. 2 Cor. 5:17-18 (2:233-35). Calvin is fond of referring to the sanctification process as one of "quickening," thereby invoking the powerful metaphor of the unborn human fetus achieving "viability." On this latter point, see, for example, Comm. John 5:25 (1:205); Comm. Rom. 4:17 (175); and Comm. Eph. 2:4 (2:224-25). 39. See also Comm. Rom. 8:20-21 (304-5); Comm. Heb. 12:27 (337~38); and Comm. 2 Pet. 3:10 (420-21). Cf. Schaff: The Reformation was "the beginning of modern times. Starting from religion, it gave, directly or indirectly, a might impulse to every forward movement, and made protestantism the chief propelling force in the history of modern civilization" (VII:i). 40. See Little, Religion, 62.ff; and Bieler, Pensee Economique et Sociale, ch. I, esp. sect. 2, and ch. Ill, sect. 2.iii.3 (cited by Hopfl, 280 n.is). 41. See Hegel, Philosophy of History, 12-16, 4i7ff., and 444. 42. See also DeGruchy, 13; and Troeltsch, Protestantism, 171. 43. See also Graham, Constructive, 200-1. 44. Along these lines, Kingdon ("Reformation a Revolution?," 218) highlights as well the "revolutionary" development and performance of the Genevan Consistory in serving as a kind of moral police. It is certainly true, as Naphy and Kingdon himself (for example, Adultery and Divorce) have documented, that the Consistory's role was a central one. For example, Naphy (Calvin and Consolidation, 108-9) ca^s attention to the significant increase in the number of its cases from 1542-1550, as well as the manner of "crimes" confronting the Genevan polity. Indeed, Naphy works deliberately and painstakingly to demonstrate Calvin's "dogged determination to transform Geneva" (231) by urging public officials at every turn to "root out dissolute and scandalous living" (156, quoting Calvin, Serm. Micah 3:9 [Supplementa Calviniana, 5:99]). Even in his pastoral work, notes Naphy (Calvin and Consolidation, 144-50), Calvin worked hard to transform the Genevan mind-set by banning certain baptismal names which alluded, even if unwittingly, to Geneva's Roman catholic heritage. On this transformative work, see also Naphy, "Baptisms," 88-90; Bainton, Reformation, 118-19; and Koops, 5. 45. Cf. Calvin's "need [for] both mutability and fixity" in the civil law (Hopfl, 16768). See also the discussion in chapter 6 (in this volume). 46. See also Bavinck, 455; and Bouwsma, John Calvin, 98 & 159. 47. Walzer's bias against the possibility of spiritual "truth" is implicit in his entire argument, it seems to me. Hence, his conclusions must be suspect, resting as they do on a foundationally antagonistic reading of Calvin. Voegelin, on the other hand, although clearly in tune with the existential truth of much of the Christian faith, nonetheless relies a bit too heavily on Anglican Richard Hooker's portrait of "the Puritan" to build his argument, and not nearly enough on a close reading of Calvin's works. This method is uncharacteristic of Voegelin's work. 48. See Kingdon, "Reformation a Revolution?," as recounted previously. See also McGrath, i; Bainton, Reformation, 117; and Hancock, "Religion," 695.

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49. Cf. Braacen: "[In Protestant Christology,] we are confronted either by a triumphalist theology of glory in which Christians must conquer the public space, or by sectarian withdrawal into ghetto-like communities alongside, and outside, the world" (21). 50. See also Little, Religion, 62-80; Eire, 304-10 & passim; and Troeltsch, Protestantism, 114. Cf. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 106; and Schaff: "The Protestant Reformation assumed the helm of the liberal tendencies and movements of the renaissance, directed them into the channel of Christian life, and saved the world from a disastrous revolution. For the Reformation was neither a revolution nor a restoration, though including elements of both. It was negative and destructive towards error, positive and constructive towards truth; it was conservative as well as progressive; it built up new institutions in place of those which it pulled down; and for this reason and to this extent it has succeeded.

(VII:3) 51. On the former, see, for example, 3.23.6. 953-55; 3.23.9, 957-58; and Comm. Rom. 6:1-2 (217-19). On the latter, see 3.19.1, 834; Comm, Rom. 6:19 (238); and the full discussion in chaptet 4 (in this volume). 52. Cf. Voegelin, "Reason: The Classic Experience," 103-8, on the Greek concept of the metaxy (the "in between"). As noted previously, Voegelin apparently did not see this aspect of Calvin's thought. See New Science, 133—4,1.

CHAPTER 6

1. Cf. the discussion of institutional helps in chapter 2 (in this volume). 2. See discussions in chapters i and 4 (in this volume). 3. See discussion in chaptet i (in this volume) re "natural" and "supernatural" gifts. 4. See, for example, Comm. Is. 10:5 (1:339); Comm. Micah 4:3 (260); Comm. Mai. i: 2—5 (480); Comm. John 6:40 (1:254); 10:16 (1:407); 19:11 (2:221); Comm. Acts 4:28 (i: 187); Comm. Rom. 11:34 (446); Cone. Etern. Predest. X.8 (171); X.n (177); X.I2 (178); X.I4 (182); as well as Muller, Christ and the Decree, 21; and Schreiner, Wisdom, 93-94. 5. See also Cone. Etern. Predest. X.n (177); and Schreiner, Wisdom: "Calvin warns his readers not to speculate about what God can do but only to remember what God has promised to do" (116). 6. See also Wendel, "Justification," 178; Comm. Ps., 135:6 (5:175); and Cone. Etern. Predest. X.I5 (184-85). Cf. Dekker, who uncovers in Calvin's sermons "the twin heresy of an autonomous man and a searchable God" (xxxii). 7. See discussion of pride and human sin in chaptet 2 (in this volume). 8. Indeed, "our understandings cannot comprehend a thousandth part of God's works" (Comm. Ps. 135:7 [5:175])- See also Comm. Gen. 3:7 (1:158); and Haroutunian, 42-43. On the beneficence of secret election, see as well discussions in chapter 3 and 4 (in this volume). 9. Cf. Hancock, Foundations, passim; and the discussion in chapter 4 (in this volume). 10. Battles translates nefas as "unlawful," yet the word connotes a much more emphatic, and impertinent, irreverence. 11. See also Leith, 108-9; and Muller, Christ and the Decree: "Calvin will not allow reference to a God who decrees salvation eternally apart from a sense of the trinitarian economy and the effecting of the salvation in the work of the Son of God incarnate. Built into Calvin's system is an interrelation and interpcnctration of predestination and Christology" (18). 12. Calvin is hete referring to Psalm 51:4. 13. Cf. Calvin's wonderful sermons on Job, for example, that on Job 38:1-4 (esp. 297-

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300). See also here the fine Introduction to this volume by Harold Dekker: "The divine incomprehensibility and inscrutability in Calvin's writings merit more attention than they have had. . . . What orthodox Christianity needs more than anything else today is the full sense of the majesty of God. There is no better place to find it than in Calvin's sermons on ]ob"(xxxii). 14. Quoted in 3.23.2, 950, n. 6. Cf. Steinmetz, "Absolute Power": "[In Institutes 3.23.2, Calvin] attacked the distinction between the absolute and ordained power of God as a speculative doctrine which separates the omnipotence of God from his justice and which transforms the compassionate Father of the biblical narratives into an arbitrary tyrant" (65). Compare this interpretation of Calvin's theology with that of Graham, Constructive, 185, noted in chapter 5 (in this volume). 15. See also Comm. Ps. 77: 14 (3:219-20); 115:3 (4:345-46); and 135:6 (5:174-75). Cf. Hancock, Foundations, 36, 38, & 149. 16. See also Comm. Harm. Moses on Ex. 3:2 (1:60-62), on the burning bush episode. See as well Serm. 2 Sam. 12:1-6, on Nathan's charge of adultery and murder leveled at King David. Says Calvin here, God may have to "shottt" or even "raise his hand and pull our ears, and even pick us up by the hair of our heads" to get the believer's attention. 17. On this last point see as well 2.10.10-12, 436-40; 3.8.1, 702; 3.8.7, 707; Cone. Etem. Predest. X.i4 (179-80); and Schreiner, Wisdom, 96. 18. Among Calvin's other letters see, for example, CCII (5:129-30); CCXXXII (5:2014); CCCCXIX (6:233-34); CCCCLXXVI (6:364); CCCCLXXXIX (6:397-98); and DXXXIX (7:49-53): "[I]t behooves you," Calvin writes to fellow believers in France, "to turn your eyes during these great troubles, and to rejoice that [God] has esteemed you worthy of suffering affliction for his word" (7:52). In addition, see, for example, Comm. Ps. 25:18 (1:43-44); 41:1 (2:113); 66:10 (2:472); 107:20 (4:255); 129:1 (5:120); 130:3 (5:128); and Comm. Is. 45:7 (3:403). Cf. Comm. Ps. 49:20 (2:256-57), where Calvin signals that God's "censures" are aimed at "those who riot in the bounties of God without any recognition of God himself." Those who so "senselessly devour the blessing which God has bestowed" thereby "divest themselves of that honor which God had put upon them," and inexorably "reduce themselves to the level of the beasts." 19. See discussion of sin in chapter 2 (in this volume), as well as of the "changing perceptions" resulting from personal suffering in Schreiner, Wisdom, 117. See also Inst. 1.5.5, 56-57, on "the confusion of creature with Creator." 20. See also Bavinck, 452; Klempa, "Barth," 39; and Leith: "Providence i s . . . much broader than salvation and includes within its orbit [as well] those who do not belong to the community of the elect" (108). Note also Wendel's point that in the 1536 Institutes, "predestination did not yet appear as an independent doctrine" ("Justification," 161). Cf. Bainton, Hunted Heretic: "The doctrine of election was. . . the very core of Calvin's system" (J43-44)21. See also Comm. Ps. 103:10-11 (4:135-36); Haroutunian, 40, 42, & 43; Leith, 109; and Tonkin, 155-56. 22. According to Battles (4.20.1, 1486 n.4), "These sentences (1559) evidently refer to the Anabaptists on the one hand, and on the other to Machiavelli, whose Italian II Principe was only in 1553 translated into Latin. Calvin may also have in mind the emperor-cult of antiquity." 23. See also Fuchs, "Providence and Politics," 237 & passim; as well as Letter DLXVI (7:116). 24. As I noted previously, Calvin is clearly incapable of envisioning the kind of totalitarian pretensions we have witnessed in the twentieth century, Walzer and others to the

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contrary not withstanding. On this point, for example, see Fuchs, "Providence and Politics," 2 3925. The publication dates of the commentaries on Romans and i Peter are worth noting here as evidence of Calvin's general consistency on the subject of civil obedience. Although Skinner, Modern Political 'Thought, 2:192, has argued that Calvin "changed his mind" in his later years about the legitimacy of political resistance (as we have noted in chapter i), the fact that Calvin makes precisely the same point in Commentary on i Peter, published January 24, 1551—in the midst of Calvin's mature work—as he does in the Commentary on Romans, published October 18, 1539, indicates some conscious consistency in Calvin's mind. In the Letters discussed following, one can unearth even more palpable consistency. For a thorough and coherent response to Skinner, see Keen, "Limits of Power." See also Cheneviere, Pensee Politique, 227-28; Laski, 10; Bouwsma, John Calvin, 86; and Comm. Ps. 127:1 (5:104). Cf. DeGruchy, xiii & 18; Chesterton, 33; Hopfl, 153; and Hancock, Foundations, 68, 113, & 159. 26. See Kingdon, Coming of Wars, no-n; as well as Letter DCXXIX of 13 May 1562 (7:269-72) to the Church of Lyon; and Letter DCXXX of the same day (7:272-73) to the Baron Des Adrets, urging him to use his influence to put a stop to the looting of property as well as to insist upon the return of looted property to rightful owners. See also Boeke, 68, quoted in note 38. 27. See also Comm. Ps. 147:15—18 (5:301); and Haroutunian, 40; as well as discussion in chapter 5 (in this volume). 28. See as well Little, "Max Weber Revisited," 417 n.ii, regarding Walzer's interpretation of Calvin; and Monter: "Calvin was out to rebuild the ancient church, not to establish a new one (99)." 29. On the timing of Calvin's arrival, and the Geneva presented to him then, see also McGrath, 186-95. 30. Bouwsma (John Calvin) describes what he sees as the almost schizophrenic movement in Calvin's psyche as follows: "[T]he more fully he articulated his orderly universe, the more he worried over the permeability of boundaries, the collapse of categories, contamination and impurity; and the more he felt trapped. He could move, for relief, only in the opposite direction, toward freedom" (109). Cf. Taylor, 229, who speaks of Calvinism's and puritanism's "horror at disorder." Bouwsma would appear to find stronger evidence of his point in Calvin's "Farewell" to the Genevan "company of pastors" just before his death. Here Calvin asks "that [they] make no change or innovation" even though "[pjeople often ask for novelties." He asks this because "all changes are dangerous and sometimes hurtful." Yet even here Calvin may simply be making the sort of point James Madison wished to make in Federalist 62, final paragraph, in explicating the need for continuity of office in the United States Senate. After noting the specific dangers of "mutability," Madison summarizes as follows: "No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable, nor be truly respectable without possessing a certain portion of order and stability" (382). 31. Interestingly, Calvin (7:172) does not suggest that church members ignore ordinary and established avenues of political protest in this matter, encouraging them to make their cause known at the next convening of the Estates General. See also 7:172 n.i. 32. In Letter DCXL of 8 April 1563 (7:297-301) to Bullinger, Calvin gives a summary of the treaty. See also Letter DCXLI (7:301-303). The dates of these letters, written just a year before Calvin's death in May 1564, seem to provide further evidence against Skinner's notion of Calvin changing his mind regarding the propriety of political resistance. See note 25. Cf. 4.10.30, 1208, where, in talking about religious ceremonies and matters of outward discipline, Calvin asserts: "|W|e ought not to charge into innovation rashly, suddenly, |or]

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for insufficient cause." Rather, remember that "[l]ove will judge what may hurt or edify." For other examples of Calvin preaching political assiduity and sagacity, see Letters CXXXVIII (4:473); and DLXXIX (7:152-53). 33. See discussion of law in chapter 2 (in this volume). See also Comm. Harm. Moses on Ex. 15:26 (1:266-67), where Calvin commends to all believers God's words to the Hebrew people at their first stop in the desert, at Marah (the "bitter" oasis): "If you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you" (NIV). In this verse, says Calvin, "we are . . . taught. . . the rule of a good life, when we obey God's voice and study to please him." With Christ and the Spirit as intermediary and inspiration, this verse teaches God's primary lesson: "that there is no health in us, except in so far as God spares us." See also Comm. Ps. 78:32 (3:251); Letter CXVIII (4:421); Cone. Etern. Predest. X.I5 (r83); Bavinck, 450; and Little, "Max Weber Revisited," 422. Cf. Parrington, 13, who appears to agree wholeheartedly with Hancock. 34. See also Bavinck, 452; and Haroutunian: "[Calvin] points out the infidelities, rebellions, cowardices, and malefactions of men which have brought contempt for God and misery upon themselves. History is tragic; but it is neither hopeless nor futile. Universal though evil is, men act as responsible beings, under the mercy as well as the judgment of God, who is wise and knows what he is doing" (37). 35. See also Comm. Is. 9:6 (1:307). 36. See Tinder, Against Fate, for a full elaboration of this crucial Christian concept. See also, of course, Comm. Is. 40:31 (3:239). 37. See also Comm. Ps. r5o:6 (5:321). 38. See, for example, Boeke, 68, who argues that when Calvin "on occasion" wrote "in support of Protestant military efforts," he did so "despite misgivings." For he "had little heart for civil strife. But here "Calvin was merely asserting the propriety of Reformed churches in defending themselves from lethal attacks by the Catholic majority. He was not advocating that Protestants initiate violence or foment revolution." 39. For other instances of such sentiments in Calvin's letters, see, for example, Letters CCCCLXXXIII (6:381-84); CCCCLXXXVIII (6:395-96); CCCCXCVII (6:418-21); DXXXIX (7:49-54); DCXXXIV (7:278-79); as well as Boeke, 68. 40. See Hopfl, 36, who notes that Calvin devoted the most space to his discussion of this third part.

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INDEX

Beza, Theodore, 77-78 Bolsec, Jerome, 79, 97 Bouwsma, William J., 7—8, 97, 142—43, 180 n.3o Budziszewski, Jay, 23

correspondence, 75-76, 143-44, :46-47 to Admiral de Coligny, 136 to the church in Paris, 143-44 to Duke of Longueville, 95-96 to the Duke of Somerset, the Protector, 75 to Edward VI, 75-76 to Madame de Coligny, 136—37 to Monsieur de Soubise, 143 to Simon Grynaeus, 25 to William Cecil, 143 faithfulness to Scripture, 13, 144 and political action, 74-75 choice. See free will "Christian Freedom," essay on. See "On Christian Freedom" Christology, 65-66 church, institutional as help, 50-51 and political involvement, 52-53, 95,

calling, doctrine of, 95, 26-27 Calvin, John call to Genevan church, 22 and city of Geneva, 28, 68—69, 101—2, 142, 174 n.58

and polity, 22, 55-56 See also church, Genevan church, Genevan, 22, 28, 98—99, 173 11.50 civil government concerning form of, 31—32, 113—14

action, corporate, 59-61, 99 and activism, 76-80 and predestination, 64-69 and providence, 124—30 and social duty, 70-72 and social institutions, 72-76 adiaphora (things indifferent), 109-11, 147 aedificatio (edification), 74—75, 97 Anabaptists, 38, 51 Aquinas, Thomas, 17-18, 43 Aristotle, 43, 82 atonement, limited, 66 Augustine of Hippo, 12, 40—41, 118 avengers, public, 34—35

IOI—2

197

198

. INDEX

civil government (continued) duties and purposes, 52, 71, 73-74, 93103, 138—41 manifestation of God's power, 23-24, 139-41 See also government, good; institutions, political civil obedience, disobedience, 43, 53-57, 91, 139-44 non-resistance, 54-55 conscience and action, 33, 70, 100, 102 and community, 50, 55—57 and duty, 41—42 as gift, 17—18 legitimacy of, 20—21 as link to God, n, 15, 19 correspondence, Calvin's. See Calvin, John, correspondence covenant, 22—23, 47 creation order, 85—86, 115—16, 126 human beings reflect, 16 moral law part of, 47 Daniel, 32, 55 David, King, 136-7 "Dedicatory Letter to Francis I," 54, 140 DeGruchy, John, 125 democracy, 29-30, 95 dependence on God, 38-39, 44, 100 due to sin , 12—13 and human institutions, 50—52 duty, 42—43, 71—72, 99—100 edification. See aedificatio election effects on believers, 19-20, 64 and individual value, 11-12 knowledge of, 78—79 mystery of, 18-19, 133-34 equality, political, 26-32 evil, problem of, 118-19 faith and and and and

certainty, 19-20, 69 dependence, 38—39 response, 42, 70 uncertainty, TOI

fall of human beings, 16-17, 40-41 Francis II, 86-87 freedom, Christian, 11—13, 59~6i, 131—32, 147-48, 149-52 adiaphom (things indifferent) and, 10914. 147 civil bondage and, 52 and community, 56-57 as goad to action, 69-72 and helps, 72—76 and history, 105—6 and the individual, 11-13, 36 and law, 49-53 and prudence, 43-44 and responsibility, 100, 103 and sin, 12 freedom, political, 31 freedom, secular notions of, 5-7 free will, 44, 48-49, 116-18 Geneva Calvin's role in, 22, 28, 68—69, 7 2 > I 74 n-58 governance of, 98-99, 125, 175 n.i?, 177 n.44 and Huguenot rebellions, 140—41 and political equality, 29 See also church, Genevan government, good, 61, 93-103 goals of, 93-103 and obligation to God, 99 and political freedom, 31 protects religion, 26, 52, 93 government, twofold, 52-53, 138-39. See also private sphere grace, common, 16-17, in Graham, Fred, 125, 129-30, 141,171 n.27 Hancock, Ralph and faith, 20 and God's power, 61, 135, 144 and materialism, 169 n.57 and political action, 103, 130 and political power, 91-96, 144 and secularism, 76-77 helps, Calvin's concept of human institutions as, 49—53, 72—76, 93 moral law as, 45-49

INDEX hiddenness, God's, 18-19, 155 n.i4 and human power, 92-93 materialism a result of, 24 and providence, 107, 119, 132-38 history, 147 and God's judgment, 119-20 and God's providence, 105-6, 115-16, 131-32 as progress, 121-26 and redemption, 121-22 Hobbes, Thomas, 94-95 Holtrop, Philip, 79 Hopfl, Harro, 91, 97, 117-18, 124-26 human beings and equality, 28 finitude of, 16-18, 81-82, 133 general make-up, 15-18, 98 and sin, 40—41, 101 humility balances political presumption, 26, 100101 and election, 78 and God's judgment, 82-84, 87-89 hypocrisy, 50-51 ideology, 126—28 idolatry, 86 image of God. See imago Dei imago Dei (image of God), n, 15-16, 4243. 47, 97 indifferent things. See adiaphora individual believer, 150 as autonomous, 11-12 and calling, 26-27 and community, 56-57 and conscience, 18 as dependent on God, 12-13, 38-39, 8184 and election, 18-19, 76-77 and human institutions, 19-21, 33-36, 50-53, 56-57 as paradoxical, 13 and predestination, 59—60 and revelation, 133 as revolutionary, 126-27, 146-48 and Scripture, 20-21 individualism and autonomy, 49—53 and conscience, 18

o

199

and political equality, 26-32 and privatized religion, 23-26 and social contract, 21-23 institutions, human God's law revealed through, 13, 49-53, 140 as helps, 73-76, 139 individuals as counter-balance to, 19, 21

institutional equality, 28 obedience to, 54-55, 139-40 relative significance of, 89, 113-14 institutions, political forms as irrelevant, 31-32, 113-14 See also institutions, human Job, 135-36 judgment, divine and human action, 60-61 and human judgment, 83-84, 92-93, 135 manifest in creation, 85-86 manifest in historical events, 86-88, 11920 judgment, human, 21, 83, 92-93, 135 and political institutions, 12, 32-36 Kingdon, Robert, 125, 140-41 Knox, John, 128, 143 law, Calvin's third use of, 40, 45-49, 4953 law, divine as help, 45—49 and human institutions, 13, 49-53, 83 two tables of, 52-53 law, earthly, 16, 29, 50-51, 113 law, moral. See natural law Leithart, 162-63 n'57 liberalism in Calvin, 12, 53—54 and political equality, 26—32 and privatized religion, 23-26 and social contract, 21-23 "The Life of the Christian Man," 42 Little, David, 25, 128 Locke, John, 33 love, duties of, 71—72

200

o

Luther, Martin and faith, 20, 42 influence of, n and priesthood of all believers, 20, 156 n.28 Lutheranism, 35-36, 52-53, 63, 69 magistrates and God, 22-23, 54, 89-91, 95, 97 responsibilities of, 33—34, 99—100 Marxism, 129 materialism, 24, 59-60, 75-79 McNeil, John T., 29-31 moderatio (moderation), 95-96 moderation. See moderatio monarchy, 29-31 mortification, 12, 38-39 Muller, Richard, 16 natural law, 18, 43-45, 48-49, 113,154 n.9 Nazism, 35-36 "On Christian Freedom," 4, 20, 76 "On Civil Government," 138-39 paradox, 4, 119 and free agency, 82 and God's sovereignty, 13, 129-30 patience, 122 Phillips, Nancy, 68 predestination, 18-19, 59~6o, 63-69, 13738 pride, 87-88 private sphere, 23-26, 35, 52-53. See also twofold government Protestant work ethic, 76-77, 169 0.57 providence, 105-7, 114-16, 149 and free will, 116-18 and history, 131-48 and institutional helps, 138-41 and judgment, 84-88 and magistrates, 54 as mysterious, 132—38, 155 n.i4 and problem of evil, 118—20 and redemption, 121-24 and revolution, 124-30

INDEX

prudence. See jyrudentia prudenlia (prudence), 43-44, 161 n.3i reason, 15—18, 43—44, 154 n.2 resistance, political, 21, 32-36, 53-57, 95 and providence, 106, 128-30, 139-44 See also civil obedience, disobedience; revolution, social and political revolution, social and political, 125-30. See also resistance, political ritual (ceremony), 111—13 salvation, 19, i n , 121—22 sanctification, 51, 53, 123—24 Scripture, 119-20 Calvin's faithfulness to, 13, 144 and moral law, 46 secularization, 23—26, 76—80 per Chappuis, Jean-Marc, 24-25 per Hancock, Ralph, 23—24, 76—77 Servetus, Michael, 79, 97-98, 173 11.46 sin, 39-41 and the church, 145 limits individuals, 12-13 and predestination, 65-66 Skinner, Quentin, 33, 180 n.25, 180—181 n.32 social contract idea, 21-23 social justice, 73-76, 96-97, 99-100 sovereignty of God, 81, 89, 137-38, 155 n.i6 things indifferent. See adiaphora totalitarianism, 94, 98, 127 tyranny, 30, 85-86, 147 resistance to, 32-36, 95 Voegelin, Eric, 127-28 Walzer, Michael, 126-28, 164 0.71, 177 n.47 Weber, Max, 59, 77-78 will, human, 16—17, 43~44> 4^—49 Willis-Watkins, David, 34-35 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 73 works righteousness, 83 predestination versus, 18-19, 64-65, 7778, 134