Calvin: Militant or man of peace?

Review of Politics

Volumn 65, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 35-69

  Pellerin, Daniel ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33749365488     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500036524     Document Type: Article

References (149)

1. Compare Egon Friedell, "Renaissance und Reformation," Book 1 of Kulturgeschichte der Neu&it (Miinchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999), pp. 305,316. All translations not otherwise attributed are my own.
2. Schubert's portrayal is perhaps most extravagant in this regard, but it hardly stands alone. (Cf. Hans von Schubert, "Calvin," in Meister der Politik: Eine weltgeschichtliche Reihe von Bildnissen, vol. 2, edited by Erich Marcks and Karl Alexander von Miiller (Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1923), pp. 68, 69,81,91.
3. Cf. Herbert Liithy, From Calvin to Rousseau: Tradition and Modernity in Sodo-Political Thought from the Reformation to the French. Revolution, translated by Salvator Attanasio [New York: Basic Books, 1970], p. 56).
4. Cf. H. R. Trevor-Roper, The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Religion, Reformation and Social Change (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 28. The comparison of Calvin and Erasmus on questions of military imagery and war will be taken up in Part I.
5. Cf. George Bancroft, History of the United States, 14th edition, vol.4 of 10 (Boston: Little & Brown, 1848-1875), pp. 152-153.
6. Cf. Karl Barth, The Theology of John Calvin, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 38,39,41.
7. Barth speaks of Calvin's writings in terms of "battle cries" and chosen "fields of battle." Perhaps the single most vivid image he adduces is that of Calvin's Institutes as "a fortress with guns trained in every direction." For Barth, Reformed Protestantism was "militant from the first" and Calvin bears responsibility for this turn even if it was also historically inevitable (Ibid. 122-23,152,153,159,236, 240). Compare also Michael Walzer's assessment in his Revolution of the Saints: "Anything less [than turning politics into a deadly business], the saints might have argued, would not be serious; anything less would not have suited their exalted sense of purpose and their apocalyptic sense of possibility" (Cf. Michael WaLzer, The Revolution of the Saints (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 296). Walzer also characterizes the Calvinist Puritan spirit as a kind of military and political work-ethic: "If indeed men did not dream of a peaceful change, if they had been brought somehow to view violence and systematic warfare as the necessary price of reformation, this was because of the training that Calvinism provided" (Walzer 13,21, italics added).
8. Barth 43,48, italics added.
9. Cf. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, translated with an introduction by George Schwab (Chicago: at the University Press, 1996), p. 26, also pp. 32, 34.
10. Contrast Schmitt 37: "The political does not reside in the battle itself... but in the mode of behavior that is determined by this possibility, by clearly evaluating the concrete situation and thereby being able to distinguish correctly the real friend and the real enemy. A religious community that wages wars against members of other religious communities or engages in other wars is already more than a religious community; it is a political entity."
11. Com. 1 Tim. 6:12, "Fight the good fight," NTC 10.276, italics added. (All reference to Calvin's New Testament Commentaries (NTC) are by Biblical passage, volume, and page number to the edition in 12 vols. by David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994-1996).)
12. Cf. Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated from the 1559 Latin edition by Ford Lewis Battles, edited by John T. McNeill, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), I.xiv.15 (p. 174) [hereafter ICR]. (All references are by book, chapter, section, and page number.)
13. ICR I.xiv.15 (p. 174). Compare also Com. Rom. 12:18: "The soldiers of Christ cannot have lasting peace with the world, which is ruled by Satan" (NTC 12.277).
14. ICR I.xiv.13 (p. 173). Thus, according to ICR III.viii.7 (p. 707), God furnishes his faithful with "the special badge of his soldiery" by exposing them to persecution for righteousness' sake. Compare also Com. Gal. 6:17, NTC 11.119: "Even as earthly warfare has its decorations with which generals honor the bravery of a soldier, so Christ our leader has His own marks, of which He makes good use in decorating and honoring some of His followers."
15. Compare ICR III.xxv.l (p. 987). Also Com. 1 John 5:4, "This is the victory," NTC 5.301: "[A]s God does not arm us for one day alone, and as faith is not of a day's duration but is the perpetual work of the Holy Spirit, we are already partakers of victory, as if we had already finished the war." Without the sustenance and succor provided by Christ, on the other hand, human beings would lack all power "to engage the great warrior the devil in combat, or to bear his force and onslaught" (ICR III.xx.46, p. 914).
16. Com. Hebrews 12:4, NTC 12.190.
17. ICR m.ii.21 (p. 567), HI.iii.8 (p. 600), IV.xviii.l (p. 1430); Com. Matt. 28:19, NTC 3.251. Compare also Jean Calvin, "Reply to Jacopo Sadoleto's Letter to the Genevans (1539)," in A Reformation Debate, translated by Henry Beveridge, edited by John C. Olin (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976), p. 78 [herafter Sadoleto]: "An armed enemy is at hand, on the alert to engage - an enemy most skillful and unassailable by mortal strength; to resist him, with what guards must not poor man be defended, with what weapons armed, if he is not to be instantly annihilated? Paul informs us that the only sword with which he can fight is the Word of the Lord."
18. Sadoleto 84. Trie defensive nature of this posture should be noted, a point we shall return to at the end of this section.
19. ICR IH.iv.20 (p. 646), IV.xvi.22 (p. 1345), IV.xviii.18 (p. 1445).
20. Compare Calvin's letter to Sulcer, 23 Aug. 1561, Bonnet 4.211. (Cf. Jean Calvin, Letters of John Calvin, translated by David Constable and Marcus Robert Gilchrist, edited with historical notes by Jules Bonnet, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1858). References are by recipient, date, volume, and page number.)
21. ICR I.xiv.13 (p. 173), H.xvi.10 (p. 515), IV.xii.8 (p. 1236); 5th Serm. 2 Samuel, p. 72 (Cf. Jean Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel (Chapters 1-13), translated with an introduction by Douglas Kelly (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1992)).
22. ICR IV.iv.9 (p. 1076); Com. Philem. 1, NTC 10.394.
23. ICR UI.ix.4 (p. 716), IH.xi.6 (p. 724); 30th Serm. 2 Sam., p. 455.
24. ICRI.xiv.5(p. 165).
25. Com Jer. 51:15-16 (vol. 5). (Cf. Jean Calvin, Commentaries on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, translated by John Owen, 5 vols. (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library). Texts in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library - reproduced from the Calvin Translation Society edition - can be searched by chapter and verse on the internet, but pages are not numbered. [www.ccel.org/c/calvin/comment3/comm-index.htm])
26. Compare Harro Hopfl, The Christian Polity of John Calvin (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1982), p. 196. Christ himself had proclaimed, after all, that he was bringing fire and a sword to the earth. (Matt. 10:34, Luke 12:49-51).
27. Erasmus's single most influential statement about the life of piety lays down "rules for combat" to guide believers in a life of warfare against the forces of darkness, urging the faithful to gird themselves in the "harsh armor" of the church militia, as members of the army led by Christ "the commanding general" (Cf. James McConica, Erasmus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 49,52,57,88). At the same time, peace and concord are for Erasmus "the essence of our religion," and the most famous essay in Erasmus's Adages is considered a pacifist classic: Dulce helium inexpertis - "War is sweet to those who know nothing of it" (Ibid. 75, 77, 82, 83).
28. Hopfl denies that peaceable inclinations might have had any place in Calvin's thought: "[A]ny show of an irenic spirit, especially by Melanchton, provoked his wrath" (Hopfl 147). But this does little justice to Calvin's friendship with Melanchton, whom he regularly defended against accusations that he was too timorous and pliable (Compare Calvin's letters to Zebedee (19 May 1539, Bonnet 4.401), to Melanchton (19 Nov. 1558, Bonnet 3.484), or to Bucer (June 1549, Bonnet 2.234.).
29. Walzer 277,290, italics added.
30. Com. Matt. 7:15, NTC 1.237.
31. Walzer 279. There might be interesting connections here both with Hobbes's view of idleness as "torture" and with his conception of war in terms not only of actual fighting, but of "the known disposition thereto during all times there is not assurance to the contrary" (Cf. Thomas Hobbes, "On Man," in Man and Citizen, translated by Charles T. Wood et al., edited by Bernard Gert (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), section 11:11, p. 51; Leviathan, edited and translated by Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), section 8:8, p. 76).
32. Letter to M. de Crussol, 31 July 1563, Bonnet 4.328. Compare also Calvin's letter to the Church of Geneva, dated 1 Oct. 1538: "[W]e do not fight against flesh and blood, that is to say, against men, but against the powers of the air and against the Prince of Darkness" (Bonnet 1.84).
33. Com. Eph. 6:11, NTC 11.217. Also ibid. 4:27, p. 192.
34. Compare Calvin's 54th Sermon on Job: "The principal combat we must wage is against ourselves and against our vices; this is where we must exert ourselves" (Cf. William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 183). Compare also Walzer 315: "The saint is a soldier whose battles are fought out in the self before they are fought out in society."
35. Cf. Com. 1 Tim. 6:12, NTC 10.276; Com. Matt. 6:10, NTC 1.207; ICR III.xx.42 (p. 905).
36. Bonnet 3.263. Compare also Calvin's letter to the Brethren of France, dated November 1559: "Persecutions are the true combats of Christians, to try the constancy and firmness of their faith. Wherefore being assailed, what ought they to do but to fly to arms? Now our arms to combat valiantly in this cause, and resist the enemy, are to fortify ourselves by what God shows us in his word" (Bonnet 4.81).
37. Com. 2 Tim. 2:3, NTC 10.306, italics added.
38. Barth 111, 113; Hopfl 196.
39. Com. Rom. 8:31, NTC 8.183.
40. Cf. Pamela A. Mason, "The Genevan Republican Background to Rousseau's Social Contract," History of Political Thought 14, no.4 (Winter 1994): p. 555. Compare Ibid. 571: "[The Reformed] associational universe was essentially dichotomous, a structure of contrasts that served to confirm, extend and amplify the starkness of the difference between 'out and in' and 'them and us'... [I]t was in exclusion that unity was created and preserved."
41. Mason 552, 556, 562.
42. Cf. Sheldon S. Wolin, "Calvin: The Political Education of Protestantism," ch. 6 in Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Boston: Little & Brown, 1960), p. 193, italics added.
43. Cf. J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1957), p. 67.
44. Cf. Ernst Troeltsch, "Protestantism," ch. Ill in The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, vol.2, translated by Olive Wyon (London: Allen & Unwin, 1949), pp. 596-597
45. Wolin 169, compare 182.
46. To the Church of Geneva, 1 Oct. 1538, Bonnet 1.83; to Oswald Myconius, 14 March 1542, Bonnet 1.314, 315. Calvin dreaded particularly "the factions that must necessarily arise from the dissension of ministers" (Bonnet 1.314).
47. Com. Rom. 12:4, NTC 8.267; Letter to the King of France, Oct. 1557, Bonnet 3.375. Compare his letter to the Church of Nimes, dated 1 June 1561: "[O]ne can look for nothing but dispersion and ruin when a door is opened for strife and contentions... [T]hose who bite and devour each other will in the end be consumed by one another" (Bonnet 4.197-98). Also Com. Gal. 5:15: "How unhappy, how mad it is that we who are members of the same body should voluntarily conspire together for mutual destruction" (NTC 11.102, italics added).
48. To Melanchton, 21 Jan. 1545, Bonnet 1.437-438. Compare also Calvin's letter to an unknown person of Jan. 1545: "[W]e seem to have hired ourselves, both hand and tongue, to the ungodly, that we may afford them the spectacle of tearing one another to pieces" (Bonnet 1.445).
49. To Farel, 8 Dec. 1551, Bonnet 2.329.
50. To Zebedee, 19 May 1539, Bonnet 4.403, 404 (App.). Though Calvin has a habit of referring to "bowels" rather loosely, we might read this as a reference to disembowelment, a customary punishment for treason. Such an interpretation would be confirmed by ICR IV.i.10 (p. 1024): "The Lord esteems the communion of his church so highly that he counts as a traitor and apostate from Christianity anyone who arrogantly leaves any Christian society, provided it cherishes the true ministry of Word and sacraments" (italics added).
51. ICR IV.xvi.16 (p. 1031).
52. Com. Rom. 15:5, NTC 8.306.
53. Com. Eph. 4:4, NTC 11.172.
54. ICR IV.xvii.38 (p. 1414).
55. Com. Acts 17:6, NTC 7.97.
56. Compare Walzer 25, 28, 45, where he contends that Calvin is concerned only with obedience, as opposed to reconciliation, freedom, or brotherly love and unity. Troeltsch argues in a similar vein that for Calvin "the thought of the glory of God outweighed the thought of the claims of a brotherly love that would overcome all conflict and all law through communion with God." Troeltsch's reading, which sees Calvin as "singling out of the Christian morality of love the religious activity for the glory of God," presupposes just like Walzer's that Calvin's own insistence on the Gospel ethic of the Sermon on the Mount can be safely disregarded (Cf. Troeltsch 586, 599).
57. ICR III.xi.4 (p. 729). Compare ICR I.vi.2 (p. 72), III.ii.29 (p. 575), III.xi.21-22 (pp. 751-52); Com. Matt. 16:19, NTC 2.188; Com. 2 Cor. 5:18, NTC 10.77. Under no circumstances must the reconciliation with God be separated from man's reconciliation to his fellow man, for "Christ's office was not only to reconcile men to God, but to bring men to mutual concord" (Com. Luke 13:12, NTC 2.91).
58. NTC 1.197-198, italics added. Compare Calvin's Sermon on Galatians 6:9-11: "Even in dealing with a Moor or a Barbarian, from the very fact of his being a man, he carries about a looking glass in which we can see that he is our brother and neighbor" (Cf. J. Alton Templin, "The Individual and Society in the Thought of Calvin," Calvin Theological Journal 23, no. 2 (November 1988): p. 166. Translated from Jean Calvin, Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, edited by Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, 59 vols. (Brunswick and Berlin, 1863-1900), vol.51, p. 105 [hereafter Opera].).
59. ICR H.viii.55 (p. 418-19), italics added. Compare also Com. Gal. 5:14, NTC 11.101: "God wants to make trial of our love to Him by that love of our brother that He commends to us... [This] includes all men living, for we are joined by a common nature... Thus, no distinction is made here between friend and foe, for the wickedness of men cannot annul the right of nature" (Italics added).
60. Matt. 5:44, "Love your enemies," NTC 1.198.
61. Compare also Calvin's letter to the Church of Geneva, dated 1 Oct. 1538: "If we set ourselves to do battle with men, thinking only to wreak our vengeance upon them, ... it is a certain fact that... we shall ourselves be vanquished by the devil" (Bonnet 1.84).
62. Com. Matt. 5:39, NTC 1.193-194. Compare Com. Gen. 4:10, vol.1, pp. 207-208: "[W]e shall lose nothing of our right if we bear injuries with moderation and equanimity;... God will be so much the more ready to vindicate us, the more modestly we submit ourselves to endure all things; because the placid silence of the soul raises effectual cries that fill heaven and earth" (Cf. Jean Calvin, Commentaries on the Book of Genesis, 2 vols., translated by John King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948)). Compare also ICR I.v.8 (p. 61): "The unarmed, few and weak, snatch victory from the armed, many and strong."
63. Letter dated 24 Jan. 1564, Bonnet 4.353. In his Commentaries, too, Calvin grants that "it is legitimate for us to look eagerly forward to the destruction of the ungodly, provided that a pure and properly regulated zeal for God holds sway in our hearts" (Com. 2 Thess. 1:8, "Rendering vengeance," NTC 8.392). Nevertheless, "since vengeance is forbidden to us without exception, we must keep from doing harm, whoever may have hurt us" (Com. 1 Thess. 5:15, NTC 8.374, italics added).
64. Cf. Hans Baron, Calvins Staatsanschauung und das Konfessionelle Zeitalter (Berlin: Verlag R. Oldenbourg, 1924), p. 15.
65. Letter to the Duchess of Ferrara, 24 Jan. 1564, Bonnet 4.356-57.
66. Cf. Jean Calvin, Selections from the Institutes of the Christian Religion - 1536 Edition, translated by Walter G. Hards, in John Calvin: Selections from His Writings, edited by John Dillenberger (N.p.: Scholars Press, 1975), p. 301 [hereafter ICR (1536)].
67. Letter to M. de Falais, 16 Nov. 1546, Bonnet 2.82. Compare Karl Holl, "Johannes Calvin (1909)," ch. 13 in Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol.3 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965), pp. 266, 278.
68. Compare his letter to Peter Martyr, 4 Oct. 1559: "Meanwhile all things are tending towards a horrible butchery" (Bonnet 3.67). This hardly seems compatible with the characterization, presented, by Troeltsch and Schubert for example, of Calvin as a keen military strategist and of his letters as "militarypolitical bulletins" (Troeltsch 600, Schubert 91).
69. To Peter Martyr, 11 May 1560, Bonnet 4.107. Compare also the letters to Bullinger, 4 Dec. 1560, Bonnet 4.149, and to Sulcer, 11 Dec. 1560, Bonnet 4.151. In particular, Calvin distanced himself resolutely from the conspiracies hatched by his desperate followers in France. Thus he reacted with outrage when the instigators of the Conspiracy of Amboise consulted him about their project, and he rebuked them in no mistakable terms, though quietly lest word of the affair reach the enemy and "all the godly should be dragged to a horrid butchery." (Compare Calvin's letters to John Sturm (23 March 1560, Bonnet 3.91) and to Bullinger (11 May 1560, Bonnet 4.104-105).) In his famous letter to Admiral Coligny, Calvin stresses how much such "wild projects" and "childish affairs" displeased him, and that he was combating such ideas in his sermons with as much violence as he was capable of. "[F]or it was to be presumed that many poor, innocent persons would pay for the rash presumption of others" (Letter dated 16 April 1561, Bonnet 4.176,178,180). In a letter to the King of France, Calvin protests in a like vein that he had employed all his influence to check and prevent disturbances, and that "far from ever having given our consent to any enterprise that had for its object to sow discord and divisions among your subjects or trouble the tranquility of your state," he had taken every measure to restrain his coreligionists (28 Jan. 1561, Bonnet 4.169-70).
70. To Admiral Coligny, 16 April 1561, Bonnet 4.176, italics added.
71. Compare 6th Serm. 2 Sam., p. 85: "In general, one cannot kill a man without the image of God being violated. And that is why Scripture says that a man, being created in the image of God, cannot be killed without the offense being against God himself, who has stamped his image in our nature" (Italics added; cf. Com. Gen. 9:6, vol. 1, pp. 295-96). On the "odium of sedition" compare the letter to Macar of April 1558, Bonnet 4.432 (App.). Also Jean Calvin, "Prefatory Address to King Francis I of France,"in Institutes of the Christian Religion, op. cit., p. 28 [hereafter Francis].
72. Thus Walzer: "As Calvinism produced a new kind of army, so it discovered in warfare a new politics" (Walzer 112, compare 86). There is a considerable tension in Walzer's treatment since he acknowledges the rhetorical purposes behind the use of warfare as an image of Christian life and indeed warns against taking too seriously this "central myth of Puritan radicalism." He also concedes that Calvin "drew back from any very radical projection of his military rhetoric and suggested that the right of Christians extended no further than defensive war" (Ibid. 65, 277, 290). Yet, according to Walzer, "others might not feel themselves so bound," and in the end, "[Calvin's] dramatic view of Satanic strife suggested something quite different: in times of war, the old Roman maxim went, the laws are silent" (Ibid. 65).
73. ICR IV.xx.12 (p. 1500-1501).
74. Compare Douglas Kelly's Introduction to Serm. 2 Samuel, op. cit.,p. xi.
75. Compare 6th Serm. 2 Samuel, p. 86;
76. 5th Sermon, p. 72.
77. Compare 6th Serm. 2 Samuel, p. 87, italics added.
78. 5th Serm. 2 Samuel, p. 72;
79. 6th Sermon, p. 79. The ominous overtones of a Hobbesian state of war are perhaps most striking in Calvin's 30th Sermon: "When we are consumed by ... distrust, it is certain that we will start fires to which there will be neither end nor measure, and we will not be able to put them out once they have been started... That is, men are too inclined to distrust and remain suspicious, so that they actually lose control of the situation, although they thought they were manifesting the greatest possible prudence." (Ibid. 452)
80. 6th Serm. 2 Samuel, p. 84. Calvin immediately reiterates this in terms of not giving Satan an opening: "For when he gets in, it is very hard to run him out." (Ibid.) It is true, too, that where only "hollow" reconciliation can be achieved and no genuine peace is possible, and where the fight is therefore "good and just, approved by God," those who stay neutral are "traitors." But this is because it would be better for everything to be lost than for the honor of God to be compromised. (6th Sermon, pp. 86-88, 90)
81. 5th Serm. 2 Samuel, p. 73.
82. 6th Serm. 2 Samuel, p. 80.
83. Bouwsma 57.
84. 6th Serm. 2 Samuel, p. 85. Compare Karl Barth: "[Calvin knew] the horrors of the reality of war and he had a strong impression of its ungodly nature, as we learn from many passages in which he speaks of it." (Barth 212)
85. Com. Joshua 8:15. (Cf. Jean Calvin, Commentaries on the Book of Joshua, translated by Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), no page numbers).
86. Compare, to the same effect, Com. Joshua 7:24: "It seems harsh, nay, barbarous and inhuman, that young children, without fault, should be hurried off to cruel execution, to be stoned and burned... But if we consider how much more deeply divine knowledge penetrates than human intellect can possibly do, we will rather acquiesce in his decree than hurry ourselves to a precipice by giving way to presumption and extravagant pride." 84.1st Serm. 2 Sam., p. 12. Compare Com. Joshua 10:18: "A mercy that impairs the authority of God at the will of man is detestable."
87. Gisbert Beyerhaus, Studien zur Staatsanschauung Calvins mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung seines Souveriinitdtsbegriffs (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1973) p. 74; cf. Opera 57.143.
88. Com. Gen. 22:1, vol.1, p. 559.
89. 30th Serm. 2 Sam., p. 451; compare also the letter to Bullinger of 9 Sept. 1563, Bonnet 4.334. Walzer again concedes that "Calvin sought to limit and define the range of permissible activities" in war, though he does not think the argument ends there. (Walzer 65, 111)
90. To Barth, Calvin's understanding of the Word as "thunder and lightning" directed against the renegade - compare ICR IV.viii.9, p. 1157 - suggests a distasteful affinity to imperialism and militarism. (Barth 198) Barth does not address the below considerations, however, in coming to this conclusion.
91. Compare Bouwsma 34: "[Calvin] abominated 'mixture/ one of the most pejorative terms in his vocabulary; mixture in any area of experience suggested to him disorder and unintelligibility." Compare also Calvin's letter to Protector Somerset, dated 22 Oct. 1548, for this equation of "mixtures" with "pollutions." (Bonnet 2.192)
92. Com. Acts 17:26, NTC 7.118.
93. Bouwsma 146; 30th Serm. 2 Sam., p. 459.
94. Com. Dan. 7:23-24; cf. Bouwsma 146.
95. (Com. Isaiah 2:4. Cf. Jean Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, translated by William Pringle, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), no pages numbers.)
96. Compare also Com. 1 Peter 2:13: "[I]t is certain that the Romans penetrated into Asia and subdued these countries more by unjust guiles than by any legitimate way." (NTC 12.270) The Pax Romana, it might be added, was for Calvin "a token of that eternal peace which we enjoy in Christ" and therefore no credit to the Roman Empire.
97. Com. Gen. 10:8-11, vol.1, pp. 317-319. Compare St. Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, edited and translated by R. W. Dyson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 147-148 (Bk. IV, Ch. 4).
98. Barth comes close to saying both: first he admits that Calvin's assent is only "conditional and limited... but finally we have a full and unqualified yes." (Barth 212, italics added) On Calvin's alleged affirmation of war as a means of politics, compare also Ernst Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung des Protestantismusfiir die Entstehung der modernen Welt, edited by Klaus H. Fischer (Schutterwald: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 1997), pp. 62,107.
99. Compare 30th Serm. 2 Sam., p. 458.
100. Com. Isaiah 3:4.
101. 5th Serm. 2 Samuel, p. 71
102. Compare also 1st Sermon, p. 8: "Once the wicked have shed innocent blood, that increases their appetite, and they are like drunkards who are always thirsty - the more they drink, the more they want! So it is with those who have once tasted human blood - they always want to continue in their cruelty."
103. 5th Serm. 2 Samuel, pp. 72-73.
104. Compare also 6th Sermon, p. 81: "[O]ne sees how earthly princes only rejoice when they fill the fields with dead bodies... That, to them, is only a pastime; it is of no more concern than wiping their mouths."
105. 5th Serm. 2 Samuel, p. 72, italics added. Barth, too, recognizes that Calvin "states most definitely that those who resort to arms should do so with regret." (Italics added) One might contrast this with Zwingli, for one, who died fully armed on the battlefield. (Barth 77, 85)
106. Com. Isaiah 2:4 ("And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares").
107. 6th Serm. 2 Sam., p. 85.
108. Compare also Calvin's Sermon on Job 31:1-15: "He who does not consider a man his brother makes himself an ox, or a lion, or a bear, or some savage beast, and he renounces the image of God that is imprinted in all of us." (Templin, op. cit., p. 168; cf. Opera, vol. 34, p. 655)
109. ICR IV.xx.3 (p. 1488). At ICR III.xix.15 (p. 847), Calvin characterizes political government as the mode "whereby man is educated for the duties of humanity and citizenship."
110. ICR II.ii.13 (p. 272).
111. Compare also Com. Gen. 2:18, p. 128, and 4:14, p. 213.
112. Com. Gen. 10:8, p. 317; 71st Sermon on Job, cf. Bouwsma 201.
113. ICR II.ii.13 (pp. 272-273).
114. Compare Com. Rom. 2:14: "[I]t is beyond all doubt that [there are] certain ideas of justice and rectitude ... that are implanted by nature in the hearts of men." (NTC 8.48)
115. Com. Matt. 7:12, NTC 1.232.
116. Com. Isaiah 2:4.
117. Compare Com. Gal. 5:14, NTC 11.101.
118. ICR IV.x.27 (p. 1205), IV.xii.l (p. 1229).
119. ICR IV.x.28 (p. 1206), II.ii.13 (pp. 272). Calvin makes no sharp distinction between government and law: "Nothing truer could be said than that the law is a silent magistrate, the magistrate a living law." (ICR IV.xx.14, p. 1502)
120. Com. Jeremiah 30:9.
121. Compare Com. Daniel 18.4:12, p. 163: "If we consider all the circumstances of life, we shall see that this benefit from God is necessary for us in every respect."
122. Com. Rom. 13:3, NTC 8.281.
123. ICR II.iii.3 (p. 292).
124. Com. Isaiah 34:12 (vol. 3). In his sermons on 2 Samuel and on Titus, Calvin employs the image of the ungoverned attacking each other "like dogs and cats." (6th Serm. 2 Samuel, p. 82; 14th Sermon on Titus, cf. Walzer 42; cf. Opera 55.559) This is not far, surely, from Hobbes' notorious war of every man against every man.
125. ICR IV.xx.3 (p. 1488).
126. ICR IV.xx.4 (p. 1489).
127. Serm. Job 36:6-14, cf. Stevenson 120.
128. ICR IV.xx.4 (p. 1490).
129. Com. Daniel 18.4:10-12, p. 162.
130. Compare Ibid., p. 164: "The blessing of God is conspicuous in princes, even if they are far from carrying out their obligations; for God does not allow his grace to be completely extinguished in them. Therefore they are forced to bear some fruit."
131. Com. Rom. 13:3, NTC 8.282.
132. Compare also Com. 1 Peter 2:14, "There has never been a tyranny, nor can one be imagined, however cruel and unbridled, in which some portion of equity has not appeared... [S]ome kind of government, however deformed and corrupt it may be, is still better and more beneficial than anarchy." (NTC 12.271) How little sympathetic Calvin was to despotism is palpable, nonetheless, when he dismisses as "intolerable" the notion "that the tyranny of Caligula, Nero, Heliogabalus or the like should be considered a true state of the commonwealth." (ICR IV.ii.3, p. 1045, italics added) By the example of "Nimrod," whose name is for Calvin synonymous with a "barbarous ferocity" more beastly than human, "God intended the first author of tyranny to be transmitted to odium by every tongue."
133. (Com. Gen. 10:8, p. 317, and 10:10, p. 319)
134. Letter to Count Tarnow, 29 Dec. 1555, Bonnet 4.426 (App.). In a letter to Protector Somerset, Calvin writes similarly that God upholds even the kingdoms and principalities of the "infidels who are his enemies." (To Protector Somerset, 22 Oct. 1548, Bonnet 2.196)
135. Compare Com. Mark 10:21: "The preservation of the human race is dear to Him (the preservation which consists in righteousness, justice, moderation, prudence, loyalty, temperance), and therefore He is said to love the social virtues; not that they merit salvation or grace, but because they aim at something that He approves." (NTC 2.257) At ICR III.xiv.3 (p. 770), Calvin likewise identifies righteousness, continence, friendship, temperance, fortitude, and prudence as "God's instruments for the preservation of human society."
136. 6th Serm. 2 Sam., p. 90.
137. Com. 2 Thess. 3:2, NTC 8.414.
138. Compare also Com. Matt. 13:24-30, NTC 2.74-75.
139. Compare Com. Rom. 1:7: "fTJhere is no true association with the faithful for any who do not believe for certain that the Lord is favorable to them even though they are undeserving and wretched sinners... This is what 'grace' means." (NTC 8.19)
140. Compare Wolin 167. As Karl Holl points out, the idea that the putative elect might feel themselves to be "a kind of higher species, an aristocracy among men" would have struck Calvin as "pure frivolousness." (Holl 265) Apart from grace itself, the elect are in no wise worthier than those whom God has discarded.
141. (Compare Com. Rom. 9:23, NTC 8.211; Com. 1 Tim. 2:3, NTC 10.209)
142. An especially subtle contribution to this debate is Hans Baron's argument for why a "libertarian-revolutionary tendency" can be attributed to Calvinism despite the fact that the points of departure for Calvin's theory of the state seem at first plainly incompatible with such a development. (Cf. Baron 37 and esp. Part II- 4, pp. 77-97) Another seminal contribution by Quentin Skinner concludes, on the other hand, that "although it has become usual in recent discussions of reformation political theory to speak of 'the Calvinist theory of revolution,' it will now be evident that there are virtually no elements in the theory that are specifically Calvinist at all." (Cf. Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2, The Age of Reformation (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1978), p. 321. Compare esp. Part Three on "Calvinism and the Theory of Revolution," pp. 189-348)
143. Calvin taught that corrupt forms of government are not ordained by God in the manner that just governments are. (Cf. Com. Rom. 13:1, NTC 8.281) Yet the inference that this might make a difference for the purposes of obedience was one that Calvin anticipated and rejected - though also one whose logic triumphed even among the first generation of his students who would march at the head of the "monarchomach" ranks: "[M]any cannot be persuaded that they ought to recognize [tyrants] as princes and to obey their authority as far as possible. For in such great disgrace, and among such crimes, they discern no appearance of the image of God that ought to [shine] in the magistrate... Indeed, this inborn feeling has always been in the minds of men, to have and curse tyrants as much as to love and venerate lawful kings... But if we look to God's Word, it will lead us further." (ICR IV.xx.24-25, p. 1512)
144. Wolin 181, italics added. Baron, too, credits "Calvinism's religious affirmation of the state" with making a vital contribution to "the renewal of political humanity." (Baron 103) No claim, meanwhile, is made
145. Compare Wolin 167: "Calvin put forward a system of ideas that stemmed the flight from civility. On the political side, he worked to restore the reputation of the political order, to remind Protestant man of the political side of his nature, and to instruct him in the rudiments of a political education." (Italics added)
146. Compare Barth 134. Also Ibid. Ill: "For all the Gallic liveliness that can flash forth at times, profound seriousness goes hand in hand in Calvin with restrained politeness."
147. Compare Com. Rom. 13:8, NTC 8.284-85
148. Com. Isaiah 34:12 (vol. 3). The preservation of seemliness and the avoidance of disorder struck Calvin as "suitable standards for assessing everything connected with external organization." (Com. 1 Cor. 14:40, NTC 9.310, italics added) This leads Josef Bohatec, for one, to claim that Calvin was animated by "an outright pathos of order," an aesthetically tinted urge towards the marvels of symmetry and harmonious unity. (Cf. Josef Bohatec, Calvin und das Recht, reprint of the 1934 Feudingen edition (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1971), p. 62)
149. Com. Jeremiah 30:9: "It is better that the devil should rule men under any sort of government, than that they should be set free without any law, without any restraint."