CALVIN'S GENEVA pre-1555

CALVIN'S GENEVA pre-1555

1. POLITICAL SET-UP

   • Monter - issue over baptism raised recurring debate over magistrates and ministers over who could excommunicate
     • General Assembly decided ministers had exceeded their authority - Petit Counseil admonished the ministers to abide by the edicts
   • Separated secular and ecclesiastical government
     • Authority of the Church
       • Extended over matters spiritual - charge was to combat sin, to aid believers in the process of their personal sanctification, and to guard the church against dishonour
     • Secular authority
       • watched over outward forms of behaviour - theft, rape, murder, riots etc...
       • Obliged to follow both tablets of the Ten Commandments - obligated to punish idolatry, sacrilege and blasphemy
       • Duty of seeing that ecclesiastical discipline was upheld and the ministers of the word were not mocked.
   • Calvin's role of the Magistrates
     • Maintenance of political and ecclesiastical order
     • Provision of teaching of correct doctrine
     • Use its right to coercion
     • Ministers and magistrates committed to same task
       • Complementary responsibilities - agents and servants of God
       • Church discipline a matter of public concern, within the legitimate authority of the magistracy
   • Narrow Council, Council of Sixty and Council of Two Hundred
     • Already reformed on Calvin's arrival
       • GORDON - Calvin's work as a reformed only possible because of the support from the Swiss churches
         • Calvin and Bullinger appreciated the importance of a united Swiss front
           • This motive laid the basis for the dominance of Calvinism from 1550 on
     • Political and Religious REVOLUTIONS

2. OPPONENTS

   • Political
     • Monter - attacking Calvin for creating a theocracy and a regime of religious intolerance and moral terror
     • Monter - Apologetics condemning Calvin's opponents as libertines and loose-living reprobates
     • Libertines - couldn't tolerate the power that Calvin had obtained for the Church in Geneva
       • Specifically the Consistory's power of excommunication
     • Loyalist Genevans - destested Calvin's authority (as a Frenchmen)
     • Enfants de Geneva - led by prominent businessmen and Perrin
       • Calvin seen as too radical
         • Imposing a new tyranny - believed inhabitants had the right to appeal consistory excommunications - Small Council
       • 1549 Riot - Perrin's faction lose and punished/ exiled
     • Naphy and Reyburn
       • Calvin's fear of political opponents is reflected in the very harsh way he treats them
     • Punishments to political opponents much more humiliating - public shaming
   • Monter - in Geneva, excommunication was coupled with an enthusiasm to apply C16th morality to sumptuary laws effectively
     • Maelstrom of complaint circulating Geneva in the period. Areas of contention rarely distinct against reformers
     • Two distinct points of contention consistently raised through the period leading to 1555 expulsion of Perrin, Calvin's leading opponent
       • Growing discontent to the large French refugee community within Geneva
         • their size and influence, of which the ministers were the visible influence
         • Baptism issue; foreign ministers not understanding local concerns
           • and local people under greater stress from increased foreign influence
           • Bandiere; "God take the preachers".
             • "The Devil can take all the foreigners..the foreigners want to rule over us".
             • Locals resentful of foreign usurpation of authority and dictating to the rightful citizens of Geneva
           • Baptism name issue rallying point for opposition to the French
             • coincided with increased anti-French attacks
             • their growing economic, social and political influence
       • Genevan citizenry in repeated clashes with the ministers - regulation of names
   • Benedict - 1545
     • When anti-Guillermins exiled in 1541 were welcomed back in 1545 to fill the population void left by intermittent bouts of the plague, anti-Calvin sentiment grew
     • Bons Genevoysiens
       • Resisted Calvin's ministerial efforts to regulate behaviour and to exercise ecclesiastical discipline without magisterial oversight.
       • Definitive triumph only after a decade of struggle
       • Conflict began with the conflict over Baptism names
   • RELIGIOUS
     • FEAR - infecting others with false doctrine
     • Bolsec 1551
       • Continuously attacked Calvin over the issue of pre-destination and argued that it was a false picture of God as a tyrant eternally damning people
       • Calvin contacted Basel and Zurich for theological defense
         • Bolsec punished for acting too audaciously and banished from the city
     • Servetus 1545-53
       • Wrote to Calvin with a revised version of Calvin's 'Institutes' - how Servetus viewed the correct doctrine
       • Condemned to death in '53
         • Melanchthon greatly approved, wrote to Calvin "done a great service to the Reformed faith'
       • Calvin - Refutation on the Errors of Servetus
         • Defended capital punishment against heretics
       • Pettegree
         • More than any event, left a stain on Calvin's historical reputation
     • Castellio - against Servetus' death sentence
       • Religious freedom and freedom of conscience the most important - purity of life more important than doctrinal orthodoxy
       • Seen as ruining Geneva's reputation
         • 'That perfect school of Christ' Knox in 1559. Castellio saw Calvin as tyrannical and exerting too much power -
     • Genevan authorities -dangerous teachings should not go unchallenged and authority should not be defied
     • Beza - Calvin not so worried about religious opponents
       • His supreme knowledge of Scripture meant he could defend his own doctrine in the face of any difference in opinion

3. CALVIN

   • Legal training commended him to the legal authorities in Geneva
     • Benedict - Advised on matters of legal procedure and help in drafting the ecclesiastical ordinances  - legal exegesis avoided allegorical interpretation
   • THE CONSISTORY - 1542
     • Ecclesiastical ordinances instructed the elders
       • Attend to those expressing contrary religious doctrines, negligent over church attendance and those engaged in vice or crime
       • 1550 - 584 cases
         • 86 involved suspected magic or Catholic practice, failure to attend sermons and inadequate knowledge of the catechism
         • Attention to reconciling interpersonal disputes
           • 238 cases
           • Family cases and domestic assaults
           • Sexual improprieties - 160 cases
           • Gambling, dancing and false business practices - 34 cases
           • Marital issues of greatest concern
             • Watt - seen as both a social and religious issue - DISCIPLINE
       • 12 lay elders and members of Venerable Company of Masters
         • Met weekly on a thursday - to maintain ecclesiastical discipline
         • Early matters - marital problems; pastoral and legal problem
         • Calvin's purpose
           • Guarantor of the discipline which Calvin's experience in Strasbourg had led him to recognise as essential to the survival of Reformed Christendom
           • Punishing deviancy
             • Those posing a threat to the established religious order of Geneva
           • Maintenance political and ecclesiastical order
           • Provision of the teaching of correct doctrine
     • Defended clerical authority
       • Civic justice would reinforce ecclesiastical discipline, and the pastors could turn to the magistrates for authoritative support
         • City council's jealousy
           • 'To take place in a manner that the ministers have no civil jurisdiction, not use anything but the spiritual sword of the word of God'
           • Civil power to remain unimpeded - McGrath
     • Watt
       • 'the means by which morality and discipline were imposed upon the rank and file of Geneva’
     • Kingdon
       • religious ignorance problems were because not fully informed about the Reformation and still using Catholic practices
       • Discipline=social control & help
   • When I first arrived in this church there was almost nothing
     • On his deathbed - "they were preaching, and that is all" - a very basic level of reformation in his eyes

4. Church System

   • Church as a divinely founded body - endowed with 'spiritual power'
   • Influences
     • Lay church members and ministers  - Included in draft ordinances for Schwabisch Hall, Basel, Constance, Ulm and Strasbourg - magistrates of long-standing free cities all proved unwilling to give church bodies the final say in excommunication
     • Visible church
       • Community of the Christian faithful, a visible group
       • Object of present experience
       • Invisible church
         • Fellowship of the saints and the company of the elect - an invisible entity
         • Object of faith and hope
         • Religious and Secular powers to be regarded as theoretically complementary
     • Benedict - Farel's assistance in Geneva
       • A radically new order of service, arrangements for education in the faith as new defined, and provisions for discipline of those who misbehaved.
       • Blueprint for 1541 Ecclesiastical Ordinances
   • Calvin's ecclesiastical Ordinance in 1537
     • Council accepted most of these measures, though communion restricted to four-yearly celebrations
     • Pastors - 'Instruction and Confession of Faith Used in the Church of Geneva' incorporated these Ordinances
     • Monthly celebrations of the Lord's Supper
     • Outline of the faith individuals needed to master
     • Ecclesiastical discipline exercised by persons of 'upright life'
       • Gave ministers the power to bar unrepentant sinners from the table - Benedict
   • Fourfold Ministry
     • Specific Scriptural directions
       • The right order of ministry in the visible church, so a specific form of ecclesiastical order became an item of doctrine - ecclesiastical administration (McGrath)
       • Cyprian of Carthage - "you cannot have God as your father unless you have the church as your mother" & "Outside the church there is no hope of remission of sins nor any salvation"
   • Benedict - following Paul, stressed Christians should act as magistrates
     • Against Anabaptists, who stated true Christians should have nothing to do with government
     • Government was divinely ordained; to resist the lawful leader was to resist God
   • 1544 measure against blasphemy
     • Prohibition of dirty songs and forbade loitering in the streets during the sunday sermons
   • 1549 broad morals edict
     • new penalties for confirmed blasphemers, prohibited speaking ill of God's word or the city magistrates
   • 1541 ORDINANCE
     • WITTE Jr. - Echoed Lutheran calls for liberty
       • Liberty of political officials from ecclesiastical power and privilege; of the individual conscience from canon law and clerical control; local clergy from papacy; of Prot. churches from state & church oppression
       • Rooted in Bible and classical sources
       • Each local polity be a uniform Christian commonwealth
     • Two tracks of morality
       • Morality of Duty - demanded of ALL persons
       • Morality of Aspiration demanded of believers in reflection of their faith

5. STRASBOURG EXPERIENCE - 1541 return

   • Conditions in Geneva deteriorated: remaining Protestant preachers in Geneva were not capable of providing effective leadership
   • 1543 Institutes
   • Ordinances inspired
     • Elders chosen by city officials
       • from members of various councils that made up the city government
       • Benedict - Genevan ordinances linked the consistory more closely to the city government than other Reformed church orders
     • Deacon bestowed upon administrators of the city's hospital
     • Weekly gatherings of ministers
       • Biblical passages to be discussed 'to preserve purity and agreement of doctrine' and quarterly sessions of fraternal correction
     • Weekly catechism classes for children
       • No child admitted to communion until he/she could recite the catechism
     • Oversight of ecclesiastical discipline
       • Consistory of pastors and elders
   • Invited Back?
     • Kingdon - had the skills Geneva needed at this juncture
       • Training as both a lawyer and a theologian - apt for dealing with the various councils of Geneva and generating the needed- reform
       • A first set of laws provided a kind of constitution for the Reformed Church of Geneva.
       • A second set of laws provided a kind of constitution for the Genevan state
       • 'Servant' of Geneva

6. International Influence

   • Zurich and Genevan Officials demanding his return in 1541
     • Stressed the town's location  and trade connections made it a place from which he could exercise wide influence
   • Benedict - Calvin never lost the feeling of refugee - importance of events beyond the city
     • Wide influence across Europe
       • Sought by many reformers and magistrates for advice
   • Letters to the HRE
     • Saxony, Wurttemburg and the Palatinate
       • Princes to strive for a godly reformation
   • REFUGEE CHURCHES
     • Frankfurt in 1556
       • to mediate a dispute with the French churches there
   • Patria; FRANCE
     • Explosion of church-building in 1555-61
       • Calvin inundated with letters imploring him to send ministers to reap the harvest, seeking his counsel about matters of doctrine, worship and discipline
   • Survival of Calvinist groups
     • Dependent on a strong, well-disciplined church, capable of weathering the hostility of its milieu
   • Mistrustful of monarchs; prone to become tyrants
     • Tyrannical kings of the OT
   • Consensus Tigurinus 1547
     • Zurich agreement with Zwingli and Calvin
     • "The ministers of the Church of Zurich and Calvin, Minister of the Church Geneva"
       • Contemporarily viewed as the figurehead of the Church of Geneva
         • Clear clerical role, and the power he was deemed to exert

7. Naphy

   • Geneva the birthplace and forge of the Calvinist model
   • Interplay between Calvin and Geneva
     • Which gave Calvinism many of its distinctive and idiosyncratic (individual) characteristics
   • Geneva
     • Awash with patriotic passions
     • Inflamed with revolutionary fervour
     • Society in turmoil and political structure was ad hoc