THE INSTITUTES

THE INSTITUTES

1. 1536

   • Benedict - convincing Francis I that the evangelical faith not threat to order, yet cast dangers of false worship
     • Catholic practices 'frightful abhominations'
   • Excommunication
     • Instituted to bar the evidently unbelieving and unworthy
   • Relation between Church and State
     • Influenced by the Gospel
     • RESPONSIVE NATURE
       • Official condemnation of the Affair of the Placards of 1534
       • Protest against the attitude of the French Crown with regard to the Reform
       • Calvin's utter focus on French affairs
       • Keen to clear French Reformed from the accusation of rebellion
   • Indebted to Lutheran thought
     • Its planning
     • Exposition on the Decalogue and the first article of the Creed

2. Jesus in Matthew 18:15-17

   • Blueprint for shunning sinners who refused to amend their ways after first private, then collective admonitions failed to move them.

3. DISCIPLINE

   • Benedict - Formed the sinews of a rightly ordered church and encompassed the power of excommunication
     • The Consistory served a different need to state's suppression of criminal behaviour
   • Preferred aristocratic governance - least likely to fall to tyranny

4. BIBLE

   • clear model for church discipline
   • Scripture
     • Spelled out the basic offices found in any properly ordered Christian church.
     • Inspired by Bucer
       • 'On True Pastoral Care' of 1538 on the NT - "pastors and preachers as the servants who meet the needs of the poor on behalf of the common church".
       • Bucer - 'Holy Spirit's ordinance...each church have a number of elders who are all pastors and bishops; overseers who provide pastoral care and carry out the pastoral office
       • 1543 revision incorporated Bucer's claim (Benedict)
         • Various forms of ministry had a clear biblical sanction and gave greater precision to the lists on ministers in Bucer's work.
         • Revisions created a work that was comprehensive and compact - appropriate for theological instruction and laymen - (Benedict)
     • McGrath - "Calvin points to how we are able to appreciate and enjoy the good things of life
       • Celebrate and acknowledge their author, giving him thanks - Calvin's sentiment

5. FOURFOLD MINISTRY

   • Calvin strengthened ministerial authority by claiming divine ordination for it, and gave those recognising the need to escape pollutive Rome a positive alternative model of a true Christian church
   • Pastors
     • Proclaiming the Gospel and administering the sacraments BIBLE - 'bishops', 'presbyters', 'pastors', 'ministers',
     • Like Bucer, Calvin (Benedict) deduced that the Roman Catholic hierarchy that distinguished bishops from parish ministers was illegitimate
     • Some ministers could have an oversight role, but all should preach and minister to a congregation at the same time
     • Ministers of the Word
   • Teachers
     • Experts in scriptural interpretation, but LACKED authority to apply Scripture
   • Elders
     • Censured morals
   • Deacons; Two types
     • Responsible for the relief of the poor
     • Collecting and distributing alms
     • Devoted to physical care of the poor and sick
       • Included widows - deaconesses as well as deacons. Inspired by Paul in Timothy 5:9-10

6. DOUBLE PREDESTINATION

   • Humanity as humble and cast down, to learn to tremble at his judgment and esteem his mercy - ELECTION
   • Addressed in 1539 Institutes - reaction against Melanchthon
   • Influenced by the modern Augustinian school (McGrath)
     • Taught a doctrine of absolute double predestination - God allocates some to eternal life and others to eternal condemnation, without any reference to merits or demerits. Fate rests upon the will of God
   • Salvation lies outside the control of the individual
     • Calvin; forced to reckon with the mystery of the inexplicable
   • God not subject to any law
     • God is outside the law, and that his will is the foundation of existing conceptions of morality
     • Predestination rests in the inscrutable judgements of God
     • Ancillary doctrine; explaining a puzzling aspect of the consequences of the proclamation of the gospel of grace - McGrath

7. 1559

   • Predestination follows the exposition of the doctrine of faith
     • Predestination in its proper context - mystery of divine revelation - yet revealed in a specific context and specific manner
     • Jesus the 'mirror' of election- an object lesson for the upright in faith
     • Scripture, Calvin feels able to deny any weakness on God's part -OMNIPOTENCE (McGrath)
     • Biblical exposition and systematic theology virtually identical to Calvin (McGrath)
   • Culminating work of Calvin's lifetime
     • Translated into French in 1560
     • Four Books of the Institutes
     • Monumental work
       • Its success was immense and it was never discredited afterwards.
     • Theological Summa of Reformed Protestantism

8. WENDEL

   • Whole of Calvinism is in the Institutes
     • All other works related to it
     • Synthesis of Calvin's thought

9. 1539

   • Contained 3x as much matter as the 1539 edition
   • REACTIVE
     • Servetus' writings and the Anabaptists - increased exposition on the Trinity
   • Influenced by Bucer's work
     • More coherent and systematic - better mastery of material
   • French version translated 1541
     • Elegant and personal style
     • Abundant circulation in France
       • established itself at once as the basic manual of dogmatic in the reformed churches.

10. 1550

    • Translated into French 1551
    • Subdivided into paragraphs - helping the reader find their way

11. SOURCES

    • Hist. - Calvin more constructive than imaginative
      • Interested more in humanist erudition than original discoveries
    • Hist. debate on role of Luther
      • Calvin his most faithful disciple
        • Comparisons are confirmed and legitimised by the homage that Calvin never ceased to render to Luther and his work.
      • Renegade from Lutheran thought
        • Calvin had too strong a personality to profess himself of Luther’s school without criticism or reservations
    • Derived thought from Augustine or Bucer
      • Idea of the Church points of comparison with Bucer palpable
        • Unified in two aspects (visible and invisible)
        • Though taken as much from Augustine doctrine
      • Church organisation
        • Wendel - Bucer's most important contribution
        • Ecclesiastical organisations are of Divine right because they are dictated by the Holy Spirit
    • Wendel - Greater knowledge of OT than any other reformer
    • Influenced by scholastic authors, medieval scholars, Church Fathers and Roman Law
    • Melanchthon
      • His expositions on tables of the Law, upon faith, hope and charity influenced Calvin's thought
    • Little respect for Zwingli
      • Saw him as a second-rate theologian - didn't understand Zurcich's support-base for him

12. Wendel - PURPOSE

    • Initially - exposition on Christian doctrine as a whole
      • Sort of Catechism - an elementary manual
    • Calvin; the Holy Spirit calls upon men to imbue themselves with Divine revelation
      • By the reading of Holy Scripture
      • Institutes a means to fulfil this
    • Manual so as not to commit errors by misinterpreting Scripture
      • Purpose for translating it into French - dissemination of correct reading of Scripture
    • 1560 edition - Latin preface for students and the learned
      • Fundamental aim of work made apparent
      • Underlining, for the benefit of all readers, the function that had to be fulfilled by dogmatics